Insight #375:
In organizations, knowledge only has value if it is useful and if someone actually finds a use for it. And in organizations, because you are supposedly part of a team, you seldom use knowledge in isolation. That’s why knowledge-workers (meaning most of us) must not sit on their knowledge, but share it to use it.
However, you, the knowledge-worker, face a dilemma. The more your bosses value your hard-earned knowledge, the less incentive you will have to share it with others. Because if you share it, then you risk losing your competitive advantage over your colleagues. And you risk seeing someone else profit from the knowledge that you shared with them.
And yet, share you must, because knowledge is like love. The more you share, the more you receive. The more knowledge you share, the larger the knowledge pool gets. If you hide your love, you end up rejected and alone. If you are stingy with your knowledge, you will find yourself isolated and out-of-touch.
But now you face a new predicament. Your boss seems to value AI’s knowledge more than yours. Should you now withhold your knowledge, especially from AI? Too late! AI has already stolen your knowledge. Worse than that, you are now more likely to wait for AI, and not your colleagues, to share knowledge with you.
Don’t despair. Not yet. Because here’s a bit of wisdom for you. No matter what AI executives tell you, AI is actually about information, not knowledge. Information is just a stockpile of data, details, and facts. Knowledge is the understanding of data, details, and facts. And here’s the catch. We humans understand and use knowledge in terms of real-world context and experience, not in virtual isolation. AI cannot do that.
That’s where you can still shine brighter than AI. By using and sharing your real-world contextual experience to make sense of what AI so effortlessly churns out.
Welcome to my side of the nonsense divide.
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Quote of the Moment:
“When your boss asks you for information, saying ‘Who wants to know?’ is not the wisest response.” The Chief Nonsense Officer.
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