Welcome to The September Approach. I am Michael Loconto, a Boston-based attorney and consultant and would also be delighted to argue with you about music, comedy and craft beer.
Why “The September Approach?”
September is the greatest month of the year in New England. Autumn Man makes his triumphant return. Students on the quad. The Red Sox make their annual run for the playoffs.
What might be less obvious is this: perhaps the most unexpected triumph at a negotiations table during the last fifty years took place in September 1978.
Lawrence Wright’s “Thirteen Days in September: The Dramatic Story of the Struggle for Peace” is simply the best book that I have read during my career. It tells the story of Jimmy Carter meeting Israel’s Begin and Egypt’s Sadat at Camp David, the presidential retreat in rural Maryland, for days of secluded negotiations over the future of peace in the Middle East. How these three men from starkly different backgrounds arrived at the historic Camp David Accords could not have been predicted, but Wright takes us through the formula that creates the conditions for all successful negotiations:
preparation, persistence - and most of all, luck.
I have negotiated labor agreements, implemented new processes and brokered the consensus to enable broad shifts in public policy throughout my career. I hope to bring this approach and some of these lessons to this newsletter.
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Thanks and reach out anytime.
Mike Loconto