Instead of handing down commands or imposing formal controls, many leaders today are interacting with their workforce in ways similar to an ordinary conversation between two people. They are fostering and facilitating conversation-like practices throughout their company--practices that enable a higher degree of trust, improved operational efficiency, greater motivation among employees and better coordination between top-level strategy and frontline execution.
Organizational conversation calls upon employees to participate in the work of generating the content through which a company tells its story, both internally and externally. By empowering employees to communicate in that way, leaders relinquish much of the control that they formerly exerted over organizational messaging.
In a really good conversation, those who talk together share a sense that they're moving forward together. They understand that their talk is taking them somewhere, however circuitous the route toward that destination might be. In an organizational setting, conversation will be good---it will be effective and sustainable---only to the extent that it embodies a sense of direction. A sense of direction is what enables communication to become a strategically critical, value-adding endeavor.
Boris Groysberg: Talk, Inc.: How Trusted Leaders Use Conversation to Power their Organizations
