Screwproof: doing deals that won't f*ck up

By Andrew Walker

Do you think you're rational? Are the decisions you make logical? How do you know? Have you ever looked back on decisions you've made and wished you had chosen differently? Probably. Everyone does sometimes, right?

The problem is our rational minds are affected by our emotions, our physical state and a whole bunch of social pressures. These unconscious parts of our mind can make us choose badly. It creates a bad decision making process, sometimes referred to as 'confirmation bias'. In life, it causes arguments, in business, it gets you screwed.

The other problem is, books about it can be pretty dull. Except this one, which is full of funny stories and bad language, just like the real world.

Screwproof is a laugh-out-loud funny, plain speaking guide to using simple thinking tools to help you make better decisions and negotiate better deals. It explains 5 simple rules that will stop you from getting screwed. It's got useful thinking tools like 'The Sandwich Guy test' and 'The Bad Waiter test' to help predict how well you'll get along with someone you're trying to make a deal with.

Screwproof is a way of thinking that makes sure your choices are coming from your rational brain, not emotions or social peer pressure making choices for you, written by entrepreneur and tech startup veteran Andrew Walker, based on all the deals he's screwed-up over the last 20 years.

It's been read by bankers, investors, civil servants, psychologists, entrepreneurs, geeks... it's even got people thrown out of quiet coaches on trains for laughing. It's useful for anyone who has to make deals, especially if they've got to think creatively and fast.

Don't get screwed, get screwproofed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrew Walker
• Release date: Feb 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9780992836511

Andrew Walker

 Andrew T. Walker (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is associate professor of Christian ethics and public theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and an associate dean in the School of Theology. He is a fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center and managing editor of WORLD Opinions. He resides with his wife and three daughters in Louisville, Kentucky. 

Book preview

Screwproof

Doing deals that won't f*ck-up

by Andrew Keith Walker

© Copyright Andrew Keith Walker 2014

ePub Edition License Notes

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ISBN 978-0-9928365-1-1

Disclaimer

(in case you feel like suing me)

This book contains language and imagery that some people might find offensive, including swearing, coarse language and sexual metaphors.  Any similarities in the text to real people or companies is purely coincidental, all names and descriptions have been changed to protect the identities of any third parties.  Any and all opinions expressed are entirely my own unless labelled otherwise.  Nothing in this eBook should be treated as advice, it’s purely educational and intended to help readers reach their own conclusions, it is not a set of instructions for how to conduct your life.  Basically if you’re offended, think I’m talking about you, expressing an expert opinion in a professional capacity or have any liability for things that happen to you after reading this book, I’m not and it’s not my fault.  Enjoy ;)

For Lulu, who helps me do everything

Foreword

I never meant to write thisbook.  When I started, I had a different book in mind.  It had the same title, same rules, similar topics and so on, but it wasn't quite the same.  Thatbook was all about the differences in business between independents (start-ups, entrepreneurs, freelancers, consultants, writers and such) and employees (people that work in large organisations).  That's because for the independents, like me, negotiating your way through business life is full of challenges that most employees never have to face.

People at large organisations have departments full of lawyers, experts, experienced old hands and innovative new recruits.  They have teams, reporting procedures, handbooks, seminars and professional development courses.  They have support as individuals within a team, plus the weight of a big organisation behind them — meaning the people they do deals with don’t try to screw with them, because that would mean screwing with a large organisation, which is fucking with more than than most people can chew… if you forgive the appalling mixed metaphor.

For the rest of us, working for ourselves or working for small companies, the laws of the business jungle are different.  It’s an ecosystem where large organisations use their size and resources to bully you, and where other small businesses and independents can be hard nosed bastards… normally because if they’re not, they would get bullied by large organisations.  It’s tough to work for yourself, to start a new company, to think bigger than a regular day job.  Tough and rewarding.  Mostly tough.

It really is a jungle out there, and when I look back on the last eighteen years of trying to do my own thing, I’m surprised it didn't kill me with booze and cigarettes, or at least send me bankrupt or possibly to prison for filing the wrong tax form or signing a duff contract, or employing the wrong person, or having the wrong type of insurance, or swimming with sharks and wrestling board room crocodiles, or some other shit like that.

So I wrote down my 5 simple rules for making deals that won’t turn into a screwing.  That was thatbook.  But as I wrote it, I realised that what happened to me in business mirrored what happened to me in life.  The way social groups behave isn’t a million miles away from how large organisations behave.  The way we are exposed to bad deals and difficult negotiations in our social lives is just as tough as it is in business.  What to wear, where to go, how to raise your kids, how to deal with your parents, what to buy, how to behave, they’re all subject to the same independent thinking vs. conventional wisdomstruggle that I had experienced trying to fit the working practice of freelancing into the working practices of a giant company.   So that story about the daily business of living worked its way into my original story about doing business.

