ABSTRACT
Conversations and stories are the lifeblood of communities and organisations of all kinds. The problem is that conversation is such a normal part of everyday life – in turn stimulating, boring, routine, touching and frustrating – that people seldom stop to think about what a complex and creative process it is. There is a wealth of literature demonstrating that ‘talk’ is a vital part of organisational life and business, and that learning and novelty emerge from conversation. A different kind of common language started to emerge for people from their earliest conversations, as phrases like ‘surfacing the invisible’, ‘ripple effects’, ‘narrative tracking’ and ‘social life of documents’ gained currency between people. The GP Advisors seemed anxious about this at first and requested another chance to read the draft with this particular readership in mind. The experience of retracing the history of the GP Advisor group also helped to further crystallise our thinking about the work of ‘cultivating communities’.
