“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.” -Toni Morrison
INTRODUCTION
Language is solely explored in the corporate world for its importance to leaders’ effective communication. The storytelling that motivates teams, appeals to Talents and gains investors’ trust, the marketing tag line that attracts consumers, the empathetic communication used to accompany change, the culturally sensitive supporting international business development, the value-based internal communication that builds corporate culture and of course, the body language recently brought to its highest levels of refinement by the tenant of the White House!
Yet leaders are constantly reminded to listen more than they speak.
And when focus is on language - as in employees’ speech, liability, risks and potential threats to corporate interests rapidly crawl on all four. Stories like Google’s accused of illegally terminating James Damore for his views or the protections offered to whistle blowers fuelling corporate fears.
So freedom of speech would only concern authors, journalists, political activists, public speakers, artists, … to serve as the foundation for democracy?
Not quite. Free speech is also vital for business to thrive.
Henry Ford is said to have cynically asked « Why is it every time I ask for a pair of hands, they come with a brain attached? » A century later, with the soon completed digitalization, robotization and automatization of work and machines performing the repetitive, strenuous or dangerous tasks, hands are actually no longer needed. But not even brains either! Machines also perform the most complex equations and analyses. They even research, process and store amounts of data the human brain fails to grasp.
So, what’s left for humans in the workplace?
While Frederik Taylor’s 1900s goals of productivity, reliability and efficiency will be achieved by robots and machines, the only thing these won’t ever do is critically think, challenge what exists and imagine what does not. This capacity, that stems from what Daniel Cable calls the “seeking system” , pushed our ancestors to leave Africa, and is very soon to send us to Mars. For this capacity knows no limit, it is the
