Can Stories Build Peace? With Adam Kahane

Oct 16, 2025

In this insightful discussion, Adam Kahane, a renowned facilitator and peace expert, shares transformative experiences from his work on the Mont Fleur scenarios in South Africa. He explores how powerful stories and metaphors can shape futures and build trust in polarized settings. Adam discusses the distinction between normative and analytical scenario planning and reflects on both successful and challenging processes. He emphasizes the importance of collective engagement and finding 'cracks' in systems to enable positive change, leaving listeners inspired by the potential for hope.

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ANECDOTE

Career Pivot From Shell To Mont Fleur

Adam Kahane left Shell after facilitating a scenario project in South Africa and never returned to London.
That Mont Fleur experience launched his career in facilitation and peace-building across divided societies.

INSIGHT

Stories Make Scenarios Memorable

Scenarios stick because stories and metaphors are easier to remember than technical reports.
Memorable scenario names like "flight of the flamingos" shape what people see and choose to act on.

ADVICE

Design The Space To Focus Attention

Try to design the setting to focus attention on the task, not on adversaries; use remote modest venues and table layouts that centre the work.
This social-island effect reduces distraction and helps build trust through shared activity.

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Alex Evans welcomes Adam Kahane - renowned facilitator, author, and expert in scenario planning and system transformation. Adam shares insights from his experience of scenario planning as part of peace processes in South Africa and Colombia, discusses the power of stories in shaping the future, and helps us discover practical habits which can create positive change in complex systems.

Key moments:

- Adam’s journey from Shell’s scenario team to global peace-building and system change
- The Mont Fleur scenarios: bringing together divided groups in South Africa to imagine possible futures
- The power of stories and metaphors in scenario planning
- Building trust in polarised environments
- The difference between normative (vision-driven) and analytical (possibility driven) scenario planning
- Lessons from both successful and disappointing scenario processes
- What makes system transformation possible: shared concerns, openness, and diversity of perspectives
- Everyday habits for transforming systems, including the metaphor of “finding cracks” in systems to enable change
- Adam’s perspective on hope and the importance of collective, persistent engagement

People:

Adam Kahane is a leading organiser, designer and facilitator, celebrated for facilitating the Mont Fleur scenarios in South Africa as the country was exiting its apartheid era. He has worked in more than fifty countries, in every part of the world, with executives and politicians, generals and guerrillas, community activists and United Nations officials and many more.

He is the author of several influential books, including “How to Work with People You Don’t Agree with or Like or Trust” and his latest, “Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems.”

Alex Evans is the founder and Executive Director of Larger Us. He’s also a Visiting Professor in Practice at Newcastle University’s School of Arts and Cultures, a Senior Fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation, and the author of The Myth Gap: What Happens When Evidence and Arguments Aren’t Enough? (Penguin, 2017).

Alex is a former Campaign Director at Avaaz, where he ran campaigns on areas including Brexit and human rights. He’s also been a political adviser, including for two UK Secretaries of State for International Development and in the UN Secretary-General’s office, and as a consultant for organisations from Oxfam to the US National Intelligence Council.

Resources & Links:

Adam’s books, including “Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems”, can be found here.

More information about the Mont Fleur Scenarios can be found here.

Our music is "Cleanse the Corruption" by Fogheart, used with permission.

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