Collaborating with the Enemy, Second Edition

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 recipient

In 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with leaders in over fifty countries, Adam Kahane shows why conventional collaboration—requiring harmony and agreement—is obsolete.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 connection
• Stretch to experiment and learn
• Stretch to step into the game

This 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.

Adam Kahane has more than thirty years of experience in more than fifty countries working with thousands of leaders to transform social systems at all scales (organization, city, country, and globe). His work has addressed many of the most important challenges of our time, including racial oppression, violent conflict among warring groups, insecurity and inequity, drug problems, social unrest, unsustainable food systems, and climate change. Kahane is a bestselling author whose six books have sold nearly a quarter million copies collectively: Solving Tough Problems, Power and Love, Transformative Scenario Planning, Collaborating with the Enemy, Facilitating Breakthrough, and Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems.