So very true. Isn't the best example of this called History? Check any opposing sides accounts of any war and we have a sort of collective amnesia. Not to mention politics...
For sure Jim our memory lies to us. Institutional memory lies too. I’d hazard a guess that the best in the business of institutional memory are pro sports teams. Game film is part of the process in pro sports, but should be borrowed by other industries as well. Egos are checked at the door and so are the protective mechanisms we have inside us, in the effort to simply “get better at our craft.” That happens in the big leagues in sports, because winning is all that matters or something Lombardi said way back when. I’m trying to bring that same “game film” like rigor to asset managers. Check back in a few years and we can review the “game film” together. All the best, Drew.
Malcom Gladwell had a great podcast about this topic called Free Brian Williams. We are unreliable narrators to our own life because our brain protects us from the reality that would otherwise drive us crazy. Also, the brain likes to construct a good story because that's more fun than telling the truth.
I experienced precisely this phenomenon when I recently read my journals around the start of COVID.
So very true. Isn't the best example of this called History? Check any opposing sides accounts of any war and we have a sort of collective amnesia. Not to mention politics...
Thanks, so true!
Love also how Anne Franks phrases it:
"On paper, everything stays put, and you can go back and see what you wrote and, more importantly, how you felt.”
For sure Jim our memory lies to us. Institutional memory lies too. I’d hazard a guess that the best in the business of institutional memory are pro sports teams. Game film is part of the process in pro sports, but should be borrowed by other industries as well. Egos are checked at the door and so are the protective mechanisms we have inside us, in the effort to simply “get better at our craft.” That happens in the big leagues in sports, because winning is all that matters or something Lombardi said way back when. I’m trying to bring that same “game film” like rigor to asset managers. Check back in a few years and we can review the “game film” together. All the best, Drew.
Malcom Gladwell had a great podcast about this topic called Free Brian Williams. We are unreliable narrators to our own life because our brain protects us from the reality that would otherwise drive us crazy. Also, the brain likes to construct a good story because that's more fun than telling the truth.
https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/free-brian-williams
Great points, Jim! The mind is an interesting beast and a written record will yield surprises over time.