Language has many dimensions. We have words and sounds and writing. But language also has the dimension of acts—the way that we do things with language, and that language does with us. Our rationalistic tradition, in which I was educated originally as an engineer at the Universidad Catolica in Chile, puts its emphasis on facts, the representation of facts, building models, and communicating about the truth of claims. Through life experiences, some of them tougher than others, I gained the conviction that there is a whole other world that is just as important, and no less rational—a world that is emotional, social, and historical. This is the world in which, in collaboration with others, we bring forth realities, negotiate with each other, and make history happen, all in conversations with each other. It is a world in which language is not merely about notations of facts but also poetical and political invention.

I began thinking about how people work together in my dissertation The Office of The Future.  I discovered the theory of speech acts, directives and commissives.  Directives, such as requests and offers, are spoken acts that attempt to prompt the person being spoken to perform some action. Commissives are spoken acts where the person being spoken to commits to some future course of action. I developed a theory of management that shows how certain speech acts, particularly requests, promises, offers, and declarations, serve as building blocks for activating commitments in organizations. At the core of this work is that a small, finite set of Speech Acts serve as a "periodic table" of the elements of coordination that is a generic and powerful foundation for design, no matter how complex the business process.