The wall was supposed to be cleared.
The project had ended. The plan was to remove the notes, clean the surface, begin again. Most of the post-its came down. Some traces stayed behind – tape marks, faint outlines, a single note left “by mistake”.
Then another appeared.
People began to stop there. Not to plan, but to look. To remember. To hesitate before erasing.
In organisational life, reset is often treated as virtue. Clean slates suggest progress, control, momentum. But ethnographic studies of work repeatedly show that people struggle when transitions erase all traces of what came before. Material residue helps groups metabolise change.
Philosopher Henri Lefebvre wrote that space is not neutral. It is produced through use, repetition, and lived experience. This wall has been re-produced. It no longer functions as a planning tool, but as a memory surface.
Anthropologist Tim Ingold describes surfaces as places where traces accumulate – where past actions remain visible, shaping how future actions unfold. The wall does not store information. It stores evidence that something happened here.
Learning theorist Etienne Wenger would recognise this as a community of practice marking its own history. Meaning does not disappear when a project ends. It lingers in material form.
The wall is not cluttered.
It is reflective.
Its refusal to reset is not resistance.
It is digestion — a way of letting experience settle before moving on.
Filed in the Cabinet.
