Jacobs Journal: Preserving best practices
1 Nov, 2008 By: Daniel G. Jacobs Landscape ManagementThe call came over the weekend: My Great-Uncle Jack passed away at an all-too-young 84.
His loss is a great one to our family on many levels. When my sister relayed the news, she mentioned a video that can be found on the Internet. Like many men of his generation, Uncle Jack was a veteran. Thank goodness someone at the Library of Congress had the foresight to create the Veterans History Project www.loc.gov/vets. The goal is to record the testimony of veterans of World War I, the Greatest Generation (World War II) and those of America's subsequent conflicts.
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Uncle Jack remained in the reserves after the war, eventually attaining the rank of Brigadier General. That much I knew. It's what I learned watching the interview that took me by surprise. I learned more about my family's history in the first 15 minutes of that video than I had at any one time in my life.
My uncle's passing is a tragic loss, but it would have been compounded had we lost his story, his memories, his knowledge and his history. Much of that will be carried on by his wife and children, what bits I can remember growing up in the same city, and from the materials he left behind. No doubt some things will be lost, but the most important memories will live on. The same can be said for businesses. Only the memories you want to retain are your company's best practices. If your institutional memory resides with only you or the guy who's been with you for a decade or more, you might be in trouble. What do you do if something happens to the individual with that knowledge?
Start by documenting your practices and procedures. Fill a notebook with articles you tear out of this magazine and documents you collect attending seminars and conferences. Find a way to record institutional memory in a format accessible to all and part of your new employee training and make it part of your annual training.
If nothing else, it might prevent you from rehashing the same arguments and repeating the same mistakes. A press organization I belong to always seems to revisit the same issue over and over at our monthly meetings. A former colleague called it "institutional Alzheimer's," a very apt description.
There's no need to let the best ideas slip away simply because the one who remembers them is no longer with us. Whether that person is a beloved family member or a trusted employee, preserve and cherish those memories.
It's the ultimate way to pay tribute.
Contact Dan at 216/706-3754 or e-mail at
djacobs@questex.com
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