We’ve all suffered from it.  Corporate amnesia.   You call a company you’ve done business with for years, and give them your name, address, and inside leg measurement 3 of 4 times before you get to the point of the call.

A more insidious form of corporate amnesia forces a team member to recall the process before they perform a task, instead of having the system remember it for them.

This kind of amnesia results in variation over time and between team members.    Sometimes the variations will be improvements, but most often they are an ever-worsening copy of a long-forgotten original, void of life or meaning.    Any improvements are forgotten, because the organisation has no way to capture them or remember them.

This isn’t just amnesia, its also akrasia – doing one thing when you should be doing another.

Because if you’re too busy remembering what’s supposed to happen, you aren’t making it happen.