This quote hits me between the eyes.

The most valuable thing any of us can do is find a way to say the things that can’t be said. My role is not to say what is easy or what we all can say, but to say what we have been unable to say.
(Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations)

Whether that can be accomplished…well, that’s another thing altogether.

I had a fascinating conversation with Tim Chase after NECC 2008 had ended, as the crews were showing up to tear down the Bloggers’ Cafe and only the die-hards sat around in a circle. Being outside the circle, Tim and I had a conversation. While that conversation probably isn’t meant to be shared, I’m willing to point out a thought that popped into my head when I heard Wes Fryer utter the sentence, “Sustained conversations change us,” or something along those lines.

Conversations. Change. People. Yes, they do. But something about that–especially when it involves a corporation–bothers me deeply. Conversations with corporations can change. As I listened to NPR the other day, businesses don’t change because they want to please their customer…they change because it’s about making money. Money…the root of all evil.

Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.
Source: The ClueTrain Manifesto

It is when transparency is not possible, when silence is the answer that the blogger, a corporation offers to the question…that’s what must be challenged. We MUST know the motives, the heart of the matter…and, since they’ll come out in the end anyways, it does no one any good to lie. And, we have to share what we find out with one another. The conversation Wes began with his Pearson podcast goes to the heart of it…what a great example!

Corporations enable human beings to commit evil acts, granting them some measure of anonymity and freedom. “The Corporation, the District decided to do something” and so sorry it resulted in the bad things that happened to you. “We did this for the benefit of the District,” when everyone very well knows that it was more to the benefit of certain individuals in power.

A part of me hearkens back to Orwell’s Animal Farm and the insiduous nature of leadership. You ever feel like Boxer, the hard working horse that gets sent to the glue factory? I bet it’s not an uncommon feeling for classroom teachers in the midst of high stakes test cultures.

Maybe, I’m just human. Sometimes, the best response isn’t a carefully considered, cultured conversation but a barbarism. Shall we not, as one electric cleric put it, “Sin boldly?”

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world.
–Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

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