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In this long-form October 2026 episode of For Immediate Release, Neville and Shel report on FGS Global’s research, “Winning the Debate on AI.” More than 7,000 people across seven countries rate AI as the least trusted technology in widespread use, yet 37% became more positive after hearing about its benefits. Shel looks at Microsoft’s move of communications into its corporate, external, and legal affairs group, and its plan to put employees out front telling the company’s story. Neville examines OpenAI’s Locked Chats and the gap between the name and what the feature delivers. Shel reports on Fresh’s finding that 28% of employees meet company news through an AI summary first, and on how to write content that survives it. Neville asks what a Northern Ireland council’s return to a printed newsletter says about channels and measurement. Shel closes with the Wharton 2026 AI Adoption Report, in which managers and the employees they manage describe two very different workplaces. In his Tech Report, Dan York reports on the critical PHP vulnerabilities fixed in the October 21 security release. The two remote code execution flaws affect any server hosting a PHP application, which is why WordPress and other platforms urged immediate updates. Dan covers why the release was coordinated, the role AI plays in the story, and the xkcd comic that captures how much of the internet depends on a few critical components. He then turns to Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net 2026 report, “Seismic Shifts on the Global Internet,” and to the French government’s pressure on Meta, TikTok, and other platforms as protests spread this weekend. He closes with two fediverse stories: the Social Web Foundation’s Fediverse Multimedia Grants, funded by a $200,000 Interledger Foundation grant, and what’s coming in Mastodon 5.0, including a redesigned composer and navigation. We’d love to hear from you: comment on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, or WhatsApp, email [email protected] with or without an audio file attached (or use the voicemail button on the FIR website to record a comment directly from the web). Links from this episode: New research: Winning the debate on AI Radar Pulse: Winning the debate on AI Microsoft Rethinks Communications As Employees Take On Storytelling Role Using locked chats in ChatGPT OpenAI Adds Locked Chat Feature to ChatGPT to Hide Sensitive Convos Behind PIN Codes AI summaries overtake workplace communications, Fresh says AI Research Summaries ‘Exaggerate Findings,’ Study Warns Ruwiki explains: Why AI summaries need more context Council to spend £30,000 on print title amid low views of digital newsletter Council goes back to printed newsletter as no appetite found for digital edition 2026 AI Adoption Report Links from Dan York’s Tech Report Security advisory: Critical remote code execution vulnerabilities, update now Critical PHP Security Release Dependency [HEADLINE NEEDED] Seismic Shifts on the Global Internet France puts Meta, TikTok, other platforms on notice over riot content as “Acte II” protests loom Interledger Foundation awards $200,000 to Social Web Foundation to support decentralized social media Fediverse Multimedia Grants 5.0: Laying the foundation 5.0: A closer look The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR is tentatively scheduled to drop on Monday, November 30. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected]. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript: Neville Hobson: Hi everyone, and welcome to the For Immediate Release podcast, long-form Episode 533 for October 2026. I’m Neville Hobson in Somerset, England. Shel Holtz: And I’m Shel Holtz in Concord, California. Neville Hobson: This month we have our usual six great stories to share with you, plus, as usual, Dan York’s Tech Report. But first, let’s begin with a recap of the episodes we’ve published over the past month and some listener comments. In the long-form Episode 529 for September, published on the 28th of September, our lead story reported on a Press Gazette investigation that found dozens of experts quoted in the mainstream media who don’t actually exist. And PR agencies are unwittingly sharing them with the press. This poses a credibility issue for the agencies and the media, we said, requiring a layer of verification unlike anything we faced before. Other stories include a crisis communication handbook for boards from the CIPR and the UK Institute of Directors. And we’ve got a handful of comments here, don’t we, Shel? Shel Holtz: Yeah, we have a couple. Philippe Borremans, our friend, said, “Thanks for covering the CIPR and Institute of Directors handbook. It was a great collaboration with colleagues, and I think the final result is really worth a look.” And Jane Wilson said, “Love the line, ‘You can’t communicate your way out of a crisis you behaved your way into.’ I use a similar line: you can’t communicate out of a crisis while the fire is still burning. There needs to be operational behavior, resolution, or a plan to resolve. For comms to do our jobs. And I agree wholeheartedly, it’s a governance issue.” And Neville, you had a reply to Jane. You wrote, “Deepwater Horizon is such a powerful illustration of this point. No amount of carefully crafted messaging could change the reality that oil kept pouring into the Gulf, and Hayward’s remark just compounded an already disastrous situation. It’s a reminder that what leaders say matters enormously, but what the organization actually does matters even more. Which brings us right back to governance and accountability, long before anyone starts drafting a holding statement.” Neville Hobson: Good comments Jane made, I thought. So in FIR 530, on the fifth of October, we discussed a Financial Times report claiming that the volume of AI slop appearing as thought leadership on LinkedIn has led to a surge in interest in human ghostwriters. And this is the one that attracted quite a few comments, right, Shel? Shel Holtz: This attracted 14 comments. This one really seemed to strike a nerve with people. It’s too much to read all of the comments as they were written, but we do have a summary. Chris Norton kicked things off. He was hosting a GEO/AEO event the week after he shared his post, and has been talking with SEOs and copywriters. One of them ran a 300-person SEO and copywriting agency and just closed it because the market vanished. Chris still believes people want taste and human authenticity in 2026. We’ll accept some automation, he says, but we’d still rather talk to a human at the co-op checkout than pack our own bags. And Neville, you replied that the scarce commodity may no longer be words at all, but judgment, taste, and genuine perspective, and that those become more valuable as AI makes competent content effortless. Dennis Howlett uses Claude to draft his FOIAs and his posts. He trained it on the Diginomica library for style, then edits everything, often rewriting. He runs it through Grammarly, then passes it back to Claude for a legal check. It makes him more efficient. Jeff DeCanya says it definitely matters. Working with a human ghostwriter isn’t the same as feeding a prompt to an algorithm. Neville, you called that the strongest argument on the other side, since the human process involves challenge, interpretation, and a real relationship with the subject. Mac Worsham offered a useful test for any byline: could the named author explain the prompt and why each point is there? If so, the drafting tool matters less than critics fear. If not, a human ghostwriter wouldn’t fix it either. He also commented on a different post. Neville, you posted and I posted, and he commented on both of our posts sharing the episode. He said the line about not being able to communicate your way out of a crisis you behaved your way into is maybe the most powerful sentence in the profession right now. That’s actually from the previous episode; I don’t know why he left it on this one, but well. It treats crisis communication as governance and moves the question upstream, to the gap between what an organization says and what it does. He sees the fake expert story, that previous story, as the same lesson from the other side. Back to this episode. Sherilyn Starkey wondered whether calligraphers had the same debate when Gutenberg unveiled movable type, asking whether it had really done the thinking. Authenticity, she says, has always had a technology problem. Megan Thomas says ghostwriting for leaders who give zero input always feels wrong to her, and she sees no difference between that and using AI with no input or care. She’s fine with AI used responsibly and with appropriate human attention, and she loves that authentic comms are back in demand, “ums,” “ahs,” and typos included. Rita Zonia says AI helps enormously with the mechanics of writing, but tends to stay skin-deep on its own. She finds it amusing that a lot of organizations thought they could decimate comms teams and let AI pick up the work, only to discover the tool is only as good as its operator. So great comms people are making a comeback. Experienced writers and ghostwriters know how to get beneath what someone says, ask the extra questions, and spot the little odd comment that’s actually the story. Finding what’s worth saying, and saying it authentically and succinctly, is still a very human skill. Sharon O’Day has seen tools that generate a podcast from your news articles or presentations, with vendors pitching materials in your CEO’s voice. Philosop

When companies talk about trust, the conversation usually centers on whether employees trust their leaders. But what happens when employees stop trusting each other? Edelman’s latest Trust at Work study found that trust in coworkers is falling faster than trust in managers or CEOs. That decline can undermine collaboration, weaken communication, and leave employees questioning their colleagues’ motives. Bad experiences with organizational change, including the introduction of AI, may be making matters worse. In this episode of On the Same Page, Shel and Mark explore why internal communicators should pay more attention to peer-to-peer trust. They discuss the everyday behaviors that build or erode trust, how managers shape relationships within their teams, and why candor matters when plans change or answers aren’t available. Along the way, they consider what communicators can measure, the behaviors they can reinforce, and where communication alone cannot solve the problem. Trust may appear in the company’s values, but keeping it alive takes more than putting the word on a wall. Links from this episode: Coworkers say they distrust each other more than ever Trust at Work: Transformation Triggering Trust Demise New Workday Global Research Finds AI is Easing Burnout but May Be Deepening a Connection Deficit at Work Gen Zers are more disconnected and distrustful of coworkers than their older colleagues—and they’re so lonely they’re taking days off work Gen Z doesn’t trust anyone—especially their bosses, data shows PwC’s 2024 Trust Survey Companies overestimate their employees’ trust. That’s bad for business, PwC says. Antecedents of coworker