Beyond Intractability: A Free Knowledge Base on More Constructive Approaches to Destructive Conflict
Introduction:
Larry Susskind, co-director of the Public Disputes Program at Harvard Law
School, says that some of the most inspiring moments for consensus-building
practitioners are instances where they get the adversaries to actually come to
the table and agree on what they are going to talk about.
This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).
Consensus-Building Process
Larry Susskind
Co-Director of the Public Disputes Program, Inter-University Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School
I've been the responsible neutral in well over
sixty very complicated cases around the world. I mean in almost every case there
is a moment when I have to decide whether to go forward and take the assignment.
Then there's usually a crisis about whether we can get all the key parties to
the table and figure out who they are. Then there's a moment of jubilation when
we get all the key parties to agree to come to the table and convince ourselves
we got the right ones. Then there's a period of great depression when it looks
impossible now that everybody's there with regard to solving the problem. Then
there's a moment of a gleeful high, where my God, it looks like we came up with
something that's going to resolve all these disputes and we try to put it in
writing. Then there's the moment of great agony when we try to put it in writing
and people say, no, no, no that wasn't really what they meant anyway. Then
there's either a sense of satisfaction that something good has come out of it that's
allowed the people involved to feel that they moved forward with whatever the
issue is. Or there's that sense of despair that all that effort has not been
able to resolve whatever the difference is and you go on to the next thing. So
in every one of these fifty, sixty, seventy, very complicated disputes, there's
that pattern.
So the inspirational moments are those moments when you actually manage to
get people who are combatants or potential combatants on some question or issue,
to actually come and sit down around the table and to agree on what they're
going to talk about. And how they're going to talk and get started. That's
definitely a high. Whether you then generate an agreement or not, separate
question.
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction. -- Albert Einstein
The Beyond Intractability Knowledge Base Project Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess, Co-Directors and Editors c/o Conflict Information Consortium(Formerly Conflict Research Consortium), University of Colorado Campus Box 580, Boulder, CO 80309 Phone: (303) 492-1635; Fax: (303) 492-2154; Contact
