The plain purpose of the third party is to convert a two-dimensional fight into a three-dimensional exploration leading to the design of an outcome.
Conflict thinking should not be a fight but a design exercise.
In this chapter I shall be writing about the third-party role in general. Later in the book I shall introduce the SITO concept (Chapter 19). SITO (Supranational Independent Thinking Organization) is specifically designed to provide a third-party role in conflict thinking – and to provide a supranational focus for thinking for all occasions.
It is the essential nature of the third-party role in the design approach to conflict resolution that creates the concept of ‘triangular thinking’. The third party is not an addition or an aid but an integral part of the process.
I want to make it very clear that what I have in mind is not compromise nor consensus. Nor is it negotiation in the usual sense of that word. It is not arbitration nor is it bargaining. It is quite simply design.
It is normal in a conflict situation for both parties to start off with full confidence in the strength of their case, their muscle and their stamina. A point is then reached where it becomes obvious that neither side is likely to gain an easy victory. It now becomes a matter of hanging on: in the hope that the other side will give up or because there is no easy way out. In the end exhaustion creates the setting for a negotiated face-saving compromise. None of this has anything to do with the design of an optimal outcome. The final negotiation is a rescue patch-up rather than a constructive design.
From time to time throughout this book I have pointed out aspects of thinking which would have to be carried out by a third party. There are two types of reason why these things have to be carried out by a third party:
1. Because the parties involved in the conflict are bogged down by tradition, training and complacency, in the argument mode of thinking. Because the parties involved simply do not have the necessary skill or experience in lateral thinking and the design idiom.
2. Because with the best will in the world, the parties involved in the conflict simply cannot carry out certain thinking operations because these would not be consistent with their position in the conflict. The structure of the situation is such that these things simply cannot be done.
With regard to the first set of reasons there is a practical necessity for the third party. With regard to the second set of reasons there is a logical necessity for the third party.
I should also add that intention coupled with an understanding of the design needs is not an adequate substitute for expertise in the type of thinking required. Understanding sculpture does not make a person a sculptor. Thinking is not just the possession of intelligence. Thinking is the operating skill with which intelligence acts upon experience.
I shall now spell out the sort of functions that would be performed by the third party in the triangular thinking mode.
Oil and water do not mix. The addition of an emulsifying agent results in an emulsion in which very tiny drops of oil are mixed in with the water. The result is a mixture for all practical purposes. It would be the role of the third party to set the scene and the mood so that the parties involved in the conflict were able to interact in an agreeable manner. Experience has shown that the right setting can contribute considerably to the way discussions proceed. A prevailing mood of hostility limits the concepts available, as I have mentioned in an earlier chapter. There is no need for hostility to be signalled in an emotional sense when it has already been made apparent by the positions taken. In practice a third party can do much to change a hostile mood whereas the parties involved can do very little.
It is extremely easy for an exploratory discussion to slip back into the conflict mode. It is rather like a routine couple’s quarrel. This may start about something trivial but in no time at all has slipped into a mutual exchange of hostilities about much more basic matters.
It is the role of the third party to detect these conflict initiatives and to defuse them immediately.
‘The purpose of this discussion is not to show who is wrong.’
With experience, a skilled third party can make a conflict initiative seem crude and out of place.
The third party sets the stages for the exploration and design exercises. One stage is tackled at a time and there is a need for a strict stage discipline. This is important otherwise there will be an attempt to discuss everything at once in the usual argument mode.
The agenda is not set through a process of consultation with the parties involved. It is set directly by the third party. This is because an agenda can often be chosen to suit one particular line of argument rather than another. Ideally an agenda should cut across the lines of argument rather than reflect these lines. If the parties do not like the agenda that is too bad.
The third party is the circus ringmaster or the orchestral conductor. It is the role of the third party to call for the specific thinking operations at any point. Instead of point-to-point thinking in which discussion just flows from point to point, there is structure. There are specific thinking operations to be carried through. For example, the third party may call for an ADI (areas of agreement, disagreement and irrelevance). The third party may also request a particular thinker to adopt a particular ‘thinking hat’ (for example the black hat of logical negativity).
