So Bruno is executive director of the MIT Harvard-Mexico
Negotiation Program and lecturer in urban planning
and negotiation at MIT'S School of Architecture and Planning.
He teaches the art and science of negotiation,
which is one of MIT'S highest ranked and most popular course
electives on campus.
He leads training and consulting work for governments, firms,
and international organizations around the world.
And as a diplomat, he's been involved
in the teams negotiating financial, technical, and
scientific cooperation between Mexico and nations,
including the US, Australia, South Korea, India,
Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and numerous others,
in addition to organizations such as the International
Energy Agency, the World Bank, OPEC, and others.
So I'm so pleased to introduce Bruno to present his research
and discuss his new book, Winning Together--
The Natural Resource Negotiation Playbook.
After that discussion, we'll have some audience Q&A
followed by a reception, which I hope you can all stay for.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Emily, thanks so much for such a warm introduction.
It was quite a blessing to meet you back in that cold October
in Germany.
That UN conference was supposed to be in Fiji.
They moved it to a different kind of weather.
Let me just, before we go to the conversation with Emily,
where we will be able to unpack a little bit,
indeed, in terms of the research, share with you
a little bit of the genesis behind this work.
I had the blessing and am very fortunate to do my PhD here
at MIT.
As part of that responsibility, I
wanted to explore how both developed and developing
countries can figure out steps to better share
natural resources with a win-win mindset.
And I didn't want to do some theoretical research.
I wanted to speak with the practitioners,
from presidents to ambassadors to CEOs,
of different industries and the managers of the NGOs about how
they go about in their daily life in terms
of fostering resilient, sustainable agreements.
And so I was fortunate, for over two years,
of conducting a series of what we call in the negotiation
field stakeholder rounds, where I spoke, in the end,
with around 70 high-ranking officials from both sides,
Mexico and the US, to try to learn from them
how did they foster these two agreements-- one centered
on the Gulf of Mexico as it pertains to deepwater
exploration of hydrocarbons, and the other on the management
of the shared environmental and water resources
in the Colorado River.
And what is wonderful, certainly when
you're doing this research where the goal is not
to figure out whether the agreements were good or not,
but actually learn from what people did in their daily life,
well, you reach out to them.
You say that your interview will take 20 minutes.
But since they're talking about themselves,
they would spend 90 minutes with me.
As a result, I was able to gather and piece together
how these agreements were negotiated,
agreements that resolved over 70 years of disputes
in both cases, agreements negotiated
by completely different teams and across
different administrations--
George W. Bush and Obama, Calderón and Peña Nieto
on the Mexican side--
and then tried to extract, from those experiences, some
of the steps that, from the perspective of the negotiation
field, the adaptive leadership field,
the collaborative decision-making field
and the persuasive political communication,
we could then share with both developed and developing
countries, and tried to go and work against the idea
that there are not enough resources to go around,
and that one side needs to win and the other needs to lose.
And so that's what the book explores in detail.
And I really look forward to be able to share
more of the details today with Emily.
So first, I thought that the audience might like to hear,
what drew you to study negotiation,
and whether your interest has always
been in conflict resolution or if that evolved over time.
Thanks, Emily.
Well, then I'll share with you a story
about how I was fortunate to negotiate
the creation of a PhD in negotiation here at MIT.
So when you come here as a grad student,
it's such a beautiful university in terms
of all the different skills and experiences
that your mentors can expose you to.
And as I was working in urban planning and political science,
I was struck by how much I enjoyed the negotiation field
and disappointed that there wasn't actually a PhD on it.
And really, MIT is unique in the sense
that it has these guidelines where
if you can make the case that a field has not been researched
in depth, and you have the coalition of mentors
to support you, you can go ahead and propose that PhD and do it.
And so the reason I wanted to devote my professional career
to the exploration of the negotiation field
is that it's quite spiritual.
That is, it's not only technically quite
rewarding to explore a set of strategies that can help unlock
significant conflicts in our communities,
but it's also a field that challenges you every day
to question which are your blind spots, what
is your moral compass, what do you stand for,
what kind of relationship you want
to foster at home and abroad.
And I felt that this was a set of skills that would challenge
me throughout my life, and that I'd
be honored to work with people passionate about this field.
So it was very organic.
It wasn't planned when they came to MIT,
and I'm very fortunate now to be responsible for teaching
about it.
As many things in life, they just come to you,
and you run with it.
Excellent.
And so your book is about natural resources negotiation.
How did you come to specialize in that area?
Well, coming from Mexico City, a city
with over 20 million people and where the stories that I
would hear from my mom about how the city looked 30,
40 years ago are kind of sad--
it doesn't look like what she describes anymore.
I'm passionate about figuring out how can we
practically both foster economic development
and, at the same time, creatively ensure
that we can hand down these resources
to future generations.
And what's exciting about the negotiation field
is that all the skills associated
with adaptive leadership and conflict resolution
really require an understanding of mutually beneficial trades,
the ability to put myself in other people's shoes and so on.
And if we want to be effective in the management
of natural resources, those are skills that are necessary.
So naturally, it's a field where the skill set
that we develop in negotiation matches the challenges
that we have.
