Adam Kahane

Follow to get new release updates and improved recommendations

About Adam Kahane

Adam Kahane is a Director of Reos Partners (reospartners.com), an international social enterprise that helps people move forward together on their most important and intractable issues.

His home page is adamkahane.com.

Adam is a leading organizer, designer and facilitator of processes through which business, government, and civil society leaders can work together to address such challenges. He has worked in more than fifty countries, in every part of the world, with executives and politicians, generals and guerrillas, civil servants and trade unionists, community activists and United Nations officials, clergy and artists.

During the early 1990s, Adam was head of Social, Political, Economic and Technological Scenarios for Royal Dutch Shell in London. He has held strategy and research positions with Pacific Gas and Electric Company (San Francisco), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (Paris), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Vienna), the Institute for Energy Economics (Tokyo), and the Universities of Oxford, Toronto, British Columbia, California, and the Western Cape.

Adam has a B.Sc. in Physics (First Class Honours) from McGill University (Montreal), an M.A. in Energy and Resource Economics from the University of California (Berkeley), and an M.A. in Applied Behavioural Science from Bastyr University (Seattle). He has also studied negotiation at Harvard Law School and cello performance at Institut Marguerite-Bourgeoys.

Adam and his wife Dorothy live in Montreal and Cape Town.

Otto Scharmer

adrienne maree brown

Kursat Ozenc

Glenn Fajardo

Suzanne Ghais

Brené Brown

Are you an author?

Help us improve our Author Pages by updating your bibliography and submitting a new or current image and biography.

Learn more at Author Central

1 11 1

$9.99

Kindle Edition
$9.99

Kindle Edition
$9.99

Kindle Edition
$9.99

Kindle Edition
$11.99

Kindle Edition
$9.99

Kindle Edition
$5.99

Kindle Edition
$10.99

Kindle Edition
$19.99

Paperback
$18.82

Paperback
Como Resolver Problemas Complejos (Spanish Edition)

Paperback
Transformative Scenario Planning: Working Together to Change the Future by Adam Kahane (1-Nov-2012) Paperback

Unknown Binding

Author Updates

Titles By Adam Kahane

All Formats Kindle Edition Audible Audiobook Paperback Hardcover See more

Facilitating Breakthrough: How to Remove Obstacles, Bridge Differences, and Move Forward Together Aug 31, 2021

by Adam Kahane

( 21 )

$9.99

Making progress on complex, problematic situations requires a new approach to working together: transformative facilitation, a structured and creative process for removing the obstacles to fluid forward movement.

It is 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—aren't adequate. They often leave the participants frustrated and yearning for breakthrough.

This book describes a new approach: transformative facilitation. It doesn't choose either the bossy vertical or the 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. It enables people 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.

Other Formats: Audible Audiobook , Paperback

Collaborating with the Enemy: How to Work with People You Don’t Agree with or Like or Trust Jun 5, 2017

by Adam Kahane

( 247 )

$9.99

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.

Other Formats: Audible Audiobook , Paperback , Audio CD

Transformative Scenario Planning: Working Together to Change the Future Oct 15, 2012

by Adam Kahane

( 29 )

$9.99

Getting Unstuck

People who are trying to solve tough economic, social, and environmental problems often find themselves frustratingly stuck. They can’t solve their problems in their current context, which is too unstable or unfair or unsustainable. They can’t transform this context on their own—it’s too complex to be grasped or shifted by any one person or organization or sector. And the people whose cooperation they need don’t understand or agree with or trust them or each other.

Transformative scenario planning is a powerful new methodology for dealing with these challenges. It enables us to transform ourselves and our relationships and thereby the systems of which we are a part. At a time when divisions within and among societies are producing so many people to get stuck and to suffer, it offers hope—and a proven approach—for moving forward together.

Other Formats: Audible Audiobook , Paperback

Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change Jan 4, 2010

by Adam Kahane

( 65 )

$9.99

A new approach, proven in the field, for making progress on our most important and difficult collective challenges
Based on Kahane’s first-hand experiences working with teams of business, government and civil society leaders around the world
Profound, personal and practical

The two main ways that people try to solve their toughest group, community and societal problems are fundamentally flawed. They either push for what they want at all costs—in it’s most extreme form this means war—or try to completely avoid conflict, sweeping problems under the rug in the name of a superficial ”peace.” But there is a better way: combining these two seemingly contradictory approaches.

Adam Kahane argues that each is a reflection of two distinct, fundamental drives: power, the single-minded desire to achieve one’s solitary purpose; and love, the drive towards unity. They are inextricable parts of human nature, so to achieve lasting change you have to able to work fluidly with both. In fact, each needs the other. As Martin Luther King put it, “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.”

Kahane delves deeply in the dual nature of power and love, exploring their complex and intricate interplay. With disarming honesty he relates how, through trial and error, he learned to balance between them, shifting from one to the other as though learning to walk—at first falling, then stumbling forward, and finally moving purposefully toward true, lasting reconciliation and progress.