The third party should not be tentative or pleading nor should there be a classroom atmosphere. It is more like the playing of a ‘thinking keyboard’. A request is both definite and defined.
If a request is not complied with this is repeated and the failure to comply is made visible.
The various tools for the mapping stage of thinking can be requested. There can be a demand for priorities (FIP) or for alternatives (APC). There may be a request to consider the views of other people involved (OPV). The third party may ask that some suggestion be extended forward in time in order to map what might happen (C&S). There can be a delineation of values, concerns and fears.
As I made clear in Chapter 3, each operation is carried out in isolation in its own right. There is no attempt at the time to fit the particular piece of the map into the total map. So any attempt to turn a mapped item into the basis of an argument point must be resisted.
The rules of Think-2 have to be strictly adhered to. At first this will seem artificial and will be resented. After a time the discipline will be welcomed because it relieves the thinker of having to keep the total picture in mind at every moment. A fairly short time is allocated to each operation. In time this gets people to focus directly on the operation instead of drifting back into a general discussion. It is amazing how much thinking can be done in as short a time as three minutes – provided it is focused thinking.
At a broad level, ‘focus’ is involved in defining the stages and the agenda. At a more detailed level it is the role of the third party to define a focus from time to time.
‘Let’s just focus on compensation.’
Setting the focus is one side of the matter; keeping people directed towards the focus is another. It is also the role of the third party to remind the thinkers of the focus of the moment.
Once the direction has been set then it becomes a matter of finding how to advance in that direction.
‘In what way can we make this course of action unappealing?’
I prefer to talk in terms of setting design tasks and defining attention areas than to talk about ‘asking the right questions’. This is because a question implies that an answer is known and the listener will tend to offer whatever answer is available to him or her. With a ‘design task’ it is assumed that there is not yet a satisfactory answer and that some thinking will need to be done. There is this important distinction between dialogue and design. Dialogue seeks to bring forth what is there. Design seeks to create what is not yet anywhere.
When discussion has become bogged down, it is up to the third party to restart it. This can be done by shifting attention to another matter or by the third party putting in some further ideas.
When no new ideas are forthcoming it may be useful to use a deliberate stimulating technique such as the ‘random word’ technique from lateral thinking. This usually opens up some new lines of thought.
It is perfectly in order for the third party to acknowledge that thinking has got bogged down at that particular point. An attempt may be made to examine why this has happened.
Calling a break is another way of coping with a discussion that has got bogged down.
This is a major role for the third party. This is because the third party is likely to have more expertise than the other thinkers in this area. It is also because the third party is the only one able to offer provocations and probes. Until the creative idiom has been very firmly established, any provocation coming from one of the parties to the dispute will be regarded with the utmost suspicion by the other party. Is it a signal? Does it reflect inner thoughts? Is it a sly way of putting across a position point?
Setting the focus is a skilled task. The way a problem is defined can make a huge difference to how it is solved. The way a problem is broken down into sub-problems can simplify the thinking task and also avoid stock solutions.
There is skill required to direct attention to matters which briefly enter the discussion but are perceived to be important. Unless attention is specifically focused on such matters they may never get direct attention and will have to remain the victims of assumptions.
This is really a type of ‘negative’ focus. It is important to cut off discussion about a matter at a particular point. For example a constructive point may have been reached. If discussion continues the effectiveness of the achievement will be diluted and even lost. A cut-off preserves that point in perception.
There are times when a finite time may be allocated to a particular thinking operation. Here the cut-off is determined by time and should be made at the present time – even if discussion is flowing. If there is no time discipline then the thinkers get lazy and assume an open-ended situation.
There should never be any fear of cutting off a flow of ideas. They will return later. It is important that the thinkers learn to be crisp and brief. Speeches are totally out of place. So are elaborate preambles and explanations for what is to follow.
