How can leaders make their big or growing companies feel small again? How can they recapture the "magic"--the tight strategic alignment, the high level of employee engagement--that drove and animated their organization when it was a start-up? As more and more executives have discovered in recent years, the answer to this conundrum lies in the power of conversation.

In Talk, Inc., Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind show how trusted and effective leaders are adapting the principles of face-to-face conversation in order to pursue a new...