As the founder and CEO of the Core Solutions Group, I spend a great deal of time thinking and speaking about mediation, negotiation, conflict management, leadership and communication. I am told I should write some of these thoughts down… so, here goes…
The Auditor General’s recent report on the construction of two CalMac ferries identified various failures. One critical aspect was the breakdown of relationships between two of the main protagonists, CMAL, the Scottish Government-owned ferry purchasers, and …
As a mediator, and therefore as someone predisposed to peace-making, the situation in Ukraine is deeply troubling. Is there a time when peace-making is redundant? We must hope not. The alternative seems too awful to …
The escalating situation in Ukraine brings challenges to those of us committed to mediation and peace-making. Is there a time when what we stand for does not work and cannot be pursued? When dialogue, even …
The escalating situation regarding Ukraine brings a chilling reminder of the days of the Cold War which came to an end at the beginning of the 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
That Scotland and Edinburgh played a …
What is the risk that the Ukraine situation is being approached by the West in a binary, dualist way? We cannot control President Putin but how we, or at least our politicians and diplomats, respond …
Effective inter-governmental relations among the constituent parts of the United Kingdom are essential in an era of increased devolution of powers, post-Brexit allocation of responsibility and contested narratives about the future of the (uncodified) UK …
I have written many times in this column about the benefits of mediation. I have been aware of the dangers of overkill, special pleading (“he would say that wouldn’t he”) or being a prophet without …
There is pressure for an inquiry into the response to the Covid pandemic in Scotland. If it proceeds, there are questions to be addressed about its scope and format.
First, what would be its purpose? There …
“The only thing which will redeem mankind is co-operation,” observed the philosopher Bertrand Russell. Perhaps only a real crisis is enabling us truly to appreciate what this means and what it might take. What if …
I posed these questions in my keynote address to the annual conference of the Arbitrators' and Mediators' Institute of New Zealand recently, in the context of the conference theme of New Horizons:
What if the way …