And so when I was deciding about my research projects,
I felt that Mexico, as it transitions
as an economy in terms of being able to serve a larger
subset of the population, knowing how to practically
address these challenges with a problem-solving mindset, which
is at the heart of MIT, would be important.
And so that's how I came to these topics.
And when you were talking just now,
you mentioned how you had interviewed more than 70
high-ranking officials who were involved in the US-Mexico
natural resources negotiations around hydrocarbon resources
in the Gulf of Mexico--
that is one of the case studies in your book--
and then the water resources within the Colorado River
basin, your other case study.
I thought, by way of getting to know your book a little better
for the audience, maybe you could tell us about a few
of the interviewees and the conversations where
people had some interesting perspectives
or surprising insights.
Mm-hm.
Well, on the Mexican side, I spoke with President Calderón.
I spoke with the ambassador, at the time during
the negotiations, to the US on the Mexican side,
Ambassador Arturo Sarukhán.
I spoke with all the high-ranking officials
at the Ministry of Energy--
currently the deputy secretary for energy transition
and planning, Leonardo Beltran; the deputy secretary
for hydrocarbons, Mario Budebo, and so on.
And on the US side, I was fortunate to speak
with the right-hand of Secretary Clinton
at the time, David Goldwyn, who was
the special envoy for international energy affairs
at the State Department.
I spoke, on the Colorado River side, which was fascinating,
with all the heads of the metropolitan water agencies
in the seven US basin states.
Let's see if I recall them correctly.
It would be Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona,
Nevada, and California.
I was fortunate to speak with, at the time,
the deputy secretary of the interior, Mike Connor,
but during the negotiations, the commissioner
of the Bureau of Reclamation.
And what happens is that you start
with a certain list of high-ranking officials,
and they very kindly then share with you the opportunity
to speak with their staff, and with the technical managers,
and the head of NGOs, and so on.
And you can really piece together a complete perspective
of what they did.
In negotiations, that takes years.
The Colorado River case negotiation, it was five years.
And the Gulf of Mexico focuses on three.
And so people are sharing with you
what they did on their weekends.
They're talking to you about the challenges
that they had as they were traveling back and forth
between the two countries.
And they really can share with you
these stories of reciprocity and trust
that emerges from such an intense contact with one
another.
And so in that sense, they were very rewarding conversations
that I structure around a set of 25 key questions that I felt
were necessary-- and they're certainly at the end
of the book in one of the appendices--
where we explore the nitty-gritty
of the negotiations against some key insights
that we have in the field to figure out how people structure
a negotiation process, who they send as a representative, who
they choose and why, what characteristics the negotiators
need to have, how they frame the dispute.
At the table, how they manage communications
with their constituents and with the other side, what
steps and sequence they followed to create value and then
distribute it, how will they manage
spoilers, how will they communicate their outcome,
do they have a press strategy, and then what kind of steps
they follow to monitor what they agree on the table, which
fortunately, for the case of what we will be discussing
today, both agreements, approved in 2012,
were further implemented and have been ratified even
by the Trump administration.
And actually, that seems like a good segue to,
are you able to give a brief overview of one
or both of the case studies to--
Sure.
What's at stake there?
OK, I don't want to bore you with many details.
So in summary, in the Colorado River,
the challenge was that Mexico and the US,
in 1944, got together and signed a binational treaty that
said, every year, we have 16.5 million acre-feet of water.
We're going to divide 15 million between the upper basin
and lower basin states on the US side.
And the 1.5 million acre-feet remaining, we're
going to give it to Mexico.
And we're deciding that this is the amount of water
we have available to us based on rainfall
expectations that we gather during the 1920s.
And so that model worked.
But as the decades went by, what they discover
is that of all the decades, going 150 years back,
the 1920s was the one where it rained the most.
So that was already a strike.
And in addition, we're facing, certainly
in the American Southwest, quite significant climate
risks and drought.
And so what happened in the Colorado is that the US basin
states first negotiated with one another
how they would deal proactively--
and that's a great testament to their foresight--
with future climate risks by enhancing a structure
to deal with shortages.
And once they negotiated that, they
went to the secretary of interior, Dirk Kempthorne
with the George W. Bush administration.
They said, we have this agreement.
Now we want to negotiate with Mexico for shortages.
And of course, when they went and knocked on Mexico's door
and said, we just want to negotiate
how to reduce your water allocation,
had the Mexican delegation said yes, they would all get fired.
And so they had to actually get together and figure out,
how can we unpack a negotiation that not only deals
with shortages, but perhaps explores
environmental restoration in the Colorado River delta,
figure out how can we partner to improve the infrastructure we
have on both sides, create new sources of water, and so on.
And I'll give more examples later on.
On the Gulf of Mexico side, by now, many of you
who are acquainted with the energy sector in Mexico,
over the last few years, there's been a massive change
in terms of welcoming foreign investment, which was not
the case since the 1930s.
But at the time when this negotiation was ongoing,
Mexico had yet to make that transition.
And they saw, on the Mexican side,
they need to set a framework in the maritime boundary
that the two countries share in the Gulf of Mexico
about how the two countries should jointly explore
and develop hydrocarbon reservoirs that
straddle the maritime boundary.
