Promote Collaborative Problem Solving

Constructive Conflict Resource Guide

This introductory article was written by ChatGPT at the direction of Heidi Burgess, who reviewed, edited, and approved the final content.
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June 20, 2026

Democratic systems depend on the ability of people to solve shared problems together. Citizens and leaders have to identify what is going wrong, consider possible responses, listen to the people who will be affected, and then choose an approach that is workable enough to command broad support. This is very different from authoritarian rule, where decisions can be imposed from above with little public input. Authoritarian systems may sometimes act quickly, but they often miss information that people lower down or further out in society can see more clearly. Well-functioning democracies use that wider knowledge. They turn disagreement into a source of learning, not just a source of obstruction.

Collaborative problem solving is more ambitious than compromise. Compromise is often useful, and sometimes it is the best that can be achieved. But compromise usually means that each side gives up part of what it wants in order to get a deal. Collaboration asks a different question: is there a way to meet the most important concerns of all sides at the same time? The familiar “orange story,” discussed in Heidi’s conflict styles essay, illustrates the point. If two children both want the last orange, cutting it in half is a compromise. But if one wants the fruit and the other wants the peel, asking why they want it can reveal a solution that gives both children what they actually need.

This is the same basic insight behind interest-based bargaining and the negotiation approach summarized in Fisher, Ury, and Patton's Getting to Yes. People often enter a conflict by defending positions: a proposed policy, a demand, a boundary, a budget number, or a public statement. Behind those positions are interests. People may be trying to protect safety, dignity, autonomy, fairness, community stability, or economic security. When the parties stay locked into their opening positions, the conflict looks zero-sum. When they explore the interests underneath, new possibilities often appear.

Collaborative problem solving is especially important in a massively parallel strategy because large societies face many problems at once. National leaders cannot understand or fix all of them from the center. Local governments, schools, workplaces, civic groups, professional associations, religious communities, and neighborhood networks all have problems that need attention. They also have knowledge that outsiders often lack. When these groups learn to define problems jointly and test possible solutions together, they increase society’s overall capacity for self-correction. Democracy becomes not just a voting system, but a distributed problem-solving system.

Collaboration is not always possible. Some parties refuse to participate in good faith. Some conflicts involve rights or basic needs that cannot simply be traded away. In those cases, advocacy, accountability, and constructive confrontation may be necessary. Still, even hard conflicts often contain some issues that can be addressed jointly. Beyond Intractability’s discussion of mutually beneficial joint action emphasizes the importance of shifting from blame to problem solving wherever possible. Promoting collaborative problem solving, therefore, is a key Massively Parallel Peacebuilding goal. It helps people move beyond domination, stalemate, and half-satisfactory bargains toward solutions that more people can honestly support.

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This page was created by ChatGPT in response to this prompt. It was then reviewed, edited, supplemented and approved by Heidi Burgess. More information about how and why we are using AI in this way, and about the growing number of ways in which Beyond Intractability is using ChatGPT, Claude and other AI systems to generate content and build out the BI system, is available on our BI/AI Overview Page.