Collaborating with the Enemy

Collaboration is increasingly difficult and increasingly necessary Often, to get something done that really matters to us, we need to work with people we don’t agree with or like or trust. Adam Kahane has faced this challenge many times, working on big issues like democracy and jobs and climate change and on everyday issues in organizations and families. He has learned that our conventional understanding of collaboration--that it requires a harmonious team that agrees on where it’s going, how it’s going to get there, and who needs to do what--is wrong. Instead, we need a new approach to collaboration that embraces discord, experimentation, and genuine cocreation--which is exactly what Kahane provides in this groundbreaking and timely book.

ldquo;Kahane writes with humility, sharing what he has learned from both his successes and his failures over a long career dedicated to helping address some of the world’s toughest problems. Collaborating with the Enemy offers practical guidance for how to work with diverse others, which is a precondition for confronting many of the complex challenges we face.”
*—Morris Rosenberg, President, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, and former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada

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  “Adam Kahane worked with us on the future of our country. The four scenarios we built have come to life one after another, and today we are living the best one. In Transformative Scenario Planning, Kahane explains how scenario planning can transform the future. In Colombia we can attest that such transformation is really possible.”
  *—Juan Manuel Santos, President of Colombia and Nobel Peace Prize recipient
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  “Power and Love is a profound book that offers us a wise way to negotiate our toughest group, community, and societal challenges.”
  *—William Ury, Distinguished Senior Fellow, Harvard Negotiation Project, and coauthor of Getting to Yes
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• “Solving Tough Problems is a breakthrough book that addresses the central challenge of our time: finding a way to work together to solve the problems we have created.”
  *—Nelson Mandela, former President of South Africa and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

• “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 practice—including his own—and proposes a new approach to collaboration that is better suited to our difficult current context.”
  *—Jan Kees Vis, Global Director, Sustainable Sourcing Development, Unilever
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  “Adam’s Solving Tough Problems helped me understand that all our pressing problems—be they strategic issues inside a company or societal challenges like conflict, poverty, or climate change—require 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 deeper—into 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
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  “Our societies face really hard problems—poverty, injustice, unsustainability, corruption—that 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
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  “In Collaborating with the Enemy, Adam Kahane shows that people who don’t 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 Nature’s Fortune
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  “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 transform—not only to change—it, beginning by transforming ourselves.”
  *—Luis Raúl González Pérez, President, National Human Rights Commission, Mexico
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  “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
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  “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
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  “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
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  “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
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  “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
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  “To transcend the perilous state in which we find ourselves, we need to learn to collaborate with those with whom we’d 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 Tzu’s The Art of War and Machiavelli’s The Prince.”
  *—Stephen Huddart, President, The J. W. McConnell Family Foundation
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  “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…