trust: Leaders’ blessings How Managers Impact Team Productivity Raw transcript: Shel Holtz: Mark, trust is key to any organizational communication effort. When I think about trust as an internal communications factor, I think about it in several ways. How much do employees trust leaders? How much do they trust their managers? It works in the opposite direction, too: How much do leaders and managers trust employees? I also think about departments that may not trust one another. I’ve heard some interesting stories about departmental trust. But one thing I hadn’t considered was the possibility that employees simply don’t trust each other. Edelman just released its Trust at Work study, surveying more than 10,000 employees across 10 markets. Trust in coworkers fell from 82% in August 2024 to 73% today. Trust in direct managers dropped from 79% to 72%, and trust in CEOs fell from 70% to 66%. Each is a record low in Edelman’s data. Here’s what bothers me: Two years ago, coworkers were the group employees trusted most, ahead of managers and the CEO. Now, their trust is declining fastest. Mark Dollins: We often talk about culture and how, when it isn’t consciously attended to, things happen that usually aren’t what you want. I suspect trust, which is often expressed as a cultural value, is eroding partly because organizations and employees expect it to be there without thinking much about it. Add remote working and team structures in which people aren’t in the same location, and it’s easy to see how trust can erode. In one sense, that decline is shocking. In another, it isn’t surprising that it’s happening. The speed of the decline surprises me most. Shel Holtz: Me too. AI may have something to do with it. Some data suggests employees are turning to AI instead of reaching out to coworkers. The less interaction you have with colleagues, perhaps the less you trust them. There would certainly be implications for internal communications if employees trusted each other less. What do you see as some of those impacts? Mark Dollins: You’re less productive if you don’t trust each other, and you’re less likely to collaborate. Even when you do collaborate, you may not trust what you receive. People start looking for ulterior motives. It’s no longer just about the work. It becomes, “What is this person trying to accomplish? Am I truly a collaborator, or am I standing in the way of what they want?” We’ve all heard employees say, “I get the work done, but I don’t trust that person,” whether they’re talking about a manager, a peer, or somebody in another department. You still have to work together, get along, and build trust. Shel Holtz: It may also affect how employees receive our messages. Someone might say, “I’ll go along with this, but I don’t trust other people to pay attention to it.” What does that do to the impact we’re trying to achieve—the change in behavior, attitude, opinion, or belief? Mark Dollins: If we aren’t paying attention, this will continue. Communicators should be actively engaged in the issue. Trust discussions often focus on external stakeholders and whether they believe the company is doing the right thing. Internally, we’re now recognizing there’s much more to it. If we can’t trust each other to get the job done, we have a problem that starts much closer to home. This is ground zero for internal communicators. Shel Holtz: Some of Edelman’s findings should particularly interest you, given your focus on change. Three-quarters of respondents had experienced at least one transformation in the past year. The most common, reported by 53%, was AI implementation. Among employees who had a bad transformation experience, trust in coworkers with different values dropped from 77% to 50%. When change goes badly, it doesn’t just erode trust in leadership. People retreat into their own camps. Mark Dollins: Sadly, this is only the beginning of change on that scale. AI isn’t going away. I suspect it will become bigger and more complex, especially as regulation adds another dimension to how we use and trust it. That reinforces what we discussed about change management as an essential part of AI adoption or any significant technological change. We can’t treat this as simply a technology rollout. It’s change with a capital C, and it needs to be managed. Shel Holtz: I looked for other research exploring declining trust among employees. Workday’s Human Connection Workplace Index found that a third of employees rarely or never have a conversation with a colleague that goes beyond transactional work. PwC has made the point that people don’t trust what they don’t know. Without regular interaction, you don’t develop trust. Could part of the explanation be that simple? Mark Dollins: I suspect a good portion of it is. Think about what builds trust: setting an example, doing what you say you’ll do, following through, and establishing clear expectations. If you’re a leader, you explain the standard and address situations in which people fall short. Many of the behaviors that build trust between leaders and employees also apply between peers. If I tell you I’ll get something to you today, Shel, and I don’t, your trust in me begins to erode. I deserve that unless I take responsibility and explain: “I know what I promised. I can’t deliver it today, and here’s why. Here’s what I’ll do to make it right.” Taking ownership builds trust. These are simple things—common decency and human behavior—that sit at the center of peer-to-peer trust. Shel Holtz: It’s also about bringing people together and spending time together beyond work transactions. Mark Dollins: It’s easy to