Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Welcome to Conversation Agent

The mission of my work is to reframe how we value things (and people) to transform business culture and society. I pursue it through narrative analysis and story design using conversation as a sense-making tool.  My origin story. Subscribe here.

 

The Glue that Holds all of our Relationships Together

We all have the desire to be seen, heard, listened to, and treated fairly; to be recognized, understood, and feel safe in the world. Some time ago I worked with a company to help build a narrative to diminish turnover and create lasting impact. It’s the kind of work I love to do—help a team and company flourish. And in this company, I came to realize that what they needed for that to happen was dignity. I did what I could to begin the process of many shifts in perception, talking, and sharing stories among the people in the team,... Read more →

The Economic Value of Culture and Creativity

Arts and culture add value beyond economics—how do we value those benefits? With all this talk and excitement around AI, we overlook the role of the arts and creative industries and their positive impact to human health and well-being. Two decades of research found that the arts and creative activities provide direct and indirect benefits to health and well-being. More than 3000 studies say exposure to the arts prevents diseases, promotes health, and can treat and manage disorders. Specifically, Daisy Fancourt, Saoirse Finn found that the arts can: help people with mental illness support care for people with acute conditions... Read more →

How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living

The value of rituals in life… and in commerce. Carrie walked into her mother’s home to find her sitting on the floor, surrounded by relatives and friends. She was wailing after having just buried her son. Nobody seemed to be able to offer any consolation—in fact, any attempt had her cry harder. “Why don’t you make us tea, mom?” It took an instant. All of a sudden, her mother stood up, composed herself, and went into the kitchen. Several minutes later in she walked with a tray filled with a hot teapot steeping, lovely china cups and biscuits. Hot tea... Read more →

Get Ready to Face Resistance for Your Originality

Most people embrace new ideas only after they’ve become widely accepted. There’s a reason why you keep seeing the same posts throughout social media. Different avatars and logos, similar stories. If you’re a student of history, you’ll see the phenomenon more clearly with the benefit of distance. Paradigm-shifting ideas have always encountered resistance. Because they challenge our thinking. As individuals—and culture—we get into grooves. People say they want creativity, but deep down they don’t. What they want is acceptance and belonging. And that means going with the flow. Hence the sea of sameness. We love the work of original artists... Read more →

Humans’ Tool to Make the Infinite Comprehensible

Saints, armies, medicinal plants, treasures, book titles, nature collections, survival kits—the essential nature of lists. Swiss businessman Jean Henri Dunant was traveling in northern Italy when he spotted the aftermath of what became the decisive battle between Franco-Sardinian and Austrian forces. 40,000 troops dead, wounded or missing near the small village of Solferino. On June 24, 1859, Dunant became a stretcher-bearer. Alongside others who were equally ill-equipped to deal with the situation, he took on the unpleasant task of retrieving broken bodies from the battlefield. It was triage at its worst. A terrible start for one of the most useful... Read more →

Between us…

How emotions are “stories in the world.” I ordered a couple of items from Amazon. It’s an option of last resort when I cannot find something going direct to companies. Sometimes Amazon is the only way to order a product. Free shipping is another reason why I might order from Amazon. Since I’m not a Prime member—given the company’s low value practices—I usually wait for my total to pass the minimum threshold. Which this particular order did. However, I realized I wasn’t going to receive one of the items within a reasonable time frame. So I deleted it. Now the... Read more →

Living Closer to your Friends Would Make you Happier. Why don’t you?

Three ideas why. We change. Life changes us. When I moved to America many years ago, I was thinking expansively—it would be great to immerse myself in a new culture. And that it was. I thought I could make new lifelong friends. What I didn’t understand is that beyond growing up together, lifelong friends in America meet in high school and college. After that window of time, your friends vary based upon where you work (occasionally), or live (sometimes), or the professional associations where you’re a member (maybe), or the causes you support (perhaps). The qualifiers are not accidental. Many... Read more →

Stereotypes

The soundtrack that flattens culture to amplify margins—the gain temporary, the collateral effects long-lasting. But it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s what you get when you try to compress a whole idea into a formula. An attempt to capture a category of things with a simple, generalized belief. You declare: ‘I expect you’re the kind of person/people who does/do that.’ Spam and marketing done on the cheap are all about stereotypes. They speak to the minimum common denominator possible— ‘as long as they’re paying attention.’ Often, the message needs to agree with the client/customers based on their expectations.... Read more →