This bestselling conflict resolution book has helped thousands of people effectively collaborate across deep divides. Now it’s been updated with 50 percent new material for an increasingly polarized world. “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....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 recipientIn today’s fractured world, collaboration is increasingly difficult yet more crucial than ever. Often, to get something done that really matters, we need to work with people we don’t agree with, like, or trust. Drawing from thirty-plus years of experience working with leaders in over fifty countries, Adam Kahane shows why conventional collaboration—requiring harmony and agreement—is obsolete. Instead, he provides a groundbreaking approach that embraces discord, experimentation, and genuine cocreation.Kahane introduces three key stretches to navigate difficult collaborations:Stretch to embrace conflict and connectionStretch to experiment and learnStretch to step into the gameThis substantially revised second edition adds multiple new chapters exploring how to work across deepening divides and with those we may never agree with. Using new case studies, a discussion guide, and frameworks for navigating permanent plurality in our polarized times, Kahane offers essential tools for transforming conflict into positive change.

Seven practical habits for people ready to stop observing broken systems and start changing them, whether at the neighborhood level or the global stage.Adam Kahane, bestselling author of Collaborating with the Enemy and a veteran facilitator who has worked with presidents, executives, and community organizers across dozens of countries, distills decades of real-world experience into a clear, actionable framework for everyday changemakers.This book is built for people working on problems that feel too big or too entrenched to move, including climate advocates, healthcare reformers, nonprofit leaders, local activists, and organizational managers who want their work to have lasting impact.Inside, you will findthe 7 habits that help ordinary people become effective agents of systemic change,strategies for collaborating across deep political and organizational divides,methods for identifying leverage points that others overlook,real examples from peacebuilding and community transformation, andguidance for sustaining momentum through setbacks.Rather than offering inspiration without instruction, Kahane gives readers concrete behaviors they can practice in their existing roles and communities.If you work within systems that feel resistant to change, this is a grounded, experience-backed guide to making progress anyway.

A new approach to helping teams solve complex and stubborn problems from the acclaimed author of Collaborating with the Enemy.It’s becoming less straightforward for people to move forward together. They face increasing complexity and decreasing control. They need to work with more people from across more divides. In such situations, the most common ways of advancing—some people telling others what to do, or everyone just doing what they think they need to—aren’t adequate.One better way is through facilitating. But the most common approaches to facilitating—bossy vertical directing from above or collegial horizontal accompanying from alongside—also aren’t adequate. They often leave the participants frustrated and yearning for breakthrough.This book describes a new approach: transformative facilitation. Instead of choosing the bossy vertical or collegial horizontal approach: It cycles back and forth between them. Rather than forcing or cajoling, the facilitator removes the obstacles that stand in the way of people contributing and connecting equitably, enabling them to bring their whole selves to the process.This book is for anyone who helps people work together to transform their situation, be it a professional facilitator, manager, consultant, coach, chairperson, organizer, mediator, stakeholder, or friend. It offers a broad and bold vision of the contribution that facilitation can make to helping people collaborate to make progress. Praise for Adam Kahane’s books“Thought-provoking discourse on handling difficult situations.” —Publishers Weekly“Profound . . . a wise way to negotiate our toughest group, community, and societal challenges.” —William Ury, New York Times–bestselling coauthor of Getting to Yes

People who are trying to solve tough economic, social, or environmental problems often find themselves frustratingly stuck. They cannot solve their problems in their current context; the larger system within which they are operating is too unstable or unfair or unsustainable. They cannot transform this system on their own, or by working only with their friends or colleagues; the system is too complex to be grasped or shifted by any one person or organization or sector. And other actors whose cooperation would be necessary to transform the system don't understand or agree with or trust one another enough to work together.

This book describes a powerful new methodology for dealing with these challenges. Transformative scenario planning is a powerful way for actors from across a whole system to work together to transform that system. It is a way for them to get unstuck and to move forward on solving their tough problems.

Transformative scenario planning goes far beyond conventional, adaptive scenario planning, Often people find themselves in systems that are complex, conflictual, not working, and stuck. In such systems, people need a methodology not simply for adapting to the system but also for creating new, better futures. Transformative scenario planning is a way that people can work together with others to transform themselves and their relationships with one another, and thereby to transform their systems. In this simple and practical book, Adam Kahane explains this methodology and how to use it.

