Institutional memory isn’t all that. We finally got rid of a nonperformer who should have been gone years ago. Two offices in my larger group had some underperformers retire. In all cases they all thought they were invaluable due to institutional knowledge. None of them have been missed. In the ten months our great mind has been gone, I have needed one minor piece of “institutional knowledge” and someone else had the information.
I hear you and agree. My point was that there are some people whose contributions over a long period include being involved in lots of stuff that nobody currently knows about (and doing it well). Non-performers, no matter how long tenured, should be shown the door.