In a recent LinkedIn discussion, Ozcan Kabakcioglu shared his observation that many on-line discussion forums generate very few conversational exchanges. More often than not, contributors tend to share their own or others' thoughts in the form of previously published blog posts, magazine articles, published papers, and the like.
In reflecting on his well-observed comment, I suggested that we are perhaps wrong to refer to these on-line exchanges as "conversations" at all. And, given, the centrality of real-world conversation to my informal coalitions view of organizational dynamics, I thought that it was worth restating my reasoning here.
Conversation is an ongoing, real-time exchange
First, as Ralph Stacey, Patricia Shaw and Doug Griffin highlighted by their coining of the term "complex responsive process" to describe the nature of human interaction (here, for example), conversation is, first and foremost, a process of gesture and response. And, in true conversations, this gesturing and responding takes place between people in the moment of their interaction. That is to say, it is an ongoing, ‘real-time’ exchange. This means that what people end up saying – and how they end up saying it - is continually being modified, whether subtly or significantly, by their anticipation and noticing of participants’ responses to each other’s intentional and involuntary gesturing.
So, even though the linear, sender-receiver model of communication still governs much of what passes for formal communication practice in organizations, this is not how conversation works – or how people end up making sense of their world. Conversations are spontaneous and emergent, not planned and structured.
On-line exchanges are necessarily linear and 'staccato'
This linear, sender-receiver process happens of necessity, though, in on-line forums and other forms of on-line activity. Someone ‘encodes’ their thoughts in the form of a post or comment, which then has to be ‘decoded’ by readers, each through their own filters, before being responded to (or not) in the form of a further comment or new post.
To use an analogy, again drawing on Stacey’s insightful observations, a formal ‘communication’ (from a CEO, say) doesn’t in fact communicate anything at all. Instead, it extends an ‘offer’ for people to communicate amongst themselves, whilst providing data, information and/or opinion to facilitate this. (I’m sure that CEOs and their Internal Comms advisers wouldn’t see it this way!). The actual communication takes place via the conversations that people subsequently have with themselves (i.e. thinking) and with others, as they try to make sense of what’s going on and decide how to act.
Any postings on blogs and forums can perhaps best be thought of in a similar way. Their value to readers, if any, is not so much in the on-line postings as in the off-line conversations (including self-reflections) that these spawn.
An aid to reflective and reflexive practice?
An important aspect to bear in mind, of course, is the value that writers of posts, updates, and comments, etc gain themselves from their efforts. For example, if I used the number of comments on this blog as the measure of its value, I would probably have given up years ago. But besides (hopefully) offering some thoughts that others might find helpful and/or provocative, I also use blog posts and comments to check and refine my own thinking.
Perhaps that is what others are doing with their own postings. To paraphrase Karl Weick, how do I know what I think until I see what I write? And on this point, as I noted in an earlier post, Seth Godin believes that blogging is a worthwhile act even if nobody reads it!
Chris, I think you and I may have different definitions of "on-line conversation". Yours seems to concentrate on asynchronous modalities for on-line exchange, such as LinkedIn forums and comments on blog posts.
But there are plenty of places for synchronous online conversations, such as Twitter chats, Google hangouts, etc. And I'd argue that these are fully-fledged conversations as you've defined them. This is one of the joys of the online world—we have a rich variety of connectivity forums to choose from to satisfy our own and our community needs.
For some years now I've been "meeting" most people in my professional world online first, conversing with them there, and then meeting them face-to-face at a conference or when I'm visiting their part of the world. Synchronous on-line has enriched those possibilities for me. and made it more likely that people will explore my blog and other places where my asynchronous communications reside.
Posted by: ASegar | 11 February 2013 at 01:33 PM
Thanks for your comment, Adrian.
Your distinction between what you are calling synchronous and asynchronous modes of on-line communication is an interesting one. However, I don't think that synchronous exchanges on line are 'synchronous enough' to merit the label conversation, in the terms that I mean.
Real conversation is embodied, with all of the visual and/or audio cues that that entails. It is not disembodied, as is inevitably the case in on-line exchanges.
I would accept and celebrate the fact that the latter are an increasingly common and important part of the communication 'package'. As you put it, these enrich the possibilities of real-world interactions. But I think that it devalues the notion of conversation to use that term to describe on-line communication.
Posted by: Chris Rodgers | 11 February 2013 at 03:07 PM
Chris, I agree that until we get Star-Trek holodeck technology, nothing's going to beat face-to-face conversation. But for me, the concept that only f2f experience is "real conversation" goes too far.
I find that I can experience valuable connection with others even via the limitations of 140 character Twitter chats with their associated multi-second delays. Google hangouts, despite the small low-fidelity video, are even more effective.
Ultimately, I think it's important to consider the outcomes of these conversations rather than say they are not "real". They provide an inferior but very useful way for people to interact in almost real time, and this needs to be compared with the reality that the vast majority of these interactions would not occur at all if we restricted ourselves to f2f encounters. And don't I think they devalue f2f conversations; rather they encourage and prepare us for meeting in the "old-fashioned" way.
Posted by: ASegar | 11 February 2013 at 05:04 PM
Thanks again Adrian for continuing the conver... (oops) exchange of views.
I don't think I'm disagreeing with anything you say about the value of on-line interactions. As you point out, they can provide “valuable connection” in their own right, as well as having the potential to enhance the (future and/or past) face-to-face experiences of those taking part. Also, dependent on the system being used, the exchange might spark many more on-line interventions and/or off-line conversations. So I’m with you on all of that.
Nor, as it happens, did I say that these on-line exchanges devalue conversations. My “devalue” comment related solely to the use of the word "conversation" to describe these other modes of interaction. I was not referring to their value per se.
No doubt you’ll continue to see your on-line exchanges as conversations, which clearly works for you. My provocation is to suggest that these can never reflect the “responsive process” nature of human, conversational interaction, in all of its ‘messy’, in-the-moment complexity. Video chats can approximate to ‘in the flesh’ conversations, in the same way that phone calls can. But in both those cases the essential attribute of conversation is interactive talk – both self-talk and other-talk – through which meaning is (co-)created.
As I see it, Twitter, blogs, and other ‘written’ forms of social media do not satisfy this criterion; although they all depend on it for meaning to emerge.
Posted by: Chris Rodgers | 11 February 2013 at 10:49 PM