It’s easy to forget 
sometimes just how complex big companies really are. As much as enterprise-wide collaboration is talked about, it’s still mostly fiction. For the market at large, it doesn’t exist beyond email. And it’s not that companies haven’t tried.
It’s my planet. Step off.
Most of people’s time is spent with their group. These groups are typically made of of everyone from the same planet. Every once in a while, the group has to send an ambassador to another planet. But, for the most part, entire lives could be spent never leaving planet Finance, for example.
Planets have a class system.
There’s a government. An upper, middle and lower class. A pecking order. A big part of people’s time is spent working in and around this.
We’ve heard of other planets.
They have to be out there, we see them on charts. Others refer to them and talk about them as if they’ve visited. Those aliens that pass us everyday or that are on our email cc lists have to be from somewhere. Regardless, they’re not us.
Planets are hostile.
It’s harsh living on a planet. The conditions aren’t friendly and the environment is primitive. Dogs eat other dogs. Inhabitants are motivated by personal gain. And everyone knows that planets don’t like other planets. Darwin was right.
People live in huts.
Homes are little walled off, felt lean-tos. And all they have to communicate with each other are letters. They can also write stuff down and paper clip it to their letter. They hope someone reads their letter. Maybe it will change their situation, help with their personal agenda or in some cases, make the planet a better place. There’s always the tribal meetings. Maybe they could get something done in there. 
There’s tons of debris.
Big companies everywhere are riddled with legacy software junk, floating around like expensive, decommissioned satellites. These things have popped up here and there on planets. Supposedly, they come from Planet IT but often they’ve been commissioned and abandoned by other inhabitants of the planet.
The scary planet.
Remember Watto? IT is a planet filled with Wattos. Most of us never make it to Planet IT and for good reason. It’s scary as shit over there. We don’t understand all the tinkering they’re doing. They speak an odd language. And we obviously make them mad. Our antiquated tools came from Planet IT but they blame their government’s rules. Something is always being incubated on Planet IT. Not much hatches.
The black hole
It’s where our ideas go. And our emails. And the files we stick into our file servers.
The hard stuff
Everyone knows what the hard stuff is. It’s the important issues, the problems, the challenges, the big ideas. It lives outside the planets. No one seems to know how to get there.
The big bang.
It’s Social Software. Companies don’t want to be in this situation. Everyone is tired of it. We’re learning how to work as a team. We’re learning how to be motivated as a group. And for the first time we can see the big picture. Aliens aren’t scary. Work can be fun. The best news is that this grim, war of the worlds is already seeing a new day. This galaxy is actually changing. Still, the fridge will always have problems.
You know we have a soft spot for you though.
