The Future of Communications: How to Adapt to the AI Transformation

Below is a lightly edited message I sent to my team March 1.

Welcome to the age of AI.

Here we are, entering an exciting new world where a massive platform shift towards AI is taking place, with Microsoft and our partners driving the change. You’ve all seen the news, and know we have a lot more coming. In this new world, a question becomes clear: what must this world class team do to thrive in this new age of AI?

As is natural given all we are seeing/doing related to AI, the first impulse is almost always how we will use these new tools, and how they will change the work we do. Instead of starting there, I find it helpful to start with a deeper understanding of what it is we do, and then build on that. Because there are always new tools, for us and for any industry. Writers and poets moved (some of them) from quills to pencils to typewriters to computers to voice and video, but remained writers and poets. People building houses embraced new fasteners, new materials, nail guns as well as hammers, but never lost the vision of what they were doing. I could go on – nearly every job being done anywhere in the world as I write this has embraced new tools, some more slowly, some more rapidly, and in so doing held true to their sense of purpose, what it is they were doing.

For us, how we light up our company mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more has remained unchanged for years. As communicators, we tell stories that help people fall in love with Microsoft, the things we make, and the impact we have in the world. And now we add – using the incredible potential of artificial intelligence – to that purpose.

To realize this incredible potential, we must first understand the soul of our jobs. If we don’t deeply understand this, then all the fantastic new tools in the universe won’t help us. 😊 And what is clear is this: It is human interaction that drives the insights and the stories and the emotional connections.

Ponder for a minute about the jobs that we’re doing right now. I think about the day I had yesterday. It was spent talking to people, driving consensus, taking incremental steps, getting knocked back, finding new obstacles, finding out who can help with those obstacles, trying new things. It was spent in pursuit of a story; in pursuit of a moment. That's at the core of what we do.

And three core traits that get us there are curiosity, diplomacy, and experimentation. So how do we reimagine these skills in this new age where speed and change are constant? Where wonder and worry sit alongside one another?

First, we need to run and find out. We’re naturally a curious group and now we need to give that joy of discovery a turbo boost! But lucky us. Because of the nature of our jobs, we already live a little bit in the future, we see what’s coming, so the distance feels smaller to us than it does for some others. This means spending time with the experts at Microsoft and the industry to understand not just the ‘what’ of AI but the ‘how’ behind it, to ensure that we are crystal clear at the product and service level what we are doing and when, how that value will spill out to customers, what the risks are. Getting smarter about AI is a journey of discovery, but it’s also a team sport; in the days ahead, you’ll get more information on new tools and resources in development including training modules, workshops and AI coaching - specifically for Comms professionals.

Second, we need to focus even more on diplomacy, on forging consensus, connection, relationships. There is a great saying I repeat to myself regularly: “sometimes we have to choose between between being right and being effective.” We can’t stop with being right, we have to chase effectiveness as well! And diplomacy helps us be effective. Because AI is transformative, there are lots of blurred lines, across organizations, disciplines, technology groups. As communicators, we have the responsibility to make sure we are first connected through and across org boundaries, building relationships along the way, convening the right sets of people, then clearly identifying where there is agreement….and where there is not! And from there, use our standing to help drive consensus, and then action.

Third, we need to embrace rapid and responsible experimentation. We have a track record of experimenting and trying new things across everything we do. With the speed of change, we must become even better at this, build the capability to try new tactics, rapidly, to best determine what new ways of working will allow us to continue reaching the right audiences. Key to this as well will be a match on data – if we’re going to expedite experimentation, we have to be able to quickly decide if we’re having success. This means speed to results – not a look back at the quarter or the half, but look back at last week, at yesterday. So, the flow needs to be: Idea -> Experiment -> Measure -> Evaluate -> Share -> Repeat. My hope is that we each embrace this formula. We have an idea, we experiment with it, we measure it, we evaluate it, we share it with one another, we repeat. Some experiments will work, and we’ll celebrate! Some will fail, and we will learn! Both are great outcomes.

This is not the first time we’ve reimagined the way we work. For years we’ve always pushed to be ahead of new technology or trends, building the communications capacity that will be required in the future, so when the future arrived we’d be there waiting for it. We were early in embracing owned storytelling through the creation of narrative and graphics; I recently looked back at our first big piece “88 acres” and was impressed at how well it stands the test of time. We centralized our crisis and issues management a decade ago, breaking from years of tradition, and by so doing created a tremendous resource for the company. We were early into blogging, into using social to create and amplify conversations at the brand level. We created a team focused on long term customer storytelling, a dedicated Analyst Relations function, and the list goes on. Each of us, no matter how long we’ve been in our industry, can easily look back at things we used to do, and do no longer, or ponder the skills we’ve grown in the last years, all in pursuit of our mission, of helping people fall in love with Microsoft.

Through it all, we will continue to embrace a growth mindset and embrace new tools to complement our understanding of the soul of what we do. Will nearly every project we do start and end with an assist from AI? Yes. Will we use these new tools to speed and improve measurement? Yes. Will our reporting systems evolve and change? Yes…and more.

Learning a new skill, or working to master a new tool, it is both scary and exhilarating. I feel this as I look ahead to this new age of AI! But I remind myself that every single time I tried something for the first time, or made that leap toward the unknown, I felt that same sense of fear. As I improved, or saw success, exhilaration followed. And in this case, we are making the leap as a team, with all the energy and IQ and experience we have, creating our future together.

We have a new story to create; let’s get to it. 😊

fxs