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

This conflict resolution book has helped thousands of people collaborate across deep divides. The updated edition includes 50 percent new material addressing an increasingly polarized world. In today's fractured world, collaboration is increasingly difficult yet more crucial than ever. Often, accomplishing something that matters requires working with people you don't agree with, like, or trust. Drawing from over thirty years of experience working with leaders in more than fifty countries, Adam Kahane argues that conventional collaboration—requiring harmony and agreement—is obsolete. He presents an approach that embraces discord, experimentation, and genuine cocreation. Kahane introduces three key stretches for navigating difficult collaborations: embracing conflict and connection, experimenting and learning, and stepping into the game. This substantially revised second edition adds new chapters on working across deepening divides and with those you may never agree with. It includes new case studies, a discussion guide, and frameworks for navigating permanent plurality in polarized times.