Talking cures

Conversations are the essence of healthcare.  Get them right, and ill people feel better.  But in the world of public conversations – of complaint or public consultation – it is as though NHS staff get instantly transported back to the world of the silent movie.  Conversations become grey and stilted, each phrase jerking past the gimlet eye of the inner lawyer that appears like magic in the heads of the professionals. 

But a powerful new global conversation has begun.  Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed.  As a direct result, the conversations that we can have with patients are getting smarter – and getting smarter faster than most organisations. In a conversation people communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking.  Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine.  It can’t be faked. Most corporations and organisations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humourless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important to-us busy signal. In the ears of patients and public this can sound like the same old tone, same old corporate steam roller over our helpless, small, warm bodies.But learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about “listening to customers.”  They will only sound human when they empower human beings to speak on their behalf. Health workers are used to having important, serious, big conversations with patients.  This should give them a big advantage in holding authentic, useful conversations on the web once they get started.  All we need to do is get out of their way. 

Tradition, corporate firewalls and over-zealous lawyers have all limited the ability of patients and staff to converse about services.  It’s going to cause real pain to tear those walls down.  But come down they will because democratised voice on the net will pull them down.  The result will be a new kind of conversations.  And it will be the most exciting conversation organisations have ever engaged in.

 

(This is adapted in part from the wonderful Cluetrain Manifesto which was authored long ago by, amongst others, Doc Searls whose writings are always impressive - so many thanks and aknowledgements).