Knowledge Management gives us access to information, but it does not decide or act. In this Knowledge Café, we will explore how Conversational Leadership builds on KM by strengthening shared reasoning, judgement, and agency. Join us to examine how we think together when knowledge alone is not enough.
Knowledge Café
Conversational Leadership — Beyond Knowledge Management
Date: Tuesday 17th March 2026
Time: 14:00 to 15:30 GMT (London time)
—it might still work for you if you’re open to an early start or a late night.Host/Speaker: David Gurteen and John Hovell
Location: Online Zoom Event
Price: Free (optional contribution of £5, £10, or £20)
Introduction
This event is part of a series of online Knowledge Cafés on Conversational Leadership, held on Zoom.
Each Café explores a theme drawn from my online blook on Conversational Leadership.
Ahead of each Café, I may invite you to read one or more related posts from the blook to help prepare for the conversation.
If you’re new to the Knowledge Café concept, please note that this is a participatory event, not a webinar.
Theme: Conversational Leadership — Beyond Knowledge Management
This Knowledge Café explores the relationship between Knowledge Management and Conversational Leadership, and why the distinction matters. Knowledge Management helps organisations organise, store, and share information and experience. It provides the infrastructure for learning. Yet access to information does not guarantee sound judgement, innovation, or coordinated action, especially when uncertainty, disagreement, and risk are present.
The theme of this session is the gap between knowing and acting. We will examine where traditional KM reaches its limits and how Conversational Leadership builds on it by strengthening how people think, reason, relate, and decide together. Using a simple four-level view of KM, we will consider how conversation becomes increasingly critical at higher levels, where sensemaking, decision making, agency, and communityship come into play.
John and I will speak about the Café’s theme and pose a question to initiate the conversation. Then, in Café style, we will divide into small groups for three rounds of discussion, followed by a whole-group conversation.
Reading Material
If you have time, please read this post from my blook. It provides helpful background for our conversation, though it’s not required.
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In-person, 7–11 September 2026
Warbrook House, Hampshire, UK
We are living and working in conditions of uncertainty, complexity, and rapid change. This week-long workshop offers a space to practise Conversational Leadership as a shared, lived experience.