Collaborating with the Enemy Summary: Three Stretches

Key Ideas

1. Choose collaboration deliberately rather than using it as a slogan

Kahane’s discussion of alternatives matters because collaboration can be presented as the only respectable response to disagreement. Sometimes a person adapts to a situation, leaves it or uses available authority to change it. Joint work is a distinct choice with its own demands. Before convening a discussion, ask what participants can actually influence and why working together might help.

In the original shared-building case, one group may control the schedule outright. If it has already decided to extend all evening hours, inviting others to design the answer suggests more influence than they have. A more honest conversation would identify the decision and the implementation questions still open. If both groups can shape a limited trial, collaboration has a concrete object rather than serving as a pleasant description of compliance.

Write the reason for working together and the limits of the invitation. Identify what each party needs from the other and which choices remain available. Consider whether the proposed process gives relevant participants a meaningful role in the action, not just an opportunity to speak. This matters because a group cannot learn how to collaborate from a process that hides where authority sits. Choosing deliberately also helps define when to reconsider. If the process produces no information, ignores boundaries or cannot affect the outcome, the next task may be to change the arrangement rather than schedule another conversation under the same label.

2. Embrace conflict and connection at the same time

The first stretch resists two simplifications: treating conflict as proof that people cannot work together, and treating connection as proof that their differences should disappear. A useful conversation makes both visible. Participants can acknowledge their shared dependence while being specific about interests that remain in tension. That is more informative than insisting that everyone ultimately wants exactly the same thing.

For the shared building, event organizers want more evening access and nearby residents want predictable quiet. Both may value the building without agreeing on the acceptable schedule. A practical opening identifies those different needs and the resource they share. Ask what each group is trying to preserve and what effect the current arrangement has. Avoid converting the other side’s concern into an accusation that they oppose community life or disregard residents.

Prepare to hear a position you may continue to reject. Clarify it accurately before describing your own concern. Then look for a joint question that does not erase the disagreement: what schedule could be tested, and what effects would have to be observed? This matters because premature agreement can produce fragile commitments. If people conceal the conflict to preserve a friendly meeting, it often reappears during implementation. Holding conflict and connection together creates a more honest basis for action. The group can work on a limited question while recording that broader differences remain unresolved and still matter to the people involved.

3. Experiment and learn instead of demanding one certain prediction

The second stretch shifts a group from competing claims about the future toward an action that can produce information. An experiment is useful when it addresses a real uncertainty and participants understand its limits. It should not be a permanent decision disguised as a temporary trial. Define what can change after the learning, or the experiment language may simply conceal a commitment.

In the building case, the groups could test two early-evening events over a defined period. They would agree how attendance, cleanup effort and disturbance will be observed, who receives reports and when the schedule will be reviewed. A single uneventful session would not prove that every later event is harmless. Equally, one complaint should be examined for its circumstances rather than used automatically as proof that no event can work.

Choose a scale that makes learning possible without assuming the final answer. Record the different predictions before the trial and identify what result would change your own view. Ask who bears the work and inconvenience of the test. This matters because evidence gathering is also a shared action with consequences. Afterward, discuss what happened, how reliable the observations are and what remains unknown. The next proposal should follow that learning. A well-designed experiment can support continuation, revision or stopping. Its purpose is not to create a story in which the proposer was right all along regardless of the result.

4. Step into the game by examining your own contribution

The third stretch asks people to see themselves as participants in the situation rather than detached observers of other people’s failures. This does not mean accepting responsibility for everything or denying differences in authority. It means identifying conduct you can change instead of making every useful next step depend on the other side becoming reasonable first.

In the building dispute, organizers may complain that residents resist all events while sending notices too late for questions to affect planning. Residents may complain that organizers never listen while submitting concerns only after arrangements are final. Each side can examine its own contribution without declaring the concerns equivalent or deciding who is more at fault. Earlier notices and a usable response route are actions that can be changed and tested.

Before the next conversation, complete a plain account of what you do that makes the current pattern more likely. Choose an action within your control and state how you will change it. Avoid making the offer conditional on a matching confession from someone else. This matters because demands for reciprocal self-criticism can recreate the same struggle for control. Changing your participation supplies information about what becomes possible when the pattern shifts. It also makes your request more concrete: you are asking others to work with a changed action, not merely accept a better description of your intentions or agree that they caused the whole problem.

5. Close with a workable next action while keeping differences visible

Stretch collaboration does not require a declaration that everyone now shares a complete vision. A practical close identifies the action people will take together, what they still disagree about and how the learning will be reviewed. This is this guide’s application of the three stretches, not an additional named stretch. It helps prevent a temporary agreement from being interpreted as consent to a much broader plan.

After discussing the trial, the building groups can record the two events, their hours, the responsible contacts and the review date. They can also note that one group still prefers more frequent access while the other remains concerned about later evenings. Keeping that difference visible protects the meaning of the limited agreement. Neither side needs to claim that the trial settled the building’s entire future.

Ask each participant to describe their commitment in their own words. Check for different interpretations of an important condition, such as what happens if an event runs late. Decide where observations and concerns will go during the trial. This matters because collaboration can fail between meetings through unclear implementation rather than a lack of goodwill. A short, accurate record gives people something to act on and question. At the review, return to both the evidence and the unresolved interests. The next action may expand, narrow or replace the trial. Continuing collaboration means remaining able to learn and choose together, not preserving the initial plan regardless of what happens.