Everyday Habits for Radical System Transformation with Adam Kahane S9E6 (126)
What if peaceful system transformation isn’t led from the top, but from within — through the everyday choices of those embedded in the system?
In a world craving certainty, how might we learn to embrace dissonance and cracks as the starting points of meaningful change?
📘 Episode Summary
In this episode of The Learning Future Podcast, Louka Parry speaks with renowned systems thinker and facilitator Adam Kahane, author of Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems. Drawing on more than 30 years of global experience—including his involvement in South Africa’s democratic transition—Adam explores how radical engagement and individual agency contribute to peaceful system transformation.
Together, Louka and Adam unpack the hidden grammars of schooling, the pitfalls of top-down reform, and the power of everyday habits to drive sustainable change. From Leonard Cohen to the Bhagavad Gita, this conversation is a deep and practical exploration of how we might lead with love and power in a time of profound flux.
About Adam Kahane
Adam Kahane has more than 30 years of experience in more than 50 countries working with thousands of leaders to transform social systems at all scales (organization, city, country, globe). His work has addressed many of the most important challenges of our time, including racial oppression, violent conflict among warring groups in countries, insecurity and inequity, drug problems, social unrest, unsustainable food systems, and climate change.
Kahane is a bestselling author whose five previous books each have sold between 20,000 and 100,000 copies: Solving Tough Problems, Power and Love, Transformative Scenario Planning, Collaborating with the Enemy, and Facilitating Breakthrough. He is the director of Reos Partners, an international social enterprise that helps people move forward together on their most important and intractable issues.
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Tune in to be inspired, challenged, and reminded why love truly is at the heart of learning.
[Transcript Auto-generated]
Louka Parry (00:08)
Hello friends and welcome back to the learning future podcast. I'm your host Luca Parry. And today I'm speaking with a quite a fascinating individual actually, someone who's worked for more than 30 years across 50 countries in order to transform social systems at all scales. Adam Kahane has addressed many of the world's most important challenges of our time.
including racial oppression, violent conflict among warring groups in countries, insecurity and inequity, drug problems, social unrest, unsustainable food systems, and even climate change. And so for our work in schools, of course, being the complex adaptive systems that they are, I think Adam will bring a really interesting perspective. He has written five books so far, and his latest one is Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems.
And I'm really interested in what you've got to say about this, this whole concept of change when we notice and look around us, Adam, and we are in a world in flux might be one way to put it. So thank you so much for joining the learning future podcast today.
Adam Kahane (01:04)
My pleasure. And yes, we are in flux and I think that's a gift in certain ways. And just because each one has taken so much work, I have to say this is my sixth book.
Louka Parry (01:15)
Fantastic. And I'm, you know, the previous ones as well, like solving tough problems, power and love, transformative scenario planning, collaborating with the enemy, facilitating breakthrough. A lot of these themes are ones that we cover here on the podcast to Adam and through our work at the Learning Future with schools and in systems. Cause of course, you know, changes the default in some ways.
of course, but it's something that we also resist as human beings, as there is, you know, volatility and uncertainty around us. One question that I always start our podcast with is just a really basic one, a human one. It's what's something that you are learning right now, Adam, as someone I imagine who is a prolific learner across many decades.
Adam Kahane (01:57)
Well, thank you. Somebody said to me years ago, something that stuck in my mind, which is it's not that people don't like change or resist change, they resist being changed. So I think that's an important distinction. It's the sense that somebody's doing something to you that you don't have control or agency. Yeah, so I think that's
Adam Kahane (02:18)
distinction. And yes, I'm a prolific learner. I guess the less polite way of saying is I'm a prolific failure. So ⁓ I try a lot of things out and a lot of them don't work. But the saving grace or the way I make a silk purse out of a sow's ear is I'm always asking, huh, that was different than I thought it would be. So what was I missing? What's going on here?
Louka Parry (02:24)
Interesting.
Adam Kahane (02:40)
And so almost all of my books start somewhere on page one. says, I used to think that, but then this happened. And then I realized that wasn't true. so yes, I guess the, the one of the learnings, which comes, exactly to the word you used about flux is I've been working on system transformation for over 30 years, but it's easy even for me.
Louka Parry (02:40)
Mmm.
I that.
Adam Kahane (03:02)
to imagine that systems are resilient, they're solid, they're smooth, they're stable. I that's what a system is, is something that keeps doing what it's doing. So when people talk about transforming systems, meaning changing them fundamentally, it always sounds like something incredibly difficult and slow and...
