Today I talk with Adam Kahane, a Director at Reos Partners. Reos is an international social enterprise that helps people move forward together on their most important and intractable issues. Adam has over 30 years of experience facilitating breakthroughs at the highest levels in government and society. His own breakthrough facilitation moment came with an invitation to host the Mont Fleur Scenario Planning Exercises he facilitated in 1990s South Africa at the dawn of that country’s transition towards democracy and the twilight of apartheid.
He’s gone on to facilitate conversations about ending civil wars, transforming the food system, and pretty much everything else in between.
He’s also amazingly open and honest about his growth and transformation as a facilitator, and his own failings along the way. It’s encouraging to hear him talk about feeling a little like a cobbler without shoes. Shouldn’t a breakthrough facilitator be able to facilitate the conflicts in their own lives with the same ease? It turns out, it’s not that simple.
Adam is also honest and open about how he looks back at his past books and sees them as not just incomplete, but sometimes dangerously incomplete. So, read Power and Love, Collaborating with the Enemy,Transformative Scenario Planning and Solving Tough problems (all amazing books) with a grain of salt while you wait for Adam’s 2021 book, Facilitating Breakthrough, to come out. It’s all about 5 key pairs of polarities in transformational, collaborative work and it’s an eye-opener.
I’ve had the opportunity to read a draft copy of the book and I’m really excited for you all to read it and learn about how to, as Adam says, “Fluidly” navigate these polarities in your own transformational work.
Just a side note: The opening quote for this episode is actually two quotes that I’m juxtaposing. I loved this simple summary of the book as a fluid navigation of polarities alongside the sentiment that the only action you can take is your next one. You make a choice, and see what happens. Designing conversations can become as static and dangerously waterfall as any old-school product design team’s backlog. Being agile and responsive in the moment requires clarity on your core values and principles...and Adam’s book and ideas can help us develop our own core north stars as we navigate complex and collaborative change.
Learn more about Adam’s work at www.reospartners.com , www.reospartners.com/adamkahane and find him on twitter at @adamkahane.
Links, Quotes, Notes and Resources
Learn more about Adam’s work at www.reospartners.com and www.reospartners.com/adamkahane
Find him on twitter at @adamkahane.
Talks by Adam:
Adam Kahane at Ci2012 - "Transformative Scenario Planning"
Power and Love: Adam Kahane at TEDxNavigli
How To Change the Future - Adam Kahane
Polarity Management by Barry Johnson
Adam’s Father’s Favorite Book: Science and Sanity
Barry Johnson’s work, which provided a foundation form Adam’s new book: Polarity Management
+Adam’s Gifts as a facilitator: Listening, Articulation and Calmness and the origin stories of them.
+The four types of speaking and listening and how to transition between them. Suspension is a key shift to enable debate, and redirection allows for dialoging. Below is my sticky note from the interview...
And here, another diagram for this model
Diagram from Adam’s article in System’s Thinker.
The Math of Collaboration: What options are there?
From Power and Love: The Generative and Degenerative (Shadows) aspects of each.
A preview of Facilitating Breakthrough: A summary of the five key questions and the 5 key inner gestures
Key Quotes
Min 2: On his formative experience facilitating the Mont Fleur Scenario Exercises in South Africa in 1991
I experienced, like a thunderbolt, this possibility that people who look at things very differently and have been pretty well at war for a long time could talk to each other and be creative and figure stuff out and change the world as a result of that
Min 15: On learning from mistakes and through reflection via writing
Most of the important things I've learned, I've learned from making mistakes or at least those are the ones that stick with me. It's always the same sort of thing. It's that I think I know what's happening and I act on what I think. I bash my head into a brick wall and I fall down. Then whether it's a few minutes or a few months or a few years later, I pick myself up and I go, "What happened there? What was I not seeing that was there?" That's my thought process....Part of what I'm trying to do in my writing, it's not very complicated but I think it's important, is to show that process of learning by failing. I mean, there may be other ways to learn, but it's been a big thing for me. I want to demonstrate that it works and that you can survive and that you can learn...So, I've just had a disaster. Let me at least try to get a book out of it or if not that a book chapter.
Min 17: On being in the present (ie, your next step is the most important)
as a facilitator and everybody else, we really can't do much more than the next step. I think you talked about design in conversations. I like making process plans for the next three years or the next three months or the next three days, and that's fine and it's useful. I think it was Eisenhower who said plans are useless but planning is essential.
