The Case Against “Presence”

In May 2005, when the pieces of the present Collaboration market were falling into place, Jonathan Spira, CEO of Basex Knowledge Consultants, published in the Basex Newsletter a letter he had written to the editor of Business Week . Its theme sentence was provocative:
“Two of the world's largest software companies just don't get what collaboration and knowledge sharing is and their products reflect a lack of understanding of the needs of knowledge and information workers and how they work.”

Few were willing to define standards for collaboration back then though “community of practice”, viz., free flow of knowledge among a group driven by common interests, and its value for raising "collective ability" were established concepts. Collaboration was so difficult to achieve in practice that any form of collaboration was welcome. To a great extent this applies even today.

Recently Passerini of P&G was quoted as saying: "For collaboration tools to help, they must be completely embedded in the work processes”. This is an echo of Davenport (Nov., 1999): “.. knowledge management has to be “baked into” the job. It’s got to be part of the fabric of the work to import knowledge when it’s needed and export it to the rest of the organization when it’s created or acquired”. Knowledge Management fell short of creating a community because it became focused on methods for knowledge sharing. Similarly, collaboration today is being understood as a product of tools. The goal of collective ability is over-shadowed.

The Live Communication Server (LCS) of Microsoft integrates with various applications so co-workers can collaborate from a spreadsheet, a document or line-of-business system, such as CRM. It also integrates with videoconferencing, Web conferencing, phone systems, e-mail, calendar, directory programs and public IM systems to create a presence-enabled work environment. This is expected to have a major impact on the way the enterprise collaborates, communicates and operates. Likewise, Lotus has assembled all the social networking capabilities it thinks are useful under a single umbrella.

Provision of tools is a far cry from organizing people and driving their individual effort towards a collective goal. A horde of strong men could have replicated the strength of Hercules but directing the strength to channel a river for cleaning out the Augean stables demanded the binding and driving force of organization and purpose that only Hercules could manage. Similarly, harnessing IT to sweep away the problems of collective ability requires a clear understanding of the force sought to be released so that its thrust may be organized and suitably channeled in the desired direction.

Collaboration quality must be defined not in terms of half way marks like knowledge sharing or a tool attribute like 'presence', but in terms of assurance of a coherent community where people share, listen, learn and evolve, in the words of Mary Parker Follett (~1926), ‘composite ideas'.