The challenge, though, was that on the US side, the guidelines
that govern the management of these reservoirs
are called the rule of capture.
And that didn't match the needs that, at the time,
the Mexican company that had the monopoly on oil, Pemex,
would be able to partner with.
And so the two countries needed to figure out, also
proactively, a framework that would allow them to create
value if they were able to develop these joint resources.
And so the agreements negotiated between the two countries quite
creatively addressed both challenges,
challenges that were outstanding since the 1940s in both cases.
And I think that in your book, the ways
that you talked about some of the--
like, there were the broader challenges,
and then there were the challenges
within the negotiations themselves.
And I just found that fascinating to get that window
into all these things happening at the back tables,
and then when they went to their counterparts
and how they built those relationships.
So what do you see as some of the most crucial challenges
within those negotiations that each side overcame
to reach a successful outcome?
Mm-hm.
Wonderful question, Emily.
Let me share a couple of stories.
Let's see if these resonate with you,
and you can even apply it to your daily practice.
So on the US side, as they were negotiating with Mexico,
they start off the launch of the negotiations
in the Gulf of Mexico.
The biggest challenge was that traditionally, the two
countries had exchanged drafts about what they would want
in a binational agreement governing
the exploitation of shared hydrocarbon reservoirs.
And when I share an idea with you
about the length of the maritime boundary,
it's three times the size of the state of Massachusetts.
That's the amount of hydrocarbon reservoirs at stake.
And the two countries would always
share with one another a set of drafts, from the 2000s.
And they would come back with 100 critiques
and never be able to get on the same pave.
And so sure enough, as they were preparing
to launch the negotiations in the late 2010s,
after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which
would make you think that it's not
the best circumstance to negotiate a deepwater
exploration agreement, [? David ?] Sullivan,
the head of the US delegation on behalf of the State Department,
shared with me that he's at the White House
with the DOI team and the Obama team.
And they're talking about the draft
that Mexico sent to start the negotiations.
And they're saying, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management
looked at it for the last five months.
And they have 180 complaints and reasons why it would not work.
And as a result of that, I think that if we start tomorrow
the negotiation, by showing them how we're
going to tear down their draft, the negotiations are dead
right there.
So why don't-- and he tried to convince his team,
why don't we tell the Mexican delegation that we should
launch a set of joint workshops?
We should travel to DC, to New Orleans, to Mexico City,
and to somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico.
They ended up choosing Tabasco.
And let's just get together with experts
in the different elements at stake--
the market and political structures that we're
going to try to transform, but also the nitty-gritty
of deepwater exploration.
And rather than work against each other,
let's work side by side against the problem.
And so for three months, they went into these workshops
to build a common framework to then discuss
how can we develop a draft together, the two countries.
At the time when they heard this proposal,
the Mexican delegation thought, aha,
so they're trying to delay the negotiations.
They know the Calderón administration ends in a year
and a half from now.
But jokingly, they said, we won't say
no to three months of vacation.
So we'll travel back and forth.
Evidently, they took it more seriously.
And after the workshops, what they realized
is that they had been able to move
past a lot of the misconceptions that both sides inevitably
had about both the market and political frameworks
on both sides.
And so that's an example of creative solutions to move away
from the traditional arm's-length protocol that
governs many diplomatic negotiations.
Another narrative to share in the Colorado River--
traditionally, in the Colorado, the rule
is that when Mexico and the US negotiate,
it must be only with federal stakeholders.
But in order to create value in this kind of negotiation,
the agencies that really have flexibility
are the metropolitan water agencies
in each of the seven basin states
because they know the challenges on a daily basis,
and they are the ones who would be
able to make significant trades with the other side.
And so Mexico had to be convinced
that even though traditionally, they
negotiate one-on-one only between federal stakeholders,
they needed to embrace a process where, in front of them,
the seven states would have delegates.
And they would not only have voice, but actually
decision-making power.
And it took Mexico quite a while to be comfortable with having
small delegations and be confronted with the delegations
that doubled them in size.
But the benefit is once you do that, you
can foster a set of creative traits, which
I imagine you want me to discuss later down the road.
So I'll keep I'll keep the cliffhanger
and talk about it later.
Excellent.
Well, I think a few of the things that stood out
to me were in the mutual gains and how,
rather than approaching things from the standpoint of who
gets the biggest piece of the pie,
it was about expanding the size of the pie.
And I liked a lot of what you had in your book about building
relationships and the unexpected camaraderie
that sprung out of there.
When it comes to environmental and natural resources
negotiations, are there elements of negotiation for mutual gains
that make it inherently more likely
to lead to environmentally sustainable outcomes?
Mm-hm.
Yes, I believe that the data not only in my research,
but for the last, I'd say, two decades
in the negotiation field, underscores
that it's the only feasible path to really foster agreements
that are both resilient and able to adapt
to the circumstances, which is crucial in terms
of the management of natural resources.
So let me come up with two examples
right away from the negotiations in the Colorado.
I laid out that the case was about how do we
negotiate shortages between the two countries.
So when Mexico said, OK, let's launch the negotiations,
they requested that the US be willing to negotiate
about surplus, about environmental restoration,
and about creating new water sources.
The US said, how can we negotiate about surplus?
