The Conversational Firm

July 25, 2016
Turco, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, spent 10 months studying the pseudonymous social media marketing firm “TechCo,” a 600-person company in an urban area; this thoughtful but ultimately disappointing book-length case study is the result. TechCo knew it needed to undergo some major changes; “The old ways of doing things,” the CEO said, “don’t work anymore.” Turco launched a major study of the company, focusing on its efforts to adopt values popularized by big tech companies (Facebook, Google, etc.) such as openness and transparency. They implemented some of the familiar trappings of an open office—a wiki, an open-plan space—and worked on replicating a digital-native culture in which open communication and employee autonomy were highly valued. Investigating what had worked and what hadn’t, Turco made some unexpected findings: employees pushed back on getting more decision-making responsibilities and had difficulty getting past fear of management reprisal when encouraged to speak honestly about problems. However, she concludes that ongoing, open dialogue is worth striving for—as long as leadership can check its assumptions at the door. This is an interesting case study, but the book is neither entertaining enough to be a story, nor educational enough to be prescriptive.