Mindset

One of my favourite games is Scrabble. It amazes me how many meaningful words can emerge from just seven letters that one is allowed to pull out from the bag. Among the many word pairs that often…

"Beat your ploughshares into swords, and your pruning-hooks into spears." Surely some mistake, I thought; shouldn’t it be the other way round? Swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks?…

This is the third installment in my ongoing project to compile a list of five books every negotiator and mediator should read. As stated in my previous blogs, the aim is not to focus on titles…

  It is no secret that the time I spent studying and working with the Harvard Program on Negotiation (PON) was the start of a love affair that has endured.The material from Fisher and Ury’s ‘Getting…

  Insomnia drove me to a late-night television binge recently and I watched a rerun of  Pretty Woman, the 1990 movie starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. For those of you yet to see this movie,…

Below was a conversation between two Chinese philosophers, namely, Huizi ("Hui") and Zhuangzi ("Zhuang") on the Joy of Fish when they were strolling on a bridge over River Hao more than two thousand…

"The world is made, not found." (W Barnet Pearce) I had been a mediator for about 10 years before I heard parties' initial words described as their "opening statement." This may surprise some…

    Source: Creative Commons The Daily Blogpost from the Harvard Program on Negotiation (PON) is always a great way to start the day. A quick read, it often turns something that I have been…

At this time of year, it is good to reflect, to look back, and also to look forward. This is not always easy as we sense the clutter and complexity of life crowding in on us. I have had the uneasy…