Numbers, Money, Dollars in Dispute Resolution

Presentation at National Mediation Conference, 14 September 2016

We see them here we see them there, the numbers they are everywhere

What’s the figure, what’s the score? Productivity must be more.

Numbers are our talisman, money, mammon’s holy bread

Dollars dazzle, zeros add, problem is they induce dread

Mediators bemoan innocence lost along the way

‘Can’t we go back 30 years when idealism held sway?’

Mediation should be voluntary they emphatically insist,

And if mediators aren’t interest-based the whole world’s then amiss

Their litany of complaints would make an ombud squirm

Of their egregious whinges we are obliged to learn.

They grumble and they mumble, taking each in turn,

Responding to hard bargaining with, ‘We have grave concern’.

Clive James bemoans the sad demise of fine poetic verse

And prose is undermined by spin, hyperbole and worse

Perhaps the mediation muse is a beacon on the hill

And counters solipsism woes that render young souls ill.

While numbers, money, dollars seem less sacred than profane

Their understanding, neuro-wise, enhances DR’s name

For entropy of enterprise will leave us in the swill.

Your patience has endured too long, and so must end this Boulle.

IMS©