Something I Forgot

A few weeks ago I saw something on the History Channel about D-Day. It told of a soldier whose job it was to photograph events on the beach that day. It's kind of amazing when you think about it. A soldier being sent into a combat zone for no other purpose than to take photographs. I guess that's how important it is to have a record, a sort of collective memory for events. This is important not just for historic moments, but for organizations of all types. Sadly, many fail to take the necessary steps to do such a thing.

If your organization, whether it's a school, a large corporation or even a small business forgets to leave some type of memory of events, you'll be left with a shallow pool of knowledge that can cause trouble later on. Without some way of having an institutional memory, the experience of your company is only as deep as those who currently are employed. In some cases, it's enough to prevent problems. But what happens when people start to retire, leave for other jobs, or worse yet, get hit by a bus on the way to work.

How many essential processes in your organization are not written down? What will you lose when those processes leave along with the memories of those who created them?

This topic is on my mind as I prepare to wind down a program for which I'm responsible in my job. I'm thinking about the previous five years of the program and all the valuable lessons that I want to capture on paper before moving on to something else. Like just about everyone, there are things you learn by having an experience that you can't learn any other way. Getting those things down on paper is essential, though it doesn't necessarily seem that way at the time.

There are a lot of things about the military that are pretty messed up. However, remembering lessons learned isn't one of them. Do a search on the phrase "lessons learned" in google. Most of the results are from military sites. The "lessons learned" papers are an important part of military culture and one from which other organizations could learn.

As far as my own situation, I'll try to write down the important lessons that someone, someday will want to remember. The only question left is, will anyone bother to read them?