Andrew Turpin asks for feedback in re corporate memory loss, and its
disabling effects.
What immediately came to mind was a bit of a takeoff on another
gentleman's site, Jim McAbee, (http://www.emeraldis.com/~jimmc), wherein
he uses a great line.
"An education is what is left when you can no longer recall most of the
facts."
I just thought how well that expression fit in with the ideas of mastery,
expertise, enablement and so forth, and how it might fit in with the issue
of corporate memory loss, following the acquisition of a great deal of LO
participiting knowledge.
What might be gained from such a query as to whether or not such corporate
memory loss is a problem in the first, or simply a "normal" reaction
which should present no great hazard to the company?
When a carpenter "masters" his craft, he doesn't need the book anymore, or
the Teacher. When a baseball player masters the position, he no longer has
to stop and think in order to make the play. In fact, it would be a
detriment to do so, would it not? And, using AT's ideas of commutation
(see his posts on that subject), their is no turning back once an
organization has taken unto itself POSITIVE information.
If the organization begins to slide, then the question is why the slide,
not where did the knowledge go that got them there, in my view. Is it
possible that there has been a loss of "attractors" for the very knowledge
we are talking about? Or a shift to more negative commutation arising from
somewhere in the organization? Sounds like it might be interesting and
useful to find out, and I for one hope Andrew widens the scope a bit to
allow for this possibility(ies).
I've noticed that I have had to do a bit more reading (a lot more)
recently, especially with Maturana subject matter, and with AT's
commutation principles. I am enjoying the reading, I must say.
--Regards, John Constantine rainbird@trail.com Rainbird Management Consulting PO Box 23554 Santa Fe, NM 87502 http://www.trail.com/~rainbird "Dealing in Essentials"
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>