The Hidden Knowledge Crisis

For too long, we’ve been putting the document at the center of the experience instead of the user. We’ve treated knowledge management as a library for retrieval, not a living, breathing system that can proactively collaborate with workers. This approach has turned once-useful tools into bottlenecks that delay decisions, reduce productivity, and trap valuable knowledge in silos.

Think about it: Your teams are bombarded by data streams. They jump between redundant tools and fight disjointed workflows. They wade through structured internal databases, unstructured emails and documents, real-time analytics, customer interactions, market intelligence, and auto-generated insights. It’s an overwhelming effort that kills momentum.

One thing is clear: Employees crave order. We’ve heard this firsthand from our global customers. Instead of forcing people to leave their workspace and hunt down answers, Slack has built an incredibly powerful experience where AI brings them the right insights at the right time — in the same place where people are already collaborating together.

Why is it so hard to get work done?

To understand why knowledge remains difficult to access, let’s examine the fundamental barriers within most organizations. These challenges create a productivity drag that ripples across entire enterprises.

• Fragmented knowledge: Information is scattered across departments, tools, and systems, creating inefficiencies and preventing seamless collaboration.
• Cognitive overload: The vast amount of unstructured data forces workers into constant context-switching, leading to mental exhaustion and reduced clarity.
• Sluggish execution: Slow knowledge retrieval delays decision-making, disrupts workflows, and reduces an organization’s ability to respond to critical business needs. Truly transformational technology should get out of the user’s way so people can get their jobs done.

I’ve been reviewing all the research, and the results are eye-opening. Desk workers spend a third of their time on low-value tasks like searching for information, responding to redundant emails, and sorting through excessive paperwork. That’s a staggering waste of potential that I see across organizations worldwide.

But here’s the good news. Stanford University’s research has shown that generative AI can reduce knowledge retrieval and workflow automation time by up to 60%. Although our insights grow daily, our own Workforce Lab research identified that only 15% of desk workers felt they had the training to use AI effectively. My conversations with customers suggest this training gap continues today, and it’s something we collectively need to address so we can build a future-ready workforce.

What really stands out to me is that employees at companies with clear AI policies are six times more likely to experiment with AI. That’s an incredible opportunity for leaders to step up and guide their organizations by putting the minimum-viable AI product into their employees’ hands and encouraging them to experiment and discover new solutions to lingering problems.

For adoption to truly take hold, AI must naturally complement how people work. It needs to be in the flow of work, acting as a natural teammate instead of driving people somewhere else to get their tasks done.

I see it every day in my conversations with customers: Workers are still jumping between tools and manually piecing together the information they need to do their jobs. It’s inefficient, and it’s holding all of us back from reaching our true potential.

The shift to knowledge delivery

We need to move beyond fragmented search and infuse AI-powered knowledge directly into our work, delivering insights where and when they are needed. Organizations that embrace this shift will gain a competitive edge, while those clinging to outdated retrieval models will fall behind.

Let’s look at the data:

• 86% of employers expect AI and information-processing technologies to transform their business by 2030, according to the World Economic Forum.
• Workers using AI completed tasks 25% faster and produced 40% higher-quality outputs in a recent Harvard Business School study.
• 92% of companies plan to increase AI investment over the next three years. Yet, only 1% of leaders consider their AI deployment mature today, per McKinsey. 

People pick up Slack and don’t look back because it’s easy to use: It’s a consumer-grade application that’s so powerful it can drive enterprises. Drawing employees into the future through design — without requiring arduous change management — is essential, because the rise of AI isn’t just a technological shift. It’s a cultural transformation in how organizations access and apply knowledge. The world of work has a long way to go, but I’m excited to say that Slack is leading the way.

Slack brings enterprise wisdom to you

I’m thrilled to share that Slack has launched enterprise search to combat the knowledge crisis. It’s an incredibly powerful solution that lassoes all your conversations, files, and integrated third-party apps to deliver what you need, when you need it, in Slack — where your teams are already working — so they don’t have to constantly switch between applications.

What makes Slack truly exceptional is that it turns raw data into insights employees can use. This is what I call “enterprise wisdom”: where the knowledge you need for your job is delivered to you in a way that makes it effortless to understand exactly what to do with it.  

Our AI-powered enterprise search understands your tasks, goals, and context. This allows it to personalize and present the relevant information to you based on your role and projects. The more employees talk and share with each other, the smarter your entire company becomes.

All your data sources are interconnected, so you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for. Simply ask a question in conversational language in the Slack search bar. No indexing, no storing — just the most up-to-date information, always.

This is more than just AI-powered search. It’s a shift from knowledge retrieval to knowledge delivery. It’s a new era of intelligent teamwork, where people and AI collaborate in real time to get things done faster, smarter, and with greater impact.

By connecting all your systems — from Google Drive to GitHub, from Asana to Salesforce — Slack becomes a single, intelligent gateway to your organization’s collective knowledge. Slack brings everything to you, personalized to your role, your projects, and your specific goals. The worker is at the center, and everything else revolves around your needs and your workflow.

With Slack’s enterprise search, you’ll unlock:

• A central, AI-powered hub for your organization’s collected knowledge
• Conversational search that understands context, not just keywords
• Seamless integration with your most-used apps and data sources
• Real-time answers that respect your existing permissions
• A foundation for agentic work where AI doesn’t just help, it acts

Here’s my challenge: Don’t wait for answers. Let Slack’s enterprise search deliver them directly to you.

Customers with Slack AI licenses on the Enterprise Grid plan can request to try enterprise search ahead of its formal rollout. Try it today and see how it transforms your team’s productivity.