Archive:

“A challenge confronting our society is widespread organizational amnesia. The baby boomers have more or less gone out the door. And with them has gone so much oral history. Knowledge and experience are not being passed on. Organizational amnesia is the consequence. It is a race against time to pass on knowledge and experience. It feels like the gap caused by loss of understanding is widening. When those coming into organizations do not know what they do not know, loss of understanding of the WHAT, WHY and HOW is a cause of concern in managing expectations,” stated Ted van der Gulik.

Ray Fung captured the mood of the summit with this summation: “The Partnership is seen as a resource that is stable, that is there, and that people can draw upon. I liked the comment that THIS IS A MOVEMENT. I find that is really inspiring to not see ourselves just as a network. We leave the summit inspired to figure out how the FORM of the Partnership will follow the FUNCTION. We can learn things from expanding our perspective. Part of that holistic approach includes the SPIRITUAL as well as the physical connection to the land.”

“The notion of a superficial understanding explains the challenge that I am seeing. There are post-2000 graduate engineers coming out of university who are familiar with green infrastructure ideas and concepts, but they do not know the details behind them: details that they did not have to know at university or in their previous jobs. But without the background and history, can they really appreciate the complexity of interactions in a whole-systems approach and why certain targets and approaches were selected while others were not? This is why it is so important to find a way to pass on information and deep knowledge,” stated Robert Hicks.

“Without deep knowledge and an understanding of history, proposed courses of action may be unimplementable. The loss of big picture thinking is reflected in the way larger organizations are siloed. Their focus is on immediate mandates and on managing budgets and staffing. When you talk to the right people, they do see the big picture and how everything connects. And yet, when it comes into the actual realm of application, it is so much easier for them to apply something when it is chopped up and put into silos. And in the process, they lose sight of the big picture,” stated Robert Hicks.