Adam Kahane has spent most of his working life in helping to transform systems. In his latest book he distills seven habits that help doing the work. The book is based on Kahane’s personal experiences with processes in South Africa after apartheid, peace process in Colombia, efforts to combat climate change, educational reforms in Mexico, health equity in the US, Indigenous self-determination in Canada, child nutrition in India, and more.
Kahane writes that a system tends to keep doing what it’s doing; that’s what it’s for. It can be transformed so that it does something different if and only if enough people want to transform it, have the power to transform it, understand how to do so, and are willing and able to act on that understanding. Real systemic change is generative: it emerges from many small actions taken by many people, not from one team’s big move. Top-down change doesn’t work in his view: they produce more fragmentation, oppression, and inequity – and therefore usually don’t last.
The seven habits are:
Habit 1: Acting Responsibly. Responsibility is less a recipe than a riddle. There is no simple correct choice. Kahane frames it as both moral undertaking and moral burden—you feel the weight of what you do and the guilt of what you don’t. But you also have agency. The work is to understand and acknowledge your role in the system: not just doing what is expected, nor just whatever you like. This requires humility and openness. Strive for progress rather than perfection.
Habit 2: Relating in Three Dimensions. See others as fellow actors playing interdependent roles in the system. See them as parties with their own interests—this is where power brokers and deal makers live. And see them as entangled kin, the focus of peacemakers and community builders. Work with all three at once. It is never straightforward; it always involves constraint, conflict, compromise. To transform a system, you must also work with three dimensions of the system itself: its function and characteristic behaviors, its elements or parts, and the structure of interconnections among those parts. Change only the elements, and the system reasserts itself.
Habit 3: Looking for What’s Unseen. See more than you always see, and you make better decisions. Engage with people positioned elsewhere in the system; they see from different places. Kahane quotes James Baldwin: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” Center the voices the system excludes, marginalizes, or oppresses—intentionally or not. Deepen your relationships, and you increase your understanding of what is happening and your capacity to do something about it. Be with the other in their world.
Habit 4: Working with Cracks. Systems look solid but aren’t. Cracks are where things shift and new possibilities emerge. Don’t ignore them or shy away. Read them, wait for the right moment and act..
Habit 5: Experimenting a Way Forward. Don’t do only what is familiar or safe. Try things you are not sure will work. Pay careful attention to the results. Adjust. Progress matters more than perfection. Advance one step at a time.
Habit 6: Collaborating with Unlike Others. Work not just with people like you and people you like. Make differences productive. Be aware of your power. Corruption begins not in power but in ignorance about it. Everyone who wants to contribute to systems transformation must find ways to build and employ power.
Habit 7: Persevering and Resting. Don’t sprint for a short while. Don’t push until you burn out. The basic practice is to remain rested, stable, and healthy. Stretch beyond your cocooned comfort zone into the less comfortable but more effective zone of radical engagement. Sustain it.
Kahane’s work speaks to leaders who feel the limits of command-and-control. His experience taught him that systems transformed by force do not hold. Lasting change is collective. It emerges from the ground, not from the corner office. Don’t sledgehammer the system but engage in give and take with it.
The book’s strength is that it names what many feel but cannot articulate: that there is no universal recipe. It is simple but not easy. Begin anywhere. Sense an opportunity. Engage with other people. The act of engaging generates a way forward you did not previously have in mind. This is both liberating and demanding. It asks you to let go of control while staying responsible. It asks you to work with power while remaining humble about it.
What makes these habits catalytic is their focus on relationship and emergence rather than planning and execution. In a world of increasing complexity, Kahane offers something better than a blueprint: a way of being and relating that makes transformation possible.
Adam Kahane. Everyday habits for transforming systems. The catalytic power of radical engagement. Berrett-Koehler, 2025.