What led you to write this book?
Over my career, I've had the privilege of working with, advising, observing, and drawing lessons from many of the world's most remarkable negotiators. Apart from writing dozens of HBS case studies on the kinds of business and financial deals that often confront senior executives, I've had the privilege since 2001 of chairing Harvard's annual Great Negotiator Award program and co-chairing an initiative to interview almost all the living former U.S. secretaries of state. (My co-chairs of the latter project are also my coauthors on this book: Nick Burns, longtime senior diplomat turned Kennedy School professor, and Harvard Law School professor Bob Mnookin. A "note" at the end of this question briefly describes these programs, whom we've honored, and why.)
Typically, after extensive preparation on our end, the awardees come to campus where we videotape lengthy conversations with them, probing their most challenging negotiations for insights that will improve practice. These interviews are unscripted and we welcome skeptical as well as supportive audience members. During these intensive events, many of the men and women whom we honor from around the world have deeply impressed me and taught me a great deal about my chosen subject. My colleagues and I often draw upon this unparalleled set of interviews in creating course materials, articles, books, and interactive video presentations.
To prepare for Henry Kissinger's Harvard visit in late 2014 as part of our program on former secretaries of state, I read almost 6000 pages of his writings as well as much of what others have written about him. Having been a college student during the last years of the profoundly divisive Vietnam War, I approached this particular preparation with some residual ambivalence; more on the various controversies surrounding Kissinger as secretary of state here. In his books, however, I found a kind of sophistication about dealmaking and dispute resolution that I had simply not encountered elsewhere.
Our initial conversations with Henry Kissinger, which marked his first time in a Harvard classroom in forty-five years, proved intellectually engaging and represented a deeply emotional "homecoming" for the former Harvard student and professor. As we interviewed him in depth about his most important negotiations, the unexpected subtlety of his answers intrigued me along with some of my most deal-savvy colleagues. Kissinger turned out, in the words of Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard's president, to be a ninety-two-year-old "rock star" in the eyes of the three hundred or so students in attendance, who asked very tough questions of the former secretary of state.
Having been struck by the broader potential value of Kissinger's strategies and tactics, yet finding myself unable to fully articulate their underlying basis, I sought insight from others. Countless books analyze Kissinger's geopolitics, policies, and individual negotiations. Despite looking widely, I was quite surprised that I could not find a serious cross-cutting analysis of Kissinger's overall negotiation record, let alone its potentially valuable implications for diplomacy and other endeavors. This struck me as gap worth filling.
Trying to understand and crystallize the key elements of his distinctive negotiation approach led me to undertake Kissinger the Negotiator with my two co-authors. We resolved to distill its powerful lessons, both positive and negative, so they would be genuinely useful to others who confront today's negotiation challenges in business and law as well as in diplomacy. (Read here for more specifics.) As the publication process neared completion, perhaps given that I teach at the case-study driven Harvard Business School, I began to think of this book almost as the "ultimate negotiation case study."
*Note on the Great Negotiator and Secretaries of State Projects. The "Great Negotiator" award program honors men and women from around the world who have overcome significant barriers to reaching agreements that have achieved worthy purposes. It is sponsored by the Program on Negotiation-an active consortium of Harvard, MIT, and Tufts—and Harvard's Program on the Future of Diplomacy. Negotiation-oriented faculty from these universities do substantial advance research and casewriting, bring the honoree to campus for at least a day of intensive, videotaped interviews on his or her most challenging negotiations, then extract their most valuable lessons in articles, course materials, and interactive video presentations. Since 2001. this program has honored the following people:
Senator George Mitchell with special emphasis his work in Northern Ireland leading to the Good Friday Accords.
Bruce Wasserstein for his decades of financial dealmaking with a special focus on his role at Lazard LLC.
Special Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky, in particular for her negotiations with China over intellectual property rights.
Lakhdar Brahimi, Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary General, with special emphasis on his work to forge a post-conflict government in Afghanistan after 9/11.
Ambassador Richard Holbrooke for his negotiations leading to the Dayton Agreement that ended the Bosnian war as well as his multiparty efforts to deal with unpaid U.S. dues to the United Nations.
The Honorable Stuart Eizenstat for his negotiations over restitution of Holocaust-era assets in Switzerland and other European countries.
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata for her quiet negotiations on behalf of refugees and internally displaced persons in regions from Iraq to the Balkans to Rwanda.
The artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude for their negotiations to erect massive, controversial installations from the Running Fence in California to the Gates in Central Park, New York, as well as wrapping Paris's Pont Neuf and the German Reichstag.
Former Finnish President and Nobel Prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari in particular for his negotiation efforts leading to Kosovo's independence and the resolution of a decades-long, bloody conflict between the government of Indonesia and the province of Aceh.
Former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker for his negotiations leading to the reunification of Germany within NATO, actions to forge the Gulf War coalition to eject Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, and diplomacy paving the road to the Madrid Conference.
Singapore's Ambassador Tommy Koh for his work chairing the Law of the Sea Negotiations, the Rio Earth Summit, the US-Singapore Free Trade Agreement, and a number of other initiatives.
Colombian President Juan Santos for his tireless negotiations to bring an end to the 50 year war between the government and the FARC guerrilla group.
An offshoot of the Great Negotiator Awards is the American Secretaries of State Program, a joint effort between the Program on Negotiation and the Program on the Future of Diplomacy. This program is co-chaired by Professors Nicholas Burns (Harvard Kennedy School). Robert Mnookin (Harvard Law School, and James K. Sebenius (Harvard Business School). By a similar process to that of the Great Negotiator program, lengthy videotaped interviews have been conducted with Secretaries James Baker, George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Hillary Clinton. (We look forward to the participation of John Kerry in 2018).