That is thisbook.  It's like the original book, but different.

Life and business are so damn close together, when you work for yourself, that it doesn’t really make much sense to separate them anyway.  Friends, clients, colleagues, family, they all play their part, heroes and villains and all the shades of grey in between.

I never intended to write a book about that.  It came as a bit of a surprise, to be honest.

Life's like that.

So is business.

Chapter 1

Read this first, preferably before you buy the book…

  Nobody ever really gets screwed, we make bad choices because they feelthe same as good choices, in the same way a kitten and a big rat feel similar with your eyes closed.

Screwproofingyourself is the way I describe being analytical about the decisions we make when we negotiate something, be it for business or pleasure.  It’s a simple fix for the most common relationship problem we encounter, namely, getting screwed by someone else.  It fixes the problem simply, by reducing the chances of getting screwed.  It’s easy to do as well, because the truth is, we only ever screw ourselves. 

You see, our brains play tricks on us.  Often, we don’t have an objective view of what we are offering, what the other person is offering and how fair the exchange we’re agreeing to actually is.  Sometimes, what looks to be a fair offer isn’t.  Sometimes, what you offer is too much, and when you give too much, you feel screwed.  This book can teach you how to fix that objectivity problem fairly, without being mean, rude or a hard nosed bastard about it.  And avoid getting screwed in the process.

It starts with understanding your brain.  Your brain is a very complicated thing.  You think that your rational mind, the bit that does the thinking, the bit that is reading these words right now, is in charge… but it’s not. 

How you feel about what you’re reading is controlled by a different part of your brain.  You may agree or disagree, but those rational arguments are often your rational mind making up reasons to explain how your emotional brain and physical brain are feeling.  When you ignore that internal interaction inside your head, between your rational mind and the emotional and physical parts of your brain, it makes you vulnerable to being screwed. 

To explain the way you make decisions, let’s compare your brain with the brakes on a car.

When you press the brake pedal in a car, the pedal doesn’t actually slow the car down, the brake callipers on the brake disc do that.  It’s a system of many parts, linked by cables and hydraulic fluid and mechanical stuff, usually with a computer monitoring the process to ensure the wheel doesn't lock-up and skid.  Now, in decision making, consider your rational mind like your foot on the brake pedal, the rest of your brain is the other parts of the braking system.  Let’s call it your decision making system.

Okay, now here’s the problem:  Unlike in the brakes in a car,  your decision making system works in two directions.  Compared with the braking system in a car, this two-way operation would be the equivalent of the brake callipers and brake disc controlling when you press down on the brake pedal, which would be crazy.  In decision making, your emotional and physical brains do precisely that.  When your physical brain is making your body tense, it makes your emotional brain feel anxious and makes your thoughts more aggressive or defensive.  When your physical brain makes you relaxed, you feel happier and think more positively.  In both scenarios, the rest of the decision making system in your brain affects what you think, and how you behave, but you don’t notice it happening.

It’s why we have the expression lose your temper.  How can you loseyour temper?  That implies your temper has a mind of its own and can do things for itself once you've lost it.  A more accurate description would be to loose your temper.  The phrase lose your temperis a warning that your unconscious, emotional brain can overwhelm your reason when it’s let loose, unchecked by your rational mind.  It can make you do things you’ll regret when you’ve calmed down a bit and regained control of your temper.  It’s precisely that kind of process, just toned down a bit, that causes you to make bad decisions in life and business.

How you feel is always part thinking, part physical, part emotional.  Change one, change them all. 

The truth is you’re not really in control of what you think, any more than you are in control of when you feel horny or cold.  Your thoughts, like your body, react to external conditions, like a teenager who can’t help getting a hard-on when he sees a woman in a bikini.  This is why we get scared by horror movies or cry at sad stories.  If our thoughts didn’t work like that, we wouldn’t find TV, movies, books or music any more interesting than looking out of the window or listening to the traffic.

Something else in your brain, something processing emotional and physical feelings, makes those things interesting to your rational mind.

These non-analytical parts of your brain (a mixture of chemicals, neurones and synaptic pathways) respond to music and movies, which subsequently makes you think up rational reasons to explain why you like them, but the truth is, liking them isn't really rational at all.  It’s the same reason why some people like bungee jumping and others hate it.  It’s not rational, it’s mostly physical and