Praise for Power and Love

Praise for Power and Love

"This profound book offers us a wise way to negotiate our toughest group, community, and societal challenges."

William Ury, co-author Getting to Yes and author The Power of a Positive No

"Adam’s Solving Tough Problems helped me understand that all of 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 Vankatesan, Chairman, Microsoft India

"Kahane is a master practitioner and thinker who knows the highs and lows of solving some of the toughest problems of social discord. Power and Love is both instructive and inspiring."

Patrick Dodson, winner, Sydney Peace Prize; Founding Chairman, Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation

"The cynical side of me says that Adam Kahane is unique, and that it’s his personality and presence that enable him to overcome conflict and create constructive resolutions to stalemates in business and society. But the hopeful side says that yes he is special, but that his ideas—which he explains so ably in Power and Love—can be used by others. He writes not from theory, but from experience—and draws out the lessons from a lifetime of fostering constructive engagement to deal with the toughest challenges."

Esther Dyson, founder, EDventure Holdings

"This is a superb book: wise and thoughtful."

W. Brian Arthur, author, The Nature of Technology; External Professor, Santa Fe Institute

"In this evocative and beautifully written narrative, Adam Kahane shares his own journey toward a deeper and more life-affirming understanding of the relationship between love and power—both in ourselves and in the systems we work with. His real-life stories and the lessons they reveal are compelling for all of us who work with complex issues involving multiple stakeholders."

Juanita Brown, co-founder, The World Café

"This is a courageous book. Too few of us who frequent the halls of power are willing to acknowledge the power of love. Not Adam. In this delicate and sensible book, we see a necessary dialectic, an uneasy partnership of power and love that is essential to solving the problems we face."

Jay Ogilvy, Dean, Presidio Graduate School; co-founder, Global Business Network

"From climate disruption to healthcare, from poverty to war, the range of seemingly-intractable crises we face today is enough to cause despair in even the most hopeful. Yet these are the kinds of problems that Adam Kahane has grappled with, around the world. In Power and Love, Kahane uses these experiences to explore why success in the face of complex challenges requires not just a new understanding of the problems, but a new understanding of ourselves."

Jamais Cascio, co-founder, WorldChanging.com

"This is a remarkable book. Kahane fuses his real experience and earned wisdom into a clear new lens through which social change practitioners and theorists can better see how expressions—and shadows—of love and power shape the outcomes of their efforts to solve complex social problems."

Ross McMillan, President, Tides Canada

"This 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, Founding Chair, Society for Organizational Learning (SoL); Senior Lecturer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; author, The Fifth Discipline

"Power and Love should be read and reread by anyone seriously committed to addressing tough problems."

Morris Rosenberg, Deputy Minister of Health, Government of Canada

In Power and Love Kahane shares with us his twenty years of experience and practice in creating new social realities. If we are to move forward on the many challenges humanity faces, only through a symbiosis of power and love can we enable the social change we need, that both unifies and is sufficiently creative. This book offers a glimpse of what a new praxis of creative collective action might look like.

Ged Davis, Co-President, Global Energy Assessment; former Managing Director, World Economic Forum; former Vice President and head of the scenario planning team, Royal Dutch Shell

"Reconciling extremes is the challenge of our time. Here, sharing insights born from working in the trenches of the world’s toughest social problems, Adam Kahane calls for the extraordinary measure of embracing the wholeness of our power and our love: the hard and soft in us all. By illuminating this “uncommon way,” Kahane's message joins the stream of the world's most profound and enduring strategic views."

James Gimian, publisher, Shambhala Sun; author of The Rules of Victory: How to Transform Chaos and Conflict—Strategies from the Art of War

"This book is a must-read for business leaders who are coming to recognize that to continue to thrive, business must join forces with interest groups, communities and government to address the wicked sustainability challenges of our time. Kahane shows us how."

Diane Osgood, Vice President, BSR

"This is an exceptionally brave book that pierces to the heart of how we must act in the world we so want to change. Kahane’s willingness to look honestly at his experiences—working on the world’s most difficult issues and in its most difficult places—is a model of courageous inquiry. I was challenged and convinced by Adam’s clarity that power and love are dynamic partners. May many of us make good use of this wisdom so honestly earned."

Margaret J. Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science and other books

"In a more experienced world, the simple, coherent message of this book would be second nature. Adam Kahane takes on the question: Why do some groups of people manage to solve complex problems, while others stumble or fall? The reader walks along with him, as he gradually builds his own proficiency at balancing empathy (love) and resolve (power), and thus raising the game for all of us."

Art Kleiner, Editor in Chief, strategy+business; author, The Age of Heretics

"Adam Kahane has mined more than two decades of practice to create a brave, concise, compelling reflection about the mistakes he has made, the lessons he has learned, and the hard-earned theory that now guides his work. Power and Love has a humility that is becoming and a depth that is inspiring. I couldn't put it down—and now I can't stop thinking about its implications for my own work."

Katherine Fulton, President, Monitor Institute

"An extraordinarily insightful and powerful analysis of what it takes to lead change and to make a difference in society. Drawing on his own experiences around the world, Kahane uses his skills of acute observation and honest self-reflection to figure out how to effect deep and lasting social change—starting with oneself."

Fields Wicker-Miurin, Co-Founder, Leaders’ Quest

"Bringing 'power' and 'love' together in resolving the most intractable social problems is not only unusual, it may also seem unreal. Adam Kahane makes it radically mandatory."

Njabulo Ndebele, author, Fine Lines from the Box; former Vice-Chancellor, University of Cape Town

"Adam Kahane is a change agent of the first order. His welcome and timely book will help readers refocus and strengthen their commitment and ability to effect much-needed community and societal change."

