I'm on Jason Calcanis' mailing list (you should be as well - you can sign up here), and today got a long missive from him that I think is quite important and goes to the heart of what I want to fight by moving our interactions back to conversation. Here's the nut graf:

Josh's experiments in 2000, during which he and his cohorts became obsessed with their view counts, parallels today's blogging, social media and YouTube "arms race." In his experiment, the technology robbed the subjects--and their audience--of every last ounce of empathy.
Digital communications is a wonderful thing--at least at the start. Everyone participating in digital communities is eventually introduced to Godwin's Law: At some point, a participant, or more typically his or her thinking, will be compared to the Nazis. But that's only part of the breakdown. Eventually, you see the effect of what I'll call Harris' Law: At some point, all humanity in an online community is lost, and the goal becomes to inflict as much psychological suffering as possible on another person.

Jason seems to see little hope; the problem is built into the structure of medium.

When I talk to clients about social media, I try and lay out a basic path through the process for them. Over time, it's developed into what I'm calling "The Five Decisions."

1. Decide that you want to do this.

2. Decide what you're really capable of.

3. Decide what you'll have to change to make it work.

4. Decide on the tools and processes to do it.

5. Decide how you'll know whether it's working.

Here's how it works.

I'm traveling (in DC for the last few days, and headed to Boston tomorrow then home) and will be back on a regular schedule next week.

Today, though, I ran across this blog post and wanted to share it here:

A Janitor's 10 Lessons in Leadership

By Col. James Moschgat, 12th Operations Group Commander, graduate USAFA class of 1977

It's a moving story (and we're all suckers for those) but it contains some basic points that deserve the attention of people who are using social media.

And there's a larger point we ought to take away.

In the story there was originally a divide between "those that mattered" - the students at the Air Force Academy - and "those who didn't" - the janitor.

The most interesting point to me isn't the moral trap that the students fell into by buying that model; it's the change in the social dynamic that took place when they dropped it.

The key to conversation-based communication is that everyone counts.

I thought I'd toss in a quick comment about advertising and conversation while I work on kind of a '12 step' list about implementing conversation-centric organization using social media tools...

There's a lot of discussion about why it is that social media is challenging advertising and on the roles of each in the future. Let me make a homely metaphor, and talk about bars and dating.

I worked with a guy once who had a remarkable plan for picking up women - he simply asked every attractive women he met to come out with him. Literally. If we went to a restaurant for lunch, he would ask out five women on the way to the restaurant, and once we were there, he'd walk past every woman on the path from the door to our table and ask them. He had matchbooks printed up with his name and number, and just handed them to women as he walked by.

He was - surprisingly - a salesman, and he applied basic doorknocking sales techniques to his personal life.

I'm an inside > out guy; it's difficult for me to make a plan without having some basic idea about the deep, underlying models that my plan is supposed to interact with. In any situation, I'm more of a hedgehog (knows one great thing) than a fox (knows many things).

So when I explain things, I tend to start with central principles and work my way out.

I've been a user and fan of social media for a long time (a really long time...thing AOL, the Well). But it's only in the last few that I 'converted' to the belief that they are central, not add-ons, to creating successful organizations in the 21st century. And so to explain that, I need to make some conceptual points.

And I'm taking your time to do it because I think it's critically important that people become convinced that this isn't just a fad - that making 'encouraging conversation' the first principle for leaders and managers is going to separate the winners from the losers.

People like to talk to each other; in fact it might be argued that the central feature of being human is the act of talking. Here's Aristotle, putting it neatly:

...it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state, is either a bad man or above humanity; he is like the

"Tribeless, lawless, hearthless one, "

whom Homer denounces- the natural outcast is forthwith a lover of war; he may be compared to an isolated piece at draughts.

Now, that man is more of a political animal than bees or any other gregarious animals is evident. Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain, and man is the only animal whom she has endowed with the gift of speech. And whereas mere voice is but an indication of pleasure or pain, and is therefore found in other animals (for their nature attains to the perception of pleasure and pain and the intimation of them to one another, and no further), the power of speech is intended to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise the just and the unjust.

(Politics, Book 1)

It is deeply in our nature to congregate and to converse. And it is in the nature of our understanding to think about things by explaining them. It is one of our most powerful tools, and from Socrates forward the notion of discussion and debate - deliberation - is embedded in Western thought.

The most powerful modern philosopher discussing this is Jurgen Habermas, a post-Marxist German philosopher who split from the Frankfurt school and is known for his aggressive defense of civil society and the Enlightenment.

Habermas is a tough read, for sure. But his notion that 'communicative action' and 'communicative rationality' lies at the heart of modern society, and that encouraging the sphere of communication is the path to a better society is critically important.

