On making conversations happen

Today my calendar told me about my friend Ipshita’s birthday. I hadn’t seen her in person for years, and our last message was more than a year old. So I did something that defines me: I connected with her again. By sending her a happy birthday + self-news message, I was able to revive our dormant friendship and keep her in my active social network. And I got a very joyful answer. It was as simple as that.

What does that tell us about business, and more precisely about corporate culture? Well, I know some (too many) managers see their company only in terms of profit margins and stock performance. And it’s understandable, given their compensation mechanisms. But anyone can agree that a company is, first and foremost, a social network. Of people, of course, but also skills, responsibilities, processes, and hopes and emotions. So, how do we strengthen that social network from a leadership perspective?

Well, just like I did with Ipshita, the unit transaction among a company’s social network is any form of communication. From a basic “hi there” to the more advanced public praise, communication is what glues people together, a bit like gluons make quarks stick together if you like quantum physics. No communication, no gluon, no cohesion. Basic.

A direct consequence is that to strengthen the organization, you can simply make communication easier. And there are a ton of ways to do that, from inciting people to shake hands in the morning to hiring more extraverted people, or by creating social settings such as recreational moments or having better lunch groups. Aim for the unit, transactional, almost meaningless interactions, and over time it will be the whole company strategy that will just click. It does compound.

Company performance is a hard problem, but strengthening communications in a group of peers doesn’t have to be. When strategy work defines a problem as the immediate priority, more often than not we find that somehow, a group of people have to interact more. I’ve said it before: culture is strategic.

Communicate → Work better → Company wins. That’s tackling the root of the problem.