This bestselling conflict resolution book has helped thousands of people effectively collaborate across deep divides. Now it’s been updated with 50 percent new material for an increasingly polarized world. “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....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 recipientIn today’s fractured world, collaboration is increasingly difficult yet more crucial than ever. Often, to get something done that really matters, we need to work with people we don’t agree with, like, or trust. Drawing from thirty-plus years of experience working with leaders in over fifty countries, Adam Kahane shows why conventional collaboration—requiring harmony and agreement—is obsolete. Instead, he provides a groundbreaking approach that embraces discord, experimentation, and genuine cocreation.Kahane introduces three key stretches to navigate difficult collaborations:Stretch to embrace conflict and connectionStretch to experiment and learnStretch to step into the gameThis substantially revised second edition adds multiple new chapters exploring how to work across deepening divides and with those we may never agree with. Using new case studies, a discussion guide, and frameworks for navigating permanent plurality in our polarized times, Kahane offers essential tools for transforming conflict into positive change.

Seven practical habits for people ready to stop observing broken systems and start changing them, whether at the neighborhood level or the global stage.Adam Kahane, bestselling author of Collaborating with the Enemy and a veteran facilitator who has worked with presidents, executives, and community organizers across dozens of countries, distills decades of real-world experience into a clear, actionable framework for everyday changemakers.This book is built for people working on problems that feel too big or too entrenched to move, including climate advocates, healthcare reformers, nonprofit leaders, local activists, and organizational managers who want their work to have lasting impact.Inside, you will findthe 7 habits that help ordinary people become effective agents of systemic change,strategies for collaborating across deep political and organizational divides,methods for identifying leverage points that others overlook,real examples from peacebuilding and community transformation, andguidance for sustaining momentum through setbacks.Rather than offering inspiration without instruction, Kahane gives readers concrete behaviors they can practice in their existing roles and communities.If you work within systems that feel resistant to change, this is a grounded, experience-backed guide to making progress anyway.

A new approach to helping teams solve complex and stubborn problems from the acclaimed author of Collaborating with the Enemy.It’s becoming less straightforward for people to move forward together. They face increasing complexity and decreasing control. They need to work with more people from across more divides. In such situations, the most common ways of advancing—some people telling others what to do, or everyone just doing what they think they need to—aren’t adequate.One better way is through facilitating. But the most common approaches to facilitating—bossy vertical directing from above or collegial horizontal accompanying from alongside—also aren’t adequate. They often leave the participants frustrated and yearning for breakthrough.This book describes a new approach: transformative facilitation. Instead of choosing the bossy vertical or collegial horizontal approach: It cycles back and forth between them. Rather than forcing or cajoling, the facilitator removes the obstacles that stand in the way of people contributing and connecting equitably, enabling them to bring their whole selves to the process.This book is for anyone who helps people work together to transform their situation, be it a professional facilitator, manager, consultant, coach, chairperson, organizer, mediator, stakeholder, or friend. It offers a broad and bold vision of the contribution that facilitation can make to helping people collaborate to make progress. Praise for Adam Kahane’s books“Thought-provoking discourse on handling difficult situations.” —Publishers Weekly“Profound . . . a wise way to negotiate our toughest group, community, and societal challenges.” —William Ury, New York Times–bestselling coauthor of Getting to Yes

People who are trying to solve tough economic, social, or environmental problems often find themselves frustratingly stuck. They cannot solve their problems in their current context; the larger system within which they are operating is too unstable or unfair or unsustainable. They cannot transform this system on their own, or by working only with their friends or colleagues; the system is too complex to be grasped or shifted by any one person or organization or sector. And other actors whose cooperation would be necessary to transform the system don't understand or agree with or trust one another enough to work together.

This book describes a powerful new methodology for dealing with these challenges. Transformative scenario planning is a powerful way for actors from across a whole system to work together to transform that system. It is a way for them to get unstuck and to move forward on solving their tough problems.

Transformative scenario planning goes far beyond conventional, adaptive scenario planning, Often people find themselves in systems that are complex, conflictual, not working, and stuck. In such systems, people need a methodology not simply for adapting to the system but also for creating new, better futures. Transformative scenario planning is a way that people can work together with others to transform themselves and their relationships with one another, and thereby to transform their systems. In this simple and practical book, Adam Kahane explains this methodology and how to use it.