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Conversations That Create Opportunity

Some of the most important opportunities in business don’t start with a proposal. They start with a conversation.

Sometimes it’s a quick introduction. Sometimes it’s a question you weren’t expecting. Sometimes it’s hearing a completely different perspective from someone you have only just met. And sometimes, it’s simply taking the time to listen.

Last month, we spoke about The Power of Showing Up, because great partnerships don’t happen by chance. Someone has to make the first move. Someone has to walk into the room, pick up the phone, ask the question or simply say hello. But showing up is only the beginning. What happens once we’re in the room is where things become interesting.

You Never Really Know Where a Conversation Will Go

In business, we spend a lot of time preparing for conversations. Meetings have agendas, sales calls have objectives, briefs have questions and events have stands, presentations and carefully planned introductions. Preparation matters, but some of the best conversations are the ones that don’t quite follow the plan.

Someone might ask a question you hadn’t considered, challenge something you believed or tell you about a problem you’ve never encountered before. A conversation that started in one place can suddenly take you somewhere completely different. You might discover an opportunity neither person knew existed when the conversation began.

That’s part of the value of a genuine conversation. You don’t always have to enter it knowing exactly where it needs to end. Sometimes you simply need to listen, ask questions, stay curious and see where it takes you.

This becomes even more valuable when we’re speaking to people who don’t necessarily think the same way we do. It’s easy to surround ourselves with people from the same industries, with similar experiences and familiar ways of solving problems. There’s comfort in that, but there’s also enormous value in hearing from someone who sees things completely differently.

You don’t have to agree with every person you meet to learn something from them. In fact, sometimes hearing someone say, “I see it differently,” can be far more valuable than hearing another person agree with you. A different perspective can challenge an assumption, introduce another possibility or even change the question you were asking in the first place.

Sometimes the Gap Is What We Haven't Asked

At Modic, we spend a lot of time thinking about the gaps between ideas and execution. But not every gap is caused by a lack of capability, technology or resources. Sometimes the gap exists because nobody asked the question that needed to be asked.

We assume the brief is understood. We assume everyone agrees. We assume the client is happy. We assume somebody else has dealt with it. Those assumptions can quietly become gaps, and often it takes a conversation to expose them.

One good question can uncover something that hours of planning might have missed. That’s why curiosity matters. Before rushing towards another answer, sometimes we need to stop and ask ourselves: What haven’t we asked yet?

This Month, We're Starting a Conversation

September gives us a great opportunity to put this thinking into practice. We’ll be meeting business owners, entrepreneurs and leaders at The Business Show Africa, followed by conversations around people, teams, leadership and culture at the HR Conference.

But we don’t want to simply document where we’ve been or take photos to prove that we were there. We want to use the opportunity to listen to people and hear what they actually think.

So we’re going to ask questions.

And then we’re going to do something a little different. Instead of deciding every question ourselves, we’re going to let each conversation determine where the next one goes.

We’ll start by asking someone a question. Once they’ve given us their answer, we’ll ask them what question they would like us to ask the next person.

The next person won’t hear the previous answer. They’ll simply receive the question, give us their own perspective and then leave another question for whoever comes next.

We don’t know what questions we’ll end up asking. We don’t know what answers we’ll receive. We don’t know whether the conversations will stay focused on business, move towards people and leadership, or head somewhere we never expected.

And that’s exactly why we want to do it.

We’re giving up some control and allowing the people we meet to determine where the conversation goes. Different people will bring different experiences, opinions and perspectives to the chair, and we’re interested to see what happens when we simply give them the opportunity to share them.

The Conversation Is Only the Beginning

Of course, a great conversation on its own doesn’t create an opportunity. What happens afterwards matters just as much.

Someone still has to follow up. Someone has to make the introduction, remember what was discussed, keep their word or take an interesting idea and do something with it. A conversation might open a door, but execution determines what happens when you walk through it.

The same is true of relationships. They’re not built by collecting contacts, exchanging business cards or adding another LinkedIn connection. They’re built by remembering the person behind the introduction and choosing to continue the conversation long after that first meeting has ended.

That’s what we’re interested in this September. Not simply how many people we meet, but what we can learn from them, what questions they leave us with and where those conversations might eventually lead.

We’ll listen. We’ll ask questions. We’ll meet people we don’t know and hear perspectives different from our own. And rather than deciding where every conversation should go, we’ll leave some of that up to the people we meet.

Because you never know which conversation might introduce an idea, challenge an assumption, solve a problem or begin a relationship that leads somewhere completely unexpected.

So, before we ask our first person to sit down and start the chain, we’d like to ask you:

What question do you think we should ask the next person?

The conversation doesn’t end here. It starts with one question…

Because great ideas deserve great execution.