The need to forget

Hyperthymesia (from Greek, “excessive remembering”) is a psychological condition which prevents a person from forgetting anything. In its extreme form the intrusive flashes of memory for events best forgotten induce stress. This opposite of amnesia is an overload of memories both good and bad. The suitcase of memories is filled with old clothes as well as new ones to the point of bursting out uncontrollably.

Maybe the need to remember is less stressful, what with external storages of data like the Internet and younger partners who’ve heard the same question before.

Because of the limited capacity of the brain to store everything, it is critical to clear some space and even intentionally forget certain things like heartaches ( I can’t remember what she said when she slammed the door wearing the scarf that I gave her), the way to an outlet mall in Las Vegas, and what one wore for the high school prom. Forgetfulness too is an essential management skill. It is needed for the process of “unlearning,” which is critical when assuming a new job. A senior executive moving into a new corporate culture needs to learn about the new company or industry she’s joining as she tries to unlearn the mindset and work habits of the company and country she already left.

Refusing to unlearn, even partly, a previous corporate culture makes for an irritating colleague, as the transferee prefaces her sentences with, “this is how we did it in my previous company,” explicitly saying — this is how we’ll be doing it here from now on. The newcomer will unconsciously be applying an old set of values and beliefs to a culture which may be totally different, even hostile to the colonial culture.

The learning curve tracks the speed with which a new skill is acquired, very steep and difficult at the start and then easing up in the course of time as relevant skills start to accumulate. This same trend applies to the “unlearning curve.”

The need to understand and accept a new corporate culture is often resisted by one parachuted from what she is convinced is a superior organization that may be many times bigger and a lot more profitable. This attitude is no different from old colonizers imposing mores and traditions wholesale on countries they have vanquished. Indigenous culture is there to be replaced by the better model.

“Culture shock” is most evident in the entry of private sector executives into government jobs. The public sector culture is everything the private sector executive abhors. Rules and precedents are a substitute for decisionmaking. Breaking them often entails breaking the law. It is no surprise that private sector executives, no matter how accomplished as CEOs and dealmakers in their previous careers and how honest and well meaning, meet their Waterloo in government service. Their contempt for the system and those that promote it is seldom disguised. The bureaucracy fights back the best way it knows how. It delays, sits on requests, routes papers to non- existent bureaus, and sabotages change. It leaks scandals (usually administrative oversights) to media to make the boss look unfit, if not venal.

Thus successful public executives are usually those already with bureaucratic experience. Hence, military types smoothly slide into public positions with very little adjustment. They know how to follow orders and ignore critics. And those who rose from the ranks always know which buttons to push, and which ones to avoid.

Too much has been written about management of change but not a lot about receptivity to change. Always, the villains in business cases are those who resist change, not the ones who impose it on the natives.

The process of unlearning requires humility. There is a tacit acceptance that the new organization is capable of teaching new and useful skills. Forgetting the rules of a previous career does not mean throwing away accumulated experience. It merely seeks to maintain openness to different ways of getting things done. True, adjustments need to come from both sides. But simply out of numerical asymmetry, the new manager must not expect the mass of subordinates to unlearn their own hardwon skills. It’s more sensible for the former to bend and see what he can learn from his new charges.

So much productivity is lost in the clash of cultures. Sometimes, it is necessary to forget the past in order to proceed to the future. Forgetting is a creative process too. It allows one to move on and try new things… including failure.

FENCE SITTER A. R. SAMSON Always, the villains in business cases are those who resist change, not the ones who impose it on the natives.