Heroic Acts of Memory: Heroism or Red Flag

Hello there!

Did you know that the words heroism and memory have negative connotations in operations? I’m referring to the phrase "heroic acts of memory." It may sound like a compliment, but it is less about heroism and more of a red flag.

In physical operations, it is usually a warning sign that a process depends on individual effort rather than reliable systems. Individual effort here means someone has to remember something that should have been systematized or documented. Mostly that “someone” is a veteran employee who holds all the context and knowledge about the process “entirely in their heads.”

Here are a few examples I watch unfold every day in physical operations:

Example 1: The receptionist who knows everybody.

The visitor management system doesn't have a rule for recurring visitors, but the receptionist remembers them. “Mr. John from company ABC Ltd. comes every Thursday. Just let him in.”

But when the receptionist is on leave, the visitor gets questioned or handled differently.

Example 2: Reserved parking by memory.

"Slot P14 is actually reserved for the CEO."

The parking system doesn't enforce it. Guards know it because they've been told repeatedly.

A new guard assigns the slot to someone else. Result: conflict.

Example 3: A contractor who arrives at 7:00 AM has a manual permission.

The access system shows no approval and the visitor management system shows a pending request. But someone in the facilities team approved a contractor over WhatsApp the previous night. The guard remembers seeing the message and allows entry.

In all of these examples, everything works fine until it doesn’t.

On the surface, it looks impressive. But from a compliance, audit, and scalability perspective, it's a trap. Here’s why:

1) It Doesn't Scale: You can scale software, automated platforms, and documented workflows. How do you scale a single person’s brain? Hence, as the business grows, the "hero" becomes the biggest constraint.

2) Inconsistent Quality: Relying on a human to perfectly remember, for example, a 15-step manual checklist every single time guarantees that eventually, a step will be missed. Humans, unlike systems, have bad days.

3) Hides the Real Broken System: Because heroes keep stepping in to patch the cracks from memory, leadership assumes the current setup works fine. It prevents the company from investing in robust, structural fixes.

4) It Creates Dependency: If the individuals carrying this memory quit, they take years of undocumented operational memory with them.

So, useful memories can also be bottlenecks in operations when the processes depend on them. But how to test if physical operations depend on heroic acts of memory?

Here’s a good rule of thumb to check it.

Does someone going on a holiday or leaving the company break the process?

a) If yes: You are running on unpredictable "heroic acts of memory."

b) If no: You are running on a resilient, automated system.

Seriously, why should someone taking a week off cause a corporate crisis? It sounds exhausting. In fact, all this talk of holidays has me wanting to migrate south for a bit.

Before I fly off, if you enjoyed learning about “heroic acts of memory,” here are a few related concepts that might interest you:

1) Tribal knowledge: Critical operational information that lives only in people's heads. If they leave, the knowledge leaves.

2) Heroic recovery: when an outage or failure is resolved through individual heroics (someone manually intervening because they "just know" how to fix it) rather than a documented process.

3) Key-person dependency: The structural risk of having an entire operational ecosystem that fails if a single specific person isn't sitting in their chair.