Blogoir

Wearing my ADRg Ambassadors hat I was in London on Tuesday to give a workshop to a prominent law firm on The Psychology of Negotiation.

The people who attended spend much of their time drafting the legal clauses needed to give effect to deals already done or in prospect. They nonetheless enjoyed being taken off to the very different world of Diplomacy, where logic and rationality in negotiation do not always exist and certainly do not always prevail.

We ran a short roleplay based on an attempt to cut a quick deal over an education initiative in a developing country. The Minister, an NGO, a UN organisation and a major international corporation all have things to offer and things they want and don't want. How best to present themselves in the meeting - and to help steer the meeting to a positive outcome?

The fascinating thing about even very short roleplays is not that they are 'realistic', but that the way people behave in them has all sorts of real-life resonance. Some talk too much, or get sidetracked into detail and don't really say what they need to say. The chair of the meeting either grips the event from the start, or doesn't. People start to put annoying words into the mouths of other people. Some people say almost nothing - but nonetheless by saying nothing cleverly they get towards the outcome they want.

As we discussed it afterwards, it was especially interesting to hear how different people interpreted the relative strengths and weaknesses of the parties in the scenario. One side had had little to offer but had made up for it by being confident and assertive. Maybe too much so? Another side had 'felt' weak and so been reticent and less effective.

In short, the objective balance of forces had not been enough to determine the outcome - the subjective aspects of psychology and tactics too had played a part.

Conclusion? The skilled negotiator needs a full tool-box. And listens astutely to what other people are saying, both when they're speaking and when they are staying silent 

Charles Crawford's workshop was engaging, informative and a real eye-opener.  His techniques can be a valuable tool for anyone involved in commercial negotiations and his practical real-life examples really bring it to life 

Great stuff. Anyone else interested?

My latest DIPLOMAT piece is up:

The UK’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) has an imposing suite of UK-based and e-learning training courses for British diplomats. Some aim at improving skills (Diversity; One Team, Many Cultures; Communication and Assertiveness; Performance Management; First Aid); others look at thematic policy questions (Advanced Human Rights; Energy and Climate Security; Understanding US Foreign Policy; Contemporary Islamic Issues).

You would expect to find a strong bloc of FCO training courses on diplomatic negotiation technique. These are core diplomatic skills. The British are wily, efficient negotiators, so they must learn that somewhere. But you would be disappointed. There are, in fact, precisely… none.

This is interesting. It seems so at odds with what I was once told that Russian diplomats were taught at the start of their careers: ‘Never move to accept anything proposed by the other side, especially if you agree with it, without exacting the best possible price for changing position!’

How do British diplomats make up for this complete lack of systematic training in negotiation skills?

In part they don’t. They are living on legacy reputation built up over decades when the UK closely shaped the rules of global order, and so could take power and influence for granted – it’s not hard to do well in negotiations if you have more power and influence than the other side.

On the other hand, new British diplomats are given significant responsibility from an early stage: tough learning-on-the job followed by years of gritty practical experience. Plus they enjoy a working culture based on unquestioned teamwork.

Many foreign ministries do not work well in terms of  distributing information internally. Information is seen by officials as being all about their own status and personal power, to be guarded against all-comers.

In the British model, hoarding information is strongly discouraged – professionally discourteous and an obstacle to career progress. Facts and analysis flow freely and widely, almost independently of hierarchy. This creates new problems of its own, but it allows swarms of experts from the FCO and Whitehall to attack a problem from all angles and identify clever ways of incorporating negotiating ‘fat’ (scraps of concessions to be thrown out when necessary). UK diplomats thereby often enjoy a real edge in complex negotiations at the UN and in EU meetings in Brussels.

It also helps that the UK has cunningly organised things so that English is the planet’s main shared language (even if the Americans often muscle in on that one): you never go wrong by being the first party to get eloquent draft conclusions in English circulated around the negotiating table...

Read the rest - examples of real negotiation in action include the doomed Copenhagen Climate Summit:

Amidst these machinations one special negotiation continued, namely a struggle for psychological pre-eminence between Washington and Beijing. China rejected any legally binding agreement and protected its ‘sovereignty’ from reliable outside verification. These hard-hitting Chinese tactics left Obama in a policy and presentational dilemma. At one point he and other leaders found themselves talking to a Chinese official after Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao stayed away from the discussions to show that any outcome would be on his terms alone.

The right move for Obama in terms of negotiating technique – and long-term substance – was to leave the meeting until Jiabao appeared. But the President didn’t want to return to Washington empty-handed after playing up the climate issue so strongly to get elected. He stayed put.

President Obama opted for modest gains on the day but thereby lost ground in a deeper US/China negotiation. Both sides departed knowing that Beijing had won that round, both on substance and on public powerplay presentation...

Yesterday evening as I wearily wended my way home from Paris, I had to get the 2115 train from Paddington to Swansea. For some or other reason it was very full.

I made my way to the front of the train to save time when getting off at Didcot, and opened a carriage door. The way was almost completely blocked by someone's large luggage pile and said person (hereinafter Jerk-in-Cap) himself.

What ensued was roughly this

JiC:   Sorry, the train's full

CC:   Huh?

JiC:   It's full. You can't get past here.

CC:   Yes I can - just move out of the way and I'll squeeze past.

JiC:   Where do you want me to go?

CC:   Just move back and I'll get on.