I think the real skill in facilitating and in writing and in living is that you do something and you see what happens. Then you decide what you're going to do next. It doesn't really matter what you're going to do after that. You'll see when you get there.
Min 19: On understanding the choice in Collaboration:
a crucial thing to understand about collaboration is it's not the only option. If I said in the following way, it's not possible to collaborate with everybody on everything. So, I think that's pretty obvious. So, the question is, on what do you need to collaborate with other people and with whom and for how long? For me, it's no use getting into how to collaborate, which is the basic subject of all of my work and all of my writing, how to collaborate, until you understand that collaborating is just one of the options.
More About Adam
Adam organizes, designs, and facilitates processes that help move people forward together on their most important and intractable issues.
Adam Kahane is a Director of Reos Partners, an international social enterprise that helps people move forward together on their most important and intractable issues.
Adam is a leading organizer, designer, and facilitator of processes through which business, government, and civil society leaders can work together to address challenges. He has worked in more than fifty countries and in every part of the world, with executives, politicians, generals, guerrillas, civil servants, trade unionists, community activists, United Nations officials, clergy and artists.
Adam is the author of Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities, about which Nelson Mandela said, “This breakthrough book addresses the central challenge of our time: finding a way to work together to solve the problems we have created.” He is also the author of Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change, Transformative Scenario Planning: Working Together to Change the Future, and Collaborating with the Enemy: How to Work with People You Don’t Agree with or Like or Trust.
During the early 1990s, Adam was the 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.
Full Transcript
Daniel Stillman:
All right. Well, so welcome to the Conversation Factory, Adam Kahane. I really appreciate you making the time to unpack some important topics about changing systems and leading conversations with me.
Adam Kahane:
My pleasure.
Daniel Stillman:
So, you've had a really unique path. I mean, I suppose everyone has a unique path, but coming from science and living in this world of the expert to coming into the world of the facilitator and valuing collaboration more. I was looking at the litany of blockbuster books you've written from Solving Tough Problems to Transformative Scenario Planning to Power and Love to Collaborating with the Enemy and now your upcoming book. What's the through line, what's the story that you connect your evolution through these books?
Adam Kahane:
Well, for me, I guess I don't know if that's the right term, but the origin history or the hinge story was my experience when I went to South Africa in 1991. It's the hinge because all of my academic and professional training up to then had been to be an expert. To be somebody who figures out the answer quickly and argues for it vociferously. I had a role like that at Shell in London in a scenario group and was starting to facilitate, but facilitate within that very, I guess I'd say, intellectual corporate culture. At least that part of the corporation. I was invited to go to South Africa to facilitate a scenario process where the participants were not Shell people, but were people from across the society and political spectrum, black and white opposition and establishment left and right, just in the middle of the transition away from apartheid.
Adam Kahane:
That's when I experienced, like a thunderbolt, this possibility that people who look at things very differently and have been pretty well at war for a long time could talk to each other and be creative and figure stuff out and change the world as a result of that. Yeah. I was pretty young then, 30 years old and everything changed. I've spent the last 30 years almost to the day actually, no 29 years to the day, thinking about what does that mean and what's the significance beyond South Africa and beyond scenarios. So, the through line is, how is it possible for people who need to work together but think they can't to do so and to make a difference?
Daniel Stillman:
Yes. It's interesting you used the term origin story because I wanted to go a step further back because you've talked before about your gifts as a facilitator. What you bring into the room of listening, articulation and calmness. I'm wondering where do you feel like you learned those skills? And for those of us who want to bring more of those approaches into our work, how do we embody those gifts?
Adam Kahane:
Well, for me the big aha was this idea of gifts. I worked in the late '90s in Guatemala and one of my friends or one of the members of the team who became my friend went to work at the Jesuit university. I don't think he had a Jesuit education, but he went to work as a dean or something at the Jesuit university. So, he got a crash course in Jesuit philosophy, which is pretty rich. One of the things they told him, which he told me, is the whole thing about a gift is that it was given to you. So, it's not something you should be proud of or conceded about. On the contrary, the thing about a gift is that you're lucky to have gotten it or you're blessed to have gotten it or whatever and the mistake is not to use it.
