Chris Rodgers riffs on my earlier posts about the perils of panel sessions. We seem to very much in the same camp. I like the way he concludes:
Communication is a relational practice. And no amount of staging – whether through crafting the content, polishing the presentation or perfecting the performance – can create the conditions for this to take place. And so, as regards leadership communion… the conversations are the work.
A big part of the problem is that in many organisations, mere “conversation” is seen as low status, whereas “keynoting” is almost universally regarded as high status. Much of what goes on in tired old Q and A sessions is also a battle for status.
I’ve thought for some time that ideas don’t like to travel uphill, and that these high status habits are pretty toxic to innovation and change. Hence my wariness of labels like “head of innovation”.
