INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY AND REVERSE SMUGGLING

INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY AND REVERSE SMUGGLING

Institutional memory comes in two forms: people and documentation. People remember how things work and why. Sometimes they write it down and store that information somewhere. Institutional amnesia works similarly. The people leave and the documents disappear, rot, or just become forgotten (as it were).

I worked for several decades at a large petrochemical company. In the early 1980s, we designed and built a plant that refines some hydrocarbon type stuff into other hydrocarbon type stuff. Over the next thirty years, institutional memory of this plant faded to a dim recollection. Oh, it still operates, and still makes money for the firm. Day to day maintenance is performed, and the skilled local crew is familiar with the controls, valves, safety systems, and other such.

But the company has forgotten how it really works.

A few things conspired to make this happen:

• The downturn in the oil industry through the 1980s and 1990s caused a moratorium on new hires. By the late 1990s, our group was a mix of people over 55 and under 35, with few in between.

• We gradually made the move to fully computer-based design.

• A series of group reorganizations physically moved our office several times.

• A major corporate merger several years after that completely dissolved us into a larger petrochemical firm, causing a significant institutional and personnel shakeup.