It is the role of the third party to set specific design tasks. The purpose of the design has to be spelled out clearly. The acceptance frame for the design (who is going to have to like it) also has to be spelled out.
In an earlier chapter I mentioned the importance of setting new thinking directions:
‘Can we design a voting system to throw out polarizing candidates?’
The third party is quite free to offer provocations of any sort and then to request the other thinkers to work from those provocations:
‘Po, the hostages benefitted from their captivity.’
The third party is in a much better position to pursue a speculative idea and to foster a tentative idea. It is not only that the third party has less at risk but also that the mind of the third party is more free to entertain ideas. The parties to the dispute would find it very difficult to pursue any suggestion which seemed to have an initial ‘negative cash flow’ for their own position.
There are times when a party to a dispute has an idea which he or she would like to put forward. This cannot be done openly because the idea might give a misleading impression. The idea may also be in the nature of a probe. For whatever reason such an idea cannot be tossed on to the table.
In such cases the idea is passed to the third party (at the discussion or during a break) and then the idea is put forward directly by the third party just as if the idea had originated with the third party. This is a classic instance of the logical necessity for the third party.
I have often been present at creative sessions that have seemed interesting at the time. The reports of such sessions are often unaccountably dull. It is not just that an idea is more fun to listen to than to read in cold print. It is simply that people are not very good at noticing ideas. Each person is so wrapped up in the merits of his or her own idea that other ideas do not get properly noticed.
It is very much the role of the third party to notice ideas that emerge – even if they are only a glimmer of an idea which no one else has noticed. It is the role of the third party to harvest all the creative ideas that get produced in a lateral thinking session. These ideas may be taken a bit further in order to explore the benefit that might attach to them. The third party has an improving role here. There is no need to be a passive and neutral reporter provided the input is to improve the idea.
It is extremely difficult to notice something that is not in line with our thinking. That is why the third party should have a range of ideas on the matter. In this way he or she will be able to notice many more ideas than the disputants who are limited in their perceptual repertoire by the position they have to take.
The third party can take a detached overview. The third party can look at the situation in perspective. The third party can distinguish the trees but also see the wood. The third party can look down on both the situation itself and also on the thinking that is taking place with regard to the situation.
Even though the third party is not going to use judgement, he or she is in the superior position of a judge who looks down from above on what is happening in his or her court.
The third party is at all times on the same level as the disputants but also above them. The image of a triangle suggests an equality for all three angles and yet one of them is in a superior position to the others.
The overview may sometimes be converted into a running report or even a permanent report. It should be made very clear, however, that the third party is not there as a note-taker or recorder.
From the detached and superior viewpoint, the third party is in the best position to see the whole map. As a result the third party can make connections and can show how one matter connects up with another. The third party can also show how two things which might appear different really have much in common. The third party can also show how under certain circumstances different aims can be reconciled. The third party can make bridges. The third party can drop in a connector which suddenly brings about an insight switch of perception.
Neighbours may be unaware that they actually live very close to each other because each approaches his home by a different route. Someone with a map of the area can see at once that the neighbours are close. Similarly in a conflict situation each side may get to a certain position by means of a totally different route. The final positions are, however, very close.
Very often disputants are so driven by the ‘intention’ of their position that they fail to notice that there is a similarity between that position and the opponent’s position. Just as the domination of a preferred hypothesis makes us unable to see evidence in an innocent manner, so the domination of a conflict position makes us unable to see where we are.
A concept review lays out the established concepts, the dominating concepts, the blocking concepts, the changing concepts, the emerging concepts and the concept needs. It is a sort of functional map that is set at concept level. The purpose of the concept review is to create awareness of the state of the conflict. The third party with his or her overview position is in a much better position than either of the disputants to lay out the concept review. It is not an easy task because we may use concepts without ever being able to define them. It is also often possible to extract different concepts from the same operation.
A concept review should be as rich as possible and should lay out a variety of concepts. Nevertheless these will need to be organized into functional groupings (ways of monitoring, ways of exerting pressure, etc.).
