Enterprise Conversations aren’t about reaching one ‘right’ answer quickly; they’re about unlocking all the productive ideas and solutions your people have (and the ones they might not know they have…)
Everyone who works has a thing or two to say about what they do and how they do it. But not everyone gets a chance to contribute that knowledge back to their employer, even if what they have to say might make a big difference to how the organization performs. And that’s largely because the old way of asking people about work is broken.
Enterprise Conversations get everyone in the organization talking about things that matter to the organization. You choose an objective, identify the relevant audience, and create questions on topics that encourage conversations around the objective. Everyone gets the chance to contribute and discuss their ideas and suggestions - the people on the front-line doing the work, their leaders, your internal experts. Then you can use the information from those at-scale conversations to make a meaningful impact on your objectives. This isn’t just a new kind of survey, and it’s not simply feedback.
Traditional surveys and feedback tools send information to and collect data from respondents. It’s a transactional process: ask and answer. Conversations are more interactive and nuanced, and encourage human connections. When we’re communicating with people, there’s more engagement, responsiveness and reciprocation. That isn’t restricted to face to face communication either. An informal, conversational tone can be enough to convince our brains we’re in a conversation even if we can’t see the other participants - and so we make an effort to participate even if we’re interacting via a screen.
Enterprise Conversations have a clear purpose. The campaigns you design, topics you talk about, and the people you talk with are all connected to specific organization objectives. The goal is to quickly make a positive impact on each objective, so conversations should surface information that helps you do that. Other conversations will happen in other places, but these ones are laser-focused on helping achieve objectives. Using this targeted approach you can start creating movement on your objectives within weeks.
In a large enterprise you won’t talk to everyone about everything, and that’s not the goal of Enterprise Conversations. You want to talk to the right people about the right things, and to do it regularly. If you need information relating to a service objective, talk to the people in service roles. If the objective concerns field technicians, invite your field technicians to a conversation. Because conversation topics are super relevant to each audience, you not only generate highly specific information, you alleviate the risk of question fatigue.
There’s also value in nurturing new connections and new sources of expert information: your weak ties. If you only ever ask the same people for input, the likelihood of generating novel ideas is diminished. If you talk with people who work in different roles, in different areas, with different responsibilities, then different - potentially better - information is naturally going to emerge. Enterprise Conversations aren’t about reaching one ‘right’ answer quickly; they’re about unlocking all the productive ideas and solutions your people have (and the ones they might not know they have…)
If you’ve already moved on from employee feedback and embraced conversations, then you know their value. If you’re unsure whether it’s a good idea for your organization - the answer’s most likely yes. We’ve helped a lot of large enterprises make the transition, and we have a couple of suggestions based on our experiences.
Operationalize everything. We’ve summarized our Campaign Design framework here, but if you want to see how it works for your organization’s objectives you can try a quick three week pilot.
You will benefit from training and supporting your people to have productive conversations, and to manage the difficult ones. Motivate leaders to participate and encourage their people to share ideas, so that conversations feel like a natural part of work.
Create a safe space where all input is welcomed, support is offered and immediate problems are addressed. And make it obvious that all contributions are valued and being considered - or better yet, put to use.