JiC them grumpily retreated a bit and I squeezed past his luggage pile to walk into a standing-room only carriage.

CC:   There, magic. Not even difficult, was it?

The train got even fuller. Then JiC started to try to stop someone (X) with a folded-up bicycle getting on:

JiC:   You can't get past. It's full. And you can't bring that bike in here!

X:      Yes I can - the rules say so

JiC:   No you can't. I'm a lawyer!

At this point passenger Y lost his patience and started remonstrating with JiC, saying that he had watched him being rude and obnxious with two people so far and that he had no right to stop people trying to get on by usurping the doorway space.

An unpleasant and foul-mouthed exchange ensued. X then demanded to know who Y was. Y turned out to be some sort of railway official and gave him his personnel number, which JiC proceeded to write down pompously in a little notebook.

I then pushed through the throng to give Y my card, saying that I too was a lawyer and that if JiC caused him any problem I'd be honoured to act as a witness.

All the other passengers watching this unseemly scene at point-blank range kept a glum silence. Alas I did not have the presence of mind to film the whole second exchange on my iPhone. But I did take a picture of Jerk-in-Cap which I'll treasure for always.

What if anything is noteworthy in this stupid little episode?

Only that there are two ways to go in life.

One is to pick stupid, negative fights over nothing much and be wrapped up in yourself and your own 'rights'.

The other is to be open-hearted and positive.

Imagine if Jerk-in-Cap had spoken thus when I'd opened the door:

I'm so sorry that I've got all this luggage almost blocking the doorway. The train's so full I've nowhere to put it - but let me get out of the way and help you get past!

So easy. Adds a cheering touch of humanity to a long sweaty day for everyone in the vicinity.

But then someone who behaved like that would not be a Jerk.

No sooner had I put out the idea this morning that Gaddafi might do well not to blow Benghazi to bits but instead behave in a more guileful way than the cunning fellow proclaims a ceasefire!

I knew of course that he swings by this blog now and again, but the fact that he is paying such close attention is most impressive.

David Hearst in the Guardian writes well on this new situation:

It is the calculation of a man who, contrary to popular opinion is not mad, but behaving quite rationally. It is the move of a man who is trying to counter the threat of a foreign military intervention by splitting the coalition before it has really had time to gather in Paris on Saturday.

A ceasefire, if it holds, would partition the country, and allow Gaddafi to keep control of the most important part and the major oil ports which his forces have just won back. In one judo throw, Gaddafi has reversed the most powerful argument behind the resolution, preventing a massacre in Benghazi.

The Libyan rebels in Benghazi certainly wanted a respite from Gaddafi's aircraft and heavy artillery, but hardly at the cost of abandoning their goal of liberating the whole of their country from a tyrant.

Read the whole thing.

Likewise with this new breathing-space, Mr Reasonable Gaddafi can hope to summon international mediators whose very presence in Tripoli will redefine the whole situation on his terms. And start to scatter the thought that if anyone is wickedly partitioning Libya it is the UN, not him.

All of which is simply Gaddafi pulling off the shelf his well-thumbed copy of Milosevic's Axioms of Pschological Warfare.

He wants to jerk the issue away from the supposed rationality of finely calculated UN and other diplomatic fora on to darker psychological terrain of erraticness and unexpectedness, where he has extra Velocity and the 'international community' is bogged down by its own Mass.

The fact that Germany manoeuvred itself into grimacing and twitching on the sidelines in abstaining in New York is a classic example of the sort of divisions which such situations can prompt. The Guardian quotes Spiegel Online's fine job of trying to fathom out how Berlin messed this one up so badly:

Some politicians within Merkel's centre-right coalition are already warning that Germany could be drifting even further away from France, Britain and the US. Attitudes toward Germany will change as a result of the vote, says Ruprecht Polenz, a member of parliament for Merkel's conservatives who heads up the Bundestag's foreign affairs committee.

"I don't think we've heard the last word on this," he said, pointing out that the EU had already announced its support for the resolution.

Not sure I follow that last point. How can the 'EU' support the UNSCR if Germany does not?

Whatever. Germany last night dealt a heavy blow to the idea of a united EU foreign policy. But that's OK, as it allows those EU member states which want to stop war crimes to get on and do their best without wasting too much time trying to build a precarious consensus.

So, a new phase begins. Gaddafi throws down this challenge - to frustrate the rules by pretending to respect them!

The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules.  

Schemers trying to control their worlds. We are not a schemer. We show schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are. You guys in the West were schemers. You had plans. Look where it got you... 

You know what we are, West? We're a dog chasing cars. We wouldn't know what to do if we caught one. 

Introduce a little anarchy, you upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. We are an agent of chaos.

And you know the thing about chaos, West? It's fair.

Hmm. Doesn't this sound (once again) ... familiar?

David Cameron made a businesslike case in the Observer today for his Big Society initiative:

The first objection is that it is too vague. I reject that. True, it doesn't follow some grand plan or central design. But that's because the whole approach of building a bigger, stronger, more active society involves something of a revolt against the top-down, statist approach of recent years.

And neither is it about just one thing. Rather, it combines three clear methods to bring people together to improve their lives and the lives of others: devolving power to the lowest level so neighbourhoods take control of their destiny; opening up our public services, putting trust in professionals and power in the hands of the people they serve; and encouraging volunteering and social action so people contribute more to their community.