And I think one of the gifts of the current era we're in these last months and years is the idea that things are just the way they are and they'll never change is obviously not true. Lots of things are being changed, being transformed, whether it's trading systems or climate systems or communication systems or
Louka Parry (03:36)
Mm.
Adam Kahane (03:45)
computer systems or transport systems or energy systems, university systems, ⁓ just to pick the ones that come to mind immediately. And so that's helpful. Things can be changed, they are being changed. Now, one of the things is a lot of that, or some of that change, maybe a lot of that change is being imposed or forced with bullying.
Louka Parry (03:50)
Mmm.
Adam Kahane (04:08)
You could say even bombing in some cases, figuratively or literally. So the question I'm interested in is, what's a nonviolent way of transforming systems?
Louka Parry (04:11)
Absolutely.
Mmm.
Hmm. There's a lot in that Adam. I note that what is the system, you know, and one of the things I learned from a mentor of mine a while ago is that it's quite, it's quite a lot. It's like a reminder of our agency, you know, we are the people we've been waiting for Adam. And this idea that in some ways, especially in a human system, when we often feel that change is happening outside ourselves, often we are.
A system is, you know, how would you, I'm curious how you define a system and then think about the role of a leader or an individual. know you've done a lot of this work in mindset or approaching that system. Cause I think, especially with the way that you've considered your own life and your own work, you know, I would say you have an underlying mindset that's exploratory that, you know, it's remembered agency. You are an agent of change. And so.
Louka Parry (05:09)
I think we look around the world, see leadership and its development. I think that's a really interesting aspect to speak to. So what would you say about that?
Adam Kahane (05:16)
Let's come back to the question of agency, because I think in a way that's the bottom line, or certainly the main point about this book. I like writing, and I can get into how I about this book and how I got started on it. one of the things I wanted to do, which I've been wanting to do for long time is try to answer this question, you know, what's the system thing?
Adam Kahane (05:37)
because I and many people use the term loosely. So I went back to one of the great early popular authors, Danela Meadows. ⁓ I guess it's relevant that one of Danela's students was Peter Senge. And Peter Senge has done a lot of work on systems thinking in schools, at least in North America, maybe in Australia as well. And
Louka Parry (05:47)
I guess.
Yes, We know his work.
Adam Kahane (06:00)
Danella defines a system as a collection of elements that are structured or related in a certain way to produce a characteristic set of behaviors, which is sometimes called the purpose or function. one of the most, there's a couple of things that follow from that immediately. One is that a system produces certain
Adam Kahane (06:24)
characteristic set of behaviors that may or may not be what it's labeled as producing. So I'm curious what you think. K to 12 school systems, what are the behaviors they produced? I mean, I suppose it's probably a little more complicated than educated, socialized kids. ⁓ So I'm interested in that. Secondly, that
Adam Kahane (06:44)
You don't change a system just by changing one of the elements. So you just change the principal or change the teacher or change the student and the system will change. Now, usually there's things about how it's structured and the relationships and the rules and the norms, the mental models. This is what Peter has done so much work on for so many decades.
Louka Parry (07:02)
Mm.
Adam Kahane (07:05)
So yeah, that's how I understand a system. And if you want a system to produce different characteristic behaviors, different results, achieve a different purpose, then you have to transform it fundamentally, not just tweak it a little bit. So this question of what's the characteristic set of behaviors that the school is producing, I mean, what comes to your mind about that?
Louka Parry (07:07)
Well, it's fascinating. I'll come to leadership in a moment because I'm really curious about your views on that. I would say in our work across schools, we have a very clearly expressed purpose in Australia, actually. It's called the Alice Springs Declaration or the Mombatwe Declaration. And it's about excellence and equity and then creative citizenship, Creative and connected citizens.
Adam Kahane (07:35)
Yeah.
Louka Parry (07:52)
But of course, that's expressed purpose at a national level. Now what actually happens? And in education, we talk about this as the hidden grammar of schooling, Adam, which is a fascinating way to think about it. even though we're saying this, the hidden grammar is this implicit set of rules that actually is how you succeed, quote unquote, within the kind of system. And so you end up producing behaviors, especially with some of our legacy mental models that still exist that we've inherited in education, ones around competition and ranking.
Adam Kahane (07:54)
Hmm.
Mm. Mm. Mm.
Right.
