January 2010
Conversations: the way work gets done!

Bob Veazie, a senior engineer at Hewlett Packard, was convinced of the role of conversations in his organisation after attending a World Cafe dialogue session. "I realised that the boxes in my organisation chart can be more accurately depicted as webs of conversations: each day we are engaged in conversations as we do our work".

Shortly afterwards Bob was charged with leading a corporation-wide safety initiative that touched over 50,000 staff. He built his project on conversations that focused on safety risks and how to address them. The conversations aimed at tapping each group's own experience, relationships and mutual intelligence in coming up with ways to reduce accident rates. The end result was impressive. For example, in Porto Rico the accident rate plumeted from 4.2 percent to 0.2 percent. The overall company accident rate was reduced by 33 percent, and the gains were maintained at manufacturing plants where the safety discussions continued.

Story taken from The Systems Thinker, Vol. 20 No. 9 by T.J. Hurley & J. Brown

Bob's story show us the inherent potential of conversations to influence business results. Conversations are not just the result of social interaction. Rather, conversations are the way we work in the modern era, and it is through conversations that work gets done.

Here are some suggestions that will help you in harnessing the power of organisations in your company:

1. Find out where conversations of strategic nature occur naturally in your organisation. They are there, and are maybe not in the area's you might anticipate.
2. Start a conversation with your leadership about the merit's of a renewed focus on conversation as a core process to your business
3. Identify and equip a set of Conversation Agents in your business who could facilitate and spark conversations at the drop of a hat
4. But do not try and manage conversations as you would any other process - conversations are delicate and sensitive. Your ability to nurture and prompt conversations will be a key success factor in embracing a conversation culture.

We are proud to be an Event Partner for the 2010 South African Employer Branding Summit to be held at Deloitte, Johannesburg, South Africa on 23 March 2010. We invite you to join us and spend a day with 9 employer branding specialists to discover the value of building a sustainable business through employer branding strategies. In particular, our role will be to explore how narrative and conversation assists in building an employer brand. Register here.

On the 11th, 12th and 13th May 2010 we will be hosting the annual Cognitive Edge Practitioner Accreditation course. Well over 100 South Africans have attended this accreditation in the last few years and have picked up practical methods on how to make sense of complex situation in their organisations. Steve Bealing, CEO of Cognitive Edge will be out from Singapore to assist with the training. Register here.

Remember that we have an active group on LinkedIn where we discuss various topics relating to complexity, narrative and real world problems.  Be sure to join our group here. 

• Sonja has written an excellent post about the wrote about The Abileen Paradox which outlines the tendency people have to not voice a minority opinion in a group, especially if they feel they are the only one to hold that opinion.
• Aiden outlines some pertinent differences between Analysis of narrative vs. Narrative Analysis and how it relates to projects.
• Aiden highlights the dangers of a single story based on a TED Talk by Chimamanda Adichie, an African novelist.