Comments on: You can keep your “business language”: that’s not meaningful conversation

By: Zbigniew Lukasiak

Zbigniew Lukasiak — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 14:42:06 +0000

Actually it is a paraphrase of that McLuhann quoute which goes the other way around: “The medium is the message”.

By: jgovernor

jgovernor — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 16:17:11 +0000

hey Zbigniew I believe that’s a quote from Marshall McLuhan – a 60s thinker who came up with the concept of the “global village”. smart dude.

Gary – great points as ever. I think a number of different modes of discourse have value. but in general, for example, white papers are seldom as valuable as they should be.

By: Zbigniew Lukasiak

Zbigniew Lukasiak — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 11:06:41 +0000

“Message is the medium” – this is a quote I’ve seen somewhere that sums the whole twitter thing in my opinion.
By exchanging the perhaps less obviously valuable information you keep the information channel open.

By: Gary Barnett

Gary Barnett — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 06:43:53 +0000

Surely it’s a horses for courses thing?

I agree 100% that a lot of business dialogue is either trite and pointless or so narrowly focussed that it utterly misses the real point.

But there are all sorts of “type” of real conversation – Which is why there’s just no answer to the question “is there an optimal mode of discourse”.

You’ve got a black-belt in “Conversational Jazz”, and god knows there have to be more bouncy, ad-libby, “orgy of the synapses”-type conversations in business… But if you’re in a meeting about Audit, or your compliance with FCC regulations then you probably need to keep it dull – It would be hard to tell the SEC “Well we had a meeting about audit… but then Jimbo saw a flower…..”

So you have to place “conversation” within a spectrum… at one end there must be the dull “exchange of facts” style dialogue. It would be annoying if everytime I asked you the time you were to reply “time for what? time for who?”… I’d like just to know how late I am for my meeting.

At the other end of the spectrum… where you spend a lot of time living and working (and providing value I hasten to add) there’s a richer more intimate dialogue where knowing how much you enjoyed your Eggs Benedict might trigger a new conversation with you that could lead almost anywhere.

By: afongen » I hardly ever use PGP anymore. This isn’t why, but…

afongen » I hardly ever use PGP anymore. This isn’t why, but… — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 02:03:54 +0000

[...] By the way, and perhaps speaking more to the intended point. If you followed the link, did you notice that post by James Governor? Go read it. [...]

By: Process Perfection

Process Perfection — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 12:59:49 +0000

Is there an “optimal” mode of discourse?…

James Governor’s Monkchips — You can keep your “business language”: that’s not meaningful conversation
Is there an “optimal” mode of discourse? Leading question, I know. Framed the way it is, the answer seems obvious: “…

By: Roo Reynolds - What’s Next? » Blog Archive » Links for Monday 24th September, 2007

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 19:48:41 +0000

[...] James Governor – You can keep your âbusiness languageâ: that’s not meaningful conv… – “I don’t only want to know What Stephen and Cote Are Working On. Rather I want to know How They Are Doing. Good managers take a view of their people that goes far beyond the tasks they assign. Twitter helps to keep us all in the loop.” [...]

By: chris dalby

chris dalby — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 23:11:03 +0000

I thought you thunk that twimping a twinped twimp is like throwing caution to the wind.

By: Rupert

Rupert — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 14:47:10 +0000

Great thoughts.
I’ve never been in a place where I’ve learnt so many things that I didn’t know I wanted to learn – and needed to learn. Of all the new things I learn every day, I reckon the majority of them come from links on Twitter. And because they’re not narrowly focussed on a topic, there’s the chance for seredipitous and surprising connections to be made between what you’re focusing on – things that inform from a wider human or technical perspective.
And when conversation is littered with intimate details of work and family life, there’s less room for bullshitting, heirarchy and one-upmanship. Not many people are out to puff up themselves or their their theories – they’re just throwing up gems of interest for other people to read and briefly acknowledge.
It’s holistic, and richer for it.