In a 2007 article in Alternatives (CPR, New York), five colleagues (Chris Honeyman, Julie Macfarlane, Bernie Mayer, Andrea Schneider and Jeff Seul) wrote about the need for a much more sophisticated “systems” approach to prospective conflict than is currently prevalent. They analyzed why this hasn’t happened already (except in the construction industry), and suggested what might be done about it.
Major organizations routinely miss opportunities and “leave money on the table” by failing to anticipate conflicts which could have been foreseen, with advice from the right source at the right time. The resulting problems then become expensive and time-consuming to unravel later. A simple flowchart shows how this happens, and suggests an alternate approach. (This can be adapted to specific settings, e.g. a version of the flowchart tailored for corporate governance disputes is at Vol.2, p.4 of the Toolkit discussed below.)
NEW: As of 2020, a new element in “thinking ahead” appears increasingly relevant, to international commercial negotiation in particular but also to some supposedly single-country commercial negotiations that may involve partners that one side is concealing from view. Questions such as “Is the company we’re talking to about a new supply chain contract actually the real player here?” or “How can our company best guard against inadvertently disclosing key intellectual property, to a supposed commercial ally that is actually controlled by a hostile government?” arise in the context of hybrid warfare, and are being investigated in Project Seshat.
Key Publications:
- The Next Frontier;
- A Simple Flowchart.
- “Thinking Ahead“, Chapter 70 in Chris Honeyman and Andrea Schneider’s Negotiator’s Desk Reference, by James P. Groton with Honeyman and Schneider. This chapter updates the above publications and shows how much progress there has been in three large domains of conflict, including worldwide in the heavy construction industry.
- “Pre-Dispute and Pre-Escalation Techniques to Improve New Business Relationships”, the concluding chapter in Negotiation Essentials for Lawyers (Schneider & Honeyman, eds.; ABA 2019.) This chapter, also by Groton, Honeyman and Schneider, is a condensed version of the NDR chapter described above.
- NEW! “Hybrid Warfare, International Negotiation, and an Experiment in ‘Remote Convening’” (Negotiation Journal, Fall 2020) is the first article produced by Project Seshat.
The 2007 article became instrumental in forming an exploratory committee at CPR (International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution, New York.) Chris Honeyman was one of the committee’s six members. The committee’s work led to a variety of follow-up efforts; see https://www.cpradr.org/ for updates.
For a few practical examples from our experience in this kind of work, see “Thinking ahead, on a smaller scale“. On a larger scale, the Global Corporate Governance Forum (a unit of the International Finance Corp., World Bank Group) formed a new project to design and write a Toolkit for preventing as well as resolving corporate governance disputes. Chris Honeyman was one of the principal authors. The Toolkit was published by the GCGF / World Bank Group in 2011.