Conversation curation
Eighteen leaders.
Gathering together at a beautiful location, away from their offices..
They closed a major chapter this year. A real one. Years of work, a significant transition, a lot that was hard and a lot that worked.
Today was about harvesting what they want to carry forward.
Before I sent them outside to work in small groups this afternoon, I did something that took about thirty seconds to explain.
I told them who was in each group.
I’d spent more time on that decision than almost anything else I prepared for today.
I have a simple data table I use for this. Names, tenure, department. Before an exercise like this one, I study it.
About a third of this group has been with the company a long time.
A third for three to five years.
A third are relatively new.
I made sure none of those thirds clustered together. I looked for the cross-department pairings that almost never happen on their own.
As we’ve returned to many times in this work, curation is never just a logistical step.
Diversifying which strengths touch upon against other strengths is everything.
As Meg Wheatley taught me years ago, if you want to change the conversation - change who is in it.
And new interaction patterns reveal new truths.
They came back after thirty minutes.
The first group presented two lessons they hoped the company would carry forward. People leaned in when they heard the first one.
Cut the knot.
They explained it simply. Don’t waste time untangling something that just needs to change. Own the change. Build the house you want to live in.
Their second lesson: We need to car pool. You can’t all take separate routes.
These aren’t the phrases you’d expect from a senior leadership offsite.
They’re also not the phrases that get written in a document and forgotten.
They came from a specific group of people, in a specific configuration, given real time to think together.
That’s the part worth paying attention to.
The phrases weren’t planted or prompted. They came from people who don’t normally sit in the same conversation being asked the same question at the same moment.
That’s what curation makes possible.
It’s a question worth sitting with before your next session.
Not just what will we explore.
But who needs to be in conversation with whom for something real to emerge?
—Jon
P.S. Experience our 2-Hour Live Intro to xchange. This is our experiential introduction to Conscious Convening. Bring a friend. And be ready to engage. I love meeting folks from all over the globe at our workshop. Over 25,000 have attended, over the last 5 years. Go here to grab your spot.