Memorial Day, in the United States, has an interesting and controversial background. Fundamentally, it appears to have been founded to honor the memory of those who fell fighting in America’s Civil War. Subsequently, the holiday has expanded to honor the memory of all who have fought for and fallen to defend the American way of life. There are a number of references on the internet about the extent to which people have forgotten the purpose for this holiday and no longer observe it in the intended manner.
It also marks the calendar end of spring and the beginning of summer in the United States. For many families it is the first long weekend during which to entertain around a pool and enjoy a barbeque, take a picnic trip to the beach or embark upon the first weekend camping expedition of the season.
In reflecting upon memories as they relate to quality there are two perspectives that seem worthy of discussion. Firstly, there is the quality of what is actually being remembered. Secondly, there is the quality of the process by which something is being remembered.
The concept of ‘quality of what is being remembered’ struck me very hard while being present throughout the struggles of my beloved grandparents with senile dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease… a disease that negatively affects one’s ability to remember. I think we all tend to define much of who we are by our memories and when those memories are slipping away we lose bits and pieces of ourselves with them. I suppose it should have come as no surprise to me when, as my loved ones’ memories were disappearing, the memories that endured longest were those upon which all other memories were built… childhood memories…. and those which changed the way in which even childhood memories operated, those being incredibly significant (to them) events, experiences and relationships. My grandfather spoke tirelessly about his service as a U.S. Marine in WWII… and about his frustration with a single manager while he was a union employee working on the Apollo space program. My grandmother did two things that had brought her the most private comfort after my grandfather had passed away but just before her memory began to betray her: she watched television and read romance novels. I would walk into a room to find her hypnotized on the edge of her seat by the television screen, even though it was tuned to a Spanish-speaking broadcast and she had never learned to speak that language. Each day, she would sit, smiling, as she read twenty or so pages of a romance novel until she tired and needed a nap… not recalling that she had read the same twenty or so pages of the same novel every day for the past six months.
In reflecting upon this it occurred to me how many of the organizations I’ve worked with did not have a formal hierarchy of events or relationships in corporate memory. If you were to ask any employee which events were most important in the company’s history… or which relationships had mattered most… they wouldn’t know. How could they function? All memory is “tribal knowledge” in such organizations and, as each employee retired or otherwise left the organization, a bit of that organization’s memory left with them… as did classification criteria for what constituted “significance”. If one were to strive for emulation of natural systems, wouldn’t it make sense to better capture and maintain more of the significant organizational memory for effective retrieval? How can an organization learn from or even value current events in relation to past events if it has no “memory” of them?
With regard to the process by which memory was retained, it was obvious that reliance upon human physiology was not up to the long term task… at least not in the case of my grandparents. I longed to have a photo album or journal from each of them to consult after they had gone from this world, but neither of them were very diligent about writing things down. With the loss of my grandparents, I not only lost their warm hugs, great senses of humor, boundless optimism and encouragement… but I also lost the comfort of their wise, hard won, experience-based thoughts and guidance. How many organizations abandon the value of such wisdom by not documenting it, also?
If your company or organization does not yet have a historian and access to “lessons learned”, perhaps Memorial Day is a good reason to reconsider the potential value of creating such knowledge repositories.
Meanwhile, I wish all of you and your families a great holiday. I also give thanks for all of the fellow citizens who have put their lives on the line to protect the way of life enjoyed by me and the millions of other Americans over the decades. Blessings to you all.
Quality and Memories
Posted by Diane Kulisek on May 28, 2007
It also marks the calendar end of spring and the beginning of summer in the United States. For many families it is the first long weekend during which to entertain around a pool and enjoy a barbeque, take a picnic trip to the beach or embark upon the first weekend camping expedition of the season.
In reflecting upon memories as they relate to quality there are two perspectives that seem worthy of discussion. Firstly, there is the quality of what is actually being remembered. Secondly, there is the quality of the process by which something is being remembered.
The concept of ‘quality of what is being remembered’ struck me very hard while being present throughout the struggles of my beloved grandparents with senile dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease… a disease that negatively affects one’s ability to remember. I think we all tend to define much of who we are by our memories and when those memories are slipping away we lose bits and pieces of ourselves with them. I suppose it should have come as no surprise to me when, as my loved ones’ memories were disappearing, the memories that endured longest were those upon which all other memories were built… childhood memories…. and those which changed the way in which even childhood memories operated, those being incredibly significant (to them) events, experiences and relationships. My grandfather spoke tirelessly about his service as a U.S. Marine in WWII… and about his frustration with a single manager while he was a union employee working on the Apollo space program. My grandmother did two things that had brought her the most private comfort after my grandfather had passed away but just before her memory began to betray her: she watched television and read romance novels. I would walk into a room to find her hypnotized on the edge of her seat by the television screen, even though it was tuned to a Spanish-speaking broadcast and she had never learned to speak that language. Each day, she would sit, smiling, as she read twenty or so pages of a romance novel until she tired and needed a nap… not recalling that she had read the same twenty or so pages of the same novel every day for the past six months.
In reflecting upon this it occurred to me how many of the organizations I’ve worked with did not have a formal hierarchy of events or relationships in corporate memory. If you were to ask any employee which events were most important in the company’s history… or which relationships had mattered most… they wouldn’t know. How could they function? All memory is “tribal knowledge” in such organizations and, as each employee retired or otherwise left the organization, a bit of that organization’s memory left with them… as did classification criteria for what constituted “significance”. If one were to strive for emulation of natural systems, wouldn’t it make sense to better capture and maintain more of the significant organizational memory for effective retrieval? How can an organization learn from or even value current events in relation to past events if it has no “memory” of them?
With regard to the process by which memory was retained, it was obvious that reliance upon human physiology was not up to the long term task… at least not in the case of my grandparents. I longed to have a photo album or journal from each of them to consult after they had gone from this world, but neither of them were very diligent about writing things down. With the loss of my grandparents, I not only lost their warm hugs, great senses of humor, boundless optimism and encouragement… but I also lost the comfort of their wise, hard won, experience-based thoughts and guidance. How many organizations abandon the value of such wisdom by not documenting it, also?
If your company or organization does not yet have a historian and access to “lessons learned”, perhaps Memorial Day is a good reason to reconsider the potential value of creating such knowledge repositories.
Meanwhile, I wish all of you and your families a great holiday. I also give thanks for all of the fellow citizens who have put their lives on the line to protect the way of life enjoyed by me and the millions of other Americans over the decades. Blessings to you all.
This entry was posted on May 28, 2007 at 10:11 am and is filed under Day-to-Day Observations, Social Commentary. Tagged: caregiving, family, Memorial Day, memory, quality, sacrifice, veterans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.