distrust people we don’t know. “You’re a stranger. I don’t know you, so I don’t trust you.” Shel Holtz: We talk about this with safety all the time. You can encourage people to speak up until you’re blue in the face, but it’s different when they know each other well enough to care personally. “I know about your family and the challenges you’re facing. I see you doing something dangerous, and I’m going to speak up because I don’t want you to get hurt.” That extends well beyond safety. Mark Dollins: A question for you, Shel: When you work with organizations on their values and how to bring those values to life, trust comes up in almost every set of company values I’ve seen. How do you make it a living, breathing part of the organization? Shel Holtz: For the past nine years, I’ve worked with one organization. Trust is one of our core values and one of the four planks of our strategic plan. We have committees working on it, we’ve researched it, and we’re taking tangible steps to build trust internally and externally. If I were advising an organization today, I’d start with measurement. You can say trust between peers has declined, but you can’t explain why without asking. You need to understand what’s underneath it. Mark Dollins: As you say that, I’m thinking about pulse surveys. They’re a common measurement tool, but I can’t say I’ve seen many that specifically focus on internal trust. Perhaps some of our viewers can tell us what they’re doing to measure trust in their organizations. Even when trust isn’t explicitly named as a value, it often appears in how organizations define respect. Respect is another value that comes up frequently, and its definition often includes building trust among stakeholders. Shel Holtz: We’ve talked about engagement before. I think one reason people have become skeptical of engagement surveys is that they don’t explore these underlying issues. Our engagement survey has 40 questions. We aren’t tying it to Gallup or another packaged survey. We want to understand the issues underlying engagement, and several questions concern relationships with peers. We do explore that where I work. I also found an older study, from 2008, showing that employees trust peers more when their formal leader trusts those peers. That effect was stronger when team performance was poor. Manager behavior helps shape who gets trusted. That connects directly to the manager communication work we do. Mark Dollins: Often, we don’t do enough of it. We can coach managers to lead in ways that build trust. Most of us have experienced a micromanager. Managers need to understand what that behavior looks like and how it affects their teams’ willingness to trus

Most communicators long for that coveted seat at the table. What do those who have attained it have to say about it? What does it take to achieve it? And does it deliver the kind of influence top-level communicators want? Neville and Shel explore the data and share their own thoughts in this short midweek episode.

When misinformation strikes, PR professionals swing into action, directing people to accurate information. But will people follow your links? One study found that people are far more likely to see what you have to say if the invitation sounds much like the language used to invite them to the original misinformation. Neville and Shel discuss the idea in this short midweek FIR episode. Links from this episode: A new study finds that to counter misinformation online, we need to copy its style Prebunking misinformation techniques in social media feeds: Results from an Instagram field study Video inoculation against election misinformation across 12 EU nations Confronting misinformation related to health and the environment: a systematic review The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR is tentatively scheduled to drop on Monday, October 26. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected]. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript: Neville Hobson: Hi, everyone. Welcome to For Immediate Release. This is episode 531. I’m Neville Hobson. Shel Holtz: And I’m Shel Holtz. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, you find a misinformation campaign online targeting your company, your products, your industry, or whatever. You immediately embark on an effort to combat it using all the strategies, tactics, and tools we’ve been trained to use. Is that a good idea? Researchers in Australia ran a dozen paired tests on Facebook. In each pair, they ran two ads carrying exactly the same accurate, consensus-based information. One was written the way PR people usually write this stuff: neutral, careful, and measured. The other was written in the style of the communities spreading the misinformation. It was warmer, more direct, and more personal. The styled ads won every time. All 12 pairs favored the styled version, and 11 of the 12 results were statistically significant. On a message about school education, the styled ad had a click-through rate of 6%. The neutral version—the one using traditional PR techniques—had a rate of 1.1%. That’s about five times as many clicks to get people to exactly the same facts. Now, “style” can sound like a euphemism for spin. Here’s what the researchers actually did: They built personas of people who engage with misinformation and matched their tone, directness, and emotional framing. One example in the article said, “You want to keep your little one safe. Wondering what vaccinations will mean for your baby?” That isn’t a lie or a scare tactic. It’s how a person talks. Even styles that weren’t a precise match for the audience