BARBER & GONZALES
CONSULTING GROUP

• Changing The World, One Team At A Time •

COLLABORATION WORKS

Collaboration (Human Capital + Social Capital) = Innovation

There is a better way. Together we can usher it in. Zero-sum thinking will no longer serve. Solutions to today’s challenges, and tomorrow’s innovation, cannot be discovered with yesterday’s attitudes and actions. There is a better way. Diverse communities collaborating, healing, and engaging in respectful dialogue is where it is at. Since 1991, we have been introducing the principles and process of effective collaboration to organizations and individuals across countless industries.
We have witnessed the positive change first-hand. Join us. Be the change.

How can we help?

Facilitation

We offer quality facilitation to design and deliver meetings that allow you to focus on getting things done by making effective use of your time and building the strengths of the team. As long as we need to depend on others and collaborate to get the work done, the meetings aren’t going away. BGCG can help make them efficient and transformational. Read More

Training

Our skills discovery sessions provide an opportunity to strengthen the relationships in groups through the development of a common understanding of the themes of "collaboration" "partnership", and "respect". Through common experience and dialogue during the course of our sessions, groups find their trust in one another improved and their commitment to common purpose reinforced. Oh, and there’s often a lot of laughter involved. Read More

Research & Analysis

Barber & Gonzales employs a host of assessment instruments to better understand your team and the organization as a whole. Our research team can design and deploy relevant survey instruments to get you the information you need to make decisions. We perform social capital and communications audits so you can better understand the software running your organization. If it is data and information you seek,
we know how to find it. Read More

Negotiation

BGCG conducts training and facilitation grounded in the principles and process of interest-based negotiations. Our founder Steve Barber, mentored by the late Roger Fisher, co-author of the international bestseller, Getting to Yes, developed the curriculum that was the first of its kind to introduce this negotiations philosophy to public sector labor-management relationships. The success of this program in California became a model that was replicated throughout the US. Read More

APPLICATIONS


STRATEGIC THINKING/PLANNING

Content Under Development

CONFLICT MANAGEMENT

Content Under Development

EFFECTIVE MEETINGS

Content Under Development

PUBLIC UTILITY RE-LICENSING

Content Under Development

MULTI PARTY DECISION MAKING

Content Under Development

TEAM CONCEPT; TEAM BUILDING

Content Under Development

FACILITATIVE LEADERSHIP/MANAGEMENT

Content Under Development

TOXIC WORKPLACES

Content Under Development

"BARBER & GONZALES HELD A FABULOUS WORKSHOP! GREAT CONTENT, HIGH ENERGY, CHARISMATIC PRESENTERS."
"BARBER & GONZALES MADE LEARNING FUN, LIKE IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE."
"THANKS TO THE IMPECCABLE FACILITATION BY THE TEAM AT BARBER & GONZALES WE NOW HAVE A PLETHORA OF IDEAS AND ACTIONS FROM WHICH TO WORK."
"BARBER & GONZALES GAVE US A GREAT START TO SOLVING MANY EXISTING PROBLEMS."
"I APPRECIATED THE POSITIVE ENERGY OF THE FACILITATORS FROM BARBER & GONZALES IN KEEPING US FOCUSED AND ON TASK."

THERE IS A “BETTER WAY”

BY STEVE BARBER

BARBER & GONZALES LLC

 

This is a story and reality check that must be told.”

Ned Hamson, Ret. Editor, JOURNAL OF QUALITY AND PARTICIPATION

 

We have just received our audit report from WASC. It said that ‘we have found such a culture of conflict in your District that we fear five years from now when we return, we will not find your District exists.’ I understand that you at PERB are developing a training program that introduces a completely different paradigm from the conventional model of labor negotiations. When will it be ready? Can you put us at the top of the list?

Author’s recollection of a breathless phone call received in approximately 1988 from a Community College VP for Human Resources.

 

This article is not written as a “How-to-do-it” guide. Rather, the underlying motive of this article is to address these questions: What is “it”? - What are “its” principles? - Does “it” work? - Is “it” real? - How did “it” get started in Public Education? - How is “it” different from the conventional paradigm?

Must Read # 1: COLLABORATION IN A NUTSHELL

“Collaboration” is not just “talking nice”, being polite, staying calm, etc. True collaboration is a way of individuals and groups being mindfully and purposefully present in the moments of choice making.

Genuine collaboration begins with systems thinking: accepting and adopting the reality that every situation involves multiple variables which are interrelated, interconnected, interdependent, and synergistic. Every situation involves content variables, process variables, and relationship variables.

Genuine collaboration literally involves acting out a collection of principles and practices that are antithetical to the conventional model of negotiations.

