Creating Conversations That Matter

Five Meeting Formats That Break Down Information Silos

Meetings are the primary forum for knowledge exchange in most organizations. Yet they’re also among the most maligned aspects of organizational life — criticized as wasteful, boring, and ineffective. The problem isn’t meetings themselves but how we structure and conduct them.

When we view organizations as dialogic systems where knowledge emerges through conversation, meetings become critical infrastructure for social knowledge creation. The question isn’t whether to have meetings but how to design them as spaces where meaningful dialogue can flourish and silos naturally dissolve.

Why Most Meetings Fail to Create Knowledge Exchange

Many meeting formats reinforce rather than break down information silos. Consider the typical departmental status meeting: each person reports on their area, others listen politely, and everyone leaves with the same understanding they arrived with. Information gets shared, but knowledge doesn’t emerge.

These meetings fail because their goal is information transfer rather than knowledge creation. They prioritize efficiency over dialogue, reporting over reflection, and individual contributions over collective meaning-making. The result is what many researchers call “dialogue of the deaf” — people talking past each other without genuine engagement.

The Shift from Information Transfer to Knowledge Creation

Drawing from Donald Anderson’s work on organization development, we can distinguish between meetings that transfer information and those that create conditions for emergent understanding. Knowledge-creating meetings share several characteristics:

• Focus on inquiry rather than advocacy — Instead of defending positions, participants explore questions together
• Encourage multiple perspectives — Different viewpoints are seen as assets rather than obstacles
• Create space for reflection — Participants have time to process and connect ideas
• Build on collective intelligence — The group’s understanding becomes greater than the sum of individual contributions

Five Meeting Formats That Foster Knowledge Exchange

1. The Learning History Session

This format helps teams extract and share lessons from recent experiences, particularly after projects, challenges, or significant changes.

Structure:

• Begin with a simple timeline of events (15 minutes)
• Explore different perspectives: “What did this experience look like from your vantage point?” (20 minutes)
• Identify patterns and insights: “What patterns do we notice? What surprised us?” (15 minutes)
• Extract transferable knowledge: “What would we want other teams to know about this experience?” (10 minutes)

Why it works: By starting with shared facts and then exploring different interpretations, this format surfaces tacit knowledge that rarely gets captured in formal documentation. The diversity of perspectives reveals blind spots and creates a richer understanding.

A consulting firm used this format after a challenging client engagement. What emerged wasn’t just a list of “lessons learned” but a nuanced understanding of how different team members had interpreted client signals differently — knowledge that helped them coordinate more effectively on future projects.

2. The Cross-Pollination Forum

This format brings together people from different departments or functions to share insights that might be relevant across boundaries.

Structure:

• Each participant shares one recent insight from their work that might be relevant to others (5 minutes per person)
• Open exploration of connections: “How might this apply to challenges in your area?” (20 minutes)
• Identify follow-up opportunities: “What conversations or collaborations might emerge from this?” (10 minutes)

Why it works: This format explicitly creates space for the unexpected connections that spark innovation. Focusing on insights rather than updates encourages participants to share the kind of contextual knowledge that typically stays within departmental boundaries.

3. The Assumption-Testing Workshop

This format helps teams surface and examine the underlying assumptions that guide their decisions, particularly valuable when facing complex or recurring challenges.

Structure:

• Define the challenge or decision at hand (10 minutes)
• Individual reflection: “What assumptions am I making about this situation?” (10 minutes)
• Share assumptions without judgment (15 minutes)
• Collectively examine: “Which assumptions serve us well? Which might be limiting us?” (15 minutes)
• Explore alternatives: “What if we assumed something different?” (10 minutes)

Why it works: Most organizational knowledge includes unstated assumptions that rarely get examined. This format makes invisible thinking visible, creating breakthrough insights and more aligned decision-making opportunities.

4. The Perspective-Taking Circle

This format helps teams understand complex situations from multiple stakeholder viewpoints, which is particularly useful for customer-facing challenges or organizational changes.

Structure:

• Define the key stakeholders affected by a situation or decision (5 minutes)
• Assign participants to represent different stakeholder perspectives (5 minutes)
• Each “stakeholder” shares their view of the situation and concerns (20 minutes)
• Open dialogue from these different perspectives (15 minutes)
• Return to original roles and discuss insights (15 minutes)

Why it works: By literally taking different perspectives, participants develop empathy and understanding that transcends their usual functional boundaries. This expanded perspective often reveals solutions that wouldn’t emerge from single-viewpoint discussions.

5. The Generative Dialogue Session

This format focuses on a collective exploration of possibilities rather than problem-solving, which is particularly valuable when facing ambiguous or emerging challenges.

Structure:

• Present the topic as an open question rather than a problem to solve (5 minutes)
• Silent reflection on personal thoughts and reactions (5 minutes)
• Share initial thoughts without discussion (15 minutes)
• Open dialogue: build on each other’s ideas without judgment (25 minutes)
• Harvest emerging insights and possibilities (10 minutes)

Why it works: This format creates what David Bohm called “genuine dialogue” — a conversation where the outcome emerges from the interaction rather than predetermined positions. It’s particularly powerful for surfacing innovative approaches to complex challenges.

Practical Implementation: Start Small, Think Big

Implementation of these formats doesn’t require organizational transformation. Start with one format that addresses a specific knowledge-sharing challenge:

• If your team struggles to learn from projects, try Learning History Sessions
• If departments seem disconnected, experiment with Cross-Pollination Forums
• If decisions get stuck on hidden disagreements, use Assumption-Testing Workshops

The key is consistency. These formats work best when they become regular practices rather than one-time experiments. You can gradually introduce additional formats as teams develop comfort with dialogue-based approaches.

Creating the Conditions for Dialogue

Successful implementation requires attention to both structure and culture. Even the best meeting format will fail without the following:

• Psychological safety — People must feel safe to share perspectives without judgment
• Skilled facilitation — Someone needs to guide the process and maintain focus on inquiry
• Follow-through — Insights from dialogue must connect to action

Beyond Meetings: Building a Dialogue-Rich Culture

While these meeting formats can dramatically improve knowledge exchange, they work best as part of a broader commitment to dialogue-based organizational culture. This means:

• Training leaders to ask generative questions rather than just seeking answers
• Creating informal spaces where spontaneous conversations can flourish
• Recognizing and rewarding knowledge-sharing behaviors
• Designing physical and virtual environments that encourage interaction

The Ripple Effect of Better Conversations

Organizations that master dialogue-based meetings often see improvements beyond the meetings themselves. Teams develop stronger relationships, make better decisions, and solve problems more creatively. Information flows more freely through informal channels as people build trust and understanding through structured dialogue.

Most importantly, these conversations create what organizational researchers call “generative capacity”—the ability to create new possibilities rather than just solve existing problems. This capacity becomes a crucial competitive advantage in a rapidly changing business environment.

What conversation could your team have tomorrow that would help valuable knowledge emerge and break down the silos that keep you from your best work?