Adam Kahane:
I found this a very liberating notion, not that I'm especially modest person but I think I had this idea that I mustn't show off too much because it could be boastful. This was the opposite idea, which he said if you have gifts, you really have an obligation to use them. In that respect, I mean I guess everybody has different gifts, but I know what mine are and liberated from the need to conceal them, I can use them. For example, well you might agree or disagree, but I've been told that I speak very clearly. To me, I know where I got that. It's imitating my father. I speak like my father. Anybody who met my father would recognize the resemblance. That's an example. It's very useful in facilitating to be, it's not the only possible gift, but it's a useful gift to be able to articulate, to be able to understand, to be able to put things together. These are all gifts. They're not things I developed or created.
Adam Kahane:
Similarly, sometimes a wound can be a gift. For example, I think I'm, in some ways or in some circumstances, maybe rational or over-rational. But in South Africa, coming in the midst of the turmoil to be able to say, I mean I didn't say exactly these words, but to be able to say to people, "Thank you very much for sharing the story of your incarceration and torture. Who would like to speak next?" I mean, I didn't exact say those words, but I thought the fact that I was so dispassionate, which in some circumstances could be a real limitation, in that context was a gift. That I could be calm and reason and not anxious amidst anxious and worried and agitated others. So, it's not that my gifts are the key ones. For me, the crucial I guess we've all got gifts and we better use them because this is difficult work to do. We need whatever we got.
Daniel Stillman:
Have you ever been in a situation where you feel like you've needed to grow, not from your gifts, but maybe in terms of transforming that wound or expanding your capability and your potential as a facilitator, as a designer of holder of space of conversations? In what ways have you tried to grow and sort of buy yourself some new gifts?
Adam Kahane:
So, it's a good question. Some of the things that come to mind is I think I have managed to grow my capacity for empathy and intuition. Or I guess now that I say that, I think I do have a gift for empathy and intuition, but I didn't know I had it and I didn't think it was very important. So, it's more about uncovering something. I think well like many people, but there's lots of circumstances when I get reactive, certain kind of person who always sets me off or a certain context. Often a competition with a man my age, for example and to recognize, "Oh, here I go again. This really is not useful. Why don't you tone that down?" Saying that to myself. So yeah, and also how to work with people who have complementary gifts. So, I have colleagues who are more friendly particularly or more creative or more outgoing or whatever and how can we, as a team, have the range of capacity that's required.
Daniel Stillman:
You're highlighting something that's so powerful, which is one, the role of self talk and growth. And another which is just knowing yourself and maybe knowing your limits and spotting some of your blind spots. None of these things are trivial by the instruction and imagination.
Adam Kahane:
Yeah. Blind spots, yeah absolutely.
Daniel Stillman:
One of the things, and this conversation can fold over itself in so many ways, but I have two sticky notes here. One is about shadow. So, there's two quotes I want to read you. They're yours. I kind of want to hold them in maybe paradox. I'm not sure. Both are places where you were sort of openly admitting your limitations, which I really appreciated. It was very humanizing to me looking at you and your body of work. In Power and Love, you talk about your pieces in Solving Tough Problems being the key to creating new social realities is to open ourselves up to our current context and what it demands of us. I was like yeah, that's totally yeah. That's a thing that we have to get people to do, and you describe it as half right and dangerous so. I was like, wow, that's an amazing place to start with your new book which is in a way just looking at some of your previous work as dangerously half right which was an amazing concept.
Daniel Stillman:
There was another quote where you were talking in Collaborating with the Enemy about your own concern about your ability to deal with ordinary conflicts in the way that you deal with extraordinary conflicts as a close-in participant in these conversations in your own life. As opposed to a convener and the holder of those spaces. I don't even know what the question is here. I looked at those two quotes and I said, "Here's somebody who is looking at themselves very strongly." That just seems to be a part of your process.
Adam Kahane:
Yeah. It is, and I'm writing a new book called Facilitating Breakthrough. It's going to do the same again of saying Power and Love is good but it's not the whole story and dangerously so. I think I'm trying to do two... There's two things going on. Partly, I love writing as the chance to reflect and to derive theory from practice. I like that as a creative act and as an intellectual act of trying to... In particular, the thing I love is what's the simplest way of explaining something that I think is important? That's part of what's going on.
Adam Kahane:
The other thing that's going on is, I don't know if other people are like this, but most of the important things I've learned, I've learned from making mistakes or at least those are the ones that stick with me. It's always the same sort of thing. It's that I think I know what's happening and I act on what I think. I bash my head into a brick wall and I fall down. Then whether it's a few minutes or a few months or a few years later, I pick myself up and I go, "What happened there? What was I not seeing that was there?" That's my thought process.
