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The attraction of strategic conversation seems to be its logical good sense as evidenced by the supportive stories and case examples. Strategic conversation seemed to have currency even before it had been tested and found valid (see the research information). Even without empirical support it was appealing enough that practitioners and managers designed programs to train organisational members, even promoting it to the status of a core competency.
So what is it?
To understand Strategic Conversation, you need to review the meanings of the component words - and then combine them.
What is 'conversation’
Literature was searched on the words dialog, debate, discuss, discourse, and conversation. Rather than reviewing the entire debate, I will only mention here the apparent favoured use of each of these words and how they differ from each other. Why bother? Only to argue the case for strategic conversation rather than strategic dialogue or discourse etc.
According to Peter Senge and colleagues, dialogue is a form of conversation to surface the 'tacit' infrastructure of thought. In dialogue there is an action focus where we suspend assumptions and enter into 'think together'. In dialogue we don't think about what we're doing, we do something about what we're thinking. Dialogue is about deeper understanding, not decisions, and is used to understand rather than advocate for agreement. Thus, dialogue has a narrow meaning. The value of dialog is that it goes beyond ones understanding, and supports the processes of creating, sharing, integrating, and evaluating knowledge. Dialog is intended to be open and power-neutral communication, but it can be abused. Such abuse can be discouraged by having 'dialogue quality systems' such as TQA, BSC etc where dialogue topic and outcome focus is confined to strategic matters.
Debate differs from dialogue in that it is a dialectic process between two or more interlocutors, during which both parties pose questions and receive answers, the aim of which is to increase either party's awareness or understanding. It is about being cooperative and goal-directed, with reciprocal exchanges of messages embedded in each specific normative context. Because decision processes are not an inherent part of debate, debate is too narrow an concept for the all-encompassing exchanges within organisations.
In discussion, ideas go back and forth in a winner-takes-all manner. There are dangers however of discussions veering from strategic towards operational, and of risk paralysis in conditions of uncertainty. To reduce those problems, authors suggest using conversational frameworks that encourage a strategic purpose and systematise organisational knowledge, culminating in the use of decision models. Discussion is a much broader concept than dialogue or debate, but still doesn’t go into and beyond the actual decision making to embrace subsequent actions
Conversation is a term that includes all the above, plus discourse and others. Conversation embrace every form of informational seeking, exchange, and processing (e.g. decisions, planning, implementing etc.)
What is 'strategic’
Strategy concerns the organisation's views inwards and outwards. Inwards, the purpose of strategy is to align minds and effort, and integrate the daily work of all employees around a common, focused direction. Outwards, strategy involves identifying and defining strategies from the competitive intelligence collected from market and environmental data, and from organisational memory. Until recently the definitions of strategy were very 'ends' focused and did not recognise the human components, a focus now challenged. The following definition is my adaptation of current thinking:-
- A strategy is a fundamental pattern of present and planned objectives that place the organisation in an advantageous (market or other) position, reducing negative impact from competitors or other threats including environmental factors [the ends]. The planned objectives take into account present, outsourced and needed organisational capabilities, and interactions that focus on discovery, development alignment and delivery of capabilities [the means].
Therefore - 'strategic conversation' is:
Hamel & Prahalad, when introducing the term 'strategic intent', described it as including strategic conversation, and that strategic conversation is about the desired ends and not the means. Others argue that it is about the means and not the ends, while yet others regard strategic conversation as the continuous to-and-fro between scenario and action. Whatever SC is, organisational capabilities without it lead to organisational rigidity.
According to Professor van der Heijden, strategic conversation is always based on a question, the topic of which may include entrepreneurial invention, unique activity, competitive advantage, strategic investments, and distinctive competencies. This is a big picture view of strategic conversation - the look outwards from the organisation. On the other hand, Von Krogh & Ros describe strategic conversation as the ‘currency’ of strategic organisational knowledge - an inwards and process view.
One way to make sense of these opinions on SC is to sort them into macro and micro views. Macro gives the big picture of the SC construct shared by managers and practitioners about where, when, why, and the focus of the topic. The micro view, on the other hand, refers to strategic conversation examined at the level of micro-skills and looks at strategic conversation as being interpersonal communication with certain characteristics, including being open rather than closed.
The two views seem equally legitimate and can be shown to support each other. Summarising, strategic conversation can be regarded being as conversation (micro) that is strategic (macro) - requiring quite distinct attention to detail, and skills. Strategic Conversation is the overarching concept that systematically and purposefully embraces strategic thinking, strategic dialogue, strategic debate, strategic discussion and strategic decision-making.
Strategic Conversation is complex - but not complicated.
References
- van der Heijden K, The learning organisation: How planners create organisational learning, Marketing Intelligence and Learning, 1992, 10, 6
- Hamel G Prahalad C, Strategic Intent, Harvard Business Review, May-June 1989, p 63-76
- Senge P, The Fifth Discipline, New York: Doubleday/Currency; 1991
- Von Krogh G Ros J, Conversation management, European Management Journal, 13, 4, 1995, p 390-394
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