By Adam Feldt and Brian Tomlinson
Adam Feldt is Senior Manager, Digital Communications at TOPSOE
AI is coming hard and fast at all of us, but assessing AI capabilities has so many dimensions.
Why should communications teams be championing AI in their organisations? Precisely because of that middle L in LLM. The deep knowledge of genres, rhetoric, metaphor, and other functions of language that determine the success of communication is key to assessing the potential and limits of AI.
It is our professional responsibility to discover, share, and discuss ethical problems and universal or local benefits within our field of knowledge. but we also have a responsibility to go beyond our professional perspective in this learning process. What can seem a blessing in communications may be a curse in public management and vice versa. In this phase, we really need cross-disciplinary insights.
Brian Tomlinson is Head of Content at Staffbase
In this post, we’ll look at what we could call AI readiness for corporate communication. We’ll talk alignment, outcomes and trust. In the spirit of shared learning, we’ve also included a work-in-progress list of initiatives for your department.
Keep in mind two things as you read this post:
It is still early days for the big impact of AI. Things are changing quickly
Sharing is caring and we need to learn together. Leave a comment or reach out to contribute your insights.
Let’s start by talking alignment.
You still need to own the communication outcomes
Strategic alignment is about goals, and about owning the communication outcomes. Here AI currently offers little or no smartness.
However, in strategic alignment across larger organizations, large language models (LLMs) may help by improving the weakest links in trickle-down communications This is often a vulnerable process that puts pressure on middle manager communication skills in translating and localising to align their teams with strategic initiatives. Translating and localising are some of the core virtues of LLMs, and they can reduce the load on middle management.
AI demands more emphasis on trust
“We need a new strategy to earn trust and help consumers and citizens make confident decisions.”
This is the premise behind Trustworthy, a 2021 book by Margot Bloomstein with the catchy subtitle: “How the smartest brands beat cynicism and bridge the trust gap”. Read more about the book based on this member’s call: Strategy for Trust
While this book was written before the arrival of Chat GPT and similar tools, it contains many insights to address the current fallout of AI when it comes to trust in communications in general. We do have a current trust crisis and trust is in high demand as it always has been. AI demands much more emphasis on trust and trust building in all parts of society.
As communication leaders, this requires us to become much more knowledgeable about what trust is, and how to build it.
Key initiatives Corporate Communications should be leading
To get things moving, we are sharing six key initiatives below. Clearly there’s more to be discussed, so consider this a starting point in the spirit of open sharing:
Use AI to be more efficient and create a deep understanding of it’s capabilities
Improve strategic alignment and outcome measurement of comms
Establish trusted communications channels with a high reach
Become the AI champion in your company
Defining AI guidelines
Contribute to the creation of safe environments for fearless exploration and learning about AI in your teams and organizations.
What else would you add? Feel free to reach out below
Learn more about AI in corporate communications
The conversation continues in our different networks, peer groups and conferences.
You can meet both Adam and Brian in person at the Boye Aarhus 23 conference happening in early November in Denmark.