Surveys from the Base of the Summit

...Previously on "Co-resolution":

Nate [shouting from rooftops from 2008 to 2010]:  "...I just need some way to apply this process!!..."

Susan:  "...I will do this co-resolution process with you, so long as you don't mention game theory anymore or publicize my involvement too much."
Nate [with a duplicitous look to the camera/blogosphere]:  "Suuuuuuuurrre..."

Marya [paying seemingly-equal attention to a million other tasks]:  "...Sure you can try out your untested, experimental process in my mediation program. Here, [throwing keys] use my car if you need it..."


The first question anyone would ask me about co-resolution when I was first describing it to the ADR community was, "How has it worked in practice?"  I would therefore like to dedicate a post to bragging about the surveys of disputants who participated in the co-resolution process, which address that question in the concreteness and persuasiveness only achievable by simple numbers.

First, some background:  Since June of 2012, I have been taking the trek to Columbus on a monthly basis, applying co-resolution with Susan Shostak in cases that screen as high-conflict in Marya Kolman's Domestic Relations Mediation Program.  And despite the fact, or directly because of the fact, that Susan and Marya would shrug off my gratitude as gratuitous (Susan because she resists my efforts to shine limelight on her as if we were playing laser tag, and Marya because she usually seems too distracted earning waves of adulation to really bask in any of it), I want to express my appreciation for their trust and assistance with the same shout-from-the-rooftops intensity with which I yearned for such help years ago.

Thanks Susan!  Thanks Marya!

Okay.  On to the numbers.

In 44 surveys taken from June, 2012, to August, 2013, participants were asked was there agreement reached in the negotiation (yes, yes on some issues, no), was the overall process neutral (yes, no favoring other side, no favoring my side), and on a scale of 1 to 5 how satisfied they were with their own negotiation coach, how they felt toward the other side's coach, whether they were able to trust the other party, and how satisfied they were with the overall process.

First,  parties expressed satisfaction with their own coach at 4.8/5.0.  Confirming the bond the co-resolvers perceived with their respective disputants, this demonstrates that parties did not feel that their own coach was colluding with the other side--this is despite the fact that the coach shares an ongoing relationship with the other coach and acts as a less-than-zealous advocate.

Next, parties rated the other coach at 4.6/5.0.  This is the truly noteworthy number.  Co-resolution is intended to be a system of cooperative advocacy--where disputants can get assistance from a coach/negotiator/advocate without having the possibility of a hard-hitting advocate on the other side opening the flood gates for an arms race of competitive/non-cooperative behavior.  So, 4.8/5.0 satisfaction with your own advocate is not unusual (the only published survey I found of client satisfaction with attorneys rated them 4.5/5.0 when they won and 3.1/5.0 when they lost), but consider how many litigants would rate the other attorney at a 4.6/5.0.  My litigation clients have nightmares about opposing counsel, and I would like to imagine that it's much worse on the other side.

So, there you have it: disputants in co-resolution are highly satisfied with their own coach and appear to believe that the opposing coach/negotiator/advocate is fair and reasonable.  Conclusive?  Apparently not...

When I presented these findings (along with 4.2/5.0 trust, 4.0/5.0 overall satisfaction, 64% full agreement, 25% partial agreement, and 91% neutrality), I was told that these results raised many questions--first among these was, "So what?"  What does 4.8/5.0 indicate?  If co-resolution stands apart from other dispute resolution processes, how does it stand in comparison?  Basically, reviewers wanted to know how the co-resolution data would compare with surveys evaluating mediation.

Let me make it abundantly clear: I do not wish co-resolution to "compete" with or replace mediation.  I want it to replace the practice of using attorneys as professional negotiators--attorneys are designed to litigate, not negotiate (but that is a different blog post).

