It has been said one cannot ask a fish what water is. When something so surrounds us, it is often invisible to us. The same thing can be said of our environment. It exists in the background and often by-passes our conscious attention. Yet, it affects us in subtle ways which can affect our feeling…
Like many of us I am constantly torn between simplicity and complexity. The world is complex: that’s a given. But a beautiful morning or a lover’s kiss is simplicity itself, and it’s a fool who overcomplicates it. And so with mediation, the profession/activity/vocation that has grown on me like a skin these last nineteen years….
As I write these lines, I am working on a commercial mediation project in the Pacific nation of Samoa – yes the one that has just jumped across the international dateline. My blog post today is a reflection on an aspect of this work that is relevant, not just to me, but to any of…
As we head into a new year of mediation and managing conflict in the world it strikes me that, at least in this little corner of Europe, the discipline of mediation itself is at a crossroads. A combination of political and socio-economic circumstances and potential legal developments could lead to mediation taking a greater part…
I like the Christmas season. It marks a very happy time in the year for me and I’m afraid, it makes me a bit silly. In that spirit, I hope readers will forgive that I start off with an Elephant story… I recently had the need to think about the various models of mediation that…
This blog is inspired by a page from Monty Python’s ‘Big Red Book’ entitled ‘Why Accountancy is Not Boring.’ (Apologies to those who have not come across the Pythons’ rather English form of humour – for the original piece see http://arago4.tnw.utwente.nl/stonedead/publications/sketches/accountancy.html) Apologies too to accountants everywhere who, in the 1970’s, were probably as easy a…
I am writing this from outside my home country, on a two-week assignment. It’s not a “mediation” as we might typically know it – not yet, anyway – but rather an early stage engagement with a long-standing and profoundly deep-rooted conflict. My job at this stage is simply to listen to how some of those…
One of the things that has been exercising me for some time is the question of what constitutes success in commercial mediation. I ask the question because the experience of the London office of my international law firm – which has attempted to gather data on mediations in which we have participated for nearly 15…
Yep, it’s been an up-and-down month. More down than up if I’m honest. But hey! I’ve done enough of these things to know that my old Dad was right all those years ago when we’d stand at the top of a black run and he’d say “Laddie, if you’re not falling down, you aren’t skiing…
Hong Kong is the global city of designer ‘labels’ as even the most reluctant of shoppers cannot fail to observe. It is also the city of fakes – fakes with labels and fakes without labels – and the place where the ‘No Fake’ label and the ‘No Label’ label thrive! Confused? Well don’t worry, Hong…
