How to Communicate AI Changes in Companies

🚫 STOP saying: “AI won’t replace you. A person using AI will.” It sounds more like a threat than a strategy. It shuts down the conversation instead of opening it. Because when employees express fear about AI, they don’t need clichés. They need a plan. Show you’re investing in them, not replacing them. Upskilling isn’t just about training. It’s about trust. So don’t just quote the internet. Show them where they fit in and how to grow. Here are 7 ways leaders can actually do that: 1. Start with listening ↳ Let them voice fears and skepticism ↳ Don’t respond with a TED Talk 2. Audit current roles ↳ Identify tasks that could be enhanced (not replaced) ↳ Talk openly about what AI can actually do 3. Invest in AI literacy ↳ Offer bite-sized, low-pressure workshops ↳ Demystify AI without overwhelming your team 4. Create low-stakes practice zones ↳ Let employees test tools with no deadlines ↳ Make it okay to play, learn, and even mess up 5. Celebrate progress, not perfection ↳ Highlight effort, experimentation, and curiosity ↳ Focus less on mastery, more on momentum 6. Pair learning with real work ↳ Show how AI can solve actual small problems ↳ Build skills while building solutions 7. Repeat the message ↳ “You’re part of the future.” ↳ “And we’re building it together.” No trust, no transformation. AI adoption isn’t just strategy, it’s a trust fall. 💬 What’s one step you’ll try with your team? ♻️ Repost if you’re investing in people, not just tech. 👣 Follow Janet Perez for more like this.

Everyone's Talking About AI Strategy. No One's Talking About AI Grief. I just finished working with a leader in the home improvement industry. The executive team is beyond excited about their new AI bot that will help associates in the field engage with customers, giving them prompts, suggesting responses, and helping solve complex problems. From the executive standpoint, this is a game-changer. From the associates' standpoint? They're terrified. Because they think they're training their own replacement. The executive told me: "We need help getting our people to embrace this change and be inspired to use it. We're looking for their alignment, not necessarily their agreement." That's when it hit me: We're asking people to embrace technology that feels like it's replacing their identity. And we're shocked when they resist? Here's what every AI leader is missing: Before people can get excited about AI's potential, they need space to grieve what feels like it's ending. Their expertise. Their relevance. Their sense of being needed. These associates are feeding customer conversations into this AI system, watching it learn from their interactions, building data on everything they know how to do. Of course they think they're planning their own funeral. The fear is real. The grief is valid. The most successful AI implementations I've seen start with this conversation: "What do you love most about your current work? How do we use AI to give you more time for THAT?" Not: "Here's how AI will make you more efficient." But: "Here's how AI will make you more human." Your team's resistance to AI isn't about the technology. It's about what they think the technology means about them. Address the grief first. The strategy will follow. How are you helping your people process what AI transition feels like? ♻️ Repost if you believe AI transformation is emotional transformation 🔔 Follow for insights on leading humans through technological change

I asked the smartest people I know about AI... I’ve been reading everything I can get my hands on. Talking to AI founders, skeptics, operators, and dreamers. And having some very real conversations with people who’ve looked me in the eye and said: “This isn’t just a tool shift. It’s a leadership reckoning.” Oh boy. Another one eh? Alright. I get it. My job isn’t just to understand disruption. It’s to humanize it. Translate it. And make sure my teams are ready to grow through it and not get left behind. So I asked one of my most fav CEOs, turned investor - a sharp, no-BS mentor what he would do if he were running a company today. He didn’t flinch. He gave me a crisp, practical, people-centered roadmap. “Here’s how I’d lead AI transformation. Not someday. Now.” I’ve taken his words, built on them, and I’m sharing my approach here, not as a finished product, but as a living, evolving plan I’m adopting and sharing openly to refine with others. This plan I believe builds capability, confidence, and real business value: 1A. Educate the Top. Relentlessly. Every senior leader must go through an intensive AI bootcamp. No one gets to opt out. We can’t lead what we don’t understand. 1B. Catalog the problems worth solving. While leaders are learning, our best thinkers start documenting real challenges across the business. No shiny object chasing, just a working list of problems we need better answers for. 2. Find the right use cases. Map AI tools to real problems. Look for ways to increase efficiency, unlock growth, or reduce cost. And most importantly: communicate with optimism. AI isn’t replacing people, it’s teammate technology. Say that. Show that. 3. Build an AI Helpdesk. Recruit internal power users and curious learners to be your “AI Coaches.” Not just IT support - change agents. Make it peer-led and momentum-driven. 4. Choose projects with intention. We need quick wins to build energy and belief. But you need bigger bets that push the org forward. Balance short-term sprints with long-term missions. 5. Vet your tools like strategic hires. The AI landscape is noisy. Don’t just chase features. Choose partners who will evolve with you. Look for flexibility, reliability, and strong values alignment. 6. Build the ethics framework early. AI must come with governance. Be transparent. Be intentional. Put people at the center of every decision. 7. Reward experimentation. This is the messy middle. People will break things. Celebrate the ones who try. Make failing forward part of your culture DNA. 8. