Organizations Remember What They Can Explain

Executive Field Note 042

Organizations have memories.

Stories about what worked.

What failed.

Who was responsible.

What customers wanted.

Why a decision was made.

But organizational memory is not a recording.

It is a reconstruction.

Complex events become stories.

Ambiguity disappears.

Contradictions are resolved.

Eventually what the organization remembers may be considerably cleaner than what actually occurred.

The past becomes easier to explain.

And harder to learn from.

Executive Question:

What did your organization have to forget in order to remember the story it now tells?

Published by Executive Insights. A publication of Axiom Research Press