Pick put from Canterbury West train station participants arriving on the 07:40 high speed train from St. Pancras station, London

“The Corporate
Diplomacy course is a convincing, insightful, valuable and hugely enjoyable experience.
I strongly recommend it.”

Brig. General (Retired) John Deverell, CBE
CEO Keyhaven Crisis Management

“The techniques that Samuel Passow teaches at the Negotiation Lab are wide-ranging and applicable to a broad range of personal, political, and business situations. However, I would specifically recommend these courses to anyone planning to negotiate in a commercial environment.”

Greg Jones
Operations Manager: Europe & Africa Baker Hughes, Madrid

11:15-13:00

Session Four: Cross-Cultural Negotiations

High Context v. Low Context Negotiation Styles:

Countries like China, India and Russia are high-context societies while the USA, Australia, Canada and most European countries are low-context societies. Viewed in the context of these two paradigms, it is easier to understand what our common interest are if we are able to identify and overcome the barriers of our cultural difference.

Harvard Business School Case Study: “Levendary Café – The China Challenge”

Scenario:  Just weeks into her new job, Mia Foster, a first time CEO with no international management experience, is faced with a major challenge at Levendary Café, a $10 billion US-based fast food chain. Strategically, many of her corporate staff have become concerned that the company's major expansion into China is moving too far from Levendary's well-defined concepts of store design and menu. Organizationally, Foster has been frustrated by the apparent unwillingness of Louis Chen, president of Levendary China, to conform to the company's planning and reporting processes. Meanwhile, financial evidence shows that Chen's efforts have produced strong results and suggests that he knows China far better than U.S headquarters does. The entrepreneurial Chen has resisted attempts by Foster and others to discuss corporate plans for China. As Foster flies to China to meet with Chen she faces a decision that will determine the future of Levendary China and perhaps the entire globalization effort: can she manage Chen at all, and if so, how? The discussion of this case study will center on identifying the eight elements of Chinese negotiation and highlighting the differences in approach to the negotiation by Ms. Foster (the Westerner) and Mr. Chen (the Chinese).

“The role playing
exercises were excellent, throwing us into many and varying scenarios, which fully tested our skills and capabilities. There was never a dull moment in the course.“

James Maberly
Chairman of the
Zimbabwe Agricultural Welfare Trust

“Mr. Passow is a well regarded academic with great experience in conflict management.”

Dr. Klaus Schwab
Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum

Coffee Break

Session Five:
Predicable Surprises: Developing a Negotiation
Strategy Before and During a Crisis.

Harvard Business School case study “Sunk Costs: The Case of the Brent Spar” written by Samuel Passow and Professor Michael D. Watkins.

Learn how the management of Royal Dutch Shell, Europe’s second largest company failed to understand how public perception and public pressure can shape the corporate decision making process during a crisis. Learn to understand the spectrum of dispute resolution, map out the inter-relationships of stakeholders to a dispute, define partners for necessary for a coalition, and the necessary stages one must go through to reach consent of your coalition partners. This session will compare and contrast lessons learned from the Brent Spar incident and the recent crisis confronting BP in the Deepwater Horizon Oil Platform disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

Lunch

Session Six:
Putting Principled Negotiation into Practice

Harvard Law School Power Screen Simulation and 60 min. Video

By Professor Roger Fisher, co-author of "Getting to Yes".

Simulation of a negotiation between two-partners in a small software company called HackerStar Inc. Allan Hacker and Stanley Star are engaged in a dispute over PowerScreen, a new product that Hacker developed against Star’s wishes. Hacker contends that he developed PowerScreen on his own time, using the company equipment only outside of business hours for debugging, and that he owns exclusive rights to the product. Star argues that, according to Hacker’s employment contract, he owes all of his creative energy to the company and that PowerScreen therefore belongs to HackerStar, Inc.

Coffee Break

The Power Screen Exercise debrief:

The classroom discussion analysing the simulation outcomes is followed by The HackerStar Negotiation Video made by Harvard Law School, which brings the simulation to life. In this video, two improvisational actors play the roles of Allen Hacker and Stanley Star in an unrehearsed and unscripted performance in their separate advising sessions with their attorneys, and then to the final negotiation with both clients and attorneys present. Harvard Law School Professor and Getting to YES co-author Roger Fisher acts as Hacker’s attorney, while experienced Boston litigator Ann Berry acts as Star’s attorney.

Dinner at a restaurant in Canterbury

Session Seven:
Multiparty & Multicultural Negotiations

The Crocodile River Story - An exercise which demonstrates the importance of personal values and cultural differences in the context of a negotiation.

“Samuel Passow was my student at Harvard. He is highly expert and knowledgeable in the field of conflict management and dispute resolution and has worked with a wide range of countries and private companies facing difficulties or sometimes dangerous situations.”

Baroness Shirley Williams
Member of the House of Lords,
Former Leader of the Liberal Democrat Party in the Upper House of Parliament,
Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government

Harvard BusinessSchool Pre-Negotiation Briefing Report (PNBR) Developed by Professor Howard Raffia.

Preparation is a key ingredient to a successful negotiation. Learn how to define your strategy as a negotiator with an analytical tool developed by Professor Howard Raffia at the Harvard Business School and used at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University for the Northern Ireland talks. The template includes:

• History of the conflict
• Defining the Parties
• Internal political structures
• Interest and values
• Vision of the future with an agreement
• Alternatives to a negotiated settlement
• If no agreement is reached
• Template for Mediated Negotiations
• Objective standards of fairness
• Trade-off analysis
• Possible appealing agreements
• Benefits to external parties
• Barriers to negotiation

Coffee Break 

Harvard Law School Simulation: The Mouse Exercise

(working lunch)

The Mouse Exercise is a multiparty and multicultural simulation of the negotiations surrounding the construction of EuroDisney outside of Paris. The role plays will involve the mayors of the four districts where the massive American theme park is located, who will be negotiating amongst themselves and with the representatives of the French government, the Disney Corporation and co- mediators from the local Chamber of Commerce to see if they can form a coalition to resolve the disputes that have built-up between the parties. Before the negotiation begins, the participants will be instructed on how to write a PNBR on their role in the negotiation. Participants will negotiate for four hours, both formally and informally in a multicultural, six party dispute.

Coffee Break 

Debriefing

Participants will talk about their experience of the negotiation and how they did, or did not form coalitions, how they or their counter- parts claimed or created value, whether they or their counterparts were assertive or empathic, whether the PNBR prepared them for the negotiation, were they able to figure out their counterparts BATNA? They will also try to identify their own negotiation tactics in terms of the Thomas-Kilman model.

Wrap Up Session

Transfer to Canterbury West train station for participants departing on 18:25 high speed trains to St. Pancras station, London - arriving at 19:21