It's not an idea that he pulled from thin air - here's Habermas (have patience with his style...):

Whether deliberation does indeed introduce an epistemic dimension into political willformation and decision-making is, of course, an empirical question. There is already an impressive body of small-group studies which construe political communication as a mechanism for the enhancement of cooperative learning and collective problemsolving. For instance, Michael A. Neblo has translated major assumptions of normative theory into hypotheses about how experimental groups learn through deliberation on political issues (such as affirmative action, gays in the military, or the distributive justice of flat tax schemes).8 Individuals were first asked for their opinions on these issues; five weeks later they were placed in groups and asked to debate the same questions and reach collective decisions; and five weeks after deliberation, they were each asked again to offer their individual opinions.

The findings more or less corroborate the expected impact of deliberation on the formation of considered political opinion. The process of group deliberation resulted in a unidirectional change and not in a polarization of opinions. Final decisions were quite different from the initial opinions expressed and opinions changed reflecting improved levels of information, broader perspectives on a clearer and more specific definition of issues. Impersonal arguments tended to take priority over the influence of interpersonal relations, and there was also an increasing trust expressed in the procedural legitimacy of fair argumentation.

Note that in this real-world experiment, deliberation and discussion led to alignment - not polarization - of views and to increased trust and acceptance of outcomes. Those are pretty much the things you want to do in organizations (note that there are risks with these - groupthink being the most significant). But if I told you that I could design a process whereby you and your customers aligned your interests, and where they looked at you with increased trust - wouldn't you like that?

There are really significant costs to this. You can't fake it. If your customers are talking to you, you need to listen. If they don't like what you're doing, you can try and convince them, but at some point you may have to change what you're doing.

If you declare that you want to be trusted, you have to be trustworthy.

Strange new world, isn't it?

In my world, conversation is suddenly a very hot topic; I'm suddenly sitting down with my institutional customers and they are all talking about how they can build business and technical systems that make conversation easier - with customers, with employees, with vendors, investors and stakeholders.

And everyone is excited about it, which worries me, because it suddenly feels like the 'concept of the day,' which we all know will be replaced by a new one tomorrow. And I think it would be a very bad thing if that happened, because I think the idea of making 'conversation' the center of our public activities is a very good thing. Why, you ask?

A starting point ought to understanding what conversation really is. Because when I ask people to tell me what 'conversation' is so we can design systems to make it easier, I sometimes get quizzical looks. I mean, everyone knows what conversation is, right? I've asked that question, pretty often, and I get two default responses:

Conversation is where two or more people converse (a personal favorite); and Conversation is where you and someone else talk.

Look, let's get something out of the way.

Talking is not necessarily (or even often) conversation. Standing with someone talking at each other is not a conversation - it might be! But then again we've all sat through dinners, or dates, or conference roundtables where lots (and lots and lots and lots) of talking was taking place, and there was no conversation at all. Talking (or writing, or emailing, IM'ing, or tweeting) is simply the mechanism for transporting a conversation; it's the IP dialtone of conversation if that makes things clearer.

So this post is about defining conversation a little bit. The next post will be about tying the concept of conversation to larger concepts, and trying to explain why it is that I think it's so darn important. And the final post will set out some ideas about what it means to recenter our institutions around conversation.

Conversation requires a lot more than shoving words at each other.

If you've raised children, you've spent some time trying to teach them some basic manners. There are manners in a variety of spheres; table manners, bathroom manners, playground manners, library manners. One of the central ones we try and teach are manners about interacting with others: let them finish their sentences, pay attention to what they are saying and respond before making your own point, demonstrate interest in the points they are making, etc.

Those manners are kind of a scaffolding around which conversation can grow. They imply a few basic truths which are at the heart of conversation.

The first is parity. When we engage in conversation with someone, the implication is that their words are as valuable as mine. We're peers in the context of this conversation.

The next is agency. We have to believe that whoever is speaking owns their words; that they are speaking from their own authentic self rather than telling us what they have been told or deceived into saying. We respect the speaker as the owner of the words and ideas that they are sharing with us.

Next is openness. We have to actually hear and accept what someone else says. In a debate, I will use my opponent's words as a springboard to make my own points. In a conversation I'll accept what I'm told, unpack it, think about it, fit it with my own understandings and beliefs and then respond. The difference is that in one case we are listening to the 'shape' of what is told us and searching for a foothold to use to push it away, and in the other, we are actually open to the possibility that what the other person says could be true - that it could actually change our views.

There are probably more, but these will be a good start.

My hope is that at some point people will be able to look at their styles of communication and paraphrase Truman Capote (who was criticizing Kerouac) by saying "That's not conversing... that's talking."

Next, I'll try and tie these concepts to a more serious philosophical framework, as a way of supporting the idea that these are important things to do.

I'm Marc Danziger, and this is my professional blog. I've had a personal blog - mostly about politics - since 2002. It's now over at www.windsofchange.net.

I work in technology strategy, which means that I work at the crossroads of how tech works and of how people organize themselves and use the tech. I'm a passionate believer in William Gibson's line - "the street finds its own uses for things" - and that the best thing managers can do is to help that happen.

You can learn more about me on LinkedIn, reach me by using the contact info on the sidebar, and learn a little more about my consulting practice there as well.

As a consultant, I'm always moving forward, looking for work and looking to learn new things. Because if you don't - you die.