This new approach can help reduce ‘mind clutter’ to become more effective at work
‘Leaders need to have good attentional control to keep their mind on the task at hand. However, they also need to be able to disengage previous information to provide the opportunity for innovation’
In Business, forgetfulness is generally considered a bad thing. People who can’t remember names, faces, employee requests, or orders that need to be fulfilled, are going to run into difficulties.
However, an issue that is rarely discussed is that people with excellent memories can also have problems. Some people have the ability to remember everything, and the inability to forget nothing.
For example think of person who remembers everything a partner has ever said to them. This causes them to have difficulties such as forgiving the partner for harsh words spoken during arguments. The ability to forget is useful because it allows people to move on.
...the latest research suggests that successfully achieving tasks requires two things – ‘disengagement’, and ‘maintenance’ working hand in hand
Forgetfulness is also relevant for business. Think of most of the business leaders you know in Hong Kong, or indeed around the world. While leaders need a good memory (or an excellent executive assistant), forgetting the past is also essential. If a leader has a strong memory for “the way things are done around here”, then these engrained rules and systems will prevent innovations. A good memory fills the brain with useless information, and that “brain space” is then unavailable for innovation.
Forgetting enables people to disengage and try new things. Having a good memory takes a lot of energy, and that means it can be difficult to focus on developing new ways of doing things. Leaders of mid-market businesses for example have to forget the engrained and successful ways of running a small business if they are to innovate the new systems and processes that lead to successful development to bigger business.
The relationship between working memory and fluid intelligence lies at the heart of the issue. Fluid intelligence is thinking through and solving novel problems and therefore it is crucial to an individual’s business success.
A general understanding has been that working memory is highly related to fluid intelligence. If you’re a middle manager and you want to increase your brain capacity, you can try some of the main brain training procedures which are aimed at improving working memory. Many claim that they improve fluid intelligence, but often they have mixed success.
