was a middle-aged man, Matirabu, who used to help launch boats at the dam.
I also delved into his knowledge of the dam and his annoying habit of asking for tips and broken rubber and his drinking.
I mentioned how he was subsequently replaced by Might, who was very pleasant but had limited knowledge of the dam which led to a decline in our performance as Matirabu’s knowledge of the dam and the tips that he gave us had over the years spurred us to success.
I then tied this up to corporate situation where knowledge of an organisation normally disappears with the experienced staff once they leave the organisation in instances of staff replacements.
This is the same with Matirabu, who left with the knowledge of Susigi and how it is essential to retain such valuable information well into the future.
This can be likened to a number of international brands that have managed to withstand the passage of time because they have managed to preserve this organisational memory.
Over the years Coca-Cola has dominated the beverages market with products which have been modified slightly to meet changing consumer needs but by and large their philosophy has not been altered over the years.
Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald’s continue to dominate the fast foods industry due to their heavy reliance on organisational memory which is embodied in their organisational values.
Though they are operating in dynamic modern environments, their recipes have been slightly altered (in line with consumer demands) over the past 50 years.
Another success story is IBM’s founding philosophy, which is based on operational excellence.
If a customer of IBM encounters challenges with their products an army of its memory preservers comprising the sales representative, design engineers will be dispatched to the customer.
They use breakdown as a time to demonstrate customer service as well as a university where they will acquire new knowledge and deeper understanding of their product capabilities.
What destroys an organisation’s memory?
Rapid environmental changes and catastrophes have been identified as some of the factors which eliminate organisational memory.
These uncontrollable factors do not dovetail correctly with an organisation’s standing such that when they occur they ravage the organisation.
However, the biggest culprit identified is the human interface. Poor succession planning and poor selection of leaders within our organisations has been rated as one of the major destroyers of organisational memory.
Allow me then to narrate one of the selection flaws experienced in Hewlett Packard.
In July 1999 Hewlett Packard appointed a chief executive and subsequently elevated her to the position of executive chairperson in 2000.
She was a marketing superstar. Over the years Hewlett Packard’s success was built on engineering excellence.
She emphasised flair, marketing and wanted to make it a sexy organisation.
As a result of her management style she lost a lot of engineering talent and ultimately lost good products/services.
As a result they lost the market. In 2005 she was forced out of Hewlett Packard.
Essentially she contributed to a loss of the organisation’s memory (as shown by low quality products during her tenure).
Locally a family took over a South African-owned specialised engineering firm .
The husband became the CEO and the wife became the human resources director. The employees were used to receiving their salaries on the 21st of each month without fail from South Africa.
The new HR director started paying workers on any day from the 21st to the 5th of the following month.
She did not want to be pushed around, therefore she would do the salaries on the day she felt like doing them.
The husband had an inflated ego. This did not go down very well with the technical staff who claimed a stake in the company due to their technical expertise. The technical guys were not easy to replace because of the specialised nature of their business.
They also take a lot of time to train. Anyway to cut a long story short the company went one way.
There was a mass exodus of skilled personnel. The company was only salvaged after the husband and wife swallowed their pride and stepped down to become non-executive directors.
At times company executives fail to realise the importance of the so-called “minor” issues such as paydays yet employees base their commitments on paydays.
Maintainence of organisational
memory
One of the major methods of preserving organisational memory is by sending new employees on induction courses.
One of the major elements of the induction content is teaching new employees the organisation’s original intent.
This applies to the CEO as well as a sweeper .The other aspects are the value systems of the organisation (i.e. the way we do things around here).
Basic issues like how many times should the phone ring before it’s picked, the correct way to transfer calls and what is the correct way of answering the phone should be clearly spelt to all.
Imagine the consequence to a company if the sweeper fails to pick up a phone, which would have resulted in a company getting a million-dollar contract.
Training should not be restricted to new employees only but also to the veterans. They also need to be constantly reminded of the organisation’s value system.
The issues of strategic path are always debatable in various organisations. Some argue that strategy is the preserve of the CEO.
This entails that only the CEO must know the future direction of the company.
Experience has shown otherwise. The best feedback on strategy normally comes from the shop floor employees who are in direct contact with customers.
CEOs have a duty to cascade strategy to the shop floor in layman’s terms, which they understand.
One of the important organisational memory attributes is management of total quality improvements within organisations.
More importantly, the personal role of individuals in quality improvement should be clearly articulated and passed on to future generations.
This specifies how an individual (on all layers of the organisation) feeds to the strategy and feedback on the strategy.
In conclusion, new brooms have been identified as major threats to organisational memory.
Over the years we have been told that the new broom sweeps clean but a new broom can also sweep gems together with rubbish.
l The writer is a managing consultant at CLC Training International. E-mail [email protected]

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