So the big society doesn't apply to one area of policy, but many. For example, if neighbours want to take over the running of a post office, park or playground, we will help them.

If a charity or a faith group want to set up a great new school in the state sector, we'll let them.

And if someone wants to help out with children, we will sweep away the criminal record checks and health and safety laws that stop them.

My libertarian heart rises several notches at these words - someone at long last articulating the moral case against centralised collectivism in this country, and offering a different way of looking at social problems.

Yet ... I have a nagging anxiety. Namely that even after a 'community' or a 'neighbourhood' is defined for Big Society purposes, the whole issue turns on how decisions are taken and then implemented. And that is fraught with complications.

One way of looking at the way a small community works is to imagine a group of people marooned on a desert island - how might they agree to run things and to settle disputes?

The usual objection to this approach is that it is too artificial - even if the desert islanders came up with some sort of model scheme, it would have no relevance to modern society with all its inherited interests and expectations.

Maybe, maybe not. As it happens, I have been living in something close to a 'desert island' scenario for the past three years. Let's call it Carboot Park.

The interesting thing about Carboot Park is that it was a small development of less than 20 houses set up in 1996 in effect from scratch. The new properties were sold off as freehold houses to brand new residents, who were bequeathed a simple set of 'byelaws' for running the commonly owned surrounding areas. The expectation was that the first residents would look at the byelaws and soon improve/consolidate them in the light of experience.

This, in short, was a dummy run for the Big Society idea - local people having a more or less blank canvas for running their own affairs, including the power of 'taxation' (ie the level of service charge required to keep the common areas in good shape, or not). Flawlessly democratic and more or less as fair as it could be - each property regardless of size had one vote.

Various things soon became clear.

First, that the willingness of people to 'get involved' varied significantly. This was not surprising as different households had different interests (ie for some people their house was their main family dwelling and investment, for others it had less significance; not everyone lived there full time; and so on).

Second, that there was a collective reluctance to confront the core question of how decisions were taken. On the one hand no-one wanted frequent meetings; on the other hand, there was no enthusiasm for devolving spending authority to specific residents between meetings. "Let's not decide today and instead think about it a bit more".

It duly took until 2009(!) for any full considered view to be taken on Carboot voting issues, a development which quickly led to various long overdue improvements.

The voting issue is especially interesting from a philosophical point of view. Why? Because if you're setting up a Big Society scheme from scratch, how to design decision-making?

Most of you did not bother to read the link to the Wivenhoe Station Master's House project mentioned in my recent BBRU:

And so two hours after a group of individuals rather nervously sat around in a circle in the Loveless Hall, we concluded with a co-operative group that had started to come up with a very real plan for the future of the Station Master’s House.

It is the next stage that will be even more challenging. Assuming that negotiations with Network Rail are positive, some form of social enterprise needs to be created to help steer the project.

The danger here of course is that a committee style operation somehow loses the bottom up enthusiasm that was evident at the Loveless Hall on Thursday evening.

That one was all about a group of local residents looking at options for an empty and run-down local landmark building. The group found some possible outcomes which they liked, but the piece does not make clear what if any thought was given to taking  and implementing specific decisions.

What in practice would happen is that the main 'activists' would tend to prevail, simply because they alone were ready to commit the time and energy to thinking about it. Even then, what if decisions were taken but then those implementing them failed to do what was expected? Where would accountability fit in? Should someone loyally following the agreed line but somehow messing up have to carry on her/his own shoulders any financial costs arising from putting right the mistake?

Back at Carboot Park things were rather different, as all households had a direct legal stake in the the community's common property and in the good neighbourliness of the community itself. So the voting arrangements (such as they were) tended to be by consensus if at all possible. Which (usually) promoted good neighbourliness, but at the cost of making it easy for anyone to block a new idea, especially if it involved spending new money.

This dilemma - the tension between democracy and 'getting things done' - plays itself out at on a grand scale. See the many posts I have written here about the turbulent rows within the EU over voting, such as this early one. The future of the Eurozone and the EU itself is at root all about who pays in to the common pot - and who decides how and where the money is spent.

So let's say that where I now live, as a private idyllic libertarian/conservative householder on a fairly unpopulated country back-lane, the newly identified 'Big Society neighbourhood' gets to have the deciding say on small local planning issues. I want to build a new hi-tech glass extension on my house. Many people don't care, some people do care but approve, some people do care but oppose.

Those who oppose may do so for all sorts of reasons - maybe they're worried about something legitimate, or maybe they are motivated by sheer spite and insecurity: neurotic or even mentally challenged people who have no friends and want to use any opportunity to show how tough they are at others' expense.

What sort of voting mechanisms take the final decision? If it's consensus, the few nasty busybodies can delay block everything. If it's a majority vote, should only those who show up at meetings vote? What about e-voting? What about proxy votes, and how to validate them? Should one resident be able to appear with a bundle of proxy votes which s/he has mustered?

What if, gulp, one faction offers financial or other inducements to get the votes needed to prevail? Is that fair? Is stopping votes-for-sale fair? Should lobbying be banned, or at least 'regulated'? What are the sanctions for disruptive or dishonest behaviour? Who should enforce them?

And what status does that one decision have? When is any decision final? Can a group of residents demand that it be re-opened? Are the outcome and the process necessarily a precedent for others up the road wanting to do something similar? Who decides that one, and how?

And so on. Welcome to politics, all the more bitter, ridiculous and obnoxious precisely because the issues are so small, immediate and 'local'.

