Organizations, social networks and quantum physics

Quantum physics came about not through a sense of logic, but because physicists were having results that they couldn't explain with Newtonian physics, but it was a struggle for them to try to understand what they were seeing.

For example, in an experiment where there are two slats and one photon (particle for light) goes through.  If both slats are open it will appear to be a wave, as it goes through both, but if only one slat is open it appears to be a particle.  If they have both slats open until just before the photon gets there, and they close one, it seems to know that and becomes a particle.

There is also the idea of what happens when two particles interact, and there is an idea what will happen, but based on the amount of energy present a different particle will come out, and a probability can be used to get an idea which one it may be.

This didn't make sense, but physicists have had decades to struggle with this, and to come to understanding about the fact that how we observe or measure will affect the results.

In organizations there is an idea that there is a rigid hierarchy, and the roles are well-defined, but, if we take some lessons from quantum physics then if we look at relationships between people, we can see that a person can have different roles based on the situation.  So, a person may be the leader of a project if she is the best person for that task, and later her role may change.  

But, just as observations and measurements affects the reality of quantum particles, how we see or what we measure in an organization can change how people act, or how we see that person.  So, if someone is seen as being someone that is a high-flyer any ideas they have may be seen in a better light, and someone that may actually be more competent may have ideas that are excellent, but because of the fact that he has long hair, he is seen differently and so the ideas are not taken seriously.

So, in an organization where people can change roles based on the situation it is important to be certain to not control from the top, but to have more of a participative form of management, where people are free to discuss their ideas.  A good chart on dialogue vs debate is: http://ncdd.org/rc/item/5394.

We come down to social networks now, which is really about trying to help people relate to each other, and much as an organization may want to look at relationships between people as more important, and allow the energy of dialogue to help with creative solutions, social networks seem to follow in the idea that there is a rigid sense of how to relate, where everyone in that social network should relate just to others in that network.  So, we have multiple networks, and there are concepts, such as OpenSocial (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSocial) that try to help bridge this, but, basically there is a great deal of lost opportunity where social networking groups don't try to find some way to allow these people to interact.

So, just as organizations may need to move to a more participative, social networks should look at trying to help people to find new ways to interact with each other, and stop looking at just trying to keep people just within that particular website.