Collaborating with the Enemy: How to Work with People You Don't Agree with or Like or Trust

by Adam Kahane, Juan Manuel Santos (Foreword by)

Overview

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with leaders in over fifty countries, Adam Kahane shows why conventional collaboration—requiring harmony and agreement—is obsolete.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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798890571199
Publisher:	Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Publication date:	11/25/2025
Sold by:	OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED - EBKS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

Foreword Peter Block ix

Preface xvii

Introduction: How to Work with People: You Don't Agree with or Like or Trust 1

1 Collaboration is Becoming More: Necessary and More Difficult 5

"I could never work with those people!" 5

The enemyfying syndrome 7

The central challenge of collaboration 9

2 Collaboration is Not the Only Option 11

The way forward is unclear 12

"The miraculous option is that we work things through together" 12

There are three alternatives to collaboration 15

Collaboration must be a choice 18

3 Conventional, Constricted Collaboration Is Becoming Obsolete 25

Constriction prevents movement 25

Change management assumes control 26

"There is only one right answer" 29

The limitations of conventional collaboration 31

4 Unconventional, Stretch Collaboration is Becoming Essential 39

Stretching creates flexibility and discomfort 39

How to end a civil war 41

Stretch collaboration abandons the illusion of control 46

5 The First Stretch Is To Embrace: Conflict and Connection 49

Dialogue is not enough 49

There is more than one whole 55

Every holon has two drives 59

Alternate power and love 61

6 The Second Stretch is to Experiment: A Way Forward 69

We cannot control the future, but we can influence it 69

We are crossing the river by feeling for stones 75

Creativity requires negative capability 80

Listen for possibility rather than for certainty 82

7 The Third Stretch is to Step into the Game 89

"They need to change!" 90

If you're not part of the problem, you can't be part of the solution 93

Be a pig rather than a chicken 96

Conclusion: How to Learn to Stretch 99

Notes 109

Acknowledgements 115

Index 118

About the Author 126

About Reos Partners 128

A Note from the Artist, Jeff Barnum 130

Editorial Reviews

“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

“Peace, progress, and justice are only possible when we find ways to work with those we do not agree with, do not like, and do not trust. . . . That is why this book matters. Adam Kahane has spent decades helping people navigate the most intractable challenges by doing what seems counterintuitive: collaborating with the enemy. His approach does not rely on harmony or consensus. Instead, it embraces complexity, uncertainty, and disagreement as essential ingredients of meaningful change. This is not the traditional model of collaboration: it is a deeper, more courageous, and ultimately more effective one.”
—Juan Manuel Santos, President of Colombia and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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 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

“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

“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. Adam’s 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 Gandhi’s 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 Visión 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 supercomplex problems—from achieving sustainable development to maintaining peace and security—that require changes in the way we face them. Collaborating with the Enemy gives us not only a privileged look into Adam’s 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 Indonesia’s 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

“Collaborating with the Enemy is a lighthouse for our troubled times. If we are to find a way to reconcile the divides that imperil our common life, here we have a profound guide and a source of hope.”
—Rufus Black, Master, Ormond College, The University of Melbourne

“Power and Love is a rare and valuable book. Kahane has immersed himself in the practical challenges of helping people effect social change, and against this backdrop he unfolds a simple and penetrating insight: that power and love are two axes that delineate our individual and collective journeys. Either we master the balance of power and love or we will fail in our efforts to realize deep and lasting change.”
—Peter Senge, Senior Lecturer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and author of The Fifth Discipline

“Solving Tough Problems is a seminal book. Exciting, vital, essential reading.”
—Edgar H. Schein, Professor of Management Emeritus, MIT Sloan School of Management, and author of Humble Inquiry

From the Publisher