I debated whether or not to put in that reference to best practices. I compromised with myself (can you really do that?) by adding the caveat, "as most people implement them."

As I've written on my blog, the process of mastery is one of long plateaus followed by periodic, sometimes chaotic, jumps in ability/skill/knowledge; very similar to your description of the various stages an organization may find itself in. Self-reflection and self-understanding are key to successfully navigating this path.

This is as true for organizations as it is for individuals. The problem with organizations, in my experience anyway, is that they are extremely bad at this type of self-analysis (for whatever reason).

Brett makes a good point that organisations are poor at self-analysis or at least those that may be good at it keep it to themselves since this undoubtedly affords them good competitive advantage.

Is learning to forget the real issue or is it more a case of unlearning effectively so that at times of duress we do not revert to poor or previous working habits? The danger with persistently high levels of information is the difficulty in validating its worth since all too often by the time that this process is fully completed the currency of such news has much diminished. Consequently, in a rush to incorporate new information so that it becomes reflected in new more effective work practices we often superimpose the novel on the out of date such that the latter either floats to the surface over time or bursts out when under pressure.

but as you pointed out knowledge is context specific which makes for a double-edged sword since if we consciously discard some which is considered obsolete it may yet be needed later if we change direction and the context alters . Surely the better option is to learn how to adapt to new situations more readily -- we're back to that old cliche again of learning how to learn.

Still think that par five is rather harsh for a 300m hole but then I haven't managed to unlearn my old swing let alone master it!

David