Doing what must be done
Since When Is Ketchup Politically Incorrect?
I was wrong, and I knew it
On The Road Again
I was in Cleveland, Ohio, to negotiate a new contract with the Israelis. The Israeli military are world renowned tough negotiators. There is always a deal to be had, but they make you work for it. We were trying to get a deal with them for aircraft maintenance parts for two years. If we got the two-year contract, next, we would negotiate a possible 10-year maintenance services deal with them.
We were staying in a luxury hotel in downtown Cleveland. My room was a suite that included two bedrooms and a conference room. We needed privacy to set our negotiation strategy each morning and evening. We did not want to use public hotel conference rooms. Our team would meet in my room early mornings and late evenings. We discussed the day’s events, what we learned, and what we wanted to accomplish the next day.
The night before this incident, we had a bad day. They had accused me, personally, of speaking Hebrew because I read their body language clearly and knew that they were bluffing. It took us two hours to convince them I did not understand the sidebar conversations they were having in Hebrew. I read their body language and knew the contract clause change they…