Genuine collaboration involves the acceptance of the idea that these principles work well together when there is a commitment to the rigorous practice of a collection of effective meeting techniques such as the use of a neutral facilitator, contemporaneous recording (group memory), and the real time disaggregation of conversations into their component parts.

Genuine collaboration involves the acceptance of a commitment to a learning curve aimed at helping the practitioners/negotiators become familiar with and build the capacity for themselves and their constituencies to actually practice the approach.

Genuine collaboration involves the acceptance of the reality that the constituents of the practitioners are usually unconsciously competent in their thinking, and perceive the negotiations process through the lens of the “positional” or “transactional” model. Accordingly, the long term success of the negotiators’ learning curve and practice will eventually require a commitment to and success at changing the entire decision making culture of the organization.

Must Read #2: INTEREST BASED NEGOTIATIONS IS NO LONGER A NOVELTY

It has been 4 decades since the Public Employment Relations Board and State Mediation Service took the initiative to energetically introduce to its constituency a collaborative negotiations paradigm. Aptly named the “INTEREST BASED APPROACH” (IBA/IBB), the paradigm has proven itself to be effective. Compared to the population of approximately 900 school districts with formalized collective bargaining relationships in the State only a few hundred of those relationships have attempted to take on the IBA/IBB model.

Of that number few have been able to sustain the practice. This is despite the reality that the IBA/IBB delivers elegant content outcomes, confronts and heals toxic labor/management relationships, and provides for the structural warp and woof needed to build an effective and successful organization.

In short: “IT” works. So why, in those four decades, have not more districts successfully adopted the approach and built a thriving organizational culture around this real and tangible concept of LABOR-MANAGEMENT COLLABORATION?

I will leave my answer to that question for another essay. Here, I would like to itemize a few of the variables thousands of hours as a trainer/facilitator lead me to believe are needed to initiate and sustain a collaborative labor-management relationship:

>Rigorous training: Typically, and as assumed to be the case as well as embedded in the EERA, the conventional collective negotiations process/paradigm is a transactional, offer-acceptance (react?), zero sum, positional affair. Simply put, the parties start out by proffering their “demands/offers/positions/wants” to each other such that historically and in law were the other party to say “yes” an agreement occurs. The constituencies of the negotiators have this picture in their minds’ eyes. In other words the conventional paradigm starts from a position of the parties being committed to their “wants, demands, positions, and offers.

The IBA/IBB model starts from the other direction, purposefully deferring commitment to the end of the process. This reversal of the process is alien to the unconscious competencies of both the negotiators and their constituencies. Hence becoming acquainted with this idea and the lexicon of the IBA/IBB model is no small matter. The learning curve is long term, and starts with a training that includes exercises, lectures, simulations, debriefs, and initial application to “real deal” issues using skilled facilitators and trainers.

>Effective meeting practices: The principles, protocols, and logistical support for the approach depend upon the tools and techniques involved in “the interactive meeting technique”. For example: a neutral facilitator to “run” the meeting, seating that does not involve a table with the parties sitting on opposite “sides”, the maintenance of a “group memory” by a neutral recorder, and sophisticated “looping out” to constituents utilizing Joint Communiques and joint presentations to formal leadership entities.

>Sustained staff development: The “reality check” in all of this is that the expectations and assumptions of the negotiators’ constituencies reflect the conventional model. To be successful in the practice of the IBA/IBB model, both short and long term, union and management leadership together MUST engage in “looping out” to their constituents in a fashion that parallels the process. In addition leadership must introduce/train their constituents in how to receive the communications from those engaged in the negotiations and understand the approach.

>Financial commitment: Sustaining the IBA/IBB model requires financial and participatory commitment by the parties. Fortunately, the utilization of the IBA/IBB model has been shown to be measurably less expensive than protracted adversarial negotiations, grievances, and other disputes. If the parties have always had attorneys and union field reps involved “at the table”, they should continue to do so. In the IBA/IBB model however those roles change from advocating for positions and demands to research, analysis, refining interests, inventing creative options, and keeping the parties out of legal and operational trouble when vetting the possible outcomes. Nevertheless, training, follow-up facilitation, and staff development over time all cost money.

>Written commitment in the CBO: The IBA/IBB model not only focuses on the content issues one typically finds in contracts, but upon the relationship(s) between/among the parties, and the continued practice of the process elements which support principles of collaboration. Taken together, these can make for a more EFFECTIVE ORGANIZATION overall.

Far too often transition in the formal leadership of the organization, whether it’s the Supt., Board membership, Union leadership, or even site leadership costs the organization the loss of the initiative, financial investment, and collaborative relationship(s) developed as a consequence of the adoption of the IBA/IBB model. In addition to the above variables the ongoing and sustained practice of the IBA/IBB model is more probable of being attained and passed on to successive generations in effective organizations by writing such a commitment into the Collective Agreement.