The basic point being that for all the horror of local authorities and quangoes and the other accumulated sprawling edifices of 'government' as it now oppresses us, it does have certain advantages. Namely some sort of requirement upheld by the law (in theory) to maintain consistency and due process. Rules exist and count for something. Bureaucracy's very aloofness and anonymous impenetrability have a value - people taking decisions have (in theory) no reason not to try to be objective and more or less 'fair'. The role of malicious local busybodies is much reduced towards vanishing-point.

As the Carboot Park micro-example suggests, those noble qualities can become all the more elusive the smaller the community gets...

In other words, let's support the Big Society impulse as something probably flawed but at least heading in the right direction away from insane centralised Brownian target-setting.

But let's also remember the fine words of the late Polish statesman Bronislaw Geremek:

... democratic values do not function without citizens; there can be no democracy without democrats

Carboot Park, Westminster, the EU - they all show us the same stark truth.

You can't build a Big Society with Small Minds.

Attentive readers recall that a year ago I joined a group of former British Ambassadors in setting up ADRg Ambassadors, a new panel selling professional diplomatic consulting, training and mediation skills to support 'corporate diplomacy'.

Here is what I wrote at the time.

Since then we have been busy 'building the brand' to good effect, to the point that we are now considering reorganising ourselves in a formal LLP format. Indeed, if you type 'corporate diplomacy' into Google on my Google settings at least, ADRg Ambassadors come out towards the top. Hurrah.

What, though, actually is 'corporate diplomacy'? The expression has been out there for a while without any clear understanding of what, if anything, it means.

Thus the University of Kent's Conflict Analysis Research Centre in 2009 offered a three-day course on it:

The tragic death in Afghanistan of aid worker Linda Norgrove as US Special Forces closed in, seconds away from rescuing her, makes us think about Negotiation again.

At the International Bar Association annual conference in Vancouver last week I heard various people say that some major corporations were changing course, away from high-profile battles in the courts towards intelligent low-key attempts to settle disputes by mediation or otherwise:

"Having a moderate and non-confrontational dispute-resolution strategy and style is now increasingly being seen as a sign of corporate strength, not a sign of corporate weakness".

Kidnappings are a grisly example of relative strength and weakness, and raise far-reaching questions about how to negotiate in extremis.

Kidnappers are the ultimate example of people who play upon the Sanction of the Victim. They are evil precisely because they rely upon the very good will and human kindness of others to extort money from people who would rather give up money than have their relatives and friends harmed or killed. That same good will and kindness in effect become weapons of the honest person's self-destruction.

In Vancouver we had some lively discussions within our travelling group about the best way to deal with hostage situations, and in particular about the circumstances in which it is morally right to risk the lives of hostages to try to save them.

Is it invariably better to negotiate with the kidnappers, maybe for years on end, to try to wear them down and hand back their victim? Is there any special issue of principle at stake, or are disagreements 'really' all about tactics? What value if any should be placed upon the lives of the kidnappers themselves? Where and how and over exactly what to negotiate?

When you start negotiating with kidnappers, don't you by that very fact enter the issue on their terms?

So with corporations. There is value in projecting strength, as long as that it does well and with integrity. But does it pay to fight every battle with competitors or disgruntled customers or vexed employees? Or to win many battles but lose the war? And which war is it anyway?

Fascinating. And very difficult.

So, here I am in shiny modern Vancouver, gearing up for the long flight home this evening.

Our ADR Group session on Mediation at the Sharp End at the International Bar Association annual conference went well, with a joint presentation on the diplomatic, legal, negotiating and psychological issues arising from 'extreme' negotiating contexts such as hostages kidnapped by pirates. One of my co-panellists was Duncan Jarrett, a formidable British expert on hostage negotiations and anti-terrorist work.

In my own presentation I quoted the magnificent line from the Joker:

Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying ...Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos...

Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair!

This is in effect the Negotiation going on between (a) civilisation and (b) Islamist terrorists and pirates and suchlike. The latter aim to drag us on to a more random, unpredictable place where order, rules and values do not apply.

Update: bang on cue:

"Faisal Shahzad is a remorseless terrorist who betrayed his adopted country and today was rightly sentenced to spend the rest of his life in federal prison," US Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement.

In the courtroom in lower Manhattan on Tuesday, about 2.5 miles (4km) south of Times Square, Shahzad warned Americans to "brace themselves" for a war with Islam.

"We don't accept your democracy or your freedom," he said, adding that he rejected the court's authority because "Muslims don't abide by human laws".

People like him prey upon our very restraint, our respect for process, our valuing of human life. The Sanction of the Victim. From their point of view, chaos is indeed 'fair' - it gives them a chance to win they otherwise would never have and do not deserve. Responding to this wisely is the far-reaching philosophical problem of our times.

One of the other speakers made an interesting proposition about the role of time in hostage negotiations. Better to slow things down, to try to de-dramatise the situation, to 'reframe' the kidnappers' demands in much less threatening and violent terms so as to engage with them on a different psychological level where reason has a better chance of prevailing.

The problem here and in many other negotiating contexts is that people are impatient: time is seen as scarce. Better a quick 'good enough' outcome than a more patient, better one

This is part of a wider key issue in all negotiation. Is it better to create complexity for your opponent, to give pause for thought, to generate a sense of uncertainty as to what the best outcome is? That may suggest using more time.