For the last twenty years Kahane has worked around the world on a variety of challenges: economic development, food security, health care, judicial reform, peace making, climate change. He has worked with diverse teams of leaders—executives and politicians, generals and guerillas, civil servants and trade unionists, community activists and United Nations officials, clergy and artists. He has seen, up close and personal, examples of inspiring progress and terrifying regress. Power and Love reports what he has learned from these hard-won experiences.

Other Formats: Audible Audiobook , Paperback

Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities Aug 1, 2007

by Adam Kahane

( 56 )

$11.99

Adam Kahane has worked on some of the toughest, most complex problems in the world. He started out as an expert analyst and advisor to corporations and governments, convinced of the need to calculate “the one right answer.” After an unexpected experience in South Africa during the transition away from apartheid, he got involved in facilitating a series of extraordinary high-conflict, high-stakes problem-solving efforts: in Colombia during the civil war, in Argentina during the collapse, in Guatemala after the genocide, in Israel, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, and the Basque Country. Through these experiences, he learned to create environments that enable new ideas and creative solutions to emerge even in the most stuck, polarized contexts. Here Kahane tells his stories and distills from them an approach all of us can use to solve our own toughest problems—at home, at work, in our communities, and in national and international affairs.
“This breakthrough book addresses the central challenge of our time: finding a way to work together to solve the problems we have created.”
—Nelson Mandela

Other Formats: Hardcover , Paperback

Planejamento de cenários transformadores: trabalhando juntos para mudar o futuro (Portuguese Edition) Aug 6, 2019

by Adam Kahane

( 5 )

$9.99

A ideia é simples: pessoas diferentes, mas afetadas por uma mesma situação, reúnem-se para elaborar cenários para o futuro. Com base nos cenários, buscam transformar o futuro. Mas colocar essa ideia simples em prática tem seus desafios, e eles são explicados de forma clara neste livro. Adam Kahane, que vem trabalhando com a metodologia de cenários há quase vinte anos em empresas e governos de países diversos, em temáticas também diversas, compartilha com o leitor os bastidores dessas experiências. São relatos capazes de oferecer insights para quem quer mudar uma situação que exige o envolvimento de pessoas com opiniões e posições diferentes e cuja solução não passa pela imposição e pelo confronto, mas pela construção de relacionamentos, intenções e entendimentos compartilhados.

Other Formats: Paperback

Trabalhando com o inimigo: Como colaborar com pessoas das quais você discorda, não gosta ou desconfia (Portuguese Edition) May 14, 2019

by Adam Kahane, Jeff Barnum, André Botelho

( 25 )

$5.99

Para Adam Kahane, a maneira tradicional como imaginamos a colaboração isto é, um trabalho harmonioso em equipe é um fator limitador diante das complexidades de nossa época. Por isso, em Trabalhando com o inimigo, o autor sugere que adotemos uma nova abordagem, a chamada colaboração estendida. Ao compartilhar suas experiências e apontar um caminho a seguir, ele mostra como podemos abraçar a discórdia, a experimentação e a cocriação genuína, provendo ferramentas para dar início à mudança a partir de nós mesmos.

Other Formats: Paperback

Usa il tuo nemico: Come lavorare con le persone di cui non ci fidiamo, che non ci piacciono o con cui siamo in disaccordo (Italian Edition) Feb 19, 2019

by Adam Kahane

( 37 )

$10.99

Tutti lo abbiamo sperimentato: per raggiungere i nostri obiettivi ci dobbiamo spesso confrontare con persone che consideriamo "nemiche". E, in molte situazioni, l'unico modo per arrivare a un risultato è mettere insieme individui con idee e visioni diverse, spesso tra loro contrastanti. Che fare allora? Adam Kahane - esperto di gestione dei conflitti che lavora da decenni con aziende, enti e governi in tutto il mondo - ha dovuto affrontare la sfida molte volte, e in questo libro ci offre le esperienze e le soluzioni raccolte nella sua lunga carriera. Passando in rassegna esempi, storie reali e casi di successo vissuti in prima persona, Kahane spiega perché collaborare è necessario, mostra che l'idea "classica" di collaborazione fondata su una totale armonia tra i membri del gruppo è fuorviante e spesso controproducente, e illustra come dare vita a una collaborazione "elastica", capace di gestire la discordia e il confronto in modo da giungere a una soluzione efficace per noi e gli altri. Un approccio pratico e innovativo alla collaborazione, una guida indispensabile per raggiungere i nostri obiettivi con l'aiuto del "nemico".

Other Formats: Paperback

More Information

Are you an author? Visit Author Central to change your photo, edit your biography, and more

Similar authors to follow

About Adam Kahane

Customers Also Bought Items By

Are you an author?

Author Updates

More Information