beat the neutral version in most of the tests. I’m reading between the lines here—this is my interpretation, not a claim by the study’s authors—but it suggests that part of the problem isn’t just that we’re failing to speak the audience’s language. It’s that our language is so bland it barely registers. You may be thinking this contradicts what we’ve heard about prebunking, and you’d have a point. Other research I read, including work from Harvard’s Kennedy School that I encountered in Communications Psychology and a review of 32 studies in the Journal of Science Communication, mostly points the other way: Don’t imitate the manipulation; teach people to recognize it. The Harvard study is a good example. A 19-second Instagram Story ad shown to more than 375,000 users in the UK taught people to spot manipulation techniques. Afterward, 59.55% of those who saw the ad correctly identified the technique, compared with 38.21% in the control group. So, which is it? I’d say both. Here’s the line I would draw: Copy the warmth, familiarity, and directness, but don’t copy the fear, scapegoating, or fake urgency. The paper suggesting that we imitate the style of misinformation purveyors draws the same line in its ethics section: no impersonation, no amplifying fear, and no stigmatizing language. The review of 32 studies found no gold-standard intervention. Effects were small to medium and depended heavily on the specific myth. Think of these as tools in the same box rather than competing theories. I have one caveat: The misinformation study measured clicks, not changed minds. A click is a first step, but it isn’t proof of persuasion. That first step matters, though. If nobody clicks, nobody reads. Nobody gets the accurate information, and you have no hope of changing anybody’s mind. There’s plenty of adjacent work. The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health runs a creator program, and the World Health Organization has a network called FIDES. Both focus on getting trusted voices into the channels where people already are. Public health agencies have been working on this for a while. But I looked for a business doing what the study describes, and I couldn’t find one: a company countering a rumor, hoax, or false claim about itself or its products by deliberately adopting the style of the people spreading it. I couldn’t find a single example, despite the research showing stronger engagement. I’d argue that’s an invitation to experiment. Here’s what I would do. First, listen. Pay attention to how people talk about your company or industry when they’re worried, skeptical, wrong, or deliberately spreading misinformation. Don’t focus on your talking points. Focus on their words. Then test it. Run a simple A/B test with the same evidence in two versions: your standard statement and one written in your audience’s voice. That’s what the researchers did. Finally, measure beyond the click. Look at comments, shares, sentiment, and whether the rumor’s reach actually shrinks. Start with something low-stakes, such as an FAQ, an employee-facing rumor, or a customer-service reply. Somebody should be trying this. Why not us? Neville, communicators spend years learning to sound credible and measured. This research suggests that being measured might be part of why our corrections get ignored. How willing do you think companies would be to test a warmer, more direct voice? Would legal and leadership kill the idea before it had a chance? Neville Hobson: That’s a good question. I think the brave ones would do it. But listening to you, and having read the piece in The Conversation, another question comes to mind: Are we sometimes so concerned with making our information accurate and authoritative that we forget to make it relevant and worth engaging with? I’m circling around that thought because some of the conclusions drawn from this study seem questionable to me. If someone is going to use techniques associated with misinformation campaigns, something is missing. To clarify the distinction, misinformation is incorrect information shared without an intention to deceive. Disinformation is a deliberate attempt to mislead people or influence them to do something they otherwise might not do. Either way, techniques are used to attract attention. Are we seeing people bring in too much of those approaches? Some elements may be useful, but I’m thinking of an article I read—and I believe blogged about—on AI in warfare, particularly the war in Ukraine. I think it was published on Deutsche Welle’s English-language website. It discussed misinformation and then disinformation that others mirrored, perhaps unintentionally. I wonder whether people may bring in the whole package, knowingly or unknowingly, and conclude that it’s acceptable to exploit vulnerabilities or manufacture emotional responses that people identify with. Did I answer your question? I probably did, but here’s one for you: If we borrow the persuasive techniques of misinformation, how do we ensure we aren’t also borrowing the manipulative behaviors that make it effective? I haven’t looked for guidance on this, and agencies may already have it: “This is what misinformation looks like. Don’t do that. Here’s an example of what you should do.” If that doesn’t exist, there’s an opportunity to develop it because the ethical dimension matters. There’s also a danger that we celebrate winning the battle for attention without knowing whether we’ve made any progress in helping people understand the message or building trust. Those fundamental questions should be at the forefront. That connects to your question