My conversation with writer, facilitator and consultant and many other hats Adam Kahane, which took place on April 8, 2025, on the very day of the launch of his latest book and Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems, the Catalytic Power of Radical Engagement. Adam talks about seven habits that enable ordinary citizens to become extraordinary agents of transformation. We talked about the process of co creating the book with over 300 individuals, including myself, and how these habits can apply to the arts.
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Imagine a world where everyday actions can ripple through complex systems, sparking real change. Adam Kahane shares the journey behind his book, revealing how a frustrating interview led to a deep exploration of how ordinary people can transform the world around them.
Chapter Summary
00:00 Radical Engagement: A New Perspective
01:00 The Birth of a Book
03:30 Understanding Systems Change
06:00 The Collective Nature of Transformation
09:00 The Seven Habits of Transformation
12:00 Art and Systems Change
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Behind the Story
Adam Kahane’s book, ‘Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems,’ emerged from a desire to understand how individuals can contribute to large-scale change. Inspired by a challenging interview and co-created with a community of over 300 people, the book outlines seven practical habits for engaging with complex systems in a meaningful way. The process involved deep exploration, iteration, and a commitment to uncovering the essence of effective systems change.
Note: This is an automated transcription that is provided for those who prefer to read this conversation and for documentation. It has been verified but is not 100% accurate (some names might not be quite right). Please contact me if you would like to quote from this transcript: claude@conscient.ca
[00:00:00 - 00:00:39] Adam Kahane
I say radical engagement with the system doesn't mean participating in that system, distractedly resigned, knowing it all hierarchically at arm's length, with arms crossed, superficially, impatiently. Saying take it or leave means taking part in it alertly, with hope and curiosity, horizontally, leaning forward, hands on, digging deep, persisting, and above all, reciprocally and relationally. So that's the core idea of radical engagement. And Claude, that's how I experience your way of being in the world.
[00:00:40 - 00:01:22] Claude Schryer
This is my conversation with writer, facilitator and consultant and many other hats Adam Kahane, which took place on April 8, 2025, on the very day of the launch of his latest book and Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems, the Catalytic Power of Radical Engagement. Adam talks about seven habits that enable ordinary citizens to become extraordinary agents of transformation. We talked about the process of co-creating the book with over 300 individuals, including myself, and how these habits can apply to the arts.
[00:01:23 - 00:03:08] Adam Kahane
Radical engagement, the role is to help us understand what's happening and what's possible. And I remembered that a lot of my early professional training was in something called scenario planning, which is a corporate strategy tool that I brought into societal change efforts 35 years ago in South Africa. But the story about the origin of that field, or why it's called that, is that Herman Kahn, who was a scientist who wrote a book called, I think it's called Thinking the Unthinkable about Thermonuclear War, was talking about his work with Stanley Kubrick, the, the film director. And Kubrick said, well, what, what you're doing is scenarios. And that's how that word which comes out of the theater and film got used in my field and, and, and then in my work. So, yeah, we're, we're trying to understand what's happening around us. It's very confusing. There's lots of things happening and stories, stories from science, stories from art are ways of, of making sense of it. Without that, we, you know, we just have our immediate reaction or projection about what's happening.
[00:03:10 - 00:03:55] Claude Schryer
Well, you and I have known each other only for a short period of time, and yet you invited me to be a sort of soft co-creator of this book, Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems. And that's part of the interest for me is the process that led to the book. But obviously I invite people to check out the book. It's literally launched today, April 8, 2025. So much to talk about your work generally. And I'll people to just see your bio and links on the episode notes. But why don't you Just start with why you wrote the book and that process of co creation, how that led to these seven ways of doing systems change. And for those who don't know what systems change is, maybe that's a good place to start as well.
[00:03:57 - 00:09:06] Adam Kahane
Well, this thing about systems, I've been, I've been working in this field for a long time because I got started when I used, when I was invited to use the so-called scenario method in South Africa during the transition from apartheid to democracy in 1991. 92. And for those of you who don't remember the chronology, Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990 and the first democratic elections were held in 1994. So my first step into this field of system transformation was then and it was hard to imagine that thing could change. Most people in South Africa and around the world thought this is just the way it is. And I mentioned that because in spite of that early experience, I think most of the time, most of us, and I'd include myself in this, think things are just the way they are, they can't change. And one of the things about the, the period we're living through now, these last years and, and right now is it's obvious that's not true, that first of all we live in systems, political systems, economic systems, trade systems, technology systems, cultural systems. We're not just on our own in a blank world. And secondly, and this has really struck me these last weeks, it's now completely obvious that these systems were largely built by humans and can be rebuilt by humans. So this idea that things are just the way they are and they'll always be the way they are to me is now obviously not true. They can be transformed. They are being transformed. So that's the starting point, that was the starting point for the book. And the question I tripped across was, okay, well, obviously transforming systems isn't something that one person does. There's nobody on earth that can do that by themselves. Even if you're the President of the United States, to take a random example, you're doing what you're doing with thousands in collaboration with thousands of people. So system transformation is obviously a collective activity, but it begs the question, what can each of us do every day to be part of that? And the starting point for the book was a, a 30-minute interview like this that I did three years ago with a, a South African activist and politician named Trevor Manuel, who I had met 30 years ago. And I was talking to him about this in a live broadcast and it was a terrible interview in the sense That I kept trying. I was not a good interviewer like you. I was trying to convince them that things were the way I thought they were. And it was really frustrating because we were talking right past each other. In fact, when the 30-minute interview ended, my wife and my colleagues sent me messages saying, you know, don't quit your day job. You have absolutely no future as an interviewer. And so that, that was embarrassing and difficult, but, but it really got me thinking. I, I wonder. I, I guess I, I really don't understand how, how what you do day to day to transform systems. And that was the question that, that got me working on this or that was the experience and the question that got me working on this book and, and it's my sixth book. But the other ones have mostly been reflection on my own experiences, which I've had a lot in this field. And here it was obvious I didn't know what the answer was. And when I told my publisher I wanted to write a book on everyday habits for transforming systems, he said, that's fine, that'll be good. What are the habits? And I said, I really don't know, but you give me the book contract, I'm sure I can figure it out. So in that sense, this book, more than anything I've ever written, was genuinely a process of discovery. And through interviews, starting with Trevor and, I don't know, about 30 other people around the world, but also with this book creating club of which you generously agreed to be a member. And over the course of a year, we did figure it out and I think we did quite a good job. So that was the process, it was a discovery process. To answer this to me, obviously important question that I didn't know the answer to.