Or rather should you aim to create simplicity - 'let's face it, it all boils down to this' - to strip away detail and instead try to focus both sides on what you think 'really' matters? Perhaps quicker?

It turns out that there are all sorts of processes going on inside different parts of our brains emphasising varying combinations of logical and emotional responses to what we see and hear. Clever negotiators can use that scientific information to evoke different responses in the opposite side.

Good stuff. At least some of the audience of lawyers from around the world who usually deal in commercial work seemed impressed by the breadth and insight of the team presentation.

Plenty to follow up. After that grisly flight home.

I was back stalking in the long corridors of the Foreign Office today, to give a talk on behalf of ADRg Ambassadors.

I put in a word for Mediation as an example of the hard-edged soft power tool the UK now needed to be ffective at a time of growing global uncertainty - many political issues had at their root emotional uncertainty, and trained insights into how to tackle issues at that level could be really useful at all diplomatic levels.

But most of the presentation developed the idea of the decline in impact of UK and EU diplomacy caused by the accumulation of lumpen useless processy Mass at the expense of far more important diplomatic Velocity.

The EU (I said) was doomed to fail eventually and give way to something else. How to approach that fact now?

In the meantime, how to deal with the obvious international success of countries who got results often at our expense precisely by not being part of clunky, neurotic, over-engineered wider regional blocs: Venezuela, Brazil, China, Russia and so on? 

A good turn-out (70+ diplomats) sat there somewhat stunned to hear one damnable heresy after another.

I also asked them this question back from 2009 to see who had been paying attention:

What is the Supreme Quality in any Brief?

• Speed
• Looks at all angles of the problem
• Clear, reasonable recommendation
• Readable
• Accuracy
• Facts/Opinions/Recommendations kept separate
• At-a-glance understandable
• Honesty/integrity

And the answer is ..?

It was excellent that at least one person there got the answer right, because he is an avid and intelligent follower of this website. (We had a quick word - drop me a line!)

Good to see lots of old freinds again fleetingly.

And to be reminded why I left the UK's public service, in some despair.

The important Employment Tribunal hearing into a disability discrimination claim made by an FCO employee against the FCO raises all sorts of intriguing dilemmas for public and private sector employers.

Such as this one.

Suppose an employer (Frank) has a good, motivated and ambitious employee (Sasha) who is disabled (in this hypothetical case blind) and needs specialist support at the workplace. It costs an employer significant money to pay for the 'reasonable adjustments' needed to help Sasha do a job effectively. 

The extent of those costs depends on where in the organisation the disabled person works. It turns out that those extra costs are less in London at HQ than in the organisation's three branch offices in Edinburgh, Brussels and Beijing:

• London:      £10,000 per year
• Edinburgh:  £16,000 per year
• Brussels:    £40,000 per year
• Beijing:       £68,000 per year 

Frank knows that if that specialist support is there, Sasha (currently at HQ) can do many jobs in any of these offices to a good standard.

However, it looks to be just too expensive to send Sasha to Beijing - the extra costs involved would cancel out (and more) the likely benefit of having Sasha there. Brussels is now difficult in cost terms - and getting more difficult in the economic downturn. Edinburgh and especially London are both comfortably affordable.

How to organise an internal bidding process for jobs?

The organisation's firm guiding principle is No Discrimination. Anyone who is suitably qualified can apply for any post anywhere.

It looks to be awkward on discrimination grounds to tell disabled employees as a general category that in certain cases (identified or not) some jobs may not be open to them on the basis that the 'reasonable adjustments' concerned may be unaffordable.

It also looks to be very awkward to tell a specific group of severely disabled people (eg blind or deaf people) that a number of postings away from HQ may be unaffordable for them even though others with different disabilities may be affordable.

So Frank glumly decides to try to keep options open and 'treat each case on its merits' by being 'reasonable'. 

He sets up a system which allows Sasha like all other employees to bid for any job anywhere, with the proviso that once the job is confirmed the test of 'reasonable adjustments' will be applied to see if (all factors considered) the posting can be made to work. This policy is presented to all employees as part of the deal: all postings away from HQ are subject to satisfactory conditions being met eg on health-checks.

Sasha applies for a job in Beijing and gets it. Frank then has to tell Sasha that that job is unaffordable.

Sasha is furious:

Whaaat? Wy have you been wasting my time? You must have known from the start of my job-bidding round that this is what you'd say. Only the blind people around here are being treated like this. This is humiliating.

Frank (startled) replies:

Come on. What choice do I have? If I tell you up front that we can't afford Beijing or anywhere else for blind people, you'll run off to some Tribunal and bust us for disability apartheid and discrimination. We have bent over backwards to help you in jobs at HQ. You've done really well too. But this is a business, not a charity. I can't send you somewhere where the sheer costs of sending you abolish any profit you make!

Sasha (even more furious):

What? Now you're patronising me too. I know it's tough employing cripples like me. It's even tougher being a cripple, by the way. All I want is to do a good job and get a fair deal. Why can't you people ever just be honest with me? Are you saying that all I can do is bid for jobs, and when I get one I have to wait for you to snatch it away?!

Frank (getting angry too):

Look. The rules we set up were obviously fair, to you and to everyone else. We have to look at each case on its merits. What else should we do? We're thinking about opening an office in Saudi. It will be pointless sending women there as many Saudis will not deal them. Discrimination against women, or reality? Life is all about tricky choices. There are many jobs you can bid for at HQ or Edinburgh. You're not being held back or in any way disadvantaged.

