Tonight I saw a fantastic presentation about encouraging the use of wikis, but it was a few steps away from the story that communicators must tell to explain the potential role of wikis in enterprise change.

Like all great presentations, this talk by Stewart Madder of Atlassian hit it's mark because it spoke to the audience and our views and deepest needs.

My guess is that most the people in the room — myself included — were left-brain dominant. When people like us think about communication, the first thing we see is the role that tools and process could play in assisting change. The presentation spoke to us because it was full of companies that I assume to be full of left-brain dominant people, and they were all sharing information and reaching consensus more effectively because they were using wikis. Great stuff. It's real, and it's a story that people like me love to hear.

But tools and processes are only one aspect of internal communication. The other side is emotions and culture. Even those of us who are left-brain dominant are emotional communicators, even if we sometimes have to remind ourselves to consider emotional factors when solving business problems.

Stewart provided some great nuggets that could be woven into a different, complementary story for a right-brain dominant audience. He spoke about getting to know people in different offices through the wiki before he met them face-to-face. He spoke about the team at Atlassian using the company wiki to organise their poker games as well as their work. But the larger story that grounded this presentation was about information and efficiency much more than culture and community. The challenge for us when we speak to heads of communication is to tell a story that speaks to the business much more than individual business processes, and that involves emotions as well as information.