#OpenDialogue 19 Mar 2025. The Reluctant Collaborator: Finding Common Ground in Uncommon Times.
In a world where the scale of our challenges demands unprecedented cooperation, we face a profound paradox: forced partnerships rarely succeed, yet the pressure that diminishing resources put on needing to “collaborate or perish” continues to mount. The experience of our conversation guides in this dialogue reveal that forced partnerships rarely succeed and can even undermine the very trust they aim to build.
We are delighted to invite you to join us in dialolgue with Adam Kahane, Kirsten Dunlop and Fabian PfortmĂĽller
đź“… Date: March 19th, 2025
⏰ Time: 3.30 PM GMT (London) / 4.30 PM CET (Paris) / 5.30 PM SAST (Johannesburg) / 10.30 AM ET (New York) / 7.30 PST (San Francisco)
đź”— Register for the zoom link
The pressure to demonstrate “successful collaboration” – often measured through metrics and immediate outcomes – collides with a deeper truth: meaningful partnerships emerge organically, through friendship, trust, and the patient alignment of timing, capacity, and shared purpose. Fabian PfortmĂĽller’s 18-year perspective with Sandbox has shown that truly impactful collaborations often begin as friendships and require years to manifest. Yet Adam Kahane will tell you it is possible to ‘collaborate with the enemy’.
At least one of the roots of the problem is what Adam identifies as the dual nature / meaning of the word collaboration – it can mean working together toward shared goals, but it also carries the weight of perceived betrayal, especially when working with those we might consider “the other side.”
This dialogue will aim to explore the tension between necessity and reluctance, between institutional pressures for immediate partnership and the organic, time-intensive nature of building authentic collaboration. It will examine how we might move beyond metrics-driven partnerships to identify practical approaches to find what Kahane calls “the cracks in the system” – those opportunities where meaningful partnership can emerge even among unlikely allies and how different stakeholders might support common initiatives for different reasons, potentially creating stronger, more resilient collaborations than those built on forced consensus.
Key themes we’ll explore:
- What challenges do increasing polarisations and scarcity of resources present and how might we even think of ‘collaborating with the enemy’.
- How might we balance the urgent pressure to collaborate with the patience required for authentic partnerships?
- What role do friendship and trust play in creating lasting collaborative impact?
- How can funders and organizations create space for long-term relationship building while meeting immediate needs?
- What new models might help us measure and value “effectiveness” – the “slow work” of building collaborative capacity?
- How do we honour both existing organisational commitments and the potential for new partnerships?
This conversation isn’t about forcing artificial partnerships or achieving quick metrics. Instead, it’s an invitation to explore how we might create the conditions where meaningful collaboration can flourish over time. Join us to share your experiences and insights as we examine what it takes to challenge our assumptions about collaboration and take practical steps to building more effective partnerships.
Register for the Zoom link for this session here.
Conversation guides
Adam Kahane is a Director of Reos Partners, an international social impact organisation that helps people move forward together on their most important and intractable issues. Reos designs, facilitates, and guides processes that enable teams of stakeholders—even those who don’t understand or agree with or trust one another—to make progress on their toughest challenges. It partners with governments, corporations, and civil society organizations on challenges such as education, health, food, energy, environment, development, justice, security, and peace.
He is a leading organiser, designer and facilitator of processes through which business, government, and civil society leaders can work together to address such challenges. He has worked in more than fifty countries, in every part of the world, with executives and politicians, generals and guerrillas, civil servants and trade unionists, community activists and United Nations officials, clergy and artists.
Adam is the author of Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities, about which Nelson Mandela said: “This breakthrough book addresses the central challenge of our time: finding a way to work together to solve the problems we have created.” He is also the author of Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change, Transformative Scenario Planning: Working Together to Change the Future, Collaborating with the Enemy: How to Work with People You Don’t Agree with or Like or Trust, and Facilitating Breakthrough: How to Remove Obstacles, Bridge Differences, and Move Forward Together. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages.
Dr Kirsten Dunlop is Chief Executive Officer at Climate-KIC International Foundation, where she leads the organisation in developing and implementing innovation to catalyse profound systemic change. As a designer and leader of business model transformation, strategic innovation, and cultural and organisational remaking, she brings unique expertise and versatility to the climate action challenge. Her vision for Climate-KIC is to offer an innovation capability to regions, cities, communities and businesses in systems transformation to achieve rapid decarbonisation, equitable economies based on sufficiency and environmental regeneration, and a climate resilient society.
Kirsten’s career spans academia, consulting, banking, insurance, design, innovation, strategy and leadership. She worked in Italy and Australia for 16 years in financial services and consulting, leading the Generali Group Innovation Academy for Assicurazioni Generali with pioneering work in strategic risk management and strategic innovation, and creating a bespoke internal division focused on strategic innovation for the Suncorp Group in Australia, including a focus on climate change. In leadership roles in Second Road and KPMG, Kirsten worked with senior management, decision makers and directors to prepare their organisations and themselves for non-linear change, combining stewardship and innovation. She was engaged by UniCredit to design a new Management and Banking Academy and was for several years a leadership development consultant with Newton Management Innovation in Milan. Her publications include a case study in The Routledge Companion to Strategic Risk Management, Routledge 2016.
A specialist in experiential learning and a life-long exponent of cross-disciplinary thought and practice, Kirsten taught in universities in Australia and the United Kingdom for 10 years prior, while pursuing a Ph.D. in cultural history on the marriage of rhetoric and architecture in Italian medieval and Renaissance cities. She has BA Hons in Art History.
Kirsten is a member of the AIT Strategic Research Advisory Board, EJP Soil Advisory Board, EAT Foundation Advisory Board, High Level Missions Advisory Board for the Innovation Fund Denmark, UK Government EEIST Senior Oversight Group, Advisor to the Systemic Investing Initiative and is a Director of Responsible.us. She is one of 16 experts at the European Commission Economic and Societal Impact of Research and Innovation (ESIR) expert group, providing independent advice on how future EU research and innovation policy can best support sustainable development and the European Commission’s priorities.
Fabian Pfortmüller is an Amsterdam-based Swiss social entrepreneur & community weaver whose work falls at the intersection of community & purpose. He is the co-founder of the Together Institute, an organisation dedicated to helping purpose-driven communities, networks and ecosystems thrive. Fabian is co-author of the Community Weaving Framework and the Community Canvas, both open-source frameworks to support community weavers across the globe, and co-creator of the Wasan Network, a global network of social impact and philanthropy practitioners who believe that relationships sit at the center of social change.
Previously, Fabian was an Innovator in Residence for the Kauffman Foundation. Fabian also co-founded Sandbox, a global community of young change makers, with 1200 active members in 40+ hubs across the world. Together with Dave Radparvar and Mike Radparvar, Fabian co-founded Holstee, an organization providing tools for a meaningful life. The organization’s manifesto (The Holstee Manifesto) has been shared over 120 million times online and was described by the Washington Post as “the new just do it”.
