How to Change the Culture of Organizations that Devalue Knowledge

Produced by Steve Nathans-Kelly

Knowledge sharing and democratizing knowledge throughout the organization, regardless of specialty is becoming more critical as skills shortages begin to catch up to companies. But how does one go about changing the culture at an organization resistant to change?

IBM’s Phaedra Boinodiris and the Monney Group's Jean Claude Monney discussed how to do just that during their panel at KMWorld 2022.

“I think the problem is less that people don’t want to share knowledge because people are afraid of losing power,” Boinodiris said. “I think the reason why people don’t want to share knowledge is because there is a less perceived value based on what that knowledge base is.”

Earning trust in AI is not a technical problem with a technical solution, it’s a sociotechnical problem that requires a holistic approach that must be multi-disciplinary.

“Other AI summits that I’ve been to curate content and market their whole summit to a certain category of people and not to others,” Boinodiris said. “Yet, we desperately need social scientists, designers, psychologists, lawyers, etc. working with data scientists in order to curate AI models responsibly.”

Boinodiris has been looking into education to recommend data ethics programs to democratize this knowledge. The diversity of sharing and sharing of diversity is key, Claude Monney said.

“When we set up our center of excellence the first thing we did was say, ‘We don’t care what your background is. If you care about AI ethics, you’re in,’” Boinodiris said.

Save the Date for KMWorld 2023—November 6–9, 2023—JW Marriott | Washington, DC!