Structural Amnesia

The organization forgets why decisions were made while retaining the decisions themselves. Institutional memory decays. Context disappears. Policies persist without rationale. The system operates on inherited rules it can no longer explain.

Learning. Calibration. The ability to distinguish between constraints that matter and constraints that are inherited accidents.

Recording decisions is easy. Recording reasoning is hard. Turnover is constant. Retrieval systems are weak. The present always feels more urgent than preserving the past.

• Decisions appear stable
• Processes continue functioning
• No one asks why until something breaks
• Questioning inherited decisions feels political

• Stability
• Consistency
• Institutional strength
• "That's just how we do things"

• "Why do we do it this way?" has no answer
• Policies persist after their original conditions change
• New leaders undo predecessor decisions without understanding them
• Institutional knowledge lives in individuals, not systems
• Post-mortems are written but never consulted

"We need better documentation"

Documentation exists but is not consulted. The problem is not recording—it is retrieval and relevance.

"New leadership will figure it out"

New leaders inherit structures without context. They either repeat old mistakes or dismantle working constraints they don't understand.

"This is just turnover"

Turnover accelerates amnesia but is not the root cause. The system fails to encode why alongside what.

"The decision still stands"

The decision stands, but the reasoning is lost. Future decisions cannot calibrate against original intent.

• Decision logs that capture reasoning, not just outcome
• Mandatory context transfer during leadership transitions
• Periodic review of inherited constraints
• Explicit sunset dates on policies without refreshed rationale

Decision reasoning is retrievable and actively consulted.