Louka Parry (08:20)
for example. So you effectively can create winners and losers within the or I'd say the traditional system, which in my view is being and must be accelerated or replaced with the language of learning, as some theorists would call it, which is much better. It's an explicit understanding of the individuation process and everyone's unique, uniqueness to create value. And so you move from ranking to matching and that's good for the economy. It's also good for communities.
Adam Kahane (08:20)
Mm.
Louka Parry (08:44)
And you move from the idea of like a narrow set of what success is to an broadened understanding of human development and human contribution. And so that's kind of the theme that I see shifting now. Academic achievement still is one of the express purposes, which is great. But unfortunately, it often just is weighted such that the other express purposes are just not honoured in the same type of way.
Adam Kahane (09:06)
Mm. Mm.
Louka Parry (09:09)
Academic results, yes, but also social connection and emotional intelligence or well-being, employability, enterprise. So that's my quick response to your point, your prompt. I'm curious about the role of a leader, because if a system is, and the distinction between reform and transformation, I think would be an interesting one for you to pick up as well. What is this?
Adam Kahane (09:12)
Mm-hmm.
Louka Parry (09:32)
What have you learned about helping leaders to transform complex systems instead of just tweak them or improve them?
Adam Kahane (09:38)
Yeah.
Well, let me say that I think the dominant model of how systems get transformed is forcing. We transform things from the top down by using our authority, the principal, the school superintendent, the minister of education, the head teacher, whatever.
the board, the systems get transformed by people at the top saying this is how it's going to be and getting others to come along. And I'm not saying that can never work or that it's always wrong, but that's not what I'm interested in. I'm interested in a transformation
Louka Parry (10:08)
Hmm.
Adam Kahane (10:18)
which occurs through the agency of the people involved in the system, through collaboration among multiple leaders at different levels, working out how to affect the transformation. And I'm interested in that because
it's more peaceful and in my experience, more successful and more sustainable. It's successful for longer. Whereas often when somebody at the top says, is just going to be the way, this is just going to be what's going to happen, whether you like it or not, that lasts for a while until the people who don't like it push back. And, you know, we can see
Adam Kahane (11:03)
extreme examples of that in oppression or superiority of one group over another or one class over another. And we see more measured versions of that in organizations and schools. But I think that's the dominant model. And if anything, that model of transformation through authority is gaining ground.
Adam Kahane (11:25)
these days, at least in a lot of parts of the world, a lot of spheres of the world. So I've devoted my whole working life, my vocation to how can people who care about what's happening in a system across different positions and levels and powers and interests, how can they work together to peacefully and collaboratively transform that system?
Louka Parry (11:25)
Interesting.
I'm thinking about the conversations I've had and continue to have around command and control systems, you know, including educational ones versus distributed or liberatory system design. And, know, the difference between I inform you of the change versus I consult you versus I involve you versus to I co-design with you, you know, and that, you know, the kind of, it's a
spectrum of public participation. ⁓ So I'm interested as well in this idea of the everyday habits, you know, because we've seen a lot of these great books come out, Atomic Habits, know, The Power of Habit. And I'm interested in what you've kind of discerned from this work in terms of the seven key habits that you put forth in the book. If you've got to start with one, what do you recommend? And
Adam Kahane (12:12)
Yeah. Yeah.
Louka Parry (12:33)
this idea of a 1 % change every day, how would you put...
Adam Kahane (12:36)
Yeah.
Well, let me say how I got to this because that'll explain a little bit. Peaceful system transformation is, by definition, a collective, not an individual activity. And most books about transforming systems are about strategies for doing that collective work.
Louka Parry (12:39)
Hmm.
Adam Kahane (12:54)
Obviously that's important, but it still begs the question, okay, I get that it's collective, but those collectives are made up of individuals. What do those individuals have to do? Not once every four years when they vote or once every year when they go to a strategy workshop or even once a week in a staff meeting. What do they need to do on an everyday basis?
you know, in English every day, both as the connotation of day after day, but also an ordinary thing. So that was the question that I wanted to answer. And I came to it because I got started in this work 35 years ago in South Africa. During the period between 91 and 94, when the transition from apartheid to democracy was happening, I was involved. I'm a Canadian, I was living in London, but
I got involved in a project that brought together leaders, black and white, left and right, men and women, opposition and establishment, politicians, business people, trade unions, community leaders, academics. And I saw that it was possible for even such a diverse group who had literally been in combat with each other, there's literally a liberation movement.