We're literally negotiating about shortage.
What part didn't you get from the memo?
But Mexico was saying, I have a back table and an audience
in the capital that needs to be able to say
that, on the merits, engaging in these negotiations
and achieving an outcome will actually generate benefits
that were not available to us.
That's what needs to be feasible from a political and technical
standpoint.
In that process, however, they didn't know what kind of trades
that they would uncover.
So one of the first challenges that the other two delegations
had is to get past the mirage that the problems that you have
on one side of the border can be solved
by actors on the other side.
So, for example, what they realized
after many rounds of negotiations that
included, for the first time--
it's quite shocking, but for the first time, involving
the high-ranking officials from both sides
to travel to the other country and visit and tour
the infrastructure.
Well, what the US realized is that on the Mexican side,
most of the canals were not lined with concrete.
And so annually, Mexico would receive their 1.5 million
acre-feet, but a lot of the water
would be lost through seepage.
What that means is that that water was not
being used by any farmer on the Mexican side.
And so there was no human being relying on it, nobody feeling
that it was a political entitlement.
So what if you line the canals with concrete?
It would immediately create new water.
Nobody's using it yet.
What if the US invests in lining the canals and, in exchange,
Mexico trades a portion of that water at the rates
on the Mexican side, which is much cheaper than the USA side,
and trades it with the metropolitan water
agencies, which are desperately trying to find new water
sources, but the farming rights on the US side
are far more expensive?
And so they realized, hey, we can make this trade,
and everybody wins.
The infrastructure on the Mexican side improves.
Water is cheaper for the ratepayers in Arizona, Nevada,
and California.
And we even get around the challenges
of setting a federal precedent.
We don't need the US to pay for these trades.
The metropolitan water agencies can do it on one-off trades.
And so that's something that sounds commonsense.
It took them three years to figure out
because one of the challenges is that for over 70 years,
the two countries managed water with two
completely different data sets.
The US relied on the CRSS modeling system, and Mexico
[INAUDIBLE].
And I won't get into the nitty-gritty.
But the fact is that they spoke two languages,
and they had never agreed which one they should rely upon
to actually understand what was happening to the whole basin.
So what, creatively, the US did is to propose funding
training all the technical managers on the Mexican side
on the modeling on the US side.
And after a year of training, they finally
were able to see some creative solutions.
So that investment in joint fact-finding
and creating a common base of knowledge was important.
And it underscores how frequently countries
think that they're managing a resource together,
but in reality, they are treating each other
as perhaps one country is the customer,
and the other is the one that sets the rules.
Whereas when you work in a partnership,
you really see the benefits on investing bringing up
the other side to your level because you can actually
then create some more beneficial outcomes.
Excellent.
So before, you were mentioning the origins of the negotiations
and how they originated under the Calderón administration
in Mexico and under the George W.
Bush and then the Obama administration in the US.
So we're now under different administrations on both sides.
And given current US-Mexico relations, what advice would
you offer to negotiators on both sides
who are going to be engaging or are currently
engaged in either natural resources
or other kinds of negotiation?
Sure.
Well, I have the blessing of being
able to work in such a beautiful country as the US,
to have done my PhD here.
I have fallen in love with my fiance as a grad student here,
who happens to be a New Yorker Jew.
I'm quite in love with the US.
And I can see how significant and pressing
are all the problems that both countries face
and how necessary it is to figure out the steps that
can foster solutions for such an array of stakeholders that
have different priorities and interests.
The challenge of approaching these problems
with a win-lose mindset, which happens on both sides,
is that you lose the ability to foster the trust
and reciprocity that allows you to find solutions
you didn't see initially.
And so you go away from the table thinking
that you foster a good deal for yourself.
But in reality, you never actually saw
even 10% of what was feasible.
So in the book, I really tried to present
12 steps that are applicable to any significant negotiation
between transboundary partners.
And let me hit some of the examples that I have.
There is no doubt that ideally, you
would want the highest authorities on both sides
to declare a mandate that says, we're looking for mutual gains.
That, of course, requires you to go against the idea, quite
widespread, certainly right now in the media,
that if you are doing fine, I must be losing.
But the reason why that curtails the creativity
of your bureaucracy is that when you convey to them
that my win comes at the cost of the losses of the other side,
is that they are less willing to invest the time
to learn from one another.
And so what was interesting in the negotiations
is that, for example, some of the actors
would share, well, when we have a weekend of negotiations,
sometimes, a high-ranking political official will
come and pound on the table and say,
your country is responsible for A, B, C and D.
And if you don't behave, we'll make you pay.
But if you foster reciprocity within your delegation team,
you can hold the wave of that anger, let that person vent,
and then move forward.
And so what they told in these negotiation is that often,
high-ranking officials on both sides
would come to certain sessions and speak
in a combative, aggressive language.
But when they would have the break,
the heads of both delegations would go by and say,
don't worry.
We haven't changed our approach.
We still got your back.
Just let that person vent.
They are above us.
Well, we know the real problems we face.
We'll work together.
Some funny examples are they were
negotiating the last pages of the Gulf of Mexico agreement.
They were at the State Department.