Adam Kahane:
Part of what I'm trying to do in my writing, it's not very complicated but I think it's important, is to show that process of learning by failing. I mean, there may be other ways to learn, but it's been a big thing for me. I want to demonstrate that it works and that you can survive and that you can learn. Yeah. That's at least one dimension of growing.
Daniel Stillman:
I feel like it may come from... My first degree is in physics as well and I think there's this mindset of well let's experiment. We learn through trial. But when I was a younger man, I think I had the idea of well we only learn what doesn't work through failure. We only learn what works through the magic of success, but I don't know if that's necessary... I don't know if I believe that anymore because life is a series of experiments. I think in another interview you said that the only move that matters is your next one. We're constantly failing or moving forward through life as a world. That's not a question. That's a statement. You can respond as we go to that.
Adam Kahane:
I think I hadn't thought of this, but I was brought up... my father was an engineer and was very interested in science and Korzybski's book Science and Sanity was his favorite book. So, I think I brought up with this idea of being scientific, but it's more at least the way I experience it is that's just what's happening. That I'm failing all the time and for me, I'm trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. So, I've just had a disaster. Let me at least try to get a book out of it or if not that a book chapter. So, I feel better. Yes, yes, I did mess up there and that didn't work, but it really helped me figure out another part of this puzzle. It's a pretty big puzzle, so you can go on finding additional pieces for a long time.
Daniel Stillman:
Yes. I feel like... Oh sorry, go ahead.
Adam Kahane:
Sorry. But the other part of that is I do think, both as a facilitator and everybody else, we really can't do much more than the next step. I think you talked about design in conversations. I like making process plans for the next three years or the next three months or the next three days, and that's fine and it's useful. I think it was Eisenhower who said plans are useless but planning is essential.
Daniel Stillman:
Yes.
Adam Kahane:
So, that's fine, but I think the real skill in facilitating and in writing and in living is that you do something and you see what happens. Then you decide what you're going to do next. It doesn't really matter what you're going to do after that. You'll see when you get there.
Daniel Stillman:
It's interesting because I feel like you've broken, maybe it's the physicist in you breaking things down into very clear narratives if you will. I have a drawing of your decision tree and what I would call the math of collaboration. You talk about the math in Power and Love in another talk. We were like okay, well can you change it on your own? Yes, no. Can you live with things the way you are? Yes, no. It's like a very straightforward logical approach to what are your choices and can you live with your choices which is a very irrational approach to the question of will I collaborate or will I not collaborate.
Adam Kahane:
Yeah. Well, partly what I was trying to say in that part of that book, which is Collaborating with the Enemy, is I wanted to... For me, a crucial thing to understand about collaboration is it's not the only option. If I said in the following way, it's not possible to collaborate with everybody on everything. So, I think that's pretty obvious. So, the question is, on what do you need to collaborate with other people and with whom and for how long? For me, it's no use getting into how to collaborate, which is the basic subject of all of my work and all of my writing, how to collaborate, until you understand that collaborating is just one of the options.
Adam Kahane:
That was the purpose of that decision tree. I don't really use it to figure out what to do except maybe intuitively, but I wanted to make that point particularly both for people who think that collaboration is the only way, which to me is a nonsensical statement. Or on the other hand for people who think it's very fuzzy and doesn't make any sense. I'm trying to show no, it makes sense logically, but in a very particular set of circumstances. I argue that that set of circumstances is becoming more and more common but most of the time we do other things. We do things on our own or with our friends and colleagues, not with strangers and opponents.
Daniel Stillman:
Right, but if we want and I presume that if we want true breakthroughs in really complex systems as you say, that option of not collaborating becomes less available to us.
Adam Kahane:
Yeah. Well probably but I'm not trying to argue that the only way to do it is the way I do it. I'm practicing and writing about a particular approach, but I'm not saying you can never do things unilaterally or by force or by getting your coalition to make it the way you want it to be. Or that it's never sensible to just adapt to things as they are. Like probably 90% of the day, we adapt to things as they are. You can't do anything about it. Sometimes the third option is sometimes you just have to exit. You can't make it the way you want it to be. You can't live with it as it is, so you leave. You quit your job or you emigrate or you get a divorce or whatever. Check out in some way. I don't really care whether the number of circumstances you need to collaborate on is 1% or 10% or 50%. I'm just arguing it's more than zero and if you want to collaborate, here are some principles and here is what doesn't work in collaboration.