Louka Parry (13:54)
Mmm.
Adam Kahane (14:10)
It was literally an armed struggle. mean, all of those things are not just metaphorical. So I was, that was very inspiring for me and I ended up continuing that work. And that's what I'm doing the last 35 years. And that's what Rios Partners has done all over the world, including in Australia. But I learned,
I did an interview with one of the people involved in that project. I did the interview a few years ago, this was 30 years after we'd met, and I asked him, his name's Trevor Manuel, an important political activist who had a huge role during that transition. And when I interviewed him and asked him, what did you actually do? His answer was so, his thinking or his understanding of what he had actually done.
was so different from my way of thinking about system transformation that the interview was a complete fiasco. I kept interrupting him and saying, you know, don't you mean this? And don't you think this? And it was a complete disaster. As soon as it ended, I got messages from my colleagues, my wife saying, you're a terrible interviewer. Don't quit your day job. And that was the, but I saw I was embarrassed, of course, but also confused. What is it that he, that Trevor was seeing as a
Louka Parry (15:07)
Hahaha
Ciao.
Adam Kahane (15:15)
as a protagonist on the front lines day to day that I wasn't getting as a facilitator, consultant, foreigner. And so that's what motivated me to do this investigation. My other five books are mostly about stuff I've learned as I went along, but this book was about something I didn't understand. So it's mostly based on interviews of others. And so it's not inventing seven.
Louka Parry (15:17)
Mmm.
Mm.
Adam Kahane (15:39)
everyday habits for transforming systems is discovering and articulating. What does it take day to day to peacefully contribute to transforming systems, whether it's a family system, a school system, an organizational system, national system, whatever.
Louka Parry (15:53)
I'm fascinated by this, by this, the kind of surprise that you experienced in having the conversation with one of those, one of your friends, frankly, from that time. Tell us a little bit more about that. And then what, what key habit or principle did that, what emerged from, from the conversation with Trevor? Cause I'm, I still want to know like, you know, when we come to these moments where you go, that didn't go at all the way I expected it to. It's a beautiful moment.
of kind of dissonance from which we can actually break through our own mental model and see the world from a different perspective. So tell us a bit more about that Adam and then yeah, what was he doing? What was his view that was different from yours at that point in time?
Adam Kahane (16:30)
Well, let me, you asked two things. That experience could be, can be described by one of the habits. So one of the habits, and then I'll come back to what he was doing. So one of the habits, habit number three is looking for what's unseen.
and Habit 4 is working with cracks. So I think that interview...
Louka Parry (16:47)
⁓ Nice.
Adam Kahane (16:49)
So some of these habits I had not thought about before the interviews that led to this book and some of them I have been working with for a long time and at least recognize them even if I don't always do them. I could see from the conversation with Trevor that I was just missing something. It was obvious that and so my
Louka Parry (17:10)
Mm.
Adam Kahane (17:17)
My reaction, I was embarrassed, of course, and I was chagrined that I had had this, because it was a live interview, I had this public embarrassment. And I was a little silly for having missed it. But at the same time, I thought, wait a second here, there's something really important. I didn't say, well, Trevor's obviously an idiot. Let me interview somebody who understands things better than him. That didn't occur to me. I thought, what?
Louka Parry (17:37)
Ha
That's good
Adam Kahane (17:44)
What did I miss here? And another way to say it in terms of habit number four, working with cracks, there was obviously my understanding in this case of system transformation, cracked, it broke down. And I could have done one of two things. I could have said, well, I guess I just had a bad day. I'm sure everything's okay. I'm sure my understanding's fine. It's just that interview didn't go so well.
Louka Parry (17:45)
Mmm.
Adam Kahane (18:07)
But I didn't. In other words, I could shy away from the crack or ignore it or paper it over and say, well, you know, he was just in a funny mood. But I didn't. I moved towards it. I said, wait a second, what's happening here? I think. I think my understanding is has the potential to shift. Let me really pay attention. OK, so that's about noticing dissonance. And I was fascinated to learn that.
one of the greatest scientists of all time, Charles Darwin, used to carry around a notebook. And what he wrote in the notebook was things that did not fit his theory.
Louka Parry (18:40)
Mmm.
Adam Kahane (18:41)
And I found in the book, I found the time when he, in one of his notes, where he explains exactly that. Somebody told me that and then I found that that's exactly correct. I think what's the case is sometimes he would find something didn't fit and he wouldn't understand what it meant for years. And he'd go back, oh yeah, that thing I saw 10 years ago.
