Product Description

In this book, Kahane draws on his amazingly rich experience working with corporate, government and civil society leaders all over the world to explain why our ordinary way of solving problems—expert-driven, piecemeal, and best practice—cannot work for solving the complex problems we face

These problems include our communities and organizations, and why we need to learn an extra-ordinary way that is inclusive, systemic, and generative, and that demands of us, in essence, extraordinarily open talking and extraordinarily open listening.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40713 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 149 pages

About the Author
Adam Kahane (Boston, MA) is a founding partner of Generon Consulting and of the Global Leadership Initiative. He is an expert in the design and facilitation of processes that help diverse groups of people work together to sense and actualize emerging futures.

He has worked in this area with corporate leaders in more than 50 countries, in every part of the world, as well as with politicians and guerillas, civil servants and community activists, trade unionists and clergy. He is also a leading thinker and practitioner in the merging of strategic management, scenario thinking, and collaborative problem solving.

Originally from Montreal, Adam lives in Boston and Cape Town with his wife Dorothy and his family.

Customer Reviews

Fascinating insight into how tough problems can be solved
This guy works with Joseph Jaworski, who established the American Leadership Forum and is author of "Synchronicity:the inner path of leadership", one of my "top 10" books.

Kahane describes how he worked with major Governments and leaders to attempt to resolve some of the toughest conflicts in the world: South Africa, Paraguay, Basques, Guatemala, Columbia and Argentina. I was interested to read about his relative failure in some places (notably with the Basques) and success in others (notably South Africa and Argentina).

He describes problems being tough because they are complex across three dimensions: dynamic complexity, generative complexity and social complexity.
Dynamic complexity arises if the cause and effect are far apart in terms of space and time. Generative complexity is high when the future is unfamiliar and unpredictable. Social complexity is high when those involved do not share the same assumptions, values, rationales and objectives.

He concludes that two components are required to make progress: the ability to talk and the ability to listen.

In his experience of trying to resolve some of the fundamental issues in Canada, for example, he found that the parties weren't really talking - just being polite with each other and not opening up. In the case of the Basques, they weren't truly listening and empathising with each other.

However, in Argentina, not only were they talking - but they were also truly listening: and in the aftermath of the country's collapse in 2001, remarkable progress was made (in the reform of the judiciary) through the dialogue that he initiated.

However, his definition of talking and listening goes beyond what we may think of. He describes 4 different ways of talking and listening:
The first way is "downloading": saying what we always say and not listening at all.
The second way of listening is debating: listening fairly and objectively.
The third way is talking and listening with empathy, subjectively, from the heart: reflective dialogue.
The fourth way, is "generative dialogue", wherein there is a "communion" between those involved to truly understand that they are radically connected.

Some very useful learning, in my opinion.

Highly Recommended !
This is a very unusual business strategy book on an esoteric topic: solving complex problems with scenario planning and analysis. Author Adam Kahane also discusses how change occurs in complicated social systems. Kahane, a conflict resolution consultant, shares a pivotal skill he learned at his former jobs with Royal Dutch/Shell and Pacific Gas & Electric. He learned how to address tangled problems with scenario analysis. He tried and, as his case histories testify, did not often succeed - to solve daunting problems in intractably troubled places, such as Paraguay, Colombia, South Africa and the Middle East. He admits his approach does not always work, though he has rare successes and frequent insights. Some of his strategy's separate steps, such as scenario planning and story telling, seem to function well on their own, but he has a tendency to de-link theory and practice. We recommend this unusual, instructive book to conflict managers, strategic planning executives and citizens who want to learn why profound national change must start at the individual level.