conversation matters

Organizations That Breathe In and Breathe Out

The more virtual an organization becomes, the more it needs to put into place periodic opportunities for workers to come together to renew relationships and cement their commitments to each other and to their joint goals. Think of it as breathing out and breathing in. Organizations breathe out by spreading across the globe, they breathe in when teams come back together to have human interaction. Oscillating between the two provides the best of both worlds.

But many organizations have decided they need to do one or the other. Some think that after spending all that money on software, team members should have no need to come together. Others like IBM, Bank of America, and Yahoo, having tried being virtual, have called workers back to the office to strengthen collaboration. Both have an “all or nothing” way of thinking - when the answer is really both!

Virtual (breathing out) contributes:

• The ability to draw on the global talent pool
• Reduction in the cost of office space
• Autonomy that provides workers greater opportunity to experiment and try out new ideas
• Being able to respond quickly to local customers
• More satisfying integration of work and family life.

In-Person (breathing in) contributes:

• Commitment to jointly made decisions
• Shared understanding of goals/purpose
• Parts smoothly come together into a meaningful whole, despite having been developed independently
• Innovative solutions to complex issues that are arrived at through collective sensemaking
• A sense of community, cohesion, and belongingness

I envision a future in which organizations that breathe out and breathe in are the new normal. A future in which organizations make full use of the unique attributes of both virtual and in-person.

“Office buildings” will have become “convening centers.” No longer will they be they places where individuals enter one by one, each heading to his or her assigned cubicle, instead whole teams will arrive together, greeting colleagues they have not seen over the past few months. Convening centers will be conducive to renewing relationships but also to addressing difficulties that have arisen related to the joint task a team is engaged. There will be spaces of all sizes, which are easily re-configurable with moveable furniture to accommodate groups of five or fifty and lots of open space for putting chairs in multiple small circles or one large circle. There will be rolling whiteboards and wall space for making joint work visible. There will be large windows with no need to worry about having too much light to see the screen because convening will be about conversations, not PowerPoint presentations. There will be lots of comfortable, informal space, ideal for chatting over coffee and snacks.  

When breathing out, I see organizations using advanced virtual tools to collaborate and stay connected. Tools that, with just a click of a button, a team member can be virtually in another member’s office, or all ten team members can be developing a plan in a virtual space. There will be effortless ways to view what others are working on and to contribute to each other’s work. There will be visualization tools that allow everyone on the team to see each member’s progress toward getting the group’s task accomplished, so team members can reach out to help where and when they are needed, and so that accountability is visible. Team members will have learned to be proficient in their use of virtual tools; able to make sound judgments about when to use what form of media to address different types of issues, e.g., decision making, brainstorming, requesting information. And they will recognize when an issue is too complex to try to solve virtually, so will schedule that issue on the agenda for the next in-person meeting.  

Look around! It’s already happening at the edges!

We Learn When We Talk

At face value that doesn’t make much sense, after all, we must know what we think about an issue; how else are we able to talk about it? But the reality is that what we don’t necessarily know what we know!  For example, has this happened to you? You begin to describe a complex issue to another person whose help you want to understand it. But while you are in the midst of explaining it, the answer pops into your mind even before you finish the question. And you end up saying, somewhat sheepishly, “Never mind, I think I’ve just realized what the answer is.”  What happened is that in trying to explain the issue, your mind has put the bits and pieces that you know about the topic together in a new way and provided you greater clarity. 

Johnson and Johnson, researchers at the University of Michigan, who have conducted studies of conversations, explain it this way. “In these meetings (of expert and asker) individuals exchange their data, conclusions, reasoning,
and questions with others. Although the cognitive benefits to the receiver of such an exchange are apparent, there is evidence that it is the speaker who makes the greatest cognitive gains from the exchange.  Individuals organize information differently if they are going to present it to others than if they are trying to understand it solely for their own use. It is in the act of speaking that people tend to organize cognitively what they know.”  They learned when they talked!

What an incredible phenomenon - we learn when we talk!  It has all kinds of implications for knowledge sharing:

• If I deliver a lecture or a presentation, it would be helpful to make time for those listening to have a conversation with each other – a way for them to put what I've said in their own words and to make mental connections that otherwise might never be made.
• If I want another team to learn from the lessons my team or project has garnered, the transfer will work better if I arrange a conversation between the two groups rather than having one team write and post lessons learned. The conversation would provide the opportunity for the recipients to think out loud about how the lessons relate to their own work.
• When I’ve read a great article, I will incorporate the ideas more fully into my cognitive map, if I tell a colleague what I have just read (or write a blog about it.)
• In the debrief of that great project my team just accomplished, the team is more likely to be able to understand how they achieved that success if I gather the team members to talk to about what they learned. They will figure out what they learned as they talk with each other.
• If I am stating an argument to convince someone else of the reasonableness of my position, I would be wise to pause periodically to give the other person an opportunity to articulate his or her thinking about what I’ve said. Even if the other’s response is only to offer a counter-argument that person will learn something new about their own position by “the way they have organized information differently…. to present it.”
• Perhaps most profoundly, it means that if we want people to learn from each other, we need to put them together, face to face if at all possible. If not, by a medium conducive to conversation, for example, Skype, Google Hangout, or Zoom. But they need to be together in small groups of no more than five or six, to give an opportunity for each person to talk.

On the negative side, it means webinars, where one person does all the talking, aren’t very good learning mechanisms.  Nor are presentations where one person is talking or making a PowerPoint presentation, and the only opportunity for others to talk is at the when the speaker says, “Are there any questions?” in the last five minutes.  Questions after a presentation, really just ask the presenter for more information. They don’t help the listeners put the learning into their own words. How many times have you sat through a day of presentations at a conference and can remember very little of what you heard?  Without the time to articulate the ideas in your own words, all that knowledge quickly evaporates.

A simple rule of thumb, we learn when we talk.