Sometimes a concept review may make the parties to a conflict instantly aware of how narrow their thinking has been.
A prime role for the third party is to provide alternatives additional to those so far provided. The third party may use his or her own creativity in order to design further alternatives or may subcontract this thinking to a resource team (as might be the case with SITO).
The third party in this and other instances can have a direct thinking role. It is not only the business of the third party to organize the thinking of the others and to extract the maximum from this thinking. The third party may well come to be the major input source for alternatives, suggestions, creative ideas and provocations. For this reason the third party should have some creative skill.
In addition to alternative ideas there are alternative directions. I have mentioned these before. They are much less than ideas. We could call them ‘suggested direction for solution’ (SDS for short).
In generating alternatives it is not just a matter of putting forward more alternatives in the hope that one of them will work. It is more a matter of creating an enriched perceptual field so that the design process can be more effective. This will happen even if no one of the alternatives is directly usable.
The second part of the design process is the acceptance of the design by the client. The third party can take a designed outcome and then test it for acceptance with each of the involved parties separately. This is something which can only be done by a third party. An involved party could never offer a designed outcome in a neutral manner because anything offered would be seen as embodying its own wishes.
If necessary, the designed outcome can be modified by the third party in order to increase its acceptance. There were several drafts of the Camp David agreement which were offered to Israeli Prime Minister Begin and Egyptian President el-Sādāt separately.
It is up to the third party to assess whether it is worth trying to modify the current design of outcome in order to make it acceptable, or whether it is better to abandon it and look at a new design. Certainly it should never be felt that an existing design can always be modified to give a final design. This is not so. We have seen that in patterning systems a wrong track will not evolve into something useful.
In this chapter I have written mainly about the ‘thinking’ functions of the third party when all three parties are meeting together to design an outcome to a conflict.
There are many other third-party roles that are not directly concerned with thinking. For example, a dispute may be referred to SITO in order to take the heat out of the situation or in order to create a time gap. Similarly a party that knows that it is going to lose the conflict might prefer to lose the conflict to a SITO opinion rather than to the other party. I shall be discussing such ‘positional’ third-party roles when I describe the functions of SITO in a later chapter.
Parties involved in a conflict may not always welcome the third-party role. If a party feels that the exercise of force or the righteousness of its case will lead to total victory then any third-party involvement is seen as likely to reduce the gains of that victory since any design would be short of total victory.
The parties in a conflict also tend to feel that the conflict is their business. This is not always the case. A brawl in a bar is the business of the bartender and the other drinkers as well as the business of the fighters. Indeed, conflicts would be less attractive if it was expected that others would automatically be involved.
There are a number of reasons why a third-party role might be rejected:
• It is no business of the third party.
• The third party cannot know enough about the scene.
• The third party does not have the feel and idiom for the situation.
• The third party can be irresponsible.
• The third party has nothing at stake and does not have to live with the result.
• The third party is just playing around.
• The third party is an academic theorist with no knowledge of the real world.
• For one reason or another the third party is seen as favouring the other side.
• The third party is unlikely to produce anything different from what would emerge anyway.
• There may be a time for the third party – but not yet and not until all hope of complete victory is gone.
• The third party should only be a go-between negotiator who does not seek to contribute any ideas as such.
• Neither party will reveal the confidential information on which their positions are really based (military) and hence a design exercise is futile.
All these objections are based on a satisfaction with the argument mode of thinking and the view that a third party will only interfere with this. Once the inadequacy of the argument mode is understood and publicized then it will be seen as negligent and aggressive to wish to conduct a conflict in that manner.
The third party should be effective and entrepreneurial and should show skill and flair. The third-party role is not just a neutral administrative function that could be handled by a bureaucracy. There is a need for the flair of a good lawyer, although the style of thinking is quite different. Perhaps it should be the flair of an architect, which combines creativity with practicality in a design that has to be generally accepted.