I have not blogged in almost a month, which is unusual for me, but some unusual things have been going on. A week or so ago, my Dad (82) had a stroke. He walked into the emergency room with his girlfriend and was able to talk at that time, but as the bleed in his brain got progressively worse so did the paralysis and brain damage, until a neurosurgeon saw him a day later and said not only was there no hope of his recuperating, but that he would die any day… that was over a week ago.

I flew to NY on Tuesday to be with him, and even though he is unconscious, I have been sitting by his bed everyday talking to him. Trying to forgive him before he transitions, and letting him know it is OK for him to go. Because I think about collaboration trends and technologies a lot, it seemed natural to think about this also while sitting at his bedside.

I am working on a current project for a client who has had a Notes environment for a long time, and it seems to serve the company well. They are looking to either upgrade to Notes 8 or move over to a Microsoft stack, and the testing will go on through the summer.
What does Notes/Exchange have to do with my dying Dad, well both are in a great state of transition. My Dad leaving this body and moving on to whatever is next for him, and my client company, also like a caterpillar in a chrysalis ready to become a butterfly. What is the role of collaboration in such a transition?

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Communication and Organizational Structure

I once learned a term in a cybernetics class in graduate school called “autopoiesis” which from the Greek means "Self Creation" and The term was originally introduced by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela in 1973.

It it an interesting idea, and one that says that things that die are replaced by like things in an organized system. For example, a person is an organized system. If you have a cell in your liver die, it is replaced by another liver cell, not a cell for your big toe, or for your nose, but another liver cell. Now it is not exactly the same cell as the one that died, but it does perform the same function and works with the other cells in the liver to help the liver perform its function as long as the liver wants to stay a liver.

If you think of the enterprise as an organized structure, then a person in that organization might be thought to be like that liver cell. If that person is fired, and the organization is autopoetic, then it hires another person to fulfill that function and work with others within that organization to keep things running.

But how does the liver cell know it is a liver cell and what functions to do and how to do them in coordination with other liver cells, to make the liver overall work well, for the larger organization called the human body? Obviously there is information inherent in the cell (DNA) and also communication between cells to help with the coordination. The same thing is true of human organizations, the new hire has his/her own background, information and knowledge, but does not have a lot of information about the new organization, its critical content, culture and social norms. All these have to be learned, and that is where collaboration comes in.

Taxes and Overhead

There is always some cost in bringing the new person up to speed, and the strength of the collaboration system in an organization can affect the amount of time and the quality of the introduction a new hire receives. Much of the new talent today are NetGeners (born after 1982) and so have used computers all of their lives. They have certain expectations of communications and collaboration technologies they get from personal interactions in the consumer world and carry those expectations over into their business lives.

The amount of time it takes them to get up to speed, or the amount of work they have to do to use legacy systems such as Notes, Exchange, SharePoint, etc. is similar to taxes (due tomorrow). Others call them the “learning curve” or “transition costs”, but whatever you call them they are the price you pay to communicate and interact in the larger organization, weather that be a liver, an enterprise or a country.

The goal of many of the Web 2.0 tools is to reduce the overhead. Think of it as a “flat tax” for interactions, in that many of the philosophies of Web 2.0 are around transparency and participation, in addition, everyone is equal. If you look at MySpace, LinkedIn, Youtube or other social networks, there is no hierarchy and pretty much everyone is equal (yes there are administrators for such systems who have greater powers). Who keeps the Internet going? No one really, there are some agreed upon standards so that one computer can talk to another, and information can be displayed in a common format, and that is about it.

Similarly the cells get chemical communications from not other liver cells but from the blood and nerves in the body. When those communications stop happening, not only the cell, but the organ and the person die. This is also as true for enterprises as it is for geographically distributed social networks. As my friends at CommunityXpersts like to talk about the 4 Rs for community (resources = content, recruitment =the number of people in the community; recognition = how do you reward those that participate; and respect= for their role and what they know). Without these things it is hard to have a successful social network or community. Many of these factors are based on communication and collaboration. Since death and taxes are inevitable, the question with collaboration is how much you pay (how big is the overhead) and when?

Summary

I have believed for many years that being a systems thinker was the only way to be successful with collaboration technologies. Although this was part of my educational background, I have not talked much about philosophy in my blog and mostly focused on tools, technologies and trends. However, sitting by my Father’s bed watching him die has put me in a philosophical mood, which ended up being expressed in this blog. If you have any comments on my ruminations, my situation with my Dad, collaboration trends or technologies, taxes, or just life and death itself, I would be glad to have you participate and note your comments on this blog. I will check it periodically (there is no wifi at the hospital) and reply as quickly as I can. For all those of you who have wished myself, my family and my father well… I thank you.

Keywords: death, taxes, autopoesis, collaboration, legacy collaboration, Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, social networks, online communities, netgeners, myspace, YouTube, LinkedIn