And Arturo [INAUDIBLE],, the head of the Mexican delegation
with the foreign ministry, got up from one of their rooms
and left his badge on the table.
And he was calling on the phone the Mexican president,
lost track of where he was, and went past the line
where you need a badge.
So the police-- or rather, the officials at the State
Department took him out.
And no matter how much the US delegation wanted--
no, like, he's there.
Don't get him angry, blah, blah, blah.
He had to wait in line, get the new badge,
and start the negotiation 90 minutes later.
When he comes back to the table, he
says that he could hear a pin drop.
And with good humor, he said, next week, we
have the meetings in Mexico City.
If somebody gets arrested before, it's not my fault.
And they moved on from that.
And there are countless examples in the book where
what is really heartwarming is that when
you realize that the other side is really putting themselves
in your shoes--
they're investing the time and resources
to figure out a package that works for you, for the people
you represent, and they devote the time
to understand which are your values,
your political constraints, the things
that your community needs--
then you build a certain rapport.
For example, I was interviewing at the Caesars Palace
in Las Vegas now the head of the metropolitan water
agency in Nevada, but at the time, the second in command,
John Ensminger, who was saying, I
was in one of those meetings with Mexico in San Diego.
And I had to fly back to Nevada to do a board meeting Friday
morning, and then I flew back Friday afternoon
to be with the Mexican delegation.
And as soon as I came in through the door,
they applauded like crazy as if I was one of them.
I love that story.
And I think it's quite genuine.
I mean, when you see that people can be hard bargainers in terms
of defending what's important for their country
and, at the same time, recognize that you're with a partner
willing to figure out how you can come back
home with a victory speech.
And so those are some of the things
that I saw in the research that has carried through.
The example is that even though administrations have changed
in both countries and even the tone
of the national relationship right now is different,
both agreements have been ratified
because the communities that depend on these agreements
were not only consulted, but empowered with decision-making.
And so one example here which is important
is that traditionally in the Colorado River,
you would have the governments negotiate with one another.
Not only did they break the protocol
in terms of empowering the states to participate
in negotiations, but the NGOs--
and you and I were at the UN event--
which often are seen as only observers that
can provide voice or insights as part of a technical team,
were empowered when managing an entire decision-making group
within the negotiation.
So the NGOs were involved because the two countries
wanted to figure out how do they restore the Colorado River
delta that had been decimated over the past 50
years [INAUDIBLE] 90%.
So it's the last chance to revive it.
How can we get water from both countries to restore the delta,
deal with invasive species, and actually enhance native growth?
They were brought for that purpose.
But the NGOs have the unique characteristic
that they are transboundary in their work.
They really look at the basin as a whole.
And they have to work in both languages.
They have offices on both sides.
So what the two countries did is often rely on them
as neutral conduits to float creative solutions.
And so for example, if the US thought that pursuing a path
would be beneficial for five of the seven basin states,
and perhaps only California would be against it,
and they didn't want to be the ones proposing it,
they would suggest to the NGO on the US side
that they could mention to be NGO on the Mexican side that
of Mexico asks next week at this point in the negotiations,
how about we do this, there will be a positive response.
And so in addition to being these neutral [INAUDIBLE]
of information, they also had a critical role in a challenge
that you wouldn't think about is as prevalent as what
the book underscores, which is that if two countries are
negotiating in two different languages,
because that's the diplomatic protocol, what
happens if there's a translation problem?
Who's going to notice?
And so they were at the end of the negotiations.
Mexico sends the last draft on the Colorado River agreement
to the US.
And Mike Connor tells me--
I remember that he was at his office in DC
at the secretary of the interior.
And he says, we received the draft from Mexico,
translate it to English, and they've
come up with some last-minute requests that make no sense.
We've negotiated in earnest for five years.
We're about to sign.
10 new requests?
Where did they come from?
And he said, we're so angry, we think we should pretty much end
the negotiation.
And the NGOs on the US side looked at the document
and said, it's funny.
The Mexican draft in Spanish had footnotes
explaining every request.
For some reason, those footnotes are not
in your English translation.
I would suggest you ask for a second translation.
It's never been clear.
Perhaps the translator was just tired and he decided,
why would the footnotes be important?
But in any case, this second translation
allowed both sides to say, OK, these are last-minute requests,
but I gather that's now come from the president of Mexico.
I gather some make sense.
And some, we can debate [INAUDIBLE]..
And so having that third party, and neutral,
create value for both sides is something
that they didn't expect, and underscores
how often, in the management of natural resource,
empowering a larger array of stakeholders
is to the benefit of all parties because you can come up
with more effective agreements.
I thought that the part about the NGOs' involvement
was really interesting.
And as a communications person, I also
really enjoyed how they worked on the press
strategies in that joint way with the messaging
and everything.
Oh, it's a great observation.
It is true that--
you can certainly see now, in the age
of Twitter and presidential politics,
that might be different.
But at the time, well, the two countries
decided [INAUDIBLE] is in a negotiation,
I'm going to need maneuvering room
to tell my back table that some of the things
they asked of me at the beginning,
they're no longer feasible.
Because in the process of having a conversation
with the other country, I've discovered
some of the constraints that we didn't know,
and I discovered some of the trades
that we didn't think about.