Daniel Stillman:
When I look at those four options or the fifth if you bring in stretch collaboration to conventional collaboration, you point out really aptly that in our daily lives, we're constantly presented with these options. I think we take certain options by habit. It's sort of baked into our operating system. Some people will just say their best alternative to negotiate agreement, they just think I'm just going to exit. I'm never going to "collaborate with the enemy", of which there are some people who will always want to go and force their way. I think this is maybe where we can talk a little bit about the paradoxes and the dilemmas of transformative collaboration because I think Power and Love is one of these polarities that you've explored and there are several others that you're exploring in this new book. It's really interesting to look at these inner tensions that we as facilitators and collaborators need to contend with to create real change.
Adam Kahane:
Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
That was less of a question because I'm looking at... I don't know to what sort of depth you want to talk about what's in the new book because I'm looking at this chart of these inner moves and outer gestures and these sort of poles of vertical and horizontal tensions. I guess that you would say that each of us is contending with in how we approach these complex situations. For me, it was really interesting to look at you lay it out there so cleanly and plainly that these are the choices.
Adam Kahane:
Well, thank you. I mean, I'm happy to talk about it. That's work in process, so it's already changed since the version you saw-
Daniel Stillman:
Oh wow.
Adam Kahane:
... and what it was last Friday. It's changed a little bit, but yes, I am. That chart is the summary of the new book. So yes, I am trying to make a general theory of facilitation and I'm arguing that there's five polarities that facilitators have to deal with over and over and over throughout any process, whether it's a day or a week or a decade. Where I've gotten to is that the crucial thing is they're not choices, they're polarities.
Adam Kahane:
Here I'm building on the lifetime of great work by Barry Johnson who has written several books on polarities and has a way of thinking about them that really works for me. His main point is that oftentimes people think they have a choice between two things but that's a misunderstanding. The simplest analogy is that that would be like saying you have a choice between breathing in and breathing out. So you have to do both and you have to do them cyclically or alternately. So, I'm positing in this new book that facilitation involves working with five polarities. Let me see if I can remember my own five polarities, but anyway, you can read them off the chart.
Daniel Stillman:
Yes, I can.
Adam Kahane:
You have it in front of me.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah, yeah. Telling and asking, concluding and advancing, mapping and discovering, directing and accompanying, man I can't pronounce that word today. I'm going to skip it. Being apart and being a part.
Adam Kahane:
Yeah. So yes. I'm arguing that underneath the technique, underneath the agenda design is working with these five polarities and each of them are not choices. We need to do both of them. I'm suggesting that if you can do both of them, if you can do these five pairs of things fluidly when they're required, then that's the gist of facilitating breakthrough. So, now I've saved you having to wait until August 2021 and spending 18.95. That's the summary.
Daniel Stillman:
Well, I don't know. I think the denouement is still very lively. I've been contending with this, and as I said reading the advanced book it's overwhelming because there's a lot in there but also the comments were pretty intense. This process of working out loud, I'm curious just as a writer, how you're finding this process of sending out this Google Document and having some people pour over it. I went through my own experience with it. It's fascinating. What's it like for you watching people sort of walk through this nascent work of yours?
Adam Kahane:
I think it's just great. I have no hesitation about it at all. For me, it's the same thing about experimenting. If there's a problem with the book or if there's a flaw or if there's something unclear or if there's something that doesn't make sense, I'd really much prefer to know it before it's published. To me it's that straightforward.
Daniel Stillman:
Yes.
Adam Kahane:
So the fact that several hundred people are willing to read it and give me their comments, I think it's very generous on their part. I really appreciate it. So yeah. I guess it's a little bit embarrassing when I realize this thing I thought was right is not right. But as I say, I'd much prefer to find it out now than when the book is in print. You can't do much about it then. So, it's a great experience for me. What I find interesting, it is a little overwhelming to look at this Google Doc with hundreds of comments, but what I find most interesting is the commenters are talking to each other. Well the substance of what they're discussing or arguing about or agreeing on is interest to me as the author. But the fact that they find that interesting and worthwhile, to me, is also a revelation that people seem to enjoy being involved in this process.