Louka Parry (18:42)
Absolutely.
Bye.
Mmm.
Adam Kahane (19:06)
Okay,
now I get it. It was explaining this thing that I understand. I have to change my theory. paying attention to discontent, but that's important because most people do the opposite. say, no, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I, when I give talks, I have to say to people, don't pay attention to what fits. That's not interesting or certain. It's not learning phone. It's not very energetic. Cause, but tell me what's confusing or doesn't sound right or
Louka Parry (19:11)
That's so good. That's so good. Yeah. 100%. Oh, that resonates with my worldview. I might write that. That sounds great, Adam. Thanks very much. I'll take some of that. Very interesting.
Yes.
Adam Kahane (19:34)
surprises you in what's going on here. So that's my learning about the process of what happened. But the substance of what happened is when I go back now to this interview, I realized that Trevor gave me the bottom line of the whole book in that interview. And I'll just read you one
Adam Kahane (19:57)
thing he said, I think now this is the essence of the book. He said at a certain point in the interview, he said, in the morning, we would be with a group of business leaders in an affluent area. And in the afternoon at a university campus with some radical students, and in the evening in a poor community, then at night, we'd work with groupings in the African National Congress, his political party, Mandela's party. So the bottom line of the book that goes underneath
the seven habits is it's a particular approach or stance, which I call radical engagement. This idea of engaging with others, arguing, talking, meeting, working, engaging with others, not superficially, but radically, radically, not in the sense of extreme, but in the sense of the original meaning of the word, which is root, fundamental, essential, intrinsic.
Adam Kahane (20:47)
So fast forward, the main, the underlying idea of the book or the big idea of the book is that if you want to contribute a system of transformation and you want to do so peacefully, rather than just forcing everybody do what you want them to do, including by bullying and bombing, then what's required is to engage radically.
And the seven habits, including the two I mentioned and the other five, are all just actions to manifest that stance or approach or way of being, which I call radical engagement.
Louka Parry (21:16)
I love that. It feels without falling into the trap of putting a circle around the thing that resonates most Adam. The resonant piece there around radical engagement also applies to subject, to knowledge and the kind of subjectification through a learning process instead of the objectification of course, right, of the other.
Louka Parry (21:38)
as a human or of even content. It's to see this knowledge, and this is the core of our work in schools, of course, is to think how do we enable our young people to engage radically with what they're learning and what it means for them.
Adam Kahane (21:45)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Louka Parry (21:53)
So that's kind of across not just the social or the human network, but even just the intellectual network. And something that I reflect on often is in some ways all learning is an understanding of relationship. And so between people, ideas, between constructs and concepts, between timelines, perspectives, I find it very compelling, this idea of, and you see a great educator and they are engaging, to use your terminology, engaging radically with their students.
Adam Kahane (21:59)
Mmm.
Mm.
Louka Parry (22:17)
in a way where the learning isn't being done to them, but it's kind of an emergent phenomenon. Again, to separate the systems talk, know, it's emergence itself rather than a predetermined destination that we reach through a set of linear actions. I'm very, I find that really, really interesting. I'd love to ask you two final questions, Adam. One is this piece on leadership, you know, because...
Adam Kahane (22:21)
mmm
Louka Parry (22:40)
Change is led by individuals when they come together. As Margaret Mead would say, know, ⁓ committed citizens can change the world. And so what is it about the act of leadership that you've noticed across your work with people that can lead in some ways peaceful system transformation rather than kind of an authoritarian view? What characteristics, what...
Adam Kahane (22:45)
Hmm.
Louka Parry (23:04)
what aspects might they have? Cause I would say people listening to this podcast are very likely to be those kinds of people that are very interested in what it takes to transform a learning system in their case.
Adam Kahane (23:15)
Well,
Let me give two opposite answers because I think this is a subject where it's easy to go too far down one path. Or one answer with a complication. The answer I would give is peaceful leadership is facilitative leadership.
call it servant leadership. what I mean is leadership that engages and encourages and works with the agency of multiple people rather than in your words, these people are just objects and I tell them to dance right and they dance right. So and at the same time,
So the complication of the qualification is that doesn't mean that we just.
sit around in a circle until everybody is happy. That it's a dance of
it's a dance of collaborating and forcing a dance of what's good for the whole, what's good for the parts in the language. I use a dance of love the drive to unite and power the drive for self-realization. It's not just one thing. And so the miss, I think the mistake people make is to, to
Louka Parry (24:09)
Mmm.