So I need to be able to explore these trades,
have them as points of tentative agreement,
and until everything is settled, then announce it.
And so both countries in both negotiations
said, we're going to have only joint declarations,
and we're going to do it very sparsely,
a couple of times per year.
And when we gather with the press,
we're going to focus our communication
to the foundations--
in the case of the Colorado River,
that [? working ?] environmental restoration.
So we're not going to have the press conferences in Mexico
City because we know, then, that somebody that has nothing
to do with the North of Mexico will
try to connect their problem with what is going on there.
And in the case of the negotiations with the major oil
companies and so on, the same decision was made.
Let's communicate with the communities that
live in the Gulf on both sides, who
are aware of the benefits that would accrue to both countries
if we work together.
And so they worked in these joint statements.
You remind me of--
it's a good-- I'm sorry, I have to tell.
It's in the book.
So Pat Mulroy, which is known as the water
czar of all metropolitan water agencies in the US--
she's had a tremendous career and, at the time,
was the head for Las Vegas.
She tells a story that unlike Arizona and California where
when you have a binational agreement,
you can announce the nitty-gritty of the deal
to your board behind closed doors, in Nevada,
they have sunshine laws.
And so the first time you're going
to tell your board the nitty-gritty of the final deal,
all the press needs to be there, present.
And they can take any narrative and tell it
to the outside world.
And she was very worried because the Mexican delegation
had told her that the US should not
say that the water that Mexico would be giving to the US
through the new infrastructure was water
that Mexico was selling.
Because in Mexico, there's a political subset
that always blames the US for everything that is wrong.
It's quite a comfortable way to approach problems.
And if you say that you're selling water to the US,
they could use it as a sign that you lost in the negotiation.
So you have to say that it was a trade, which it was.
But Pat couldn't be certain that that's how it would be written,
not only in the US press, but most importantly,
what is often published in the US press,
is actually what is then published in the Mexican press.
They just go and get that, and translate it verbatim.
So she met with the heads of all the newspapers, radio,
and TV agencies before that meeting with the board
and said, this is what you can say,
this is how it can be said, so that when it gets translated
to Mexico, they are fine and they
don't have problems at home.
Quite unusual to think about that,
and it underscores their relationship.
Well--
Unusual for the press to agree to something like that as well.
Indeed.
And she was saying--
she was very close to Senator Harry Reid.
She said, I'm presenting to you, in detail
in these meetings, why this agreement serves
the constituents of Las Vegas.
And if you think that's not true, go ahead.
And so she devoted the time to present
why the package made sense.
She used that reputation she had with different agencies.
And then she's sleeping.
And she wakes up at 3:00 AM, and she
realizes, but the person that writes
the title of the story, that wasn't present.
And it's completely different from the one
who writes the article.
So she had to call right away and change that title
before 5:00 AM.
And so it's telling to commit yourself
to think about how your message works for the other side.
And again, it underscores that both sides--
you behave that way when you've achieved a deal that
is good for you, right?
And it's telling that that's also how Mexico behaved.
They would only convey the outcome of the negotiations
to the foundations that invest in restoration.
So quite a good story in that sense.
Absolutely.
And I thought maybe you could briefly
tell us about some of your current areas of research.
And then we can turn it over to the audience
for a few questions.
Sure.
Well, I think that my research is connected also
with the blessing that is to be able to chair at MIT.
So a lot of my work over the past year
has been focused on building, for the entire campus,
the first ever inter disciplinary concentration
in negotiation and leadership.
And so in partnership with five schools,
I've been leading the effort that
has gathered over 125 undergraduates from 22
different departments in figuring out
which are the subjects and the pedagogy,
that includes both mind, hand, and heart, to empower people
to develop these skills and be able to go out
to the outside world and say, I have
mastery in negotiation and leadership
that people usually develop in their MBA or MPA
when I'm 18, 19, 20.
I've taken a year and a half of classes on these subjects.
And I now have my career to put this win-win approach
to practice.
So a lot of the research there is empowering undergraduates
to be able to contribute to conflict resolution
research in the field.
Now, in the spirit of winning together,
I'm part of binational collaboration between MIT,
Harvard, and the Mexican Ministry of Energy,
the national oil company, and [? CFE, ?]
the major electricity company, in rethinking
how Mexico negotiates domestically and abroad.
And by that, I mean that we're in the process of empowering
agencies in Mexico to develop negotiation
units within their companies.
And what that means is you often think that negotiation
is an individual skill.
You go to a certain training.
You read a certain set of books, and then you bring those skills
to your organization.
But the reality is that in such diverse and challenging fields
as energy and water management and so on,
the wisdom that the different entities in your organization
have about how to foster effective negotiations
needs to be nurtured.
That knowledge needs to be able to be transmitted effectively
and quickly between different agencies in different parts
of the world.
And so we're in the process of figuring out
how these negotiation units that are traditionally
only available in some companies like Google, Apple and so on
can be put in practice in Mexico so that these companies that
now face a completely new economic landscape
can actually foster benefits for the myriad
of different communities that, in Mexico, desperately
need economic development, social justice, and so on.