Adam Kahane:
I don't want to exaggerate, but I realized it is a kind of facilitation that I'm doing or in particular, it's the mapping and discovering, the telling and asking. That I put something out there and we come to a substitutive point about facilitation. I don't think it's ever just about being a blank slate and saying, "Tell me what you think we ought to do." So to me, it's important that as a facilitator or a stakeholder, you almost always have to put something out there and say, "Here's my thinking about this subject or here's my thinking about this agenda or here's my thinking about what we ought to do next. What do you think?" That's the basic polarity, in this case in telling and asking, and that's what I'm doing with the book. I'm saying, I've been working on this for a year. This is my best thought. It's not as though I'm sending you all blank sheets of paper and saying, "Will [inaudible 00:30:36]." But I am saying, "This is as far as I've gotten. What do you think?"
Adam Kahane:
I don't want to exaggerate. This isn't a co-creation. It's not a co-authored book. I'm writing it, but I am genuinely suspending my thinking. This image that Bill Isaacs, at least I learned it from Bill Isaacs that the crucial step in dialogue or technically speaking, the crucial step in moving from what Otto Scharmer calls downloading to debating, the crucial step is suspending. This image that Isaacs uses that you take your idea and you hang it as if from a string in front of you so that you can see it. I can see it. You can attack it without attacking me. You can question it without questioning me. Maybe at the end, I'll still think what I thought before or maybe I'll see it differently.
Adam Kahane:
That's what I'm doing with this manuscript. I'm suspending my thinking. Half the time I'll say to people, "Thanks for your feedback, but I'm going to stick with the way it was." But the other half of the time I'm going to say, "No, it's great. You've really seen something I was missing and this is going to help me improve it." So, I'm going on because this goes back to the experiment I did. If I wasn't willing to experiment, then I'd have a book that's only half as good.
Daniel Stillman:
Yes. So, it's interesting because when you talk about the inner gestures associated with working through some of these paradoxes and these tensions, teaching people to suspend is nontrivial. When you're talking about some of the very challenging conversations that you've facilitated, getting people to suspend doesn't come for free. You have to, I presume, lead them towards that space of suspension to get them to be willing to move from debating to dialoguing.
Adam Kahane:
Well actually, no. I don't think it's very difficult if you set it up well. Suspending in the Scharmer model is the move from downloading, which is when I say the truth of the matter is to debating where I say in my opinion. That's the first shift. That's what he calls suspending. I had a colleague in South Africa, Louis [inaudible 00:33:11], who used to say to people, "When you're really sure about the way things are and when you find yourself pounding the table saying the truth is, just put in my opinion at the beginning of the sentence. If that doesn't work, try in my humble opinion." Actually, I find that people get that pretty easily. Then there's very simple technical things that go along with that. For example, to take a really simple example, writing things on Post-its. So, I use a lot of Post-its in my facilitation. Somebody once accused me of having shares in the 3M company, which I don't have.
Daniel Stillman:
I know. They say that to us all the time and we should, but we don't.
Adam Kahane:
It's why Post-it is interesting because you write something on it. You don't know exactly who wrote it. You can move it around. You can put it next to something else. You can crumble it up and you can do that over and over. So, this is this process of iteration, creativity through iteration. It's one of the most important things and it's not difficult to learn and it works really well. It really works well. So, no, I don't actually think that's one of the harder things to do.
Daniel Stillman:
That's so interesting I mean because I feel like it is easy for people to slip back into debate. That there does need to be a reminder to hold space to suspend.
Adam Kahane:
Well and that's where the shift from debating to dialoguing in the Scharmer model is called redirecting. So, it's where I see things from the perspective of the other. Again, there is a simple way to learn that or not sort of easy but simple which is, do I see this other being as a person like me so that I'm not prepared to just defeat them, but I have a genuine curiosity about gosh, they keep saying this thing. Why is it that this is so important to them? Why do they see this thing that I'm not seeing, et cetera?
Daniel Stillman:
Yes. I'm curious. You mentioned facilitation is this adaptive challenge. There's this human aspect too. There is this technical component to it and there's two things that came up in a few of the stories I was reading about your facilitation that I wanted to just get you to sort of explicate a little bit. One which was the discussions in Colombia being over 10 days over the phone. I think a lot of people who are listening to this like me love sticky notes and certainly in this moment of the global pandemic, we're not doing that in-person where it is very easy and fluid to do. But a lot of people have been facilitating, as you have, complex transformative scenario planning conversations over the phone over multiple days with a broad variety of stakeholders. I mean, this is down the weeds question like, what does it take to make a multi-day phone conversation with this broad of a spectrum of stakeholders work?
Adam Kahane:
Well, it's a great example because I had forgotten until recently that I'd been doing this virtual facilitation for whatever days, 25 years. That particular example, it wasn't everybody on the phone. It was a group in-person but in that process which involved-
Daniel Stillman:
It was hybrid. That's even worse. Most people would, you know.
