In2:InThinking Network March Newsletter

Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities

Author: Adam Kahane
Publisher: Barrett-Koehler
Length: 132 pages
Reviewer: Jon Bergstrom

Adam Kahane's new book, "Solving Tough Problems", provides important information we can use in dealing more effectively with our most complex problems. He uses his profound experiences in facilitating the transition out of apartheid in South Africa, the peace initiative process in Guatemala and many other dramatic stories to tell how he learned that we must find a new way of talking and listening if we wish to solve tough problems without force. This includes the everyday tough problems we all face at home and at work.

These problems are tough because they are often complex in three ways:

They are dynamically complex, which means that cause and effect are far apart in space and time and so are hard to grasp from first hand experience.
They are generatively complex, which means that they are unfolding in unfamiliar and unpredictable ways.
They are socially complex, which means that the people involved see things very differently, and so the problems become polarized and stuck.

He notes that there are two ways to try to get a complex problem unstuck. The first is for one side to act unilaterally, to try imposing a solution by force or violence. The second opportunity is for the actors to talk and listen in unconventional new ways in order to find a way forward together.

Most conventional approaches to solving problems emphasize talking, especially the authoritarian, boss or expert, way of talking: i.e. telling. This approach works for deciding between already created alternatives, but it does not create anything new. The additional element that is required to create something new, which is ignored in most conventional approaches, is listening.

Open listening is the basis for all creativity-in business and engineering as much as in politics. If we listen in the normal closed way, for what is right and what is wrong, then we won't be able to hear what is possible: what might be but is not yet. We won't be able to create anything new.

He describes four different ways of listening, as outlined by his partner, Otto Scharmer:

a. Downloading - Saying what is in our heads and what we have always said. When we download, we are deaf to other stories; we only hear that which confirms our own story.

b. Debating - When we debate, we listen to each other and to ideas objectively, like a judge in a debate or a courtroom. When we download or debate we are merely exhibiting and reproducing already-existing ideas and realities. We are not producing anything new, and we are not being creative.

c. Reflective dialogue - We engage in such dialogue when we listen to ourselves reflectively and when we listen to others
empathetically-from the inside, subjectively.

d. Generative dialogue - In generative dialogue, we listen not only from within ourselves, but from the whole of the system.

How can we solve our tough problems without resorting to force? He notes that the answer is simple, but it is not easy. We have to bring together the people who are co-creating the current reality to co-create new realities. We have to shift from downloading and debating to reflective and generative dialogues. We have to choose an open way over a closed way of talking and listening.

I believe that you will find important new assistance in better understanding every complex situation. You will also learn his ten suggestions to help us talk and listen when we face our next tough problem.