Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

The View from Somewhere

When we ask for someone's point of view on a topic or subject, what we mean is the opinion or feelings they have from their experience or situation. Point of view is the angle of considering things. The philosophical aspect of point of view is perspective. In their work, Heraclitus and Parmenides discussed the relation between “appearance” and reality —as in what is appearance, what is reality, and the relationships between the two. In literature, point of view is the mode of narration that an author employs to let the readers “hear” and “see” what takes place in a story,... Read more →

W. Edwards Deming's "Plan, Do, Study, Act" for Learning and Improvement

“There is no substitute for knowledge.” [W. Edwards Deming, The New Economics] At Conversation Agent we believe in developing knowledge so that we can extract the right data at the right time to make decisions appropriately. Which is why there are no shortcuts to knowledge —it is an acquired taste, and a product of the refinement of our skills and wisdom rather than that of fashion, label, or popularity, just like a good wine. We take into account context when we experiment in our work to test the validity of a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy of something previously untried.... Read more →

Working on the Right Things is What Makes Knowledge Work Effective

“Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective,” says Peter Drucker. The subject of The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done is how we can manage our self for effectiveness. Half of the battle in managing ourselves is about deciding how we place value on our activities. It may seem productive to pursue all opportunities, for example, telling ourselves that any benefit is better than no benefit. But that thinking, encouraged by technology and the illusion of access, hides a harsher reality —activity is not synonym with effectiveness. When it comes to... Read more →

How Small Differences in Perception can have Potentially Major Consequences

“The church is near but the road is icy; the bar is far away but I will walk carefully.” [Russian proverb] What makes some people see the glass as half full and others half empty? What is the connection between our minds and body? Does it leads us to see the world differently? Social psychologist Emily Balcetis set to find out. She focused her question on health. She says, when it comes to fitness, some people quite literally see the world differently from others. To overcome these differences Balcetis offers a surprisingly simple solution that helped people use their visual... Read more →

What we Know to be True

“A good story has a beginning, a middle and an end, although not necessarily in that order.” [Jean-Luc Godard] There's a big difference between working and communicating about our work —we may excel at the first and need help with the second. Writing and talking are also two distinct competences. Some of us may find that we are much better at talking things through; for others, it is more comfortable to write things down. Social media, email, and messaging applications have not created the need for us to say things —just like the telephone they are tools. And even if... Read more →

How to Ask Better Questions

“Literature is the question minus the answer.” [Roland Barthes] Our questions reveal our real intent more than we suspect. There is such a thing as a leading question —a statement camouflaged as question by the inflection, or a lazy question, for example “who is going to win?” “The future is the intersection of choice and interruptions,” say Christopher Locke and David Weinberger in The Cluetrain Manifesto. “The questions we ask aren't going to predict the future. They will create the future.” Things are what we make of them. What happens next? In a recent paper Jean Twenge, a professor of... Read more →

How to Improve Our Conversations

When Susan Cain started research for her book in Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking, along with the story of Dale Carnegie's metamorphosis, she found the chain of events that led to the cultural transformation of a whole country. From a Culture of Character, the United States moved to a Culture of Personality. Culture shapes behavior. The world followed —and now we can't stop talking. Talk shows, reality shows, trade shows, media and entertainment trading places. What are we saying? Do we know were to begin to have a valuable conversation? It starts with... Read more →

Exploring the Balance Between Living for Oneself and Living for Others

“We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something last longer than we do.” [Herman Hesse] It makes a difference whether we live for our résumé or our eulogy. The truth is we spend our lives exploring that balance between living for ourselves and... Read more →

Companies don't Need Content; they Need Things to Happen When they Publish

“Far less thought goes into making history than remembering it.” [Peter Tunjic] This is reason enough for a whack on the side of the head —but there are twenty five more where that came from. For example, what happens when we look for the second right answer? To make something repeatable we need to understand why it works. Finding the reason why it would work for us requires we go beyond the obvious —often what everyone else is doing. Yet most organizations and teams hardly have time and space to do so. And in not having those conditions of time... Read more →

The Real Meaning of "Author"

“If you want the whole thing, the gods will give it to you. But you must be ready for it.” [Joseph Campbell] This weekend's project was cleaning up the email account associated with this blog. To quantify the scope — from a starting point of 17,682, the account is now at 4,092. The qualitative process included criteria for what to keep and what to let go. In the process, I had the opportunity to review thousands of conversations and comment threads from the past ten years. That is a lot of emotional data through stories. A few high level themes... Read more →