Introducing this blog and site: "Insights from Jim Sebenius about complex negotiations &c."
Friends and Colleagues,
Like most of you, I deeply care about how effective negotiation can lead to good outcomes in the face of daunting obstacles. These days, the world, the United States—and many of us personally—could use wiser and more productive negotiations. Via email, a new blog, and social media, I've decided to offer to a wider audience what I hope you find to be intriguing and valuable insights into this topic. And if I think it’s worth your while, I’ll toss in a few nuggets from time to time.
New Ideas for the Shutdown Negotiators.For me, these emails will succeed if everytime you open one, you find genuinely useful and/or intriguing insights, mainly into analyzing and effectively handling complex negotiations. So before I even sketch my background and current activities below, let me start with a "down payment" on my promise. I've recently published some ideas—on January 10 and February 8 in The Hill a widely read, Washington DC-focused outlet—about how to prevent the government shutdown negotiations from going into the ditch for a second time before their February 15 deadline. (As of February 17, a relatively narrow deal was struck, but the ideas behind my earlier advice have broader applicability.) Two negotiation concepts point the way. First, intractable, single-issue, win-lose negotiations can often be resolved by heeding the wise words of Dwight Eisenhower: “If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.” Second, craft an outcome that permits each side to give a (genuine but differently spun) “victory speech” to its constituents. If the application of these broader concepts to the shutdown talks interests you, go to "recently from Jim Sebenius," in the lower part of the landing page of my new website.
Now back to "why me?" Figuring out the strategies and tactics of successful negotiators and sharing this knowledge with others—personally, as a professor, and as a deal advisor—has been my passion for decades. As a kid growing up in Lafayette, Louisiana, I was fascinated at how savvy Cajun rice farmers, with little formal education, could outsmart major oil companies in leasing deals. I became something of a go-between in disputes among members of my family, intrigued by how bridges could sometimes be built over emotional chasms. And in routine negotiations—over cars, jobs, and houses—spotting good and bad moves really engaged me.
This interest came to define my career, which has spanned the U.S. Commerce and State Departments, the Blackstone Group, and Harvard Business School, my full-time home since 1992, where I started and grew the Negotiation department/unit. Concurrently, I direct the Harvard Negotiation Project at Harvard Law School and chair the annual Harvard-MIT-Tufts “Great Negotiator” award program. Outside academia, I actively work with talented partners at Lax Sebenius LLC advising companies, individuals, and governments on their most challenging deals.
Opportunities to distill and apply negotiation insights often come my way. For example, just in the last few months:
At the Boston Book Festival, I shared the stage with Wendy Sherman, the remarkable chief U.S. negotiator of the Iran nuclear deal, as we each presented our newly published books to a packed session, moderated by Graham Allison.
I conducted several hours of videotaped interviews with Juan Santos, former Colombian president, and his advisors on how they reached agreement with the FARC guerrillas after a fifty-year violent conflict that had killed over 230,000 people.
As part of our ongoing work at Lax Sebenius LLC, I worked with my partners to advise clients on renegotiating a troubled joint venture, on settling a multiparty lawsuit, and on forging a contract between small company's founder and a large pharmaceutical firm. (If you or others you know face a challenging deal or dispute and might use advisory help, contact me. I also enjoy speaking to groups on lessons from the world's greatest negotiators.)
After a public viewing of the “Oslo Diaries,” I led a discussion with Shlomo Ben-Ami, former Israeli foreign minister and lead negotiator at Camp David II. Shortly thereafter, I probed with Khalil Shikaki, the leading Palestinian pollster, the negotiation implications of his findings over decades of gathering detailed opinion data from Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and the wider region.
To share ideas from such activities more widely, I’ve started a new blog and, for the first time in my career, have begun reaching out on email and social media to those whom I think are likely to share these interests. You are among these people: a selected group of my friends, old and new, colleagues, advisory clients, former students, participants in executive programs I’ve led, or those who’ve heard talks I’ve given on handling complex deals and disputes.
If this outreach initiative is successful, you’ll actually be pleased to see items from me pop up in your inbox and social media feeds—with content you find both intriguing and personally valuable.* Please share or link to any of these materials that others might find useful or forward the sign up link for my “Insights” emails. Beyond waiting for my next message, do wander over to my new website for a look at the kinds of things I’ve been up to and how they can lead to better deals as well as more productive and sustainable cooperation.
Cheers,
Jim
*If not, I’m sorry to have burdened your inbox; feel free to unsubscribe below.
