Adam Kahane - Collaborating with the Enemy: How to Work with People You Don’t Agree with or Like or Trust

Praise for Adam Kahanes Work

Business

Kahane addresses an important challenge that we face every day: how can we move forward together in situations where we are in conflict and unable to construct a shared vision of the future? In doing this he overturns conventional practiceincluding his ownand proposes a new approach to collaboration that is better suited to our difficult current context.

Jan Kees Vis, Global Director, Sustainable Sourcing Development, Unilever

Adams Solving Tough Problems helped me understand that all our pressing problemsbe they strategic issues inside a company or societal challenges like conflict, poverty, or climate changerequire that those with a stake and the power to act come together in open dialogue to create a joint diagnosis and a deep commitment to moving forward together. In Power and Love, Adam goes further and deeperinto the kind of leadership that it takes to do this. A must-read for every reflective leader.

Ravi Venkatesan, Director, Infosys, and former Chairman, Microsoft India

Our societies face really hard problemspoverty, injustice, unsustainability, corruptionthat are insoluble by conventional means. Conflicts of interest and profound uncertainties about the future are producing paralysis and inaction. Adam Kahane has, more than anyone, developed and successfully employed tools that enable us to create futures of shared progress and profit.

Peter Schwartz, Senior Vice President, Salesforce.com, and author of The Art of the Long View

Civil Society

In Collaborating with the Enemy, Adam Kahane shows that people who dont see eye-to-eye really can come together to solve big challenges. Whether in our businesses, our governments, our communities, or our personal lives, we can all benefit from this smart and timely book.

Mark Tercek, President, The Nature Conservancy; former Managing Director, Goldman Sachs; and coauthor of Natures Fortune

Adam Kahane proposes a solid and clear methodology, supported by his experience in the many processes in which he has participated, that invites us to defy our situation and to transformnot only to changeit, beginning by transforming ourselves.

Luis Ral Gonzlez Prez, President, National Human Rights Commission, Mexico

Kahane takes the core message from his seminal Power and Love into uncharted territory: our messy, challenging, and necessary task of working with others to solve intractable problems. He redefines collaboration, testing our assumptions about the interplay between individual agency and collective action. At once theory, memoir, and practical guide, Collaborating with the Enemy is a vital primer for people working at all scales to make the world a better place.

Ross McMillan, President, Tides Canada

Nowadays, opposition and conflict are the new normal, yet normal responses to them seem impotent. Amid this chaos and as if delivered to us by special order, Collaborating with the Enemy shows us how thinking and seeing differently can help us navigate this challenging landscape. Kahane abandons orthodoxy in taking on the most intransigent problems, showing us the path to effective action in a complex world.

James Gimian, Publisher, Mindful magazine, and coauthor of The Art of War and The Rules of Victory

Transformative Scenario Planning is a deeply human book that offers tangible means for tackling the intractable problems that confront us at every level of life, from domestic and local to national and beyond. It offers realistic, grounded hope of genuine transformation, and its insights and lessons should be part of the toolbox of everyone in leadership roles.

Thabo Makgoba, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town

In our field, the hardest nut to crack is how to address conflicts between parties with fundamentally different worldviews. Adam offers a robust theory and a straightforward practice to address this vital challenge.

Ofer Zalzberg, Senior Middle East Analyst, International Crisis Group

Foundations

How many of us have dreamed of developing the art of helping others solve impossible problems and bridge uncrossable divides? Adam Kahane has taken that journey. Read, listen, absorb, and integrate.

Peter Goldmark, former President, The Rockefeller Foundation

To transcend the perilous state in which we find ourselves, we need to learn to collaborate with those with whom wed rather not. Drawing on his experience enabling sworn enemies to create peace in places like South Africa, Northern Ireland, and Colombia, Adam Kahane shares insights and lessons we can all use when collaborating with those others is our only or best way forward. Collaborating with the Enemy belongs on the same shelf as Sun Tzus The Art of War and Machiavellis The Prince.

Stephen Huddart, President, The J. W. McConnell Family Foundation

Adam Kahane helps us overcome romantic and linear approaches to conflict transformation. Collaborating with the Enemy provides a hands-on critique of the myth of the uninvolved mediator and explains the art of working with the enemy.

Gorka Espiau, Associate Director, The Young Foundation, and former Peace Advisor to the President, Basque Government

Government

Mahatma Gandhi said, Be the change you want to see in the world. His life was the unfolding of an even deeper truth: the need to change himself if he wanted to change the world. Hence, his autobiography was titled My Experiments with Truth. Adams story of his engagements with people in many countries, whom he was called to help in their efforts to change their worlds, is an account of his own realization of Gandhis deeper insight. It is an honest and beautifully told story.

Arun Maira, former member, National Planning Commission, and former Chairman, Boston Consulting Group, India

Power and Love includes the story of the Visin Guatemala team, in which a group of us, who in the ordinary course of events would never have met or worked together, had an unprecedented experience that opened up new horizons for us and for our country. Adam helped us cultivate our dreams and ideals and gave us the energy and hope to act to renew our society.

Raquel Zelaya, former Secretary of Peace, Guatemala

Advances and changes in humankind have left the world with super-complex problemsfrom achieving sustainable development to maintaining peace and securitythat require changes in the way we face them. Collaborating with the Enemy gives us not only a privileged look into Adams extensive experiences in high-level engagements to address these problems but also his honest and brave reflection on his successes and failures, and from these his articulation of an important new approach to collaboration.

Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, former Head, President of Indonesias Delivery Unit, and Distinguished Practitioner, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford

The quality of a decision depends in large part on the quality of the process by which the decision is made. But the political process in my country (as in most) actually causes us to enemyfy each other. If we are to solve the great challenges of our time, whether climate change or economic division and social unravelling, we must learn how to collaborate with those we believe to be our enemies. Adam shows us a way to do so.

James Shaw, Member of Parliament and Coleader, Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand