AI in Corporate Affairs: Start with the 3 Ps
Corporate communicators have not had an easy go lately. We’ve jolted from crisis to crisis — all of which have played out in the workplace like never before. This has particularly flummoxed companies because they were designed to communicate in silos. Today’s topics, from climate change to racial equity, are all multi-stakeholder issues that matter to everyone. And that’s before tackling the biggest communications transformation of our time: artificial intelligence. Clearly, a new communications model is required.
Today, AI questions dominate communications circles. While the topics vacillate from efficiency to bias, what’s most evident is the lack of technical understanding or even curiosity. The overriding emotion is fear, which is never a good starting point.
From our experience supporting the many of the world’s most sophisticated brands and best-known change makers, we believe any effective AI strategy starts with the 3Ps: policy, productivity, and promise.
1. Policy: Job one is to create the environment where your team can explore AI safely. This requires understanding and articulating your principles and values for how you will use AI — and how you will not. Articulating these principles is a prime opportunity for communicators to lead at an executive and board level. Just as an executive team must be responsible for values-setting, there must be a clear owner for engaging with the myriad of contradictory and evolving policies being set by both government and private sector actors. In the AI space, staying current on the policies of leading technology companies will be just as important as understanding local regulations.
2. Productivity: Of course, the real hope for AI is its impact on productivity. Unlike other technologies, AI will have to be adopted from the bottom up and across a multitude of individual processes.
For it to succeed, first, we need to stop talking about AI. When a company’s AI strategy comes up, most people tune out or hide. The term ‘AI’ feels too abstract and daunting. Employees lean in when the conversation frames AI as a new way to save time or generally make their jobs easier. No wonder Microsoft and others are pushing the co-pilot analogy.
The next step is to find the best initial tasks for AI to support. This starts with breaking down your common workflows and measuring the time spent on each. When it comes to corporate affairs, AI is most commonly being used for research, versioning, and writing first drafts. It is rarely good enough to produce final external content that does not need to be edited or fact-checked. After all, one of the most important principles for any company must be that they — not the AI — are responsible for output.
3. Promise: The last critical task plays to our strengths as communicators. We must sell our AI strategy and bring all of our stakeholders along. Investors naturally hope AI will improve your bottom line. Already, we’ve seen how the ability to effectively communicate a company’s AI strategy to stakeholders can translate directly to stock gains.
On the other hand, both employees and customers will be skeptical. Are you actually leading and trying to be first in your field or joining the crowd? Are you positioning yourself as people-first or AI-first? The difference between AI as a co-pilot and AI as the terminator comes down to your tone and the examples you cite.
For all the bigger picture narrative building, AI presents immediate challenges as well. Brands must now tackle imminent threats from disinformation to the new landscape for search engine optimization (SEO) and vexing AI driven privacy challenges. None of this can wait. None of these can wait for your technology team to align on the full AI strategy.
Ultimately, the AI transformation will be the biggest change management exercise of the next decade — more akin to the digital evolution than something smaller like the recent shift to hybrid work. Organizations that embrace AI and communicate it well will win, which will require both the right technology and the right message.