Mari Fitzduff, Professor and Director, Masters Program in Coexistence and Conflict, Brandeis University

"This book is written with great insight and revealing honesty. Adam is a wonderful storyteller, grounds his thinking in reality, and in this book gives us a path to making a lasting difference in the world."

Peter Block, author of Flawless Consulting, Stewardship, and The Answer to How Is Yes

"Effective and sustainable responses to global health challenges require business, government, and civil society to work together in partnership—but such partnerships do not easily deliver win-win-win outcomes. Kahane’s thoughtful and grounded reflections on his own experiences of success and failure show us the way."

Paulus M. Verschuren, Senior Director, Global Health Partnerships, Unilever

"A timely book for futures practitioners. This book contains clear lessons about how, why, and when systemic, participatory, and generative interventions, aimed at shaping the future, work or fail."

Angela Wilkinson, Director of Scenario Planning and Futures Research, James Martin Institute for Science and Civilisation, University of Oxford

"In the four decades since Martin Luther King’s death, change agents across the world have sought to ground themselves in his powerful and loving practice. Adam Kahane’s book is a journey and a roadmap to that practice."

Michel Gelobter, CEO, Cooler; former President, Redefining Progress

"Mahatma Gandhi’s life was the unfolding of the deep truth of the need to change oneself if one wants 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 insight. An honest and beautifully told story."

Arun Maira, member, Planning Commission of the Government of India; former board member, Tata Motors

"Adam’s courageous exploration of his struggle with the paradoxes of power and love invites us into our own exploration of this crucial tension. Our capacity to deal with our toughest social challenges—even our survival as a species—depends on our learning to work skillfully with these two fundamental drives."

_Phil Cass, CEO, Columbus Medical Association

"It isn’t either-or, it’s both-and. In this deceptively brief and clearly written book, Adam Kahane takes us through his own learning process to a way of acting in and on the world that is both effective and caring. Intelligent, insightful, satisfying—and inspiring."

Mary Catherine Bateson, author, Composing a Life and Willing to Learn

"If you wish to grasp the essence of the next revolution in the art of bringing about transformative change, this book is a must. As leaders in the private, public, and social sectors, we all struggle to navigate tensions such as Task Vs People, Markets Vs Charity, Content Vs Process, Hard Vs Soft. Adam Kahane points out that the polarity of Power Vs Love underpins all such tensions. As long as we approach this polarity with an “either/or” filter, we will remain stuck; only when we embrace it as an 'and' can we breathe life into change. Kahane shows us how to embody this 'and' and so to lead effectively and gracefully. A remarkable and heartful read."

_Zafer Achi, Managing Director, Middle East, McKinsey & Company

"International conflict is commonly understood by governments through the lens of realpolitik. The limitations of such a strategic analysis of power is that it does not recognize the power of human motivation. Adam Kahane’s wise and insightful book addresses this by integrating the concepts of love and power."

Gabrielle Rifkind, Director of Human Security Programme, Oxford Research Group

"Kahane addresses the often neglected need to create alternative social structures in situations where power, competition, and self-interest continue even after deeply entrenched disputes have been “settled” through conflict resolution and negotiation. Reflective and practical: a must read."

Charles Villa-Vicencio, former National Research Director, South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission

"Based on his first-hand experiences working with leaders—from across sectors, organizations, and communities, around the world—who are dealing with tough problems, Kahane’s beautifully written book offers a jewel of wisdom to those who want to effect profound social change: learn to speak both the language of power and the language of love."

Elena Díez Pinto, Executive Director, Soros Foundation of Guatemala; former Executive Director, Visión Guatemala

"This thought-provoking book will help leaders of social change efforts undertake their challenging work more positively and powerfully."

Bob Head, CEO, Skandia

"Power and Love expands and refines the analysis of Solving Tough Problems. A renowned practitioner of the delicate art of convening diverse and often warring stakeholders to solve intractable problems together, Kahane has a genius for extracting fundamental insights and principles from complex experience. This small book will stimulate fresh thinking by researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers everywhere who are concerned with catalyzing sustainable social change."

David Brown, Senior Research Fellow, Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, Harvard University

"This is not a book about simple solutions to complex problems; it is the tale of a twenty-year pilgrimage, one man’s courageous journey into the unknown, a willingness to take on some of the world’s most complex and seemingly intractable problems, at the same time working on one’s own intractability. Power and Love is the antidote to resignation; it is about the hope and possibility that comes from committing oneself to making a difference in the world."

Barry Oshry, author, Seeing Systems: Unlocking the Mysteries of Organizational Life and Leading Systems: Lessons from the Power Lab

"Power pushes, love pulls. Adam Kahane understands these two fundamental forces like few hands-on practitioners of conflict resolution. Power and Love is that rare jewel—a manual and a sonnet."

Robert Fuller, author, Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank

"Power and Love outlines Adam’s unique approach to solving problems, which enables people to make sense of their world—past, present, and future—so that they can make it better."

Paul Hanratty, CEO, Long-Term Savings, Old Mutual plc

"Adam Kahane takes systems thinking over into systems doing. He tells us stories of how separated parts are brought - lovingly – into serving the purposes of the whole of the social order. Kahane walks his talk. He is a principled pragmatist."

Bo Ekman, Founder and Chairman, Tällberg Foundation

"Power without love cannot sustain the long-term, coordinated effort necessary to achieve social change; love without power cannot overcome entrenched interests. Kahane’s stories and his wise counsel show how we can work with these apparent opposites to create new worlds."

Betty Sue Flowers, co-author, Presence; former Director, Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library