Sasha (in despair):

Only you could argue that if one employee alone here - namely me - is denied the chance to go to Beijing, that employee suffers no disadvantage. Now you're hinting that I won't be accepted for Brussels jobs either?! Stop messing around. Give me a list of jobs I can apply for.

Frank (somewhat pompously):

Listen, Sasha. You know I can't do that. That would amount to discrimination, putting disabled people in a jobs ghetto. Trust us on this one. We're doing the best we can. Not all disabilities are the same.

Sasha (incandescent):

Ah, I get it. Someone with a mobility disability can apply anywhere, since it doesn't cost you much. But I'm blind, so I can kiss goodbye to any overseas jobs in this organisation. It's just that you don't have the guts to tell me, hiding behind your so-called reasonable adjustments and all those jerky consultants and experts you brought in to talk about my condition without talking to me! What did that lot cost, by the way?

Frank (firmly):

Calm down. That's an unfair parody of the situation. The very idea of 'reasonable' adjustments means that some adjustments you'd like may be unreasonable, including on cost grounds. You're a smart officer. I'm surprised and disappointed that you don't see that!

Sasha (with steely determination):

You're dead wrong. I may be blind, but some things I see very clearly. Especially your blatant discrimination with knobs on. I'll 'see' you in court.

* * * * *

See the problem?

The FCO at the hearing on Thursday revealed that this was All Too Difficult and emitted an endearing cry for help:

... they would not give a clear answer to what level of cost was reasonable for deaf people overseas. At one point an FCO HR person cheerily opined that the Tribunal might help them answer that one(!). Indeed they might.

One nice point for the Tribunal to decide is something like this:

Can rules, procedures and the way decisions are communicated (which all look to be a sincere attempt by an employer at good faith reasonableness) somehow combine to create an impact on certain disabled people which is in substance discriminatory or otherwise unlawfully harmful?

The answer (if they are ready to give one) will be read with keen interest.

A new step in the Serbia/Kosovo story: the UN General Assembly has passed a unanimous resolution whose sense is to open 'dialogue' between Belgrade and Pristina supported by the European Union.

Note that the BBC can not even get the simplest facts right. Its report says that:

The European Union and the United States have already recognised Kosovo's independence.

Budala! First, the EU does not recognise anyone. Second, several EU member states have not recognised Kosovo - that's part of the point.

Thus it looks as if (for now) the Kosovo issue is shifting in official Belgrade eyes from being a Problem to being a Fact of Life. The UN resolution blandly ignores all the arguments to and fro, notes the ICJ judgement and encourages Belgrade and Pristina to be nice about the whole thing.

Diplomacy in action. Sometimes the best thing to do is to stop brooding on a problem and set up prosaic processes aimed at patiently building common ground instead.

Note that, credit being given where it is due, the European Union (energetically supported or indeed led by bilateral diplomacy from UK, Germany and other member states - well done William Hague) emerges rather elegantly from this one too. The new process set to emerge allows the EU's own embarrassing divisions on the Kosovo issue to be subsumed in ... dialogue. What else?

All those other countries led by Russia who have supported Serbia too will be more or less content. No one loses anything by talking!

Moscow no doubt will be struck by the fact that in this case Belgrade has changed course under intense pressure from Brussels, London and Berlin. But does Russia really care where all those puny Balkan borders lie? No. And, of course, Russia has done very well from the West's bungling over Kosovo by pocketing some precedents for its 'near abroad', namely the so-called independence of Abkhazia and S Ossetia.

What in the end will Belgrade and Pristina discuss? How about cutting a Big Deal? Let's swap some land to tidy the map in a way which allows Serbia to recognise Kosovo with eveeryone's honour ostensibly intact?

I can not see any realistic outcome short of that, which has some merits of its own anyway.

More importantly, clever people like the International Crisis Group are now thinking the same - and urging the 'international community' not to make footling difficulties:

The most controversial outcome that might emerge from negotiations would be a Northern Kosovo-Preševo Valley swap in the context of mutual recognition and settlement of all other major issues. Neither Pristina nor Belgrade proposes this openly, but officials in both capitals have begun to speak of it quietly in contacts with Crisis Group.

Many in the international community would be unhappy with this option. Crisis Group believes that ruling out this or any specific mutually-agreed option from the onset, however, would risk freezing the Kosovo-Serbia conflict, with no guarantee of eventual resolution.

Exactly. The locals have to live with the outcome, not us.

Nice technique by all concerned.

The International Bar Association's Annual Conference is this year in Vancouver in early October.

And I am honoured to be included on their speaker's list.

Here in the latest Standpoint magazine is an article by Joshua Rozenberg about Mediation and the new, excellent strategic dispute resolution service offered by ADRg Ambassadors.

Alas the most interesting sections of the article about ADRg Ambassadors are not included in the online version.

So to read them you'll have to buy the magazine .

Well worth it.

Just to say that those readers who have not yet had a quick look at ADRg Ambassadors - a bespoke new senior mediation, consultancy and training panel comprising various former Ambassadors - should do so.

Since our launch in January we have attracted some healthy interest, including from quite unexpected places. It turns out that there is a lively demand for the regional skills, languages and professional wisdom which this panel might bring to bear in dealings with foreign governments and organisations, especially in unusual or pioneering areas of activity.

