For the past 5 years, xNI has been working with William Ury, co-founder of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation and best-selling co-author of Getting to YES to distill 45+ years of experience working in difficult conflict around the world into a proven method and mindset that works to transform seemingly impossible conflicts into creative and constructive negotiation. We call this method BB3 (for Balcony, Bridge and Third Side).
Since 2017, Ury has deployed BB3 in conflicts as diverse as ending the Colombian civil war, averting nuclear war with North Korea, and most recently to catalyze negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. xNI’s vision: world-class teams of skilled negotiators tackling the world’s toughest conflicts utilizing BB3 to help protect us all from the existential problems that plague us - from war to climate change.
In 2020, when the world stopped traveling due to COVID-19, xNI capitalized on the opportunity to begin prototyping scalable, virtual ways to teach William Ury’s BB3 methodology as a way to break through intractable conflicts around the world. xNI ran their first virtual workshop with a hand-picked team of Senior Strategists and Conflict Practitioners including For the past 5 years, xNI has been working with William Ury, co-founder of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation and best-selling co-author of Getting to YES to distill 45+ years of experience working in difficult conflict around the world into a proven method and mindset that works to transform seemingly impossible conflicts into creative and constructive negotiation. We call this method BB3 (for Balcony, Bridge and Third Side). collaborators of xNI’s partner Jonathan Powell of InterMediate. Powell was former Chief of Staff to UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and lead negotiator on the Good Friday Agreements. His staff who participated in the workshop were all highly engaged in difficult and intractable conflicts around the world from Afghanistan to Israel/Palestine, Syria, and Nigeria. The BB3 workshop gave the team a chance to go to the Balcony, explore ways to build bridges for the conflict parties and activate the Third Side to bring the power and pressure to bear to transform their respective conflicts.
From May 2021 thru September 2022, xNI was able to expand its reach through a total of six virtual workshops, passing on the BB3 method and mindset to more than 400 conflict practitioners working on 83 teams from 100+ different organizations working in 37 different conflicts around the world. Nearly 60 different nationalities were represented in the workshop.
IMPACT BY THE NUMBERS
- 400+ conflict practitioners
- 83 teams
- 100+ different organizations
- 37 conflicts on nearly every continent including Afghanistan, Middle East, Colombia, Venezuela, US, Kashmir, Brazil, Cameroon, Nigeria, Boko Haram, Rwanda, Yemen, Syria, Mali, Sudan, Congo, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Burundi, Somalia, and Climate Negotiations
Participants found the workshop invaluable, as it transformed their approach to conflict and gave them immediate new tools to work with:
“The interactive sessions provided us with an amazing range of tools with which to consider new ways of approaching our negotiations, and the space to do this together as a team. On more than one occasion during the COP, we invoked one of William's practices when thinking about the way forward.”
“I'm in the middle of some real-time negotiations, and it was very useful for the frameworks to spark tactical ideas that I otherwise would not have thought about. I wish I could just do this monthly as a way to step back and think through everything going on.”
“It was excellent! As someone who is working on preventing or at least mitigating an election crisis in 2024, I not only need all the tools that I can get but as much of the Possibilist spirit as I can get.”
One participant remarked, “This model is the best I've seen in my ten plus years learning about and applying conflict resolution.”
In 2023, to begin building towards William Ury, OEF’s and Marcel Arsenault’s shared vision for scaling this methodology for systemic impact, xNI is seeking to make another leap in its ability to pass on and train practitioners, and to impact some of the world’s most difficult conflicts. In Chapter 3 next month, we will share our goals and plans for how to accomplish the very audacious goal of training conflict practitioners around the world in this transformative method and mindset.
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