Beautiful.
Adam Kahane (24:25)
Yeah, to focus only on horizontality and I'm never going to tell anybody what to do and I'm never going to push anybody to do anything that they're not completely happy with. So that's a pretty big complication. And the way I describe it in my previous book, Facilitating Breakthrough, is that the facilitative leadership requires working both with vertically and horizontally, just like breathing in and breathing out.
Louka Parry (24:48)
Hmm
Adam Kahane (24:49)
⁓
You know, people do in leadership meetings have a bunch of people who are in favor of horizontal and most people in favor of vertical. But you never have people, the people in favor of breathing in on the people in favor of breathing out. It's a polarity. have to do both on necessarily the same time. You have to cycle between them. And that's my understanding of what it takes to lead collaboration. And another way to say that just one more sentence about it is it's
It's about paying attention to what's good for the group as a whole and what's good for each member of the group. It's a constant interplay of those. It's constant polarity between those two drives.
Louka Parry (25:26)
That's a great answer, Adam. I'm just thinking about my own leadership journey. Having led a school and some interesting work now with our organisation. It's really beautifully put. High agency, the power, but high responsiveness, the love. I really like the reflection on those two as well. Okay, well, penultimate question.
Adam Kahane (25:41)
Yeah.
Louka Parry (25:47)
It can be a long game, Adam, I think, fair to say, even if we were to look at in some ways the social movements that have worked and then this kind of the tide that comes forward and then back, it sometimes must be frustrating to see that. And so my question too is really, I guess, around resilience or long-term, how to keep the fire burning long and warm.
and not flash in a pan in some ways. Especially for leaders that are, and often, as to your point on vocation, many of us in education really, when you have young people in front of you, you really do go above and beyond because you know what's at stake. And so what's some strategies or pieces you've seen to keep continuing even though there is resistance and there are setbacks?
Adam Kahane (26:23)
Yeah.
Well, I'm not that old, but I'm old enough to have seen things go up and down a few times. I one of the great learnings about being in South Africa after the year for the last 30 years is I've seen some things work and some things not work, some things advance, some things regress. I mentioned it because Australians know something about South Africa.
Adam Kahane (26:56)
And it's easy to be romantic about, you know, we've made a transformation and now it's all done. So I think I understand that's not the case in nothing, not South Africa, not Canada, anything. um, and again, I'd be a little careful with the word resistance. It's like, it's like saying people don't like change. Now people read this one, I think they're being screwed. Uh, so, uh, you know, people,
Louka Parry (27:01)
Yeah.
Mmm.
Yeah, nice.
Adam Kahane (27:21)
fight against change when they think that they're being changed and that it's not to their benefit. I think it's, I write that asking people to think of the good of the whole is almost always an unreasonable and manipulative request because it means pay attention to the whole that matters to me. And there's different holes that matter to different people. Anyhow, so that's another version of the power and love and justice thing.
Louka Parry (27:26)
Mm.
Adam Kahane (27:46)
So the seventh habit seven out of seven is persevering and resting. And it's exactly on this issue. And as I said, the book is based on a series of interviews, and there's one primary interview for each chapter. And the primary interview for chapter seven is with a man named Philip Atiba Solomon, who was the head of the African American Studies Department at Yale and the CEO of a media company and
the director of an NGO that works on police violence in the United States, particularly violence against black and brown people. So he knows that this is not a one and done job, that you have a great project or you give a great speech or you make a reform and then it's done. On the contrary, it's, I mean, I'm not an expert in the field, but I think it goes, know, there's progress, there's redress.
In fact, he says at one time, at one point in the interview, he says, you know, things really only move forward in a crisis, you know, where there's been brutality and there's a riot or protests or whatever. that a lot of his work, he's talked about getting ready. So you're ready when there's a crisis. ⁓ But what the crucial thing he says there.
Louka Parry (28:39)
Hmm.
interesting.
Adam Kahane (28:53)
He says, I know the people who've done this before me. I know the work is not like you've in my lifetime. I hope that other people can pick it up and it will continue and that we'll make progress over a very long time. And he said, I know the people who went before me in this work, previous generations, and I saw them burn themselves out and have heart attacks and divorces and whatever, and I'm not gonna do that. So that's where the idea.