Plus the training aspects show early promise. There are a number of different 'diplomatic' training options out there, but very few if any combine high-level operational experience with professional mediation training.

So if you are a business doing creative things in a brand new commercial area and you want to discuss quietly how best to set about tackling foreign governments (or foreign problems which do not fit into neat categories), look no further.

Get in touch with the experts.

The tumultuous launch of ADRg Ambassadors gives way to a requirement to write an article for DIPLOMAT magazine about Diplomats and Mediation.

One interesting theme is 'neutrality'. Is it possible for any international mediator in a dispute or problem to be truly impartial, and does it matter if that is not achieved or achievable?

It is probably possible for diplomats to be adequately neutral for most practical purposes if they have no evident axe to grind in the dispute concerned. Hence small smart countries geographically removed from a problem can have an impressive impact - a classic modern example being the way Norway used diplomatic nimbleness to broker the Oslo Accords.

On the other hand, one of the hardest tasks facing a mediator is not to get personally 'involved'. Hence mediators who are seen as impartial (enough) on the substance themselves usually have reputations to win or lose, so they might end up over-pressing one or other of the parties to reach a settlement - itself a form of non-neutrality.

Is this a bad thing? Maybe not, when issues of war or peace are at stake. On the other hand, a party which feels that it has been coerced or bamboozled into a settlement against its better judgement or instincts may just not try to implement that settlement, so the much-praised deal falters anyway.

Then there are mediations where divisions between the mediators themselves start to affect the outcome. See this fascinating account of how a German, American and Russian team of senior diplomats tried to broker a deal between Kosovo and Serbia. The Kosovo/Serbia problem in effect became a new place for their other rivalries playing themselves out.

Another option is to outsource mediation efforts to non-diplomats, people who are skilled, modest and anonymous - people who derive their authority as mediators from really being detached from the politics of it all, and who look rather at the emotional and even spiritual factors at play.

Such as the Quakers, who have had a long and usually creditable record in trying to find common ground in some of the world's toughest hot-spots, relying on sophisticated 'impartial listening'.

One important part of their method lies in denying to themselves as far as possible any sense of satisfaction, one reason why career diplomats tend to have no understanding whatsoever of this sort of work - diplomats are impressed by their own cleverness, or at least are told to bring home some glory for their Minister:

If a conciliator believes in confidentiality, he or she must deny themself `many elements of ego satisfaction', maintains Mike Yarrow in his book, Quaker Experiences in International Conciliation. `It takes a certain amount of courage to intervene in a complicated, dangerous situation,' he continues. `To keep it up the conciliator needs some sense of satisfaction. All this can readily build up to a feeling that the individual is essential to the resolution of the conflict, and even that he or she has the solution. Such feelings are fatal to this kind of unofficial effort.'

Conclusion?

None, other than to point to the array of examples of mediating interventions which have made a difference, and the many more where despite heroic efforts by well meaning mediators to help the parties identify sensible outcomes, the problem just keeps dragging on. And all concerned lose out.

Perhaps this happens because, as we all know, issues are like Shrek the Ogre. They have layers:

Shrek:     Ogres are like onions.
Donkey:   They stink?
Shrek:      Yes. No.
Donkey:   Oh, they make you cry...
Shrek:      NO. Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. You get it? We both have layers.

And you have to be a superhuman mediator to be able to identify all those stinky tear-inducing layers, and then help the parties to deal with them simultaneously.

A group of former senior British diplomats (self included) have come together to set up a new top-end international strategic advice and dispute resolution/dispute management service: ADRg Ambassadors.

Here is the website, just launched.

Check it out, including the excellent and impressive list of policy areas and languages the team covers.

The idea is to bring to bear the unusual specialist skills of senior diplomats - all trained by leading UK mediation experts ADR Group in professional mediation techniques - on high-level disputes and problems.

Mediation training (as we have all found out the hard way) gives diplomats very different professional skills to those normally found in diplomacy - you have to step back from busily trying to solve other people's problems, and instead engage on a 'deeper' level to help the parties themselves explore their own options.

That said, combining world-calls diplomatic skills with world-class mediation training produces a team of uniquely qualified people raring to take on new challenges. As far as we know, this is the first such team of its kind 'in history' 

So if you have a significant problem or a dispute (real or looming) needing some subtle discreet specialist attention, or if you are looking for creative ways to break a deadlock and reach a deal, you now know what to do.

Get in touch with the experts.  

I have been back on the mediation trail, this time leading a successful two-hour negotiation between two people who had fallen out over a private business deal.

Flushed from that triumph I headed for the ADR Group conference in Oxford where many leading UK mediators gathered to mull over trends in the sector.

One issue of course is Regulation and the heavy clammy hand of government. It falls on the mediation world because some public money is available for parties in dispute and so the government wants 'quality control', which means all sorts of mechanisms such as the Civil Mediation Council - and extra costs/hassle for everyone.

There was one poignant exchange between the conference participants. One said that the best way to keep up standards was to be found in delivering high private professional reputations. Someone else retorted that that was "some sort of nineteenth century laissez-faire anachronism - the way forward lies in Regulation".

This is a Back to the Future issue. Remember the Guilds - and their downfall?

What we are seeing now is a doomed pseudo-professionalisation and formalisation of all human activity driven by government 'control' instincts which in effect create new collectivist guilds - those unfairly blessed and privileged by the state, lording it over private associations which are not. This phase will end, but only after appalling damage has been done.