And I think to the extent that we can empower different actors
to go against these win-lose mindset and, in practice, show,
throughout the hierarchy in an organization, that investing
that time generates benefits for everyone
well beyond the energy companies.
It's a wonderful responsibility to have.
I'm thankful that MIT has entrusted me with that.
Well, I'm sure everyone here is thankful to have you here.
Oh, thank you, Emily.
Thanks so much.
And now who has some audience questions?
Go ahead.
Thank you for the questions.
Hi, Bruno.
I love listening to you.
This is great.
Thank you.
I'm just recovering from negotiating a deal
with a state-owned entity in China, Mexico,
and the United States, corporation
around water treatment.
I got trained at Tufts in negotiations
around a lot of the same ideas, and they're not
prevalent in industry.
You have the CEOs banging the table.
You have nobody wanting to spend time to learn from each other.
And it is almost an academic approach to something
that people feel has to be machismo,
men standing at the table.
So I'm interested-- I thank you for keeping this training going
because it is the right way to solve problems.
It works for everybody.
Why do you think this difference persists?
And what do you think is the difference
between the private sector and public sector
in these type negotiations?
Oh, wow, thank you for such a fantastic question.
It's true that--
I see three angles.
The first one is that to some extent in democracies--
and there's different degrees of how
democratic different societies are.
Certainly in Mexico, there's so much room for improvement.
To some extent, the acquisition of power
and the execution of that power is
associated with casting the other side
as someone you don't need or someone that is preventing you
from achieving your goals.
And so often, many of our leaders
are selected by their ability to tell these narratives
to the point that they actually represent
how they approach the world.
And so within that framework, which
is certainly win-lose and happens in certain dynamics
where you're trying to acquire power, once you acquire it,
you feel comfortable with executing it and using it
in such a way.
And you're not worried if actually, you're
leaving value on the table.
And so the only way to get to practice it on a daily basis
is to make sure that across different responsibilities,
we empower these specific companies
to rethink how they negotiate.
And that means that as it pertains to the bottom line,
as it pertains to the effectiveness
of their agreements, we can actually show,
this is how you negotiated deal A, following
the traditional protocol.
And this is how you negotiated deal B--
with a team of negotiators that you foster for a year,
that you nurture, that you're preparing these skills.
And once they see that it adds up to the bottom line,
they can rethink how they go about things.
And so you certainly need backing from up above.
And then you need people who see leadership
from a facilitative role, almost as a mediator
within your company and across.
I think that a big challenge is that people
believe that if a deal is good for me,
that's all I care about.
Often, then, that's a parasitic agreement.
And somebody who wasn't sitting at the table pays.
So empowering this approach to negotiation,
at the end of the day, saves litigation costs.
It enhances implementation and fosters relationships
that allow you to create more value in other things.
And so I'm happy to see that there
is this move in Mexico with these major companies
to develop these skills.
And when I speak with them, what they
tell me is, because we're seeing all the partnerships
that we're not able to build.
And we are terrified about the value we're losing.
We see the disparity between the knowledge
that the foreign companies have and the knowledge that we have,
and we wish we had the structure to approach this without fear
and actually make decisions that are rational
and also generate value.
So I think that is part of a process.
And you just need to hope that more people in positions
of leadership are willing to test it,
and then empower their teams with that.
In that sense, I think that's why MIT is so unique.
That concentration will be the first
in any top US university that offers
that level of intense training.
And we are the only university to have an advanced negotiation
course for undergraduates.
So MIT's taking the lead in seeing
that we need to empower people earlier
so that from the start up, they build.
They have this approach to the problems they face.
Any other question?
So I think one of the most important negotiations that's
going to go on are the future COP negotiations.
And you and Emily met each other at a related event.
What do you think--
I mean, first of all, I guess the French have gotten credit
for doing something magical that helped the COP21 come together.
But what do you think needs to happen to ensure--
I mean, these are going to get tougher
as people have to really make good on their promises.
What needs to happen ahead of time?
Sure.
Is there hope?
Well, how can I tell a positive story in that sense?
So there's 20 years of trying to deal with this.
And I think that research is quite clear
that local communities need to make these decisions.
So for example, MIT has invested a lot of time
in empowering coastal communities in New England
to think proactively about how to deal with climate
risks regardless of political positions
by going to communities in Maine, Massachusetts,
New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, and gathering not only experts,
but actually citizens that represent business,
environmental interests, and so on,
and fostering these workshops where they can engage
in role-play simulations where they negotiate,
for example, how to deal with coastal flooding.
And what the research underscores
is that being able to, even in a role-play simulation,
put yourself in the shoes of a completely different actor
when you are exposed with hard data about the challenges,
but you also see the emotional components behind why people
want to keep with a daily practice
and they don't want to change it,
fosters a set of conversations that often underscores
how now, you're missing the opportunity
to create significant value.
So one of the most important challenges with the UN,
if we take it globally, is that often the discussion
is about all the costs.
And all neuroscience research underscores
if people are thinking about the costs,
they will not support your agreement.
So the ability to frame and persuasively
communicate about the benefits and devote your time
to structured conversation around those benefits
needs to be in the front of the conversation.
And that won't happen if, the way countries currently
negotiate, they leave it up to the last month,
and the last week, and 11:00 PM on the last day,
to make the deal.
