{"id":1517,"date":"2025-07-31T12:31:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T12:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aidanmccullen.com\/?p=1517"},"modified":"2025-07-31T12:31:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T12:31:00","slug":"echoes-of-a-forgotten-self-on-past-lives-infantile-amnesia-and-organisational-origins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanmccullen.com\/?p=1517","title":{"rendered":"Echoes of a Forgotten Self: On Past Lives, Infantile Amnesia, and Organisational Origins"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cNo company starts out as a cumbrous bureaucracy, but most end up that way. As an organization grows, layers get added, staff groups swell, rules proliferate, and compliance costs mount. Once a company hits a certain threshold of complexity\u200a\u2014\u200aaround two to three hundred employees\u200a\u2014\u200abureaucracy starts growing faster than the organization itself.\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200a<\/em>Gary Hamel<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>Michele Zanini<\/em><\/a>, Humanocracy 2.0<\/em><\/p>\n

Infantile amnesia, scientists say, occurs because the developing brain generates so many new neurons that it overwrites its own memories. Moving forward means letting go. In a sense, our earliest self is sacrificed to\u00a0growth.<\/p>\n

Nietzsche saw this phenomenon as a feature, rather than a\u00a0flaw.<\/p>\n

\u201cA little tabula rasa of consciousness to make room for something new, above all for the nobler functions and functionaries\u2026 that, as I said, is the benefit of active forgetfulness, like a doorkeeper or guardian of mental order, rest and etiquette\u2026 there could be no happiness, cheerfulness, hope, pride, immediacy, without forgetfulness.\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200aFriedrich Nietzsche<\/em><\/p>\n

In Nietzsche\u2019s view, the mind actively suppresses certain memories\u200a\u2014\u200aa \u201clittle tabula rasa\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200aso that we are not forever weighed down by what came before. Some amount of forgetting is essential to moving forward, to clearing space for growth and reinvention. But the flip side is also true. Too much forgetting can mean that we lose our essence, while, too little, means we can\u2019t\u00a0evolve.<\/p>\n

This tension between memory and innovation, between past and future is not just a human one. It applies to organisations too.<\/p>\n

As organisations (and careers) mature, they undergo their own version of childhood amnesia. They forget the scrappy experiments that shaped them. They forget the cultural risks that paid off. They forget what it was like to struggle, to be unknown, to be underdogs.<\/p>\n

Instead, they institutionalise. They hire for scale, no longer for energy and attitude. They codify culture into handbooks, standard operating procedures, and compliance frameworks. They fire their entrepreneurs and reward the optimisers. Over time, employees focus more on protecting their careers\u200a\u2014\u200aand those of their bosses\u200a\u2014\u200athan on protecting the edge that made the company remarkable.<\/p>\n

This is something we explored on the Innovation Show with Greg Satell and Paul Nunes. Paul framed it\u00a0plainly:<\/p>\n

\u201cShould we fire the entrepreneurs in the company? Well, if we\u2019re trying to scale, yes. If I\u2019m Starbucks, I don\u2019t need someone telling me every day the logo should be blue. I need someone who can make 50,000 stores exactly the same, as fast and as cheaply as possible. The problem is, when those stores start to look obsolete, you suddenly want the entrepreneurs again\u200a\u2014\u200abut you\u2019ve already fired them. So you\u2019re left asking: What\u2019s the next play? What\u2019s the next act? And the people who might have answered that are long\u00a0gone.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

In that moment\u200a\u2014\u200awhen what worked no longer works\u200a\u2014\u200ayou don\u2019t need more process. You need entrepreneurial memory. You need to remember who you were before you\u00a0forgot.<\/p>\n

The Girl Who Remembered Too MuchThe Girl Who Remembered Too\u00a0Much<\/h3>\n

Past Lives<\/p>\n

In 1948, in Madhya Pradesh, India, a girl named Swarnlata Mishra began to sing Bengali folk songs no one had taught her. She performed dances from another region, dances she never had the opportunity to learn\u200a\u2014\u200aan example of xenoglossy, the rare phenomenon where someone appears to speak a language they could not have acquired by natural means.She described, in intricate detail, a life she claimed to have lived in a town over 300 kilometres away. Her family, confused and sceptical, eventually investigated.<\/p>\n

What they found astonished them. Everything she described matched the life of Biya Pathak, a woman who had died years earlier. When Swarnlata was introduced to Biya\u2019s surviving relatives, she recognised them by name, used private family nicknames, and recounted incidents no outsider could have\u00a0known.<\/p>\n

The late psychiatrist Dr Ian Stevenson spent decades researching such cases, collecting thousands of accounts of children who recalled lives they had never lived\u200a\u2014\u200aat least not in any rational, linear sense. Swarnlata\u2019s case was among the most rigorously documented. Over fifty of her statements were later verified as accurate.<\/p>\n

Stevenson didn\u2019t claim proof of reincarnation. But he did claim this: sometimes, forgetting isn\u2019t complete. Sometimes, what we are supposed to leave behind lingers just beneath the surface, waiting for the right conditions to resurface.<\/p>\n

