According to Ove Arup, engineer, designer and philosopher and founder of the eponymous company, “the ultimate immoral act is choosing not to think.” This was quoted by Professor Emeritus Peter Jones as part of his 2010 Ove Arup Foundation Lecture, “Why are three heads better than one? Or: How to prepare for a new Enlightenment.” Professor Jones holds that the “cement of society is conversation and that when we ignore or lose our capacities for conversation we are in peril.”
While views vary on what constitutes a conversation, indeed, some hold that there is no such thing, the definition given at the lecture reads thus: “Conversation is a sacred and improvisatory practice in which the duty to listen precedes the right to speak.” It is essentially a practice because the skills required to be a good conversationalist have to be learned. A duty to listen reinforces the need for participants to understand the context and display appropriate manners. Consequently, the practicing conversationalist welcomes the opportunity to approach a topic from many directions and be open to the views of others while being happy to formulate and present their own arguments.
Ove Arup brought an array of experiences and an open, enquiring mind into the world of architecture and engineering. He noted that practitioners of both were not conversing and therefore, in his view, these disciplines needed reform, with a greater emphasis on learning from each other and opening their minds to other influences. This became the signature approach of his firm, one that applies today.
While the current economic situation has further reinforced the need for architects, engineers and designers to innovate and find new business models, the need to break out of disciplinary silos and actually think and converse is crucial for all companies and indeed governments and other institutions. By this way, can organisations find a way through the economic crisis and indeed plot a route to future success.
At the micro-level, this could begin by turning business meetings into conversations. Rather than mechanistic encounters where agenda items are ticked and the senior manager pontificates, all present have been schooled as conversationalists and all enter the meeting with an open mind and desire to tackle the agenda from many quarters, to learn, to assess, to think. While retrofitting a conversational ethos onto a company can be beneficial, the ultimate gift to society will be through structural changes to the way we educate young people – from nursery to university. Only the most ardent educational ideologue would disagree that we could be doing more to empower our school and university graduates with an ability to critically appraise, to question conventional methods and to posit their own views. While there will always be exceptions, the UK educational system needs to work harder, if its aim is to nurture thinking individuals.
Business too, is not a hotbed of thought and conversation, as the pressure to deliver on ‘key performance indicators’ takes precedence. The bigger the company, the less thought takes place as the job is driven by process and procedure. The smaller, dynamic entrepreneurial company though, is more of a cradle for silo breaking and thoughtfulness, but even then speed is more the order of the day.
For the businessman hungry for debate and conversation, there are opportunities out there, beyond the normal run of conferences and award ceremonies. For example, a desire to look beyond the here and now has been taken to heart by the Scottish urban regeneration community. An upcoming conference aims to take a creative and positive view of regeneration in the light of the economic crisis. Called Creative Approaches, the whole conference is built around ‘Moving Conversations’ which combines lively debate with film and television archive clips. The normal flood of bullet pointed slides has been replaced by rare footage and discussion, with the express aim of exploring ideas and stimulating new thinking amongst the public, private and voluntary sectors.
As Professor Jones concludes:
“Let us not further deceive ourselves into believing that, over the centuries, Governments or Instituitions or Professions have always, or even very often, put into place people and resources to promote relentless, self-critical and exploratory thinking.”
Far from being a luxury that a business cannot afford, finding the time to think might be just what all Chief Executives need right now.
