Defining Strategic Conversation

To understand strategic conversation, we need to review the meanings of the component words and then combine them.

What is ?Conversation?

If you study literature on the topic you will come across the following terms: dialogue, debate, discussion, and conversation. Let?s see how each of these words is used and how they differ from each other.

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 dialogue is that it goes beyond one?s understanding, and supports the processes of creating, sharing, integrating, and evaluating knowledge. Dialogue is intended to be open and power-neutral communication, but sometimes it can be abused.

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. Decision processes are not an inherent part of debate.

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 systematize organizational 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 embraces every form of informational seeking, exchange, and processing (e.g. decisions, planning, implementing etc.).

What is ?strategic?

A definition of communication strategies needs to be given at this point and the distinction between strategies, tactics and techniques ? words that are often confused and used interchangeably ? should be drawn. The terminology used in the field often overlaps confusingly. For example, the terms ?strategy? and ?technique? are sometimes seen as equal in meaning. Indeed, the distinction between the two is minimal. Cohen distinguishes them in terms of abstract or general and more specific respectively. In short, we could say that strategies are mental processes. The issue of consciousness comes into this discussion with different researchers debating about how conscious a strategy is in order for it to be considered a strategy rather than a process. A review of opinions is given by Cohen and in this discussion, we will consider communication strategies as conscious processes, which can be observable and accessible for description both by an observer and by the speaker himself. The argument runs on the basis that strategies are selected by the speaker, thus employed consciously.

Different strategies are used in communication situations. By a strategy we mean awareness of the situation as a whole, finding its development direction and controlling the situation in the interests of communication aims.

What is ?strategic conversation?

Hamel and 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.

One way to make sense of these opinions on strategic conversation is to sort them into macro and micro views. Macro gives the big picture of the strategic conversation construct 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. Summarizing, strategic conversation can be regarded as being 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 requires an effective ?way? of communicating ? to get the reactions you need in order for plans to be formed, implemented, and succeed. After all, we all know that it matters ?how? someone asks us to do something. So, strategic conversation does more than lubricate the activities, it designs, monitors and improves those activities. Very often our communicative success is largely determined by our skills in strategic conversation.

Date: 2016-06-12; view: 114