New Book from Lawrence Susskind: Good for You, Great for Me

CBI is pleased to announce that our Founder and Chief Knowledge Officer, Lawrence Susskind has published a new book Good for You, Great for Me: Finding the Trading Zone and Winning at Win-Win Negotiation. Stepping beyond the traditional model of "win-win" negotiation, this book introduces the idea that you can still come ahead in a negotiation without sacrificing your relationship with your trading partners. Susskind's previous books include Built to Win: Creating a World Class Negotiation Organization, Breaking Robert's Rules, and of course, The Consensus Building Handbook. 

Purchase Good for You, Great for Me: Finding the Trading Zone and Winning Win-Win Negotiation

Professor Susskind will also be instructing a one day program through the Harvard Program on Negotiation on how to use the tools he outlines in the book to ensure how to "win" at "win-win" negotiation. 

About the Book

Through a series of articles and anecdotes, Professor Susskind emphasizes the importance of the trading zone and introduces new tools to determine how to enter the trading zone, what to do when you get there, and how to maximize your takeaway. As one of the world's foremost authorities on negotiation, Susskind espouses six principles and six strategies necessary to be the true winner at "win-win." The six principles are straightforward but must be put into operation, so Susskind goes into detail outlining the strategies "for creating deals that are good for them and great for you." The author offers specific advice for different types of negotiations, even addressing specialized technology, negotiations involving regulatory matters, and the use of facilitators, mediators or agents. Fortunately, this dense material is presented in a warm, collegial tone and structured in manageable chapters, which are in turn broken up by subheadings punctuated by snappy call-out boxes of text. Full of valuable advice, this title is a must-read for business or law school curricula and anyone who needs to negotiate in today's global marketplace. 

If you would like to hear more about this book and the topic of win-win negotiation, Professor Susskind joined the NPR program The Source to discuss some of the history of negotiation practices, strategies to improve your negotiation outcomes, and working with difficult trading partners. The full interview can be found to the right. 

About the Author

Lawrence Susskind is Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Founder and Chief Knowledge Officer of the Consensus Building Institute.break He has served on the faculty of MIT for over 35 years and currently directs the Graduate Program in Environmental Policy and Planning. He is also Vice-Chair for Instruction at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, which he helped found in 1982, where he heads the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program and teaches advanced negotiation courses. 

Past work includes leading CBI’s efforts to mediate Bedouin land claims in the southern desert of Israel. He has been involved in a wide range of initiatives to address the land claims of First Nations in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.

Professor Susskind has mediated numerous disputes, including land use conflicts, facility siting controversies, public policy disagreements, and confrontations over water. He has served as a court-appointed special master and helped facilitate negotiations on arrangements of global environmental treaties. He offers a range of executive training programs each year and has served as guest lecturer at more than two-dozen universities around the world.

 For a full listing of CBI-authored books, visit our Books page.