#institutionalknowledge

As always. That’s why we’ve been shedding competence, experience, and institutional knowledge like there’s no tomorrow.

When new leaders join a company, the first question they should ask is simple:

“What was already known, and what was already attempted?”

Without that context, accountability turns into retroactive blame, punishing people for outcomes they never had the authority to change.

Too often, long-standing structural issues are well known internally. They’ve been raised repeatedly by those closest to the work, but when prior leadership failed to act, the problems compounded. Calling that “lack of ownership” misses the reality, it’s an organizational stall point, not individual failure.

Strong leaders know the difference. They can tell who’s been quietly pushing to fix systemic issues versus who’s been coasting. They take the time to distinguish contribution from compliance, ensuring that institutional knowledge isn’t discarded in the name of “fresh perspective.”

I’ve spent years trying to drive meaningful change, often against inertia. But it’s difficult to stay motivated when leadership seems more focused on appeasing the next layer up than on fixing the foundation. If decisions continue to be made in haste, without understanding how we got here, the risk is simple: we’ll lose the ability to sell the products that actually work while chasing “new initiatives” that generate noise but not revenue.

Sometimes the problem isn’t that people don’t care, it’s that those who do care stop believing anyone above them is truly listening. Learn to identify them. Empower them. Protect them. Do that, and you might just build a team capable of winning again.
If not: good luck, and adios.

All those years of hard-earned know-how just vanish overnight. Some leave on their own, some are kicked out. The new hires mean well, but they don’t have the background to keep things steady. You can’t replace decades of knowledge with a two-week onboarding. It’s scary seeing how fragile the whole system really is.

COP will soon layoff significant numbers of hardworking and skilled personnel with significant institutional capacity and knowledge in its efforts to become as per McKinsey Focused Future Proof….
What does this new COP really look like and at what cost?
Or are the management consultants correct in that COP is rudderless and need of institutional retooling.

execs came up with a brilliant move... let's cut the people with decades of experience, the ones who stopped the place from collapsing every time a vp brought in their latest tedtalk strategy. cause (obviously) performance has nothing to do with institutional knowledge...... it’s all about how fast you can say synergy on a teams call.

genius - really. this isn’t lazy cost cutting at all.

it’s bold visionary leadership that looks at a spreadsheet and thinks.

wow what if we swap a skilled person over 50 with two new hires who need six months of hand holding and a manager on top. now thats pure efficiency. even better, let's call it innovation, or transformation. just don’t dare call it what it actually is.

dumping the people who actually know what they’re doing so the earnings call feels a little less cringe...