[One Idea Monday] Collective Memory, Uncool Leadership, and Recruiting

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Akwaaba friends,

Good to be back earlier than expected 😃 I hope you miss my newsletter, because I sure miss your emails. Let’s dive in!

1 idea: Collective Memory

Collective Memory is the idea that in social interactions between 2 or more people, we share a “warehouse” of memory, information, and knowledge.

Photo by fabio on Unsplash

In that warehouse, each of us is responsible for a number of “knowledge blocs” - things that we love to do or are very good at. This is what I call our “internal memory”. And the rest of the warehouse will be our “external memory” - things that we’re not particularly interested in or not good at remembering.

For me at MỞ, my internal memory includes product development, recruiting, and vision. My external memory includes marketing, customer service, design, etc.

For an organization to run smoothly, it is completely normal to have different members specializing in different things. So the difference between a strong organization and a weak one is how well people know each other.

When people don’t know each other well, the collective memory is loose. You don’t feel like you can trust that someone will have your back. So you try to remember everything. Or worse, you remember nothing at all, because no one knows what you’re good at anyway.

When people know each other well, they create a strong collective memory, which helps everyone answer “Who is the best at remembering what kinds of things?”. And if people know you as “the growth hack guy” or “the facilitator”, you know that people will come to you when problems arise.

Your reputation is on the line. So you are motivated to improve your skills and knowledge. As you double down on your strengths, you also believe that other teammates will double down on theirs. And you can always come to them when faced with relevant problems.

Collective memory is not about knowing everything that other people know. Collective memory is about knowing people just well enough, so that you know who to ask for what kinds of advice.

We (MỞ) are building a team that knows each other well enough, and create good things together. Check out the JDs HERE!

1 blog: Uncool Leaders

Collective Coolness is about leaders who aren’t cool (they’re just great).

1 quote

Life lessons will be presented to you in the order they are needed. ~ Kevin Kelly, 103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known

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Akwaaba, Tung