about why organizations should address this properly. If they don’t, they’re missing opportunities and failing to help the broader community understand what’s right and what’s wrong. Shel Holtz: I come at this from the perspective of wanting to get people to accurate information. Remember, the A/B test concerned what got people to click. Once they clicked, the information was the same in both versions. The warmer, friendlier language attracted more clicks than the typical bland PR language. The researchers in Australia included that ethics section addressing stigmatizing language and other concerns. But here’s what I kept thinking as I read it: In marketing, and to some extent in public relations and certainly in internal communications, we’ve embraced audience personas for years. We get to understand different groups within a larger audience based on their characteristics. We often boil those down into a fictional person who embodies them: “Mary is a 33-year-old single mother and administrative assistant.” Here’s what she’s likely to believe, what she pays attention to, where her skepticism lies, and so forth. That helps us craft messages for different groups within the audience to get the best possible results. Why aren’t we doing that when confronting misinformation? W

Companies are urging employees to adopt AI—but a software rollout, training session, or announcement doesn’t necessarily prepare people for changes to their work. When expectations keep shifting, and the destination remains uncertain, how can organizations build trust and help employees move forward? In episode 9 of On the Same Page, Shel and Mark explore AI adoption as a change management challenge and the role internal communicators should play. They discuss listening to employees, challenging leadership assumptions, and building a flexible approach to change—along with the gap between recognizing the need for change management skills and developing them. Raw Transcript: Shel Holtz: Hey, Mark, how’s your experience with AI these days? Mark Dollins: It’s never-ending. I keep getting both excited and frustrated with it, but it’s all about learning, right? Shel Holtz: It is. It’s about learning for a lot of employees as well. Many companies are still struggling to introduce AI and drive adoption in their organizations. I was reading about the Financial Times’ AI transformation program in 2024. They started by listening. They surveyed employees and received 725 responses. What they found was that the biggest obstacle was a lack of time, and that helped shape their approach. A lack of time isn’t resistance. When we’re asking people to adopt AI and integrate it into their workflows, we’re asking them to make a change. We tend to look for resistance, but not every challenge is resistance. How have you been thinking about change management and AI adoption, given your passion for change management and internal communications? Mark Dollins: Ironically, one thing communicators have increasingly been doing over the last several years is using AI to become more productive. It’s already saving us time. But I think professionals in this space increasingly understand that AI isn’t simply a technology rollout. It’s one of the biggest waves of change we need to step into, get in front of, and help manage. Shel Holtz: I guess the question starts with our role in managing this change. Are we taking the lead? Are we trying to get that coveted seat at the table so we can influence it? Are we waiting for the training and IT departments to say, “Here’s the program. Communicate this and drive the change”? What should we be doing? Mark Dollins: It’s a little of everything. In the research we’ve done—and we’ll talk more about this in another podcast—Jon Stemmle and I conduct an annual survey about communicators’ attitudes toward and uses of AI. We talk to a couple of hundred communicators around the world to understand what’s changing, what we’re working with, and what we’re struggling with. We’re finding that communicators are getting a bigger seat at the table. We’re having more influence in setting governance and policies, which is good. We’re using AI more, but we aren’t using it for more strategic purposes. The biggest thing we haven’t fully signed up for is treating AI as a change management initiative that we should help lead. We tend to view it as a technology rollout or a policy rollout connected to AI. But artificial intelligence is itself a massive change. We’re talking about seismic adjustments in how organizations work. That’s a space employee communicators should be stepping into, and some are beginning to do that. Shel Holtz: I absolutely agree. The question is whether we’re being asked to help design the change or simply sell decisions that have already been made. We should use the expertise we bring that others in the organization may not have to the same degree: identifying impacts on employees, testing leaders’ assumptions before a rollout, and listening. But responsibility requires authority. We can’t resolve workload, staffing, or incentive problems through messaging. What decisions must we be able to influence if we’re going to be held accountable, to any degree, for AI adoption? Mark Dollins: Even better, let’s not wait to be asked. Let’s step up and say, “We believe we can help this organization better manage this wave of change. Let’s figure out how.” Some numbers provide context for what I call moving upstream. In 2024, about 45% of communicators reported being involved in shaping AI usage in their organizations. That rose to 70% last year and 76% this year. That’s a good sign. We’re saying we’re shaping it, although I’m not exactly sure how that’s happening in every organization. Communicators aren’t just using new tools. We’re helping organizations explain, govern, and normalize new ways of working. That’s where change management comes in. We asked communicators whether they view change management as a competency they should have. That figure rose from 73% in 2024 to 81% last year and is at 79% this year. That tells us this isn’t being treated as a fad. It’s more of a structural expectation. We’re also seeing growing interest in training or certification to become more proficient at managing change through communications. Around 72–73% of this year’s respondents said AI requires significant change management communications. About 80% believe change management—which is different from change communications—is a competency they should acquire. And about 76% believe communicators should be involved in influencing AI use in their organizations. There’s clear evidence that, as a global community of employee communicators, we know what we should be doing. The real question is whether we’re doing what needs to be done. Shel Holtz: At some level, everything we communicate is change communication. We’re putting something out because we want something from people. We want them to do something new or different, stop doing something, do more of something, or think or believe something. All of that is change. But when it’s a software rollout, the scope may be more contained. We’re adopting Workday as our HR and payroll software, and everyone needs to start using it. I don’t know how much of that requires the full Prosci process or whatever change management protocols you follow. AI is different. What does the change look like at the end? One thing I learned when I began studying change communication—and I had a great mentor in Tudor Williams—was that you should be able to close your eyes and envision the outcome. I don’t think anybody can do that with AI yet. That presents an interesting challenge for a change program. Mark Dollins: AI can be a tool for some change management and communication tactics, but we still need to understand the disciplines themselves. The question we should ask is whether we really understand change management and how change communications works with it. Over the years, I’ve asked communicators that question, and I often hear, “Yes, I understand change communications. I put out organizational structure announcements, leadership changes, and executive updates.” Then I ask, “What else went with that?” Often, there’s silence. That doesn’t happen every time. Our community is getting better at this. But my experience is that many communicators don’t get into the specifics of the change management discipline. What do I mean by that? Understanding organizational readiness for change, for example. Is the organization ready to make this change? Who are the executive sponsors? Who are the champions who will help lead it? Do we understand the detractors and barriers? Do we have governance and processes for addressing barriers when the people involved can’t reach a resolution? Those are parts of change management that organizational communicators often aren’t taught when they learn how to communicate change. Whether the topic is digital transformation, cultural transformation, or AI adoption, it’s deeper than simply a technology change. These aren’t one-and-done activities. They require sustained, focused, strategic communications and an understanding of stakeholders’ individual needs. Not everybody experiences change in the same way, and that understanding should inform our communication. There’s far more to change management communications when it’s structured and aligned with the discipline of change management. Without that alignment, you can find yourself in a situation I’ve experienced: “Hey, Mark, we have a big change we want you to communicate.” I ask, “What’s the change management plan?” and get blank stares. Then someone says, “Why don’t you develop that?” That’s why, more than 10 or 15 years ago, I took the time to become certified as a change management professional. I chose Prosci, one of several options. It changed how I viewed the relationship between change communications and change management. The training took about four days and was tremendously helpful. I’m agnostic about which certification people choose. What matters is understanding the concepts we’ve discussed. That understanding helps us drive successful change through communications. How’s that for getting on my soapbox? Shel Holtz: That’s fine. I loved it. What we’ve seen in many organizations is almost the opposite of what you’re describing. Initially, companies asked communicators to tell employees to experiment with AI, without much clarity about the purpose. Then we told people to use AI a lot. We got into this whole “token maxing” thing, where people were using so much that they blew through a company’s annual budget in a month, and organizations had to dial it back. It’s hard to get people to buy into a change when you’re continually clawing back the messages you sent earlier. What are we asking employees to trust? What happens to the time they save? Will there be new expectations? Will roles change or disappear? Who gets development opportunities? We shouldn’t simply accept the message we’re asked to deliver. Part of change communication is pressing leaders to explain what’s been decided, what’s still uncertain, and how employees will be involved. Blanket assurances that AI won’t cost any jobs, or that it will completely