One of the most famous quotes in American culture was never said, yet it provides a great lesson of the importance of clarity in communication.
In negotiation, words are our tools of persuasion. The way we get people to agree with us is through the words we use. Done properly (right words, right person, right time), words help us achieve our goal: influencing the other party to say, “Yes.”
But words can be multi-dimensional and misleading. In one negotiation, the word “capital” sidetracked me and my counterpart for several days. I said, “We need a term that allows us to recover our capital.” The client said no. What we did with our capital was our risk. This went on through several negotiation sessions until we realized we were talking past one another. When I said “capital” I meant money. The client, a manufacturing company, thought I meant equipment. The client felt no obligation to compensate us for issues with our equipment, but agreed we should be able to recover our investments in the deal. What “capital” means can vary based on your industry.
I’d always thought the quote attributed to famed American bank robber Willie Sutton was a victim of similar misinterpretation. The story is that a reporter, Mitch Ohnstad, asked Sutton why he robbed banks. Sutton was said to have replied, “Because that’s where the money is.” The exchange always bothered me because the answer does not align with the question. As a former newspaper reporter, I would have asked that question to understand what motivates Willie Sutton to rob banks. Sutton spent half his 79 years in prison because he would not stop robbing banks, so a fair question would be, “Why do you rob banks?” Sutton appears to be answering a question about his choice for a robbery: “Why do you rob banks?”
In interviews late in his life, Sutton said he never said what he is credited with saying. Nonetheless, the quote has taken on a life of its own, having found a place in medical schools as “Sutton’s Law.” Like Occam’s Razor, Sutton’s Law suggests to medical students that when trying to diagnose an ailment, go to the most obvious answer first. Sutton’s quote is perceived as pretty obvious answer: I rob banks because banks have money.
In his 1976 autobiography, “Where the Money Was: The Memoirs of a Bank Robber,” Sutton finally answered the question as to why he robbed banks:
“Why did I rob banks? Because I enjoyed it. I loved it. I was more alive when I was inside a bank, robbing it, than at any other time in my life. I enjoyed everything about it so much that one or two weeks later I’d be out looking for the next job. But to me the money was the chips, that’s all.”
A much different answer to a much different question, all because of focus on the wrong word: “why” instead of “banks.” But an important lesson in communication. Failing to maintain clarity in what each party is saying will ultimately cloud your deal.