Louka Parry (29:11)
Hmmmm
Adam Kahane (29:19)
that you need to persevere because this is not a quick job, almost never. Just in parentheses, people who don't know much about South Africa said, well, Mandela was let out of prison in 1991, first democratic elections in 1994, pretty quick, all done. People forget the African National Congress was founded in 1912. Just to take an example, mean, it's a lot of people doing a lot of different things over a long period of time. And that's what
Louka Parry (29:24)
Mm.
Adam Kahane (29:44)
Philip is saying about the system he works in, therefore it's not sprinting isn't going to do it, and nor is keeping going till you burn yourself out. And there's a lot of that. I don't know about the world of teachers, but the world of activists, whether it's policing activists or climate activists, where it's so urgent and so important that people burn themselves out. And he's arguing, or the way I articulated it is you need
both to persevere and to rest. And when I phoned him to ask for the interview, didn't answer me for a year because he was on a paternity leave. And I took that as walking his talk. You know, he was happy to do the interview, but he had something else he needed to attend to first.
Louka Parry (30:16)
Mmm. It's great.
It's, without getting too spiritual, it's, it's, there's this one passage in the Tao De Jing, which I think is really instructive and it's, know, do your work and then step back. The only path to serenity. And I think about that a lot when in our work with leaders, you know, is to, to care more, but be less bothered as I've heard Ken Wilber say, which is such a powerful, powerful way to think about.
Adam Kahane (30:30)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Louka Parry (30:47)
the driving force, your life force for existence, contribution, impact, be in education or any other space to care more, but be less bothered to not hold that allostatic load as you try to rest. otherwise allostatic, just a buildup of stress on the physiology of a human, you know, and so that releasing of that.
Adam Kahane (30:58)
Yeah.
Hello, static.
Right. Yeah. So I have a feeling that idea
is in a lot of spiritual traditions because I've done a lot of work in India and one of my mentors there is a man named Arun Mayra and Arun has given me the same advice five or six times. I'm a little slow on a little, slow, but I was asked one of the most recent times he gave me the same advice he gave me before is I was asking about impact and how do I know I have the impact? said, you know, Adam,
Adam Kahane (31:32)
That's a pretty egotistical approach that you want to know that what you're doing is important. He said, Adam, I reminded you many times or he didn't say that way, but he had reminded me many times of the final sentence in the second chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, which says almost exactly the same thing. The work is yours, but not the fruits thereof. Do your work, do what needs to be done, but don't don't
Adam Kahane (31:57)
assume or become attached or fixed on what the result is going to be. And he has said this to me five times over the past 15 years. And I really, I would count on one hand the number of things like that that I often have in my mind. And I'm, it's very helpful because I'm very clear on what I need to do. I don't, I never really doubted that what I was doing was useful, but whether it'll be successful.
or in my lifetime, or whether it'll be swept away by something else, ⁓ that I don't get too exercised about.
Louka Parry (32:27)
Mmm.
Mmm, that's beautiful, Adam. A really human way to kind of...
conclude our chat today. My last question to you is a take home message for people that have invested their time and attention to listen to this conversation between us today. What would you like them to leave? What would you like to leave them with?
Adam Kahane (32:50)
Well, I'm from Montreal. So in every podcast, I must quote Leonard Cohen at least once, if not twice. And I realize the best way to summarize what this book is really saying, this is not in the book, but just what I realized from talking about the last few months is a famous. Cohen.
Adam Kahane (33:08)
poem, it's the verse of the song Anthem, where he says, ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering. There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. And I was focused a lot on the final two sentences of that because I write in the book about cracks. And that's how you change things. You look for the cracks, you move towards them rather than away from them. That's how you make progress. That's how you let the light in. But I realized that the first two sentences are
Adam Kahane (33:35)
just as important, if not more important, that we all have bells we can ring. They may not be obvious, you may have to hunt for them, but every single one of us has bells that we can ring. And one of the requirements is to forget your perfect offering. Forget the idea that the group has to be perfect or the plan has to be perfect or the idea has to be perfect or the moment has to be perfect or that you have to be perfect. Forget it.
Adam Kahane (34:01)
It's not going to happen. just, you know, take a step and see where you get to. That's what I'd like to leave people with.
Louka Parry (34:08)
Adam, thank you so much for the work you do for discussing your insights from Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems and for joining us all the way from Montreal, Canada on the Learning Future podcast today. Thank you.
Adam Kahane (34:20)
My pleasure.
