The Hard Conversations

Abstract

Every commons in this book was governed by people talking. The herdsmen at Lloyd's gate, the farmers before the cathedral door in Valencia, the fishers of Alanya drawing lots each September: the institutions they built were, in the end, agreements reached in conversation and kept in conversation. A leader who wants to govern a commons inside an organisation will find the same. The charter, the ladder and the health sheet are written down after people have agreed. Getting them to agree is a series of conversations, and a few of those are hard. This chapter takes six of them: with a board, with finance or head office, with a union or works council, with business partners, with family, and with the sceptic who has read Hardin. For each it sets out the worry the other person brings, what is true in it, and a script. The scripts are written to be read aloud and then put away. Nobody should recite them. Their job is to give a leader a first sentence and an order of ideas when the conversation arrives, which is usually before the leader feels ready.