Adam Kahane:
Let me tell you that story. This was a process in Colombia in 1996 during the middle of the war. It was a process thinking about the future of the country and it involved business people and politicians and NGO people and peasants in trading, et cetera. At the time, there were two armed left wing gorilla armies, known by their Spanish initials the FARC and the ELN. So, these are illegal armed movements, rebel movements. The organizers of the project had got permission from the government of Colombia to give these people safe passage to come to the nine days of workshops, but they had refused because they thought it would be too dangerous. So yes, those four people participated by telephone; the FARC from some secret location in Costa Rica and the ELN from a prison cell.
Adam Kahane:
So yes, they participated in this very complicated process by speaker phone. It was very dramatic because the people who were in the room at the hotel were frightened of these people on the phone because they were the scary gorillas. When we started the process and when we would take lunch or coffee breaks, the participants in the meeting room would physically walk to the coffee break but staying far away from the speaker phone as if they could get hurt. Then after a few hours or a few days, people would bring their coffee to the speaker phone and have coffee with the people on the phone. So, it was very dramatic because it was literally a life and death situation.
Adam Kahane:
Sorry for the long information, but the answer to your question, why did it work, for me the answer is very simple, and this is the most important thing to keep in mind. It worked because those people wanted to be in the conversation. That's the only reason. That's the answer to most questions about facilitation and process is it'll work if it's important to people. In this case, those rebels really wanted to be in this conversation with the legal actors about what was happening in Colombia and what could happen and they were remarkable.
Adam Kahane:
We would have these presentations in the room where people would present the results of small group work. They'd be 20 flip charts on the wall which the people on the phone couldn't see. This wasn't video conference. This was a speaker phone, and the guy in the prison would say, "Well, I'd like to comment on the fourth bullet on flip chart number seven." Well the only way he could know what the fourth bullet on flip chart number seven was is because they must have been writing it all down as it was being presented verbally. So, the amount of concentration and seriousness to be able to participate under those circumstances is extraordinary. Why did they do it? The reason is obvious. They did it because it mattered.
Adam Kahane:
So, I think there's a lot of things that are difficult in facilitation or impossible in facilitation if people don't really want to be there and think it doesn't really matter. It's all a big joke and they prefer to be doing something else. For me, this is not an interesting challenge. What I'm interested in is what do you do with people who really want to work together and how can you help them do so in spite all the difficulty.
Adam Kahane:
So, thanks for reminding me of that. I think in a way it's an example of the most basic principle of all which is again about these choices. If you don't want to collaborate, if you want to do it by force, which is of course what armed gorillas are trying to do. They're trying to gain power by force of arms. But if you've decided that or if you think that maybe you can't get what you want on your own by forcing, adapting or exiting, then you might need to work with these other people, even people you don't agree with or like or trust. Then roll up your sleeves and let's try.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. I agree that if there's will to keep going, then something can happen. I feel like many people struggle with the question of the person on the phone isn't writing down every bullet point. They're doing their laundry and walking around their house and checked out-ish. That's a much harder situation, ironically harder situation to change when it isn't life and death, when it isn't about the future of your country to get people to actually wake up and start to pay attention.
Adam Kahane:
Absolutely. One of the most basic ground rule we encourage in our workshops is be present. That is, it's easy to not be present when you're on Zoom or whatever. So, it is a basic issue. But my solution to that is very simple which is to try to only work with people who are really trying to do something they care.
Daniel Stillman:
It's good advice. I have one more incredibly logistical question to ask you because you talk about contribution, connection and equity and justice is sort of part of that. I think a lot of people struggle with creating a quality of contribution partly because people over talk. I feel like I was reading one story where you were a bell to really time to limit people's check-ins. I feel like very often people are nervous or hesitate to do something like this especially with high level people, especially when we're talking about really real stories and intense situations. This is way on the ground level, but managing the amount of time that people are speaking when they're speaking really, really truly important things. Doing something as intrusive as a bell or a visible timer, I think some people block out, but it sounds like you've done that in the past.
Adam Kahane:
Yeah. So, let me say a couple of things about that. Firstly, there is a way in which one of the core variables or the core aspects of the facilitator plays with his time. So, time is a big deal.
Daniel Stillman:
Because it's limited.
