Are we missing wisdom at work?

Which begs the question, maybe access to knowledge isn’t the issue? Maybe it’s how we use knowledge that really counts? After all, while knowledge tells us tomatoes are fruits, it’s wisdom that reminds us that tomatoes have got no business in a fruit salad.

We sat down with Marion GAMEL, Executive Coach, Mentor and NED, to explore how organizations can find the right recipe to turn knowledge into wisdom.

The role of soft skills vs hard skills

“Most organizations prioritize the skills that are lacking — often technical skills,” Marion points out.

Which is understandable. Tech skills are shiny. They’re front-of-mind. And with new technology arriving at speed, and the shelf-life of tech skills shrinking just as fast, simply staying on trend can feel like a full-time pursuit.

Hard skills, it turns out, age like milk. But the softer skills that guide, contextualise, and apply them. They age more like fine wine.

How to nurture wisdom at work

“Skills and tools become obsolete,” Marion points out. “The ability to acquire new skills, remain agile, and keep your finger on the pulse is more important.”

That flexibility is what keeps people and organizations relevant. But agility doesn’t grow in isolation. It depends on the free flow of knowledge. And all-too-often, that simply doesn’t happen. Instead, it pools, it stalls and stagnates.

Which is where wisdom starts to fall through the gaps.

Make sharing a superpower

“Knowing something is great,” Marion explains, “but what is valorized in strong organizations is sharing the knowledge.”

Because when experience lives only in someone's head, it leaves the building when they do — taking succession planning strategies with it.

To counter that kind of institutional knowledge loss, Marion encourages leaders to ask some simple but searching questions: “Who needs to know what you know? How often do you take the time to teach it? And how do you know they’re actually using it?”

Knowing something is helpful. Making it useable by others is transformational.

Create a knowledge transfer plan

Good intentions aren't enough. Knowledge sharing needs structure. Otherwise, it leaks, fades, or gets lost in the margins.

“Make journaling, reporting, monitoring, analysis, and reflection mandatory steps — and everyone’s responsibility,” says Marion.

The aim is to build what she calls “a library of knowledge, tests and trials, experiences made available to all employees.”

Not a dusty archive you visit once a year, but a living reference people actually reach for.

Without it, corporate amnesia sets in. And before you can say déjà vu, organizations are rerunning experiments, relearning lessons, and reinventing wheels instead of building on top of what's already been discovered and understood.

Reposition mentorship programs for employees

In a world that changes quicker than the office thermostat, “the role of a mentor is not so much to teach how they did it,” Marion explains. “It’s to help the mentee adopt an empowering state of mind.”

Mentorship, then, doesn’t mean handing over a finished map. It’s more about helping someone learn how to read the terrain for themselves. Especially when the landscape keeps shifting.

What Marion calls organizational “foundational principles” — clear rules like “If it can’t be tracked, it shouldn’t be done,” or “Function always reports into function,” — can provide broad direction and help people make decisions and move forward without having to discuss details.

That way, as Marion puts it, “whatever new situation and whatever new challenge” can be met with confidence, judgment, and perspective. Even when there’s no clear path ahead, there is a North Star.

Embrace a learning culture

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing,” Plato once said. Which, coming from the man who pretty much wrote the book on it, feels like advice worth taking a page out of.

For many organizations, living that idea calls for a real values shift — away from certainty and towards curiosity.

To do that, “Change the question from ‘What have you achieved?’ to ‘What have you learned?’” Marion suggests.

Because when you reward people for having the answers, you get only polish. When you make space for learning, that’s where you get real progress.

Where knowledge becomes wisdom

Experience has its place. Knowledge has its place. Skills have their place. But as Marion reminds us, they don’t “necessarily bring long-term added value.”

What truly makes the difference is the judgment to understand what matters, when to apply it, and how to adapt it to what’s in front of you. And the sooner we get wise to that, the better.