My colleagues will “be there” for those issues and concerns. Thus
transactive memory is not that you simply know someone or that
he or she is your best friend necessarily; the “system” that develops
is more about knowing what the other individuals in one’s group
are good at, what they are capable of, what they know, where their
skills lie, and which people you can count on for what. With the
bonds of memory and expertise being transacted, as well as peer
pressure (knowing that you are being counted on for a particular
type of expertise), the social system can work effectively toward
task accomplishments. Also, it is a matter of knowing people well
enough so that what they think of you matters, but the tipping
point is 150; beyond that our transactive memory begins to break
down.
The relevance of the Rule of 150 to knowledge management
and organizational learning should now be obvious. Keeping
organizational structures and groupings to no more than 150 indi-
viduals facilitates knowledge exchange and “transactive memories.”
ConclusionFollowing NASA’s Challengeraccident in 1986, an independent
presidential commission was appointed to determine what went
wrong and why and to make recommendations for the future. The
late Richard Feynman, a commission member, noted physicist, and
Nobel Prize winner, was particularly skilled at demonstrating the
consequences of extreme cold on an O-ring.
An independent group to study NASA’s Columbiashuttle
tragedy was also formed. These independent commissions can be
very helpful in understanding more about technical problems, in par-
ticular, and in furthering NASA’s organizational learning in general.
However, independent study groups do not run NASA. It is there-
fore up to NASA executives, managers, scientists, engineers, and
technicians to learn from these tragedies and take corrective action.
One form of corrective action can be improved knowledge
management. NASA executives and managers may have now
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