There is no maneuvering room there to make the trades.
But of course, if you want to embrace a negotiation process
only to make political declarations
and speak about a perspective of the world
where you're protecting your country by doing nothing, which
happens across all continents, then that's the outcome.
So we need a genuine desire from stakeholders
in industry, environment, and in government
to say, the way we negotiate does not match what research,
in 40 years, has underscored.
We don't negotiate that way because it serves us
in terms of remaining in power, but it
doesn't solve the problems.
How about we figure out a way to solve the problems
and remain in power?
I believe that's feasible.
I've seen it.
Everybody I interviewed has advanced in their career,
whether Republican or Democrat.
And so it's just desire to rely on our imagination
and to stop being narrow-minded, which unfortunately, is often
a challenge that if we don't resolve when we are young,
it gets tougher the more you get old.
Any other question?
You touched on it briefly, both the value of having models--
so very strong data from a joint fact-finding perspective that
people agree on and can use to find good answers--
and also the benefits of designing your agreements
to be flexible with some sort of either changes in the face
of uncertainty or openings for how we negotiate again
in the future [INAUDIBLE] structured in some way.
I found, in some of my work, that I have trouble convincing
people of both of those things.
And instead, they'd really prefer
to do just one because they view the creation of good models
and data as finding the right answer,
and then they don't need it to be flexible.
Or they want to create a flexible solution because they
don't trust any of the data, and they just
feel like they need to do this over and over again.
And I wonder if you have thoughts
on how you combine both of those things
into one combined package when sometimes,
the constituent stakeholders are--
it's a tough sell for them.
Yeah, well, it's a fabulous question
because it's related with timing.
That is, to the extent--
I mean, one thing that comes across from these negotiations
is--
and people will repeat it on both sides,
is you really need to empower your colleagues
to practice putting themselves in other people's shoes.
And that means being able to deal
with their negative reactions at the beginning where
you're exposing them to a different approach
to the problem.
So for example, when the two countries
were negotiating the beginning of the negotiations
in the Gulf of Mexico, what the US said was,
we are certain that Mexico has no proof that there
are transboundary reservoirs.
All our genealogical research underscores that it's unclear
whether they exist.
And so we don't see even the point of negotiating.
And Mexico would answer back and say,
our data underscores that there are.
You're just saying you don't want to see our data.
Once you do, you'll be convinced.
Both sides were protecting from one another.
The US would say, even if the federal government wanted
to believe Mexican data, we can't have access
to the proprietary data that is in the hands of the US
companies.
And so Mexico came up with a creative solution
and said, OK, so we [? can't ?] share data,
but how about I present it to you?
So I'll invite you to Tabasco.
You leave your phones out.
Your delegation comes in, and I'll
present slides with the data, and we discuss it.
And if you feel more comfortable about it afterwards,
then we can move forward.
And so the desire to figure out how
the sharing and presentation of the data
can move parties beyond their preconceptions
needs to come from the top.
Then if you invest in training both sides
in acquiring knowledge about a same language,
it won't be easy.
It won't be smooth sailing throughout.
In the negotiation, something that was very interesting
is, well, when the US came in, they had a set of projections
about how water availability in the Colorado River system
is going to decrease in the upcoming decades.
And then they trained the Mexican officials
on the modeling system for a year.
And then they are, one day, in a meeting in California.
And the US comes in and presents an update in the system.
And it turns out that there's going to be even less water.
Well, the Mexican delegation was saying,
you're cooking the books on us.
How dare you do this?
We're about to leave.
They storm out of the room.
They're discussing whether they're
going to fly back to Mexico.
And then the head of the California agency
says, we have to stop them.
They're not understanding that if we're
revealing to them that there's an update in the system,
they can check whether it is true.
If we're trying to pull one over them,
we will have actually done the opposite.
And they said, but Mexicans won't stop.
So what could we do to keep them here?
Mm-hm.
Culturally, there's a tradition for hospitality.
How about we call for the cookies
that the hotel has ready, say and present the cookies
to them, and they won't say no.
And while they're eating them, one-on-one, we
explain them the problem.
You say, in these major negotiations,
such a move is useful?
Boy, it was.
I interviewed the Mexicans.
[INAUDIBLE] those cookies, they were critical.
We were about to leave.
But once I saw them, I said, OK, I'll give half an hour.
So those steps of speaking the same language,
I understand why you struggle with it.
But the message is, embrace the challenge of both sides
having to discuss their assumptions.
But the payoff is in the long-run,
because the better your picture, the easier it
is to see what is really feasible.
And the right answer from a technical standpoint
needs also to fly politically.
So that second step starts with having
the technical data correct.
Then the second is up to the politicians
to see what is feasible.
And that will be a second negotiation that
relies on emotion and the nitty-gritty of the context
you face.
And speaking of cookies, I hope that you guys
can stay for our reception.
Thank you so much, Bruno, for having this talk with us.
And also be on the lookout out.
The MIT Energy Initiative has a twice-annual magazine,
Energy Futures.
And in the next issue, there will be a conversation
with Bruno there.
Thanks so much, Emily.
Thank you for sharing your evening with me.
Thank you, guys.
[APPLAUSE]
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