Hey Reader,

Each week in this newsletter I take a question from a reader. This week's question comes all the way from beautiful New Zealand:

Yes, absolutely yes. You're in the right place, I can help you. Get a coffee, let's chat.

Change comms is hard because there are so many moving parts, so many things to consider, so many stakeholders to consult... and change comms can take so many forms too. Restructures, leadership transitions, return to office, system rollouts, mergers... if you didn't have some sort of change happening in your company right now I'd be very surprised.

And the crucial bit of communicating any change is getting managers prepped, supported and confident to have two-way conversations with their teams. Because when something big is changing in work, we all naturally look to our boss for answers, don't we? And we expect them to tell us about the change in their own words and explain what it means for us and our daily work.

Can AI help us to do that? I reckon it can. Let's have a look.

Change comms needs good manager comms

Let's go back a bit first. It's not easy being a manager. I think we forget that sometimes, that managers are usually crushed by the weight of expectations from below (their team) as well as above (their leaders) and they're often doing two jobs; managing people and executing on tasks.

And when a big company change is announced, managers are often just as nervous and anxious as any of us. It's hard enough going through a big change let alone being responsible for guiding your team through it too. How can we help? We can prepare them to communicate clearly, we can arm them with facts and messages, we can create mechanisms for them to ask questions and get more information.

Managers will appreciate the help of a skilled comms professional during times of change. They will love you if you can provide them with tangible, prescriptive answers they can rely on. They don't want to wing it in front of their team, they don't want to make promises they can't keep, they don't want to be the person who makes the announcement worse.

And you can help to equip them.

BUT. Building a proper manager toolkit takes time. Anticipating questions takes time. Writing answers that are honest but on-message takes time. And if you're a team of one or a busy comms pro (who isn't?) then time is probably a luxury you don't have.

This is where AI can help you, by speeding things up.

Let me show you with an example

Imagine your company has just announced a restructure. Two teams are being combined, there's a new reporting line and a handful of roles are being made redundant with redeployment options offered. The leadership announcement has been drafted. Now your job is to prepare managers to have the conversation with their teams. You need to build a manager comms toolkit.

Step one: gather your inputs

The quality of what AI gives you back is directly tied to the quality of what you put in. So before you open ChatGPT or Claude or whatever you're using, get your inputs ready:

• The drafted leadership announcement, not just the headline
• Any supporting documents (e.g. policy docs, FAQs already drafted, leadership talking points, any additional context you can provide)
• A bit of context about the managers in your company (e.g. how many there are, where they're based, how experienced they are, what they typically struggle with, anything you know about them that might be useful as you build a manager toolkit)
• A note on your tone of voice and any phrases your business avoids

20 minutes of prep here will save you hours of editing later. Trust me, the more you feed the tool then the better the output will be. Put them into the tool of your choice and begin prompting.

Step two: build the toolkit

Here's a prompt you could use in any LLM:

Have a look at what this prompt gives you. It won't be perfect but you're no longer starting from a blank page. Sometimes it gives you GOLD that hardly needs refining at all, sometimes it gives you total rubbish that is equally useful because now you know what you DON'T want. Your human judgment is needed here, your comms expertise is needed here to edit, change, assess and refine.

You've now got a solid draft of your manager toolkit. In just two steps!

What to challenge in the output

A few things AI may get wrong that you can watch out for:

• Tone that's too corporate or too cheery. Change announcements need careful empathy and audience understanding. AI often defaults to upbeat and enthusiastic so don't forget to give it a specific tone of voice to use and edit out any bits that are not suitable.
• Promises hidden in the answers. Look for phrases like "we will ensure," "you can be confident that," "we are committed to." If your business can't actually guarantee it, cut it.
• Generic language that could apply to any company. If the output sounds like it could have come from any organisation, it's not yet ready to go. Again, your comms expertise is essential here.
• Anything that softens bad news to the point of being misleading. Especially in restructures or redundancies I would always say that clarity is kinder than vagueness, every time. You want people to really understand the message, even if it's not particularly pleasant.

One important caveat

AI is not going to do your change comms strategy for you. It's not going to tell you if Billy down the hall is going to get on board with the change or if Brenda in Finance is going to seethe when she hears the news. Your AI tool can't read the room or have insights about which teams might need more support during the change.

That's still your job. You are still absolutely essential and we need your human comms skills now more than ever. AI is just a tool you can use in the course of your work. It's not replacing you, it's helping you.

Want to go deeper on AI and change comms?

This newsletter scratches the surface of what AI can do for change comms. There's so much more.

On 25th June, Frank Dias is running a live session inside The Curious Tribe dedicated to exactly this topic: Using AI for change comms.

Frank is an AI Adoption and Change Consultant based in London. He's been deep in AI since it launched and has been experimenting with it ever since. He is exactly the right person to walk us through this.

His session will cover:

• Using AI for change impact assessments
• Building FAQs for change initiatives
• Personalising change messages for different audiences
• Tracking sentiment during a change programme

He'll tell stories, share real examples, give you practical takeaways you can try in your own role and there'll be plenty of time to ask him your own questions and get advice live.

This session is members of The Curious Tribe only. If you want to be in the room on 25th June, you can join us here:

Thanks for reading and stay curious,

Joanna

Find me on YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn and check out my book​

Want to work together?

• Join The Curious Tribe. This is my membership community for ambitious, curious communicators who want to achieve more in their roles and have fun at the same time. Membership allows you to work directly with me for 12 months, make deep connections with other communication pros who 'get it' and improve your skills through training and learning. More info here.
• Ready to review your channels and content but don't know where to start? Download my practical Internal Comms Audit Playbook to guide you through a DIY audit - no expensive consultant needed.​ This has ready-to-use templates and checklists to give you a systematic way to do your own audit which you can repeat every single year. Get it here.
• Take a shortcut. I've developed a collection of tried-and-tested templates, checklists and how-to guides for the key processes you'll need in your role as an internal communicator. You can download my Internal Comms Cheat Sheets here.​

​
​Unsubscribe ·