[00:09:07 - 00:10:08] Claude Schryer
Well, there are seven habits in the book and you know, I'll read them out just so that people can get an idea. Acting responsibly, relating in three dimensions, looking for what's unseen, which can also be listening for what's unheard, by the way, working with cracks, experimenting a way forward, collaborating with unlike others and persevering and resting. And they were kind of layered in a kind of seven beautiful little graphic. And they resonate with me. Adam, I think we did a good job in probing you and making you go into uncomfortable spaces because you came up with something that's quite lucid, I think, and practical. And I think that's part of it. Right. And whether it's artists or whomever is using the methodology… There is what? This is another way to approach systems Change, but it's very. It's grounded in the day to day. It's like you do meditation practice. You do. You have it. You practice systems change. And you can do it at a very micro level.
[00:10:08 - 00:12:17] Adam Kahane
Yes, exactly. And that was the challenge. It's, you know, not obvious how you make a list of seven. That's not. It could have. Could have been six, could have been nine, but it's not how obvious how you make a short list that isn't either obvious, banal, or, or just dumb. And. Well, we did it through exploration and through iteration. We had in our little book club, we had. Well, not little. There were 300 people in it, all of them mentioned in the back of the book. Hope the names are spelled right. But we did it by. Yeah, by going over it over and over and trying to draw what's the essence here and what's. Yeah. What's important, what's true, what's lucid, what's clear. And some of them are. Some of those seven are ones that I've thought about for a long time, like collaborating with. Unlike others, that's been the center of my, My work and my writing for decades. But some of them were completely new. And I'll just mention one that was new to me, which is this idea of working with cracks. I never really thought about that, but it turns out it's a very interesting metaphor. Of course, I'm from Montreal and. Yeah, yeah, no, it's part of my citizenship that I have to mention. Leonard Cohen, and in every podcast, and he famously wrote, there's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. But it turns out there's lots of people using that metaphor, including a beautiful writing by Bayo Akomolafe. And so this idea that we might think of systems as these solid, immovable things that you can only change them by using a sledgehammer or dynamite, but that's not true. They're changing and they're cracking and they're being cracked, and the everyday habit is to look for those and work with them.
[00:12:18 - 00:12:31] Claude Schryer
So I'm going to put you on the spot. And how do you think artists can use these tools or the book? I assume it applies to everyone, but what do you think artists can most benefit from something like this?
[00:12:31 - 00:14:04] Adam Kahane
I'm trained as a physicist and I've worked as a consultant, but I'm also an artist in the sense that I spend a lot of my time writing and I guess creative in some way. For me the question that applies to everybody, and I think artists as much or more than anybody, is the questions I asked at the beginning, what's happening and what's possible and how can I be part of that? What's. What's my responsibility? And that's the habit that I really hadn't thought about much before I wrote this book. Habit number one, acting responsibly. I was going to put it at the end, sort of as a interesting thing to think about at the end of the book, but my editor and my granddaughter that the artist who did the drawings in the book said to me, no, it's got to be at the beginning. This is the foundation of everything. It is at the beginning. It is habit number one. And I. I did my best, but even with what I've done, I think this question of acting responsibly is. Is less of a recipe than it is a riddle. So for all of us, artists included, what's. What's our role and what's going on and what's our responsibility? Not just what do we feel like doing, but what's needed of us in this time.
[00:14:05 - 00:14:25] Claude Schryer
Our 15 minutes are up, so to speak of fame. The book is full of. I always end with action points, but the book is an action point. So I don't know if there's anything you want to add to the seven action points or tools that you suggest people, you know, do that in a practical way.
[00:14:25 - 00:14:52] Adam Kahane
As you say, the book is intended to be practical and. But I would just say I'm inspired by your question about the role of arts and artists in this moment, in this conjuncture, and this idea of reaching out across boundaries. So you've certainly got my curiosity up for how I can be part of that artistic and cultural movement.
[00:14:53 - 00:14:54] Claude Schryer
Well, thank you.
[00:14:54 - 00:14:56] Adam Kahane
So that's an action point for me.
[00:14:57 - 00:14:59] Claude Schryer
And for others in their own way.