>Results: Reality check: a healthy, robust, collaborative labor/management relationship inures to the bottom line benefit of the purpose/mission of the organization. An initial, linear analysis by PERB and subsequent interviews of negotiations relationships practicing the IBA/IBB model reveal the following:

·       ULPs: Reduced

·       Grievances: Reduced

·       “Labor Actions”: Resolved / Reduced

·       Union/Management Relationship in bargaining: Improved

·       Site based governance: Improved

 

Must Read #3: HISTORY MATTERS

HOW “IT” GOT STARTED: During its first decade the Educational Employment Relations Board (EERB), later known as the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), was deluged by Unfair Labor Practice cases. (ULPs). While preparing the PERB’s 10th annual report (1985) an internal staff analysis of this backlog-producing phenomenon revealed that a principal cause came from a conventional negotiations process that sustained, or even produced, rather than reduced toxic labor/management relationships. The formalized collective bargaining process had become not only a generator of toxic relationships but also a venue for communicating and acting out such.

As a result of this “AH-HA” the PERB Board authorized its staff to look further into this phenomenon and the prospect that there might be a model of negotiations that could encompass such factors such as mistrust, poor or disrespectful communication and other adversarial decision making behaviors. In other words the charge was this: “Is there a “different negotiating paradigm” available to the negotiating parties, consistent with the law, and one that actually addresses and improves the relationship...thereby reducing the prospect of a growing ULP caseload for PERB?”

The staff organized a small group of people known by us to be collaborative by nature and as frustrated by the agency’s backlog as was the staff. This little group of professionals came from ACSA, CTA, CSBA, AFT, SEIU, CSEA, ACCCA, the State Mediation Service, and some un-affiliated practitioners and consultants representing either management or labor. When asking the then CEO, Wes Apker, about the participation of ACSA, his reaction was, “It’s about time! What can we do?! Just tell me to what you need from us.” The same went for union leaders.

The decades of the 1960’s and ‘70’s had seen a number of international and national events such as the decline of manufacturing production in the Northeast that created the phenomenon of the “Rustbelt” and “offshoring” of American jobs, the 6 Day War between Israel and Egypt, and the emergence of the Baby-Boomer generation into adulthood. The latter was predicted to clog the American judicial system unless a “better” way to resolve disputes could be found than the sole reliance upon the court system.

Such was the motivation for the publication of a book by two professors from the Harvard Law School, Roger Fisher and Bill Ury: GETTING TO YES. This team from Harvard had been called upon by President Jimmy Carter to design and facilitate the negotiation between Egypt and Israel that resulted in the Camp David Accords. This book, published in 1979, and the academic resources which had been evolving as a result prompted members of the PERB search group to inquire into the efforts of the academic, private, and public sectors for training materials that could help collective bargaining practitioners shift from the conventional, transactional, “offer/counter offer” (aka. “demand/react”), paradigm to a more collaborative approach. This small group of PERB stakeholders called itself the “Curriculum Committee.”

Ø  A note off interest to ACCCA members here: early on in the PERB search efforts one of the members of this small “Curriculum Committee”, the late John Glaser who was at that time the Asst. Supt. for HR at Napa Unified SD, had been tinkering with a training curriculum. His initial “reveal” of his efforts to the educational community at large was at an ACSA “Negotiators Symposium” held at the Seth Parker Red Lion Inn in Montecito. To illustrate what we were up to John and I facilitated a 90 minute version of a three hour exercise from Harvard. Our intent was to illustrate the paradigmatic difference between what we came to call the “Interest Based Approach” to Negotiations (sometimes called Interest Based Bargaining or “IBB”) and the conventional approach to negotiations. The exercise was an overwhelming success and eye-opening experience for those in attendance.

Ø  After the de-brief John asked me if I thought the exercise would be enough to enable negotiators to immediately commence to adopt the Interest Based Approach? As part of our odyssey I had been working with one of the consultants and a team of mediators from the State and Federal Mediation services as they were trying out some approaches to training negotiators using this collaborative paradigm. PERB invested hundreds of hours for me to watch and facilitate, and critique these trainings for the PERB “Curriculum Committee”. So, my reaction to John’s question was close to that which I had been giving the State and Federal mediators I had been observing: “90 minutes is not enough. Two days are not enough. This approach is a completely different paradigm, because of the ingrained nature of the conventional negotiations model it is counter-intuitive, and will take explaining and practice. To even hope to be effective our training will need at least 5 days, multiple exercises, simulations, both management and union teams involved, and some sort of “reality check”. John was startled; so I said, “I will be at your office Monday to explain what I mean.”

