Description
Sadly, Colin Powell is best remembered in many quarters for deploying his immense personal prestige in giving what became his infamous speech at the United Nations. This speech purported to reveal evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, thereby building support for the disastrous U.S. invasion of that country. Powell did not want to give this speech on the rushed timetable demanded by President George W. Bush along with neoconservatives Vice President Dick Cheney and others. Having “lost” this timing negotiation with the president, the die was cast. We probe this episode for insight into how a more sophisticated approach to his “negotiation” with the president might have led to a very different outcome, in the process seeking to extract positive lessons from painful negotiating failures.
About Dealcraft
Host: Jim Sebenius
Co-Producers: Alex Green & Avery Moore Kloss
Outreach: Podglomerate
Materials courtesy of the American Secretaries of State Program, a joint effort of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, the Program on the Future of Diplomacy at Harvard Kennedy School, and Harvard Business School. Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College.
In the final episode of Season One of Dealcraft: Insights from the World's Great Negotiators, I’ll offer you several fresh negotiation insights plus a look back over the dealmakers and diplomats from whom we've heard during these last twelve weeks. Each of these negotiators has given us a master...
Published 11/18/24
In 2015, before a rapt Harvard audience, Colin Powell recounted his poignant and incredible life story and career with me and my colleagues Bob Mnookin and Nick Burns. Interwoven into his remarkable accounts were lessons drawn from profound success and deep failure in negotiation. In this week's...
Published 11/04/24