You are almost certainly familiar with the concept of transactive memory, even if you don’t know it by that name. If you’ve ever seen a couple who divide their various responsibilities for the household between themselves, or a group of coworkers remarking that “Bob is the expert on that Client” then you’ve witnessed transactive memory in action.

We want to take some time and talk about what exactly transactive memory means and looks like, the effect it can have on your team, and how improving and developing transactive memory can improve your team.

No One Knows Everything

Here are two basic facts of communication: no one person knows everything and everyone knows something. If you want to know what the first step of the communication process is for any team, it’s reconciling those two facts. If you don’t then you can expect communication in your team to falter. An exchange of information has to occur. This is the foundational idea behind interactive communication. It’s right there in the definition: Communication is a transactional process based on a shared interpretation of reality via symbols. Transmitting in communication should be one of the most natural things in the world.

With that all said, you may be looking at the title of this article and asking “OK, but what is transactive memory though?” Put simply, transactive memory is how you reconcile those two facts mentioned above. It’s the process by which information moves from the person who possesses it to the person who needs it. If you can imagine your team as a network of computers, then transactive memory is the information sharing technology that moves data from a database on one machine to a program on another.

What’s So Important About It?

We aren’t going to dive into the 7 elements of communication here or anything, and we aren’t going to be answering the question “what makes communication dynamic?” but we are going to say that transactive memory is just as important to your team as those things. Let’s start with the obvious benefits of sharing information and how transactive memory makes that more efficient.

There are some environments where minimal information sharing is the norm, where there are issues when it comes to sharing sensitive information. Those aren’t really the environments we’re looking at here. Instead, we want to look at a fairly standard team setup, probably close to the one you’re used to. Let’s conjure up a quick project for our imagined team: the new building for Client F. Now, we don’t expect, or even want, every member on the team to have to remember every single detail of everything tied to this project. That would be entirely too much. Instead, the team divides that information up amongst themselves. First, we have Bob, who’s worked with Client F before. Then we have Amy, who has worked closely with architects before. Finally, we have Sam, who knows the ins and outs of project planning. Between these three, they’ll be covering most aspects of the project for Client F. If Amy needs to know what the client would want for lighting or office layouts, she doesn’t need to research that herself, or stumble through Client F’s automated phone tree. Instead, she goes to Bob and asks him. He may already know the preference based on previous conversations, but if he doesn’t, he knows exactly who to talk to about it. The same is true when Bob needs to provide Client F with an update on when and how they’ll be moving into the facility. Bob won’t need to go source moving crews or verify that all permits are in order, instead, he’ll go to Sam who can provide that information, or at the very least, be able to point Bob to the exact people he needs to talk to.

If you’re thinking that this looks a lot like an efficient distribution of work, you’re exactly right! Transactive memory frequently looks like efficiency in action when it’s properly employed. Over time, teams will naturally develop transactive memory if given the chance. They’ll even do it for small things the longer they work together. It’s a natural way for teams to share the load of memory amongst themselves while also ensuring that they all maintain access to that information.

We’ve talked before about the benefits of providing a team with methods of relieving stress, (and we here at TourGuide Games would absolutely love to help your team do just that!) but something that is just as important is easing sources of stress. Encouraging the development of transactive memory is one great way to do just that. If it’s known and understood that not every member of a team is expected to have all of the knowledge for every aspect of a project, even if they’re working on that project by themselves, then that immediately removes a big potential stressor.

So encourage your team to share information, find ways to build an interconnected web of knowledge sharing within your team. If someone comes to you with a question and you know that another member of the team has the answer, bring them into the conversation!

And if you want to find ways to practice transactive memory with your team in a low stakes situation, check out our culture building offerings here at TourGuide Games. Our Team Game Experiences all involve situations perfect for transactive memory practice. Schedule a consultation if you’d like to know more!