Subject: Re: Corporate memory LO2933

BandABall@aol.com
Mon, 25 Sep 1995 15:09:21 -0400

Replying to LO2911 --

In a message dated 95-09-22 23:41:48 EDT, Rick Church replied to LO2870
by saying:

>
>To what does the psychobabble term "corporate memory loss" refer?
>

Having spent many (31+) years in a Fortune 100 company, I can attest to at
least the following forms of "corporate memory loss:"

--after mulitple reorganizations, no ability to do comparative multi-year
analyses; the base(s) was (were) too obscure to recover or recreate

--procedures that no longer worked, because the "intervenor" who made it
work was RIFed or retired

--systems which theoretically protected the "memory" no longer did,
because the "magic name" who made the connections between disparate data
bases was no longer in that job

--abandonment of "archaic" practices and processes because the "new" crowd
didn't understand the reasons for them, only to have a major blow-up some
six months later.

All in all, I do not view corporate memory loss as "psychobabble" at all.
Of course, this may not be at all what Colin Sharp and his colleague had
in mind when they wrote:

"My Colleague (Neil Lewis) & I have researched and written on the
problems of corporate memory loss with organisational re-structuring,
especially "de-layering" (a la Hammer & Champy- "Re-engineering"). Some
organisations are claiming that they are using groupware (like Lotus
NOTES) to ensure capture of corporate memory to avoid such losses. "

Regards,
Byrd

--
Byrd M. Ball
Atlanta, GA
BandABall@aol.com