I had a coffee with a retired CEO today where amongst other things we discussed the risk that can face businesses when long-term employees retire or leave the organisation.

Earlier this year, I met with a relatively new senior executive of a software vendor whose whole management team had been replaced over the past 2 - 3 years.  He and his team were struggling to understand why their clients were not as excited as they were about what was coming up in their products.   

I broke it to him that he and his team had no corporate memory of historical events, but he wasn't interested in investigating why previous efforts had failed as he was ''only focused on the future, not the past'; the second time a new executive from the same company has told me the exact same thing over the years....

Before you want an over enthusiastic marketing team determining your corporate memory, capture as much first hand knowledge as you can, as those that do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.