One other effect of professionalising this area is that it is tending to become inflexible: there are all sorts of rival theories and techniques being taught and argued about, as if they were mutually exclusive.

One result of this is that mediations tend to be rather formulaic.

In the US/UK model a day is set. The parties gather. A 'joint session' is held at which they lay out their core concerns (preferably in a civilised way). Then the parties separate, and the mediator engages in deft shuttle diplomacy between them to help identify areas of common ground and so construct a possible deal.

This formula works pretty well in many cases. But it has disadvantages. There is no real negotiation over the process itself, which perhaps the parties would appreciate and value. It also has at its core a hard-nosed pragmatism - cut a deal - rather than prioritising any attempt to achieve reconciliation.

That said, such 'disadvantages' may well be valued by many disputing parties who after months or years of expensive and draining warfare simply want to get it Sorted.

Their lawyers too may be hoping the mediator will be tough and help get some unpleasant messages across to clients which they are loath to convey themselves. See this lively article on Heavy Metal Mediation.

My problem with the very word 'mediation' is that (to me) it sounds soppy and tree-huggingish and somehow limp. I much prefer the idea of problem-solving or dispute management. Which after all is what it is.

We all know that it is far better to face up to issues than pretend that they'll go away - to nip problems in the bud before they escalate and create unmanageable bad feeling and waste time and money.

And if you smart readers have issues within your organisation or between your organisation and another which are just getting stuck and bad-tempered, you know what to do. 

Back from training EU officials in Mediation techniques, with an eye on the role of mediation at the international level.

One of our role-play examples featured an attempt by an imaginary Head of Mission in an imaginary country trying to mediate between his Deputy and a younger Political Officer over how best (if at all) to report back to HQ rumours of unrest in that country on the eve of an important visit from said HQ.

It was loosely based on my own experience in post-Tito Yugoslavia in 1984. I as a youthful and truculent Political Officer thought that the Embassy in Belgrade needed to convey to London serious concern about the risk of decay and perhaps even dangerous collapse in the country.

The Embassy top brass disagreed - Yugoslavia would (they were convinced) Muddle Through Somehow. See one of my first ever blog posts on this seductive and misleading idea.

The ensuing bickering and rows in the Embassy all played out in the long-lost days far before email, when there were few ways to get Confidential analysis fed to London. That was annoying (for me) but it had the advantage of giving Authority (of sorts) to what the Embassy sent in. Now when myriad emails slosh around, there is far more freedom and information, but it is that much harder to extract solid ideas and unambiguous wisdom.

Yet we all did our jobs. Any system requires people up through the policy chain to weigh options and take decisions accordingly. The then Ambassador disagreed with my paper, but he gave it a fair hearing before taking a more conservative/cautious view and feeding that back to London for due consideration.

Later when I returned to London I was asked to submit to then junior Minister Malcolm Rifkind a short note explaining my concerns. Which I did.

It came back saying that the Minister had considered my arguments but concluded that "ultimately it was for the Yugoslavs, warts and all, to sort out their own affairs" (or words to that effect).

Several years later when things in Yugoslavia were evidently sizzling, the next Ambassador tried to alert London to what was happening by sending to the top policy official in London a personal letter warning about open conflict. He got a sneery reply to the effect that it just did not matter if the Yugoslavs started fighting - Brits would just have to go somewhere other than Dubrovnik for their holidays.

This it came to pass that London and the rest of the Western world completely failed to grasp the seriousness of ethnic tensions across Yugoslavia until it was too late to stop the place disintegrating.

Had I and some expert people in the UK system or other systems been believed, or allowed to press their case more authoritatively - or had they been determined and brave enough to force their concerns into more formal complaints procedures and force a change of policy - billions of pounds of UK/EU/US taxpayers' money might have been saved. 

Yet democracies don't work like that.

If the FCO yells at HM Treasury that there is a good chance that spending an extra billion now on squabbling foreigners may save several billions down the road, the case will not even be considered. Too many imponderables.

A fascinating case-study on many levels.

An eruption of peace, or something, in Honduras.

The issue will be how far 'President' Zelaya, if he is briefly restored to office, can manage to manoeuvre anything other than a polite handover to his successor after the forthcoming elections.

If these elections do pass off peacefully, Mr Micheletti can be congratulated on having headed off a very messy situation when Zelaya tried to thwart proper process.

This looks like an outcome where all concerned give something and get something, not as usual a result as it ought to be (see eg Kosovo).

Just a pity that a fraction of the US-led effort put into squeezing Honduras was not used to squeeze the Iranian regime during their farcical elections?

More on that self-proclaimed independent EU-sponsored Report on the 2008 Georgia conflict.

Points of interest from it, as they come:

The Mission had no access to intelligence reports: a serious setback, I'd say. Not least since the whole business was launched because of what Georgia + Washington 'really' thought Moscow was up to, and vice versa.

It has some oddly psychobabble-type passages:

After fighting has ended there is a sad record of killings and other losses, of intense suffering, of dreams and hopes that were shattered, in many cases forever.

... We will come to know that all sides involved in the conflict had their grievances, that their actions had origins in their experience and memory, and that most of those taking part thought that what they did had to be done. In a close look at the peoples´ motives we shall understand their aspirations, even when we are not able to accept the means.

Understanding the people will lead us to the facts.

Hmm. Or not.