Undocumented Knowledge

What AI exposes about the institutional memory your organization never captured

Deloitte surveyed over 3,000 senior leaders and found that worker access to AI rose 50% in 2025 alone. We all know that the adoption of AI is accelerating. And organizations are putting plenty of budget behind it. However, only one in three companies says they’re actually “transforming their business”. They are moving faster, not better.

Here’s what that gap looks like in practice. Someone leaves the company, a senior manager, a longtime account lead, or a subject matter expert who’s been there 12+ years. Yet, suddenly, nobody can find the proposal that won your biggest client, the messaging framework that worked, or the process everyone followed because she explained it once in a meeting that nobody documented (or made it widely accessible).

Your teams instead start from scratch. They ask around. They recreate what already existed. It’s not because they aren’t talented. But unfortunately, some of the best thinking in the organization was never written down in a way everyone else could use. McKinsey puts a number on it: employees spend nearly nine hours a week just searching for information they should already have. That’s one full day every week.

AI didn’t create this problem, but it did make it visible. This is where purposeful communication really earns its place. Not in how you talk to customers or create a powerful leadership message and narrative, but in how intentionally you treat what your organization already knows.

The companies truly transforming with AI are those building something that anyone can prompt later. They captured the tone, voice, vision, best practices, and verbiage in their institutional knowledge before they needed it. I believe that investment didn’t come from an IT budget. It came from a leadership decision. And, as someone who used to head up intellectual property development for a consulting firm, I agree.

A few things worth looking at right now in your own organization:

• Find out where your best thinking lives. If the answer is mostly in people’s heads or scattered across inboxes and on SharePoint hubs, that’s where to begin in solving this problem, not just another AI tool. Salesforce and HubSpot maintain transactional data, not intellectual assets.

• Turn repeat work into real assets. Proposals, presentations, frameworks, and messaging that worked with your best customers/clients. These should be starting points, not things you recreate every time.

• Set standards first. AI will amplify whatever you give it. Sales reps spend just 28% of their time actually selling. And according to Salesforce, nearly 400 hours a year are spent searching for content, which is work that should already be done.

The difference isn’t the tool. It’s what’s captured behind it. AI will amplify whatever you give it. Without a documented voice and clear guardrails, you will accelerate inconsistencies rather than your best work.

So, if your three best people leave your company tomorrow, what will remain?

Purposefully Yours,

Michelle

As a long-time communications professional, I write Purposefully Yours to share strategies, tips, and ideas to help people communicate more purposefully and effectively. For more on what services I offer, visit actionpointassociates.com

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