Regardless, I did revamp the surveys to compare how Susan and I did as co-resolvers to how Susan did as an impartial mediator.  The results were as follows:
Was agreement reached in the process?  Co-resolution:  Yes on 7, Some on 3, No on 0.  Mediation:  Yes on 19, Some on 8, No on 0.
How satisfied were you with the negotiation process?  Co-resolution: 4.4/5.0.  Mediation: 4.2/5.0.
Did the facilitator(s) have a positive impact?  Co-resolution: 4.8/5.0.  Mediation: 4.4/5.0.
Were you able to express everything you wanted to express?  Co-resolution: 4.6/5.0.  Mediation: 4.5/5.0.
Were you able to understand the other side's P.O.V.?  Co-resolution: 4.5/5.0.  mediation: 4.4/5.0.
Do you feel that the other side was able to understand your P.O.V.?  Co-resolution: 4.1/5.0.  Mediation: 3.9/4.0.
Were you able to trust the other side?  Co-resolution: 4.1/5.0.  Mediation: 3.8/5.0.
Was the process neutral?  100% "Yes" for co-resolution and mediation.

So, where are we?  After two years of increasing data by a few surveys each month, I was led to shift my efforts from publishing these results in major journals to sharing them with local mediators.  Something told me that I could publish and present results until I was blue in the face and I would only end up feeling blue with the results.  So, I conducted a day-long co-resolution training in which participants expressed enthusiasm about the process (and rated the course at 4.9/5.0--surveys for another post).  Thus, if change was going to happen, it was going to occur bottom-up rather than top-down.  So, again, where does that leave us?  At the bottom.  Take a look:

The business and technological communities (depending heavily on new ideas) have long known that new ideas/practices spread through the population along a bell curve: from innovators (2.5% of the population), to early adopters (13.5%), to the early majority (34%), to the late majority (34%), and finally to the laggards (16%) (see Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations).  In order for a practice to catch on and "tip" into common usage, it needs to be applied by 15% of the population, representing the innovators and early adopters.  I've tended to believe that 20% is a good tipping amount (especially when service is at 4.8/5.0), but who am I to question the wisdom of the business community in this regard?

This trajectory for the diffusion of new ideas is explained by the psychological makeup of the overall population.  2.5% of people are innovators--outsiders who clash with the status quo, seek to change the broader system, and thereby propose novel concepts.  I would consider myself to be an innovator, and my Myers-Briggs personality type (INTJ) would support this.  INTJs comprise 2% of the population and are imaginative, introverted outsiders who gather knowledge and attempt to improve systems with an uncompromising rationality.  As Burkan notes in Wide Angle Vision, innovators exist on the "edge" of a population, bringing new ideas from the periphery or bottom of an organization, rather than from a position of authority or top of the organization.

The next group, 13.5% of the population, are the early adopters.  These are risk-taking extroverts who seek out new ideas and use their higher status and leadership abilities to swing the opinion of the broader group.  As Moore details in Crossing the Chasm, this visionary minority must then sell the innovation to the risk-adverse pragmatists in the rest of the population.

Applying this bell-curve trajectory to co-resolution, the predicted propagation of this idea begins with a very slight slope--a few years of just me, then two years of me and Susan.  The slope then angles sharply, noting either exponential growth or the steepest, most difficult and treacherous section of the route to the top.  This is the point on the curve where co-resolution appears to currently lie--between innovators and early adopters.  A good number of extroverted, visionary, opinion leaders participated in the training I held a couple weeks ago, and I am hopeful that they will propel the idea into the larger alternative dispute resolution community.  This may not be such an insurmountable feat.  Using the membership of mediation organizations in Ohio (approximately 200 people) to estimate the ADR professionals in the state at maybe 400 people, this tipping point is only 50-60 people.  We might not be so far off from that number, taking a look at the page-visits for this website around the time of the training session on March 28th (another bell curve):

Thus, I am recruiting 50-60 opinion leaders interested enough in new ideas to have read this far into a long blog post.  Up to this point, I'm sure that co-resolution would have faded away without my direct actions.  Now, I would like to pass the torch to the early adopters, hoping that we can spread this idea and set the field ablaze.