As Rafael Echeverria says, “language has an active and generative role. It is what we call the transformative power of the word, through which we generate new objects and products, we transform the world, we open or close possibilities, we build different futures." Echeverria talks to us of the power of language, and of how companies are a clear example of this power. Without it, we would not be able to set up organisations.
All organisations have a clear linguistic structure, let us look at four aspects of this structure:
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First, whoever belongs to an organisation decides through a declaration.
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Second, the structure of an organisation is like a network of mutual promises, each person is tied to the organisation by a series of specific commitments and is responsible for satisfying certain conditions.
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Third, the members of an organisation act against a shared backdrop, which is “company culture”, produced through the permanent thread of conversations.
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There is also a fourth aspect to company culture, but not based on the conversations of the past but rather on a shared future that creates a common vision.
The conversations that take place or not in companies, condition and reproduce both internal and external relationships
Whatever the problem is that the company might be facing can be examined through observation of its conversational structure. Even when a team fails, the conversations held during its acquisition or during the planning of its maintenance.
A fundamental aspect that must be reviewed in companies when they are going through a moment of paralysis, with a sensation of not moving forward, are the conversations that do or do not take place. These condition and reproduce both internal and external relationships.
A possible reason for a company’s stagnation can be down to the fact that they live anchored in trial conversations. These are conversations, usually private, that companies have based on a chain of trials through which we interpret what happened and its consequences. They are conversations that aim to find an explanation about what happened (reduction in profitability, loss of important clients, failure of a marketing campaign, ...), which end up looking for culprits and those responsible without taking on board what can be done to change the situation. These type of conversations can take a lot of time or end up blocked indefinitely.
Trial conversations create stories to explain what happened but they do not generate action and responsibility to change the situation
Moving to action means having a different type of conversation, like for example, conversations to coordinate actions. These conversations generate future action for us to deal with an existing situation (problem). Their aim is to make something happen, to intervene in the current state of things. When we begin them, we try to change whatever is causing the problem or for us to take charge of the consequences.
To have these types of conversations there are generally four linguistic stages: the petition, the offer, the promise and the declaration.
There are people who find it hard to ask for help. Asking for help suggests weakness, and if I ask for help I could be refused and so feel rejected, etc. Not asking for help does not allow us to change things and only continues the suffering.
In today’s interdependent world we have to learn to ask for help and to understand that rejecting a petition is not a rejection of the person. There are companies that have the cultural characteristic, which determines the behaviour of their professionals, which is not asking for help, and so they will find sustainable growth difficult.
Sometimes, moving directly to action is not possible, sometimes we do not know what we can do to improve the situation, and that is the moment to start conversations about possible actions, like for example, brainstorming.
In other situations, before dealing with the problem it is necessary to define the basis for how we will deal with the issue, to specify what behaviour is allowed and what is not. What we will do to coordinate and reach agreement when there is none. This is the conversation for the relationship. We do not talk about how we will overcome a specific situation, but rather we talk about how we will work together.
Therefore, whenever a company is making no progress, when we find ineffective teams, we should first look at the types of conversations that are or are not taking place.
There are companies with the cultural characteristic, which determines the behaviour of their professionals, of not asking for help and that makes sustainable growth difficult