Science has long side-eyed such phenomena. But even the sceptic must pause. Whether literal or not, these stories hint that forgetting is never total and that remembering might be the beginning of something extraordinary.<\/p>\n

Just as Swarnlata\u2019s recollections returned uninvited but unmistakable, organisations too can find themselves stirred by echoes of an earlier self. One of the clearest examples of this corporate remembering: Burberry.<\/p>\n

Forgetting the Fabric of Identity: Burberry\u00a0Forgets<\/h3>\n

There was a time when a Burberry coat wasn\u2019t worn to be seen, but to shelter from the\u00a0weather.<\/p>\n

Founded in 1856, Burberry\u2019s earliest identity was woven from necessity. In the late 1870s Thomas Burberry<\/a> invented gabardine, a tightly woven, breathable, rain-resistant fabric. It clothed farmers and fishermen, explorers and British soldiers in WW1. It stood between the British body and the British weather. The iconic check, now broadcast on runways and Instagram feeds, was once hidden in the\u00a0lining.<\/p>\n

But as decades passed and the brand expanded, that lining made its way outside. The check moved from being a quiet signature to a brash (chav) signal. Licensing spiralled. The pattern popped up on baseball caps, handbags, even dog bowls. The association with football hooliganism led to the wearing of Burberry check garments being banned at some venues. In the early 2000s, Burberry found itself in\u00a0crisis.<\/p>\n

When Angela Ahrendts<\/a> took over as CEO, she noticed something during the first strategic planning session. Sixty senior leaders flew in from around the world to London. The day was cold and grey. Not one of them wore a Burberry trench coat. Burberry had grown, but it had forgotten its origins. Each of its 23 global licensees operated with different visions. The trench coat\u200a\u2014\u200aits north star\u200a\u2014\u200ahad been demoted to the sidelines. The brand\u2019s story was incoherent.<\/p>\n

Rather than reinvent the brand, Ahrendts chose to remember\u00a0it.<\/p>\n

She centralised design\u200a\u2014\u200aappointing a \u201cbrand czar.\u201d She pulled the trench coat from the archive and brought it back to the spotlight. And then she asked a simple question: What if we innovated at the core? Not by discarding the past, but by resurfacing it for the next generation\u200a\u2014\u200amillennials, digital natives, the luxury customers of the\u00a0future.<\/p>\n

For a while, it worked. Burberry became coherent again. It was no longer a check pattern in search of a product. It was a trench coat company, moving forward with confidence.<\/p>\n

But, like innovation, reinvention and any transformation effort, memory is a practice, not a one-time\u00a0act.<\/p>\n

In recent years, the brand lost the thread to its past again\u200a\u2014\u200aexperimenting with streetwear reinventions, monogram rebrands, and a detour from what made it credible in the first place. The results were\u00a0mixed.<\/p>\n

In Q2 of 2025, Burberry reappeared on Lyst\u2019s global hottest brands<\/a> ranking after a yearlong absence. Not only that\u200a\u2014\u200ait landed at 17th place, ahead of Gucci, Birkenstock, and Valentino.<\/p>\n

The reason? A resurgent \u201cCool Britannia\u201d spirit. A strong festival campaign. A growing menswear presence. Not a full reincarnation, perhaps\u200a\u2014\u200abut a remembering of its\u00a0roots.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s too soon to say if this signals a true remembering. But it serves as a reminder that even brands can forget\u200a\u2014\u200aand sometimes, remember\u00a0again.<\/p>\n

Next time you consider a transformation or reinvention. Just think maybe your organisation doesn\u2019t need a new strategy. Maybe it just needs to remember who it used to\u00a0be.<\/p>\n

That episode of the Innovation Show X with friends Paul Nunes<\/a> and Greg\u00a0Satell<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/medium.com\/media\/d678cdc92ff0e2a89574140bf717ef14\/href<\/a><\/p>\n

Echoes of a Forgotten Self: On Past Lives, Infantile Amnesia, and Organisational Origins<\/a> was originally published in The Thursday Thought<\/a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.<\/p>\n

The post Echoes of a Forgotten Self: On Past Lives, Infantile Amnesia, and Organisational Origins<\/a> appeared first on The Innovation Show<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cNo company starts out as a cumbrous bureaucracy, but most end up that way. As an organization grows, layers get added, staff groups swell, rules proliferate, and compliance costs mount. Once a company hits a certain threshold of complexity\u200a\u2014\u200aaround two to three hundred employees\u200a\u2014\u200abureaucracy starts growing faster than the organization itself.\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200aGary Hamel and Michele Zanini, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nEchoes of a Forgotten Self: On Past Lives, Infantile Amnesia, and Organisational Origins - Aidan McCullen \u2013 Keynote Speaker Ireland | Innovation & Leadership Expert<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/aidanmccullen.com\/?p=1517\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Echoes of a Forgotten Self: On Past Lives, Infantile Amnesia, and Organisational Origins - Aidan McCullen \u2013 Keynote Speaker Ireland | Innovation & Leadership Expert\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cNo company starts out as a cumbrous bureaucracy, but most end up that way. 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