We started this project about four years ago, and what this book is all about is about an organization that is full of conversation. If you think about what organization is all about, it’s just basically a bunch of conversations that are happening at the same time. And what leaders do to facilitate the conversations that actually produce value, and actually engage employees, is that what distinguished some of the best corporations that we studied.
So if you think about what makes conversations among friends to be really productive is that it has all the attributes. It’s interactive. It’s intimate. It’s inclusive. It’s actually intentional. And if you think about it, when you place that conversation inside organizations, many of those great attributes actually disappear.
So the book is, how do you actually have productive conversations in an organization? And the reason why it’s actually more important now in the 21st century than before is that, if you think about what’s going on around us, we’re a knowledge-based economy. Our source of competitive advantage are actually people who are working for us, working for our corporation. And the more engaged they are, the more productive they’re going to be.
So I think having right conversations [INAUDIBLE] 21st century is more important than 20 or 25 years ago. I think the speed of change, how industries are changing, how products are changing, is much, much faster than it used to be. So staying close to customers, staying close to your employees, that’s becoming more and more important.
Many companies nowadays are global companies, so you actually have to not only engage employees here locally, but you have to engage them across the board. And so communication, being able to be in touch with employees, is becoming more and more important.
An interview with Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind, authors of Talk, Inc.: How Trusted Leaders Use Conversation to Power Their Organizations. For more, read the article Leadership Is a Conversation.
