Center for Semantic Excellence

When we walk away from a stimulating meeting or business forum, we're often filled with new insights and excited about the new relationships we have created. But we all face the same interrelated problems in such situations:

• We leave such gatherings with somewhat different understandings of what transpired, and those understandings diverge over time.
  
• Our memories of what transpired are grossly incomplete. We have no retraceable record of the critical conversations in such gatherings, let alone of the conversations in which we participated directly.
  
• Similarly, we have no retraceable, structured record of whether ideas voiced by participants were considered good, causal, or bad by those participants.
  
• So there is no way to convey the essence and impact of those meetings to others in our functional groups with consistency and accuracy.
• And the next meeting on the same topic covers much of the same ground ... with the same shortcomings. 
  

Meetings are just the beginning of the problem. In meetings and other information-based activities, the superabundance of information leads increasingly to misinformation, because it is more difficult and time-consuming to identify, consume,and evaluate what is relevant.

It isn't just a matter of finding and remembering, either. Modern commerce is a complex exchange of both meaning and money. Specifying what we want isn't just a matter of picking objects from a list and handing over currency. Nor is it just a matter of picking objects from long, complex lists. Every aspect of designing, creating, and selling products and services is an exercise in communicating meaning —meaning that creates value for the organization.