Adam Kahane:
And knowing when to slow down and when to speed up and when to stop and when to just keep going, I think this is an important aspect of the skill. We use the bell in a very particular, and it's not useful all the time. I have stories about when it disastrously didn't work or was disastrously inappropriate. But we have used the bell often in the very first session of introductions and the principle is democracy of time. The principle is that the CEO isn't more important than their subordinate. And because the pattern is set at the beginning in everything, then the pattern you set in the first half and hour really matters. So, we found that setting this pattern which says everybody who is here is equally important and we're going to ring a bell after a minute for the CEO and the subordinate equally, dispassionately is a very dramatic signal especially in cultures, organizational cultures or national cultures, where that's not the norm. So yeah, but I think to underline principle is democracy of time.
Daniel Stillman:
I agree with you so hardly.
Adam Kahane:
And respect.
Daniel Stillman:
And I love the way you're stating it. It's such a clear way of you establish the principle, but it sounds like you don't hammer on it the whole time necessarily. That you release it when the context calls for it further into the conversation.
Adam Kahane:
Yeah, but that's not easy. It's not an accident that most arguing between facilitators and groups are about time. But I guess the question you have to ask is are people saying they don't have enough time because they want to listen to themselves more? So yeah. So, I think it's related to respect and not forcing.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. Adam, speaking of time, we're coming up against our time. Is there anything that has been unsaid that we should say? What haven't I asked you that I should ask you?
Adam Kahane:
Well, you alluded to it and I'll just mention it as a teaser more than anything else, but I wrote a book called Power and Love. What I'm trying in this book, one of the things I'm trying to do is to explain why those buy themselves won't get you anywhere. And that this question of purpose and direction and justice is the missing ingredient. That's one of the things I'm trying to articulate in this new book. I think it's true and I also think it's topical.
Daniel Stillman:
Very much so. I'm really excited to make my way through the rest of it. I feel like in a way, the diagram of Power and Love is the torch versus the bonfire. In a way, I've been trying to understand the vertical and the horizontal. It seems like that's the analogy that I'm tacking onto that it seems like these other paradoxes I'm looking at them through the lens of that bonfire and the torch.
Adam Kahane:
Yes, that's true although mathematically if you will, it's the opposite of what you might think and that's why it's a little hard to explain because the vertical, the hierarchical is the one where love dominates, where the whole dominates the parts. That's opposite to what people would guess.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah, it's very interesting. I'm contending with those two terms and I'm enjoying the process. I'm grateful that you're writing the book. It's a really great book so far. I'm excited to see the final version of it.
Adam Kahane:
I'm enjoying it and please make your way through. We're waiting for your comments. Deadline is next [inaudible 00:49:49] days.
Daniel Stillman:
I'll get on it. I was so nervous to try and get... I was like I couldn't get through all of it before this. So, I'm grateful for this conversation, Adam. Thank you for the work you're doing and for sharing your ideas so generously with the world and your time here.
Adam Kahane:
My pleasure. Thanks.
Daniel Stillman:
So just with our last seconds, you tell me if anything felt out of place or believable.
Adam Kahane:
Oh no, wonderful. I appreciate it. I enjoyed it.
Daniel Stillman:
Thank you. Thank you so much, Adam. I'm glad we could talk about some of the big and these tiny, tiny little details that say so much about what facilitation is.
Adam Kahane:
Yeah. Well, I've also made notes, things that I want to make sure to get into the books. So, thanks for reminding me also of this story about the phone.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. Do people act as their hands as well I would imagine?
Adam Kahane:
No, no. Well I guess. I don't remember. I guess so. I guess when they presented, somebody else would write on a flip chart. But it was really something. I mean, these were scary people and were scary for the participants and yet they participated very thoughtfully and sincerely. It was a really big deal.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah, and we really didn't get to talk about this, but I've heard you speak in some other talks about the 16 year arc of seeing it bear fruit and of the whole country going through these scenarios in process, in sequence.
Adam Kahane:
Yeah. That's the kind of weird thing about it. That is, I don't quite have the explanation for that because scenarios are not predictions and four scenarios put in a report are never intended to be enacted sequentially, but by some weird synchronicity they were. At least that's one interpretation of those 16 years of Colombian history. So, the whole thing took on a bit of a mystical. President Santos said, it was an act of prophecy. That's a pretty interesting word.
Daniel Stillman:
It is. I mean, I also think that you laid out really the four fundamental possibilities and they tried them all. They tried all the easy ones until they got to the hard one.
Adam Kahane:
Yeah, I guess so.