Ø  In the meantime word of our little team’s efforts had gotten out, and I was in receipt of a number of “When your training is ready, put our District on your list!” requests. So, during our Monday meeting I also said to John that we needed to get a training together pretty soon, because we had districts “eager and ready to go”.

There being no training model readily available from Harvard the Curriculum Committee eventually developed a 5 day, in person, in residence, training model. In 1989 we began to roll it out. Among our first “customers” was the CCD referenced in the opening quote for this article.

Initially the representatives from the stakeholder groups and consultants on the Curriculum Committee facilitated the trainings, but they also had their own careers, businesses, and obligations to take care of; so we needed to institutionalize this initiative using PERB resources.

Being the focal point of this initiative at PERB meant calls and inquiries came to me, but as Deputy Director of the agency. At the time I did not have the staff assets to create a team of trainers. Our chief of the Representation Division (the group of people who work on the determination of appropriate bargaining units, conduct elections, etc.), Janet Walden, had the human assets, and the unit had a diminishing workload. This unit could eventually take on the task of becoming trainers/facilitators. However, once the grants from Hewlett and Stuart’s (Carnation Milk family) foundations ran out PERB’s budget would need to address issues of costs.

Two Senators, one Democrat and the other Republican, co-authored a bill to fund this emerging responsibility for PERB. The bill received unanimous consent in the Assembly and the two committees of the Senate prior to going to the floor; however, for a variety of reasons did not make it out of the Senate. As a result the Curriculum Committee morphed into a non-profit called the California Foundation for the Improvement of Employer-Employee Relations. (CFIER). CFIER eventually offered the training to the private sector. Like so many well intended, not-for profits CFIER no longer exists leaving yours truly and a couple of other private sector consultants to carry on the initiative.

 

OUR TEAM


BASIC RESOURCES:
Publications from the Harvard Program on Negotiation such as these books and more:
  • GETTING TO YES, GETTING PAST NO, Roger Fisher et al.
  • BEYOND REASON, Roger Fisher et. al.
  • GOOD TO GREAT FOR THE SOCIAL SECTOR, Collins
  • HOW TO MAKE MEETINGS WORK, Doyle and Strauss
  • NAVIGATING THE EMERGING PARADIGM, Steve Barber

  • REFERENCES
  • Maggie Carrillo Meijia Ret. Supt., Sacramento City School Dist. maggie.carrillo.mejia@gmail.com
  • Jodie Brentlinger Ret. Supt., Solana Beach School Dist. jebrentlinger@gmail.com
  • Eamonn O’Donavan Dept. Supt. HR Irvine Unified School Dist. eamonnodonovan@iusd.org
  • Willy Duncan Pres./Supt. Sierra CCD wduncan@sierracollege.edu
  • James Parker Principal, Irvine Unified School Dist. jamesparker@iusd.org
  • Ken Cooper Civics Teacher, Tustin Unified School Dist. kcooper@tustin.K12.ca.us
  • Salvatore Abbate VP/HR Solano CCD salvatore.abate@solano.edu
  • Mary Jones Ret. VP for HR Los Rios CCD msmtjones@aol.com
  • Greg Franklin Ret. Supt., Tustin Unified SD gregfranklin2@gmail.com

  • Steve Barber

    Founder & Principal

    Steve Barber calls himself an “Applied Political Scientist”. After Graduate Studies in Political Science and Epistemology at San Diego State he managed the successful Assembly campaign of the late Dr. Ray Gonzales. Subsequently, he served as the District AA to John Garamendi during his first term in the Assembly. During the first term of Gov. Jerry Brown Mr. Barber operationalized special assignments for the Secretary of the Health & Welfare Agency, Mario Obledo. After the EERA was passed and signed into law Mr. Barber was assigned by Sec. Obledo to assemble the logistics, staff, budget, and initiate the integration the EERB into State Government. While serving as the Exec. Secretary to the Board itself, Mr. Barber was a principal architect of the initiative to introduce the collaborative negotiations model to the management and union constituents of the PERB. He left state service in 1992 to start a private consulting practice, BARBER & GONZALES LLC specializing in the introduction and facilitation of the IBA/IBB model to public education, other public sector entities such as Federal Gov’t, Special Districts, and local Government entities. He includes a number of Silicon Valley computer manufacturers and other private sector entities on his list of clients. Steve is currently training a cadre of trainers and facilitators to sustain his efforts into the future. Married 57 years to his wife Kathleen, Steve has a “full” and active life supporting his wife’s antique business, as well as sailing, auto racing, flying, motorcycling, and horses when there is “free” time.