Institutional Memory
An Element For Organisational Development

By Shankar P. Rajbhandari

WHEN an old person dies, a library is lost. This African proverb is an eye opener for those organisations where institutional memory is not properly appreciated. Institutional memory is a key element for organisational development. This is because, organisation learns from past memory and plans the future strategy based on its past experiences and present situation.

Vulnerable

Most of the organisations do not learn. This is vulnerable for the organisational growth. Because, learning if locked inside the heads of individual staff members, organisation may lose its memory when individuals leave the organisation or forget the memory. Therefore, the African proverb should no longer be applied in non-governmental organisations from the standpoint of making these organisations developed.

One of the crucial elements of organisation development is the process of developing NGOs’ information and its due applications to the development purposes. This is how, a learning organisation needs mechanisms, which enable an individual’s memory to be downloaded into an information system so that everyone can continue to access that person’s experience, and their analysis of that experience long after the individual has moved.

The process of downloading the information or individual’s memory is not that easy as it is important for every organisation either it is governmental or non-governmental one. Most of the organisations either do not know the correct process of downloading individual information or ignorance it without following the process minutely. In either case, the result becomes detrimental for organisational growth. Taking this institutional carelessness into accounts, many organisations use to give emphasis on transferring individual memory into institutional memory.

Many organisations, mainly NGOs, now have come to realise that all departing staff should go through an exit process, which parallels the induction required at the beginning of contracts. Some organisations link departing staff with trainers to develop training materials (sometimes based on case studies) which can be used either in-house or with other organisations. Such a creative practice should follow by every organisation if they are serious enough towards developing their organisations.

Towards this end, another crucial technique is that staff should be encouraged to tell their story of their time in the organisation in whatever way they feel comfortable. For this, two important points are to be deemed. They are: first, staff should know how to tell their story regarding their institutional growth, and second, the organisation environment or culture should be congenial to tell the story. Besides, there should be a proper mechanism to record the individual stories for the use of institutional development.

One should clearly understood that through the use of documentation, databases, resource centres, policy papers, guidelines, training and discussion of experience, an organisation can enhance its members’ collective memory in ways which unlock each individuals knowledge and place it in the organisational domain.

Informal sharing of knowledge and experience related to problem solving is also an effective way of ensuring that the organisational memory is expanded and refreshed. Again, it requires a cultivation of sharing culture in an organisation. Such a culture is one of the lacking parts of the organisations in developing countries. How to promote a sharing culture in organisation? This call for a deliberate approach-both from the inside-out approach as well as the outside-in approach.

Sharing culture in organisation can be ensured to some extent by unlocking individual memory of the staff members. This is because, many NGOs have recognised the importance of unlocking each individual’s memory but few have, as yet, developed systematic ways of ensuring that their knowledge and understanding are made widely accessible to colleagues both in their own organisation and beyond.

Staff generally become reluctant to share information with the peers mainly due to two basic reason, first the temptation to be indispensable in the organisation if not at least in a particular working group in the organisation. Second, the prevalence of the leg-pulling culture in the organisations. Both the above reasons are major barriers towards promoting sharing culture in the workplace. Many staff members are unaware of the negative implications of the above weaknesses towards the institutional growth and many organisation members deliberately involve in manifestation of the above ill practices.

The process of promoting, sharing culture and mitigating the culture of leg-pulling and self-centeredness can be abolished in the organisations if its importance for organisational growth is largely realised and make collective efforts for the same.

Nevertheless, some suggestive measures can be introduced for the imporvement of work environment and organistion culture. First, develop a mechanisms for remembering the experience of its current and previous work through the development of highly accessible databases, resource information centres and data retrieval systems in organisation.

Second, introduce the provision of making all important written documents and reports cross-referenced and made easily accessible to all staff. This helps enhance the individual competency of the organisation members. Third, regulate the provision of systematically recorded debriefing by the staff who leaves the organisation so that organisation retains its knowledge in a regular basis. Fourth, a systematic database of all programmes and activities of the organisation should be introduced so that staff and outsiders can easily understand the utilisation of their expertise in the process of institutional growth. Fifth, information collection systems should be given top priority with a view to update and alert the organisation for its efficiency and effectiveness.

Crucial

Institutional memory is a crucial factor but most of the people ignore it due to lack of knowledge of its importance. It is therefore suggested that people involved in NGOs should strictly follow the above points if they are really keen to develop their organisations as dynamic entities.