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Introduction:
Lawrence Susskind of
MIT says that he doesn't measure his success in consensus building processes by
analyzing the quality of agreements reached during negotiation, or even by
whether or not agreement was reached at all. In some cases, agreement may not be
the most appropriate option for a group. How, then, does he measure success? He explains:
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This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).
Success in Consensus Building
Larry Susskind
Co-Director of the Public Disputes Program, Inter-University Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School
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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.In many instances I feel like we did the best we could. Sometimes a
party has a better alternative away from the negotiating table then anybody can
come up with to offer them at the table and it's appropriate for there to be no
agreement. So I don't measure my sense of satisfaction or my sense of our
contribution by virtue of everybody analyzing an agreement. Rather its based on
whether we've done all that we can under the circumstances.
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