The Art Of Conversation

Talking It Over And Not Out

“I began to ask myself what kind of work I was doing as an organizational consultant, when I found that from time to time I was being accused, albeit with curiosity, of not being a ‘proper’ consultant, or coach, or facilitator.”

Patricia Shaw is a bad consultant. Maybe. But also an astute listener.

Her 2002 book - Changing Conversations in Organizations: A complexity approach to change - is one of the most surprising books on organizational change and organizational failure-to-change that I have ever read.

Nearly 30 years ago, Dr Shaw was a PhD student of Ralph Stacey’s at the University of Hertfordshire. Stacey had a varied career as an economist, investment analyst, and management consultant before becoming an academic and a trained psychotherapist. Given his background, it is surprising that his work is as comprehensible as it is.

But we’re not talking about Stacey here. Or Doug Griffin, the third founder of the Complexity and Management Centre. We’re going to talk about Patricia Shaw.

“The question, ‘How do we go about changing complex organizations?’ often means ‘How can we formulate intentions and communicate them as agreed plans of action to be implemented?’ In other words, it involves conceiving a future different in some way from a conception of the past and taking action to realize the change… In this book I have been asking and exploring a rather different question. I have been asking, ‘How do we participate in the way things change over time?’ meaning ‘How at the very movement of our joint sensemaking experience, are we changing ourselves and our situation?’”

Her work stands out to me not only because it accurately describes the true nature of organizational life but also because of its unusual tone. Most management texts issue edicts about the way the world is from the pulpit of authority. Shaw is no preacher. She relates experiences and offers interpretations. But these are provisional, not final. They are subject to change. There are no axioms, there are patterns. There are improv-style offers. Because that is what conversations are. The book both is about conversation AND is also a conversation itself. So often what we told is contradicted by how we are told it - “Here is my excel spreadsheet on the importance of spontaneity". Not here.

“When I began working with organizations twenty-five years ago, it still seemed a sensible proposition that the task of leaders was to have a good overview, a grasp of the big picture, the real state of affairs which enabled them to direct and co-ordinate the activity of an enterprise… However over this period such hubris has been tempered by the experience of the world as more complex and less directly manageable.”

This all resonates for me as a manager. I am not clever enough to sit in a corner and work everything out by myself. Options and obstacles and pathways emerge in conversation with others. I think with my mouth and my ears. If I haven’t spoken to anyone for a while then that’s a bad sign. If I am only talking to the same people again and again that’s a bad sign. One thing that drives me insane* is having the same conversation again and again. That’s a bad sign. Who have you talked to recently?

So if you are here reading this Substack then you should probably read this book. And if you have already it, what did you think of it?

*The full list of things that drive me insane is quite long. Perhaps the issue is less the things and more me.