It Can't Always Be About Being Right

When do you take a calculated risk? Can you call it a calculated risk even if it is a little difficult to see the "calculated" piece beyond your all too apparent frustration.

Here's the deal. You are in the midst of a settlement agreement. You are encouraged to settle because it supposedly does not look good for you in the end. All things considered, you determine that it would be best all around to close this out quick and easy. Quick and easy, ha! Everything is tooling along . . . .and then the bump. 

In settlement discussions, many options and approaches are thrown out for consideration. Once considered further, the options presented may not be feasible. What sounded like a good idea in brainstorming, may not after further inquiry. You review the other party's settlement proposal and see that the proposal appears to be negatively impacting the very group they say they were trying to protect. They may not realize this, so you tell them. They don't budge or seem to care. Why? It seems to you that they can't see beyond their need to make a point. They just know that they are right.

Do you take a calculated risk, end the settlement discussions and take this to hearing because you don't feel the group of people in question are being represented properly? You feel they are being used as a means to an end. Are they? Or could it be that you don't like it when the balance of power is not in your favor and you can't see beyond your need to shift it? You can't see beyond your need to make a point. You just know that you are right.  

What do you do? Absolutely nothing for 24 hours. Then you talk with your people on this side of the issue.  When they tell you to let it go, settle and move on, you do just that. You settle and you move on. You do it without calculation. You do it with a smile.