As individuals, there are things we learn which require constant practice to maintain. If we don’t play the guitar for five years, then chances are we won’t be stage ready. If we don’t paint for a long time, our brush strokes become imprecise. If we put down the pen for years, our prose won’t be as sharp.
However, there are basics, simple enough that, once learned, we seem to retain almost indefinitely. Tying our shoes, riding a bike. We take these things for granted because they don’t go away. They are always on hand and don’t require conscious effort to maintain.
Organisations, on the other hand, tend not to forget the hard things; these are where their competitive advantage lies. They keep up the practice.
But not always so for the basics.
It’s easy to forget that in organisations, many of the basics are performed by individuals, and individuals don’t stick around forever. All of a sudden no one knows how to do that one task, and it has to be relearned.
Organisations need to work hard to ensure that even the small stuff is trained into the muscle memory of the system itself, it’s precisely because something is simple and repetitive, that it should be embedded into systems and processes.