Retaining critical knowledge with AI and fostering a culture of trust in the organization at KMWorld 2024

Standardized retention of critical knowledge interviews have been used to extract tacit knowledge from experienced workers to pass on to new staff and to protect the business from knowledge loss due to natural attrition.

Combining this with newly available data analysis techniques, Merck analyzes large bodies of data for trends based on sentiment in novel ways.
Grace Chen, associate director, IT/ Strategy Office, Merck and DMMD, presented use cases on organizational data that has been gleaned to provide recommendations to leaders on how to effectively pause and restart areas during her KMWorld 2024 session, “Retaining Critical Knowledge With AI.”

She discussed the pros and cons of manual analysis, broad AI tools, the strategic application of AI and natural language processing (NLP), and how their activities impacted employee satisfaction and sense of community.

“You have to have a systematic approach to acquiring knowledge… and most of how to do this is up to you and your organization,” Chen said.

According to Chen, the DIKW model includes data, information, knowledge, and wisdom, which allows you to predict and have foresight.

She presented a use case for a specific product that is bound by regulations and must undergo validation. In this scenario, there’s a pause on this project in 2027. The company needed to digitize the tacit knowledge involved in this project. Merck met with the leadership teams, surveying the department, and fielding their questions to drive the tacit knowledge identification process. Once captured, the knowledge gets transferred, and then shared.

Rebecka Isaksson, KM expert and founder, KnowFlow Value, also discussed how AI-powered knowledge solutions can help shift focus from mundane work to value-add activities that drive real business and customer value while fostering a culture that ensures the well-being of its people.

She provided tips on building a knowledge-centric culture, motivating, and inspiring the people in the organization, preparing for cultural and mindset changes, and how to reap the full benefits of AI-powered knowledge.

“We talk a lot about the tacit and implicit in knowledge management,” Isaksson said. “Explicit knowledge without the tacit knowledge isn’t really that knowledgeable.” Information and experience together are going to help teams form the best solutions, she explained.

Common KM challenges include people, process, and technology. However, it’s really people and processes that are more consistent challenges.
“Just share without expecting anything back,” she said.

With AI there are numerous ways to drive productivity and innovation, but there needs to be a focus on the human side of this technology.

“You need to start to blend the hard metrics but also look at the soft metrics,” she said. “How does the employee wellbeing impact how long they stay at the organization.”

Isaksson shared her modern KM approach, which includes:

• Identifying knowledge blockers
• Integrating knowledge flows
• Measuring knowledge impact

“If we do not have a culture of trust or collaboration, how are we going to start sharing things? How are we going to have the confidence to ask the question that we can’t figure out ourselves,” she said.

KMWorld returned to the J.W. Marriott in Washington D.C. on November 19-21, with pre-conference workshops held on November 18.

KMWorld 2024 is a part of a unique program of five co-located conferences, which also includes Enterprise Search & Discovery, Enterprise AI World, Taxonomy Boot Camp, and Text Analytics Forum.