Part 2 book "Never split the difference - Negotiating as if your life depended on it" includes content: Create the illusion of control, guarantee execution, bargain hard, find the black swan - How to create breakthroughs by revealing the unknown unknowns. | CHAPTER 7 CREATE THE ILLUSION OF CONTROL A month after I d finished working the case of Jeffrey Schilling in May 2001 I got orders from headquarters to head back to Manila. The same bad guys who d taken Schilling a brutal group of radical Islamists named the Abu Sayyaf had raided the Dos Palmas private diving resort and taken twenty hostages including three Americans Martin and Gracia Burnham a missionary couple from Wichita Kansas and Guillermo Sobero a guy who ran a California waterproofing firm. Dos Palmas was a negotiator s nightmare from the start. The day after the kidnappings the recently elected Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo set up the most confrontational nonconstructive dynamic possible by publicly declaring all-out war on the Abu Sayyaf. Not exactly empathetic discourse right It got a lot worse. The Philippine army and marines had a turf war in the midst of the negotiations pissing off the kidnappers with several botched raids. Because American hostages were involved the CIA the FBI and . military intelligence were all called in and we too squabbled among ourselves. Then the kidnappers raped and killed several hostages 9 11 happened and the Abu Sayyaf was linked to Al Qaeda. By the time the crisis concluded in an orgy of gunshots in June 2002 Dos Palmas had officially become the biggest failure in my professional life. To call it a train wreck would be generous if you know what I mean. But failures plant the seeds of future success and our failure in the Philippines was no exception. If the Dos Palmas calamity showed me anything it was that we all were still suffering under the notion that negotiation was a wrestling match where the point is to exhaust your opponent into submission hope for the best and never back down. As my disappointment with Dos Palmas forced me to reckon with our failed techniques I took a deep look into the newest negotiating theories some great and some completely harebrained and I had a chance encounter with a
