(Image by A Couple Cooks)
What is 200 mgs of caffeine? It’s about two cups of espresso. And it can improve your short-term memory (up to 24 hours) a great deal.
This can be useful when you need to read something and quickly reproduce it, like a statistic in travel and tourism, or the temporary code you are sent by your bank for a 2-way authentication.
Memory is linked to emotions, but also physical sensations, and our environment. Memory also informs us who we are and helps us plan future actions and thus our future. Without it, we couldn’t learn or develop, because all learning rests on a foundation of prior knowledge.
Contrary to what many people believe, our memories are not stored in a file cabinet where we can open a drawer and pull out the recollection we’re searching for.
Instead, memory is a complex system involving many brain regions and processes. And every experience we have changes the connections to and of memories within our brain’s vast neuronal networks.
Each time we recall a memory, it is actually reconstructed, and so there are many subtle differences in how it’s refashioned. And often distorted.
What does this mean at work? And how do we, for instance, deal with systems that were implemented a long time ago and where we struggle to recall all aspects and things that happened, accurately.
Read on to find out more.
Memory
Our memory works on a conscious and unconscious level, sort of knitting current experiences with the past (and projecting in the future). Similar to this article, you will remember some pieces of information for a few seconds (maybe the caffeine bit), others for an hour, some comments for days and one day you might remember you even just read it. Or that you didn’t.
It’s a very selective process, memory that is. Some concepts get absorbed, others don’t.
It’s more like a dynamic and evolving movie that can change with each viewing. This is also because there are different components of memory, like the short-term memory (“limited capacity storage”), working memory, and long-term memory (“large capacity storage”).
Short-term memory is when we are able to remember a short list of things for about 30 seconds. If we don’t have a cue, we may repeat it over and over in our head like a grocery list. Or we use a cue by placing your grocery bags at the door to remember you had to do groceries to begin with.
Working memory is the ability to juggle a few pieces of information together to solve a problem.
And long-term memory is created when attention-grabbing things and events get encoded in our brain and can be recalled.
All of these categories of memory are influenced by our inner beliefs, sensations, and whether we think about the meaning of something, perhaps connecting to it more deeply.
Our environment plays a big tole too. Remember going on an offsite training to a really nice facility in a wooded area? It’s more likely you remember that site than the training, so it can be distracting, too.
At work
While working memory kicks in when you have an immediate task and need multiple pieces of information readily accessible to achieve a goal. Like working out formulae in Excel with some statistics.
But the problem at work is with long term memory, especially if we have worked somewhere a long time (say over 15 years) and we are over 50+, when people start to recall more negative than positive memories.
There are scientific explanations for this I won’t get into now, but it has unfortunately been proven.
This creates an important dynamic when different teams need to work on, for instance, the implementation of an Offer & Order Management System where traditionally an airline has used a Passenger Service System (PSS), especially during a time where New Distribution Capability (NDC) connectivity is being migrated toward.
The thing is, there more anxiety there is, coupled with fear of failure and bad reconstructed memories of past migrations, the more our working memory deteriorates.
Bad and confusing recollections further influence how we futurecast upcoming tasks and how we interact with our team members, often increasing the “they vs. us” dichotomy when people actually need each other.
Organizing for Memory
So, there is actually such a thing as organizing for memory.
Organization is about handing over information and coordinating this information. This also applies to the past.
And one trick to reconstruct and recall memories better is through storytelling between different departments that talk about each others’ business processes as if they were implemented again for the first time.
Meanwhile, you include younger staff from related departments that were treated at silos in the past to learn from past memories, but also to create new stories as to how an integrated organization (enterprise process) would look like with the added functionality (e.g. NDC and O&O).
These memory recall+ sessions take about 1-2 hours per business process and turn both memories and organization into something malleable, which is not a bad thing.
Defense mechanisms are reduced because the past is treated as something that was done for specific reasons that were necessary “back then”, and not as set in stone going forward.
Simply asking somebody to explain why something was necessary in the past lowers the anxiety for those involved in the past. It does not make them feel like they’re being criticized. You will find that more often than not, people start opening up and discuss the discrepancies between their memories.
Which will show that not everything is as they think it was. And that it is not negative, but a necessary step toward the future.
Not everybody will believe in these sessions. Which is why context and core inner beliefs are important, but that is a staffing for attitude issue. In the worst case, you can consider attitude problems as an organizational challenge by assigning people to teams where they matter less. It’s a whole other matter.
Just like caffeine (in limited doses), you can make memory work and we should all thrive to remember the past and past projects better to understand how to go forward. Criticism about the past is easy, and often based on selected memory or ignorance.
I recently started to refresh my memory regarding all material, started rereading books that had an impact, and I am getting to fresh insights and new memories.
I found it very useful.
Wishing you all a wonderful day, and greetings from Montréal.
Ricardo
Montreal, Tuesday, 3 October 2023
Feel free to contact me for questions, comments, or a chat:
ricardo(at)pomonaadvisors(dot)com
my general email has changed to: info(at)ricardopilon(dot)com