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Successful transformation through strong leadership communication

The key to successful transformation is  strong leadership communication and a good corporate culture.

Transformation communication is much more than just passing on information—it combines strategic leadership with empathetic communication and forms the basis for a company’s long-term success. Especially in times of profound change, management communication plays a central role.

You have to face these challenges during a transformation:

Whether through company takeovers, mergers, sales (M&A) or the introduction of digital, AI-based processes – transformations present companies with far-reaching challenges. In addition to the technical and organisational aspects, there are often emotional and human hurdles:

  • Uncertainty among employees

  • Resistance to management

  • Increased employee turnover

  • Loss of trust among customers and investors

These factors jeopardise both the implementation of the change and the corporate culture and performance.

Creating an AI-enabled culture instead of an AI culture

Artificial intelligence  is increasingly becoming an integral part of a comprehensive corporate strategy – with the aim of creating a strong, AI-enabled cultural ecosystem. The success of AI in your organisation depends crucially on the quality of your corporate culture.

An ‘AI culture’ should not be the company’s goal. It is crucial to create an AI-enabled culture that integrates and motivates employees, customers and partners instead of alienating them.

Companies that only focus on technology risk resistance and a feeling of replaceability among employees. CEOs and management teams have the task of managing digital change strategically and communicatively. They should

– Develop guidelines and visions that provide orientation.

– Encourage employees’ willingness to change through further training opportunities and targeted communication.

– Actively involve employees in the information process and emphasize future-proof skills.

– Use strong storytelling to convey complex topics in an understandable and inspiring way.

In the media: Please read my guest article on finews. first: Too big to fail was yesterday – too big might fail is tomorrow 

General facts about the usage of AI-Tools in communications

‘People overestimate the impact of technology in the short term but underestimate it in the long term.’ (Gartner)

AI is reshaping the business communication landscape and empowering leaders to connect more effectively with their audiences. By harnessing the power of AI-driven data insights, automation and personalization, businesses can benefit, foster stronger relationships, drive engagement, and, as a result, achieve more lavish, extraordinary

Artificial intelligence helps to increase efficiency in the creation of content and the generation of ideas. AI-supported communication efficiently supports the digital transformation; however, content must be humanised and reviewed from an ethical perspective.

What does ‘humanise’ mean? Human skills that cannot be replaced by AI, such as empathy, emotions, and judgement, are used when processing AI-generated texts. They will be decisive for a company’s communication success. This can be defined as the extent to which it elicits the desired reactions and behaviours from the target groups. This means that the messages conveyed are understood, trigger the desired emotions, and ultimately lead to the desired actions.

Humanisation: bridging the gap between technology and empathy.

In the dynamic landscape of digital communication, the boundaries between machine and human communication are becoming blurred. One of the most pressing challenges here concerns empathy, authenticity and ethics.

The humanisation of communication is the basis of meaningful interpersonal dialogue and, simultaneously, one of the most urgent challenges posed by AI. Algorithm-supported AI texts are often created in an impersonal and robotic manner. These raw texts generated by AI usually need to capture the nuances of human communication. While AI can perform certain aspects of sentiment and language analysis, it can only sometimes fully understand or respond appropriately to human emotions.

This is a challenge for globally active companies. As AI models learn from large data sets, they can unintentionally create social biases in the data sets that can lead to discriminatory or insensitive responses. This can prevent certain demographic groups from being marginalised or even left out in intercultural communication topics.

Technology companies in particular face the challenge of making their corporate stories easy to understand for their audience – customers, investors and future employees. They usually communicate this in jargon or very complex language that is unsuitable for brand building, finding investors and customers, or attracting talent.

 

 

Communicative challenges: Artificial intelligence has its weaknesses!

  1. Generative AI still lacks the human perspective to develop innovative PR strategies.
  2. Using AI-based content means you can’t rely on the accuracy of the information.
  3. Legal issues relating to plagiarism, authorship, correctness, etc., remain unresolved. This is why using generative AI tools in communications must be accompanied by strict quality management. Read more about AI and ethics here.
  4. Understanding different traditions, cultures, and languages is crucial from a global communications perspective. AI can deliver analyses and translations but cannot always capture or respond appropriately to subtle cultural nuances.
  5. Transformation communications and crisis communications: AI cannot yet provide the ability to reliably interpret non-verbal signals, respond to individual needs or build relationships. Both crisis and transformation situations require sensitivity, empathy and human interaction.
  6. Finding qualified employees with the necessary expertise to use AI in corporate communications can be challenging.
  7. Ambiguity of language: Human language is often ambiguous and context-dependent. AI systems have difficulty understanding irony, sarcasm or metaphors and responding appropriately.
  8. Dialects and accents: Regional differences in language can pose a challenge for AI systems.
  9. Semantic understanding: AI systems need to understand the meaning of words and sentences in order to have meaningful conversations.
  10. Contextualisation: The ability to interpret information in the right context is a major challenge.

Status: November 2024

Artificial Intelligence and Ethics: The ethical use of AI is critical.

Particularly in maintaining transparency with stakeholders, such as labelling and ensuring corporate compliance with industry regulations.

Organizations must have formal ethical guidelines and policies in place for their use. Communications professionals, legal counsel and senior management, will have to identify understandable and practicable rules for engagement to ensure the privacy of confidential information. Regarding data security, client and institutional knowledge must be appropriately incorporated.

With the AI Act, the EU has created a basis for regulating the development and use of AI technologies in Europe, such as facial recognition or automated decision-making in critical areas. Companies need to understand the implications of this directive and ensure that their practices comply with the new regulations. This can affect how organizations collect data, use AI and interact with customers.

In the media: You can find my latest article on this in KMU Magazin here

This is because organizations’ AI systems must be developed and deployed in a transparent, responsible, privacy-compliant way that is understandable to the public. Companies’ AI-supported communication practices must comply with these regulations and be transparent, ethical and lawful. This is the only way to strengthen the trust of the target group and minimize potential AI risks. More details about the European AI Act can be found here.