Conversational competence is a process, not a state. Ithaca does not exist, only the voyage to Ithaca. Vibrant campuses are a series of productive conversations. At its core, communicative competence in academic settings mirrors a collective search for meaning regarding the purpose and direction of a campus community. Communicative competence requires a cogent answer to the question: "Do we each organize our work from the same shared sense of what is significant?" Research suggests that as much as 90 percent of the time spent in effective faculty conversations is devoted to creating clarity regarding what colleagues desire to achieve. Conversationally adept leaders and followers can consciously "design" their own conversations to set the tone and direction of collegial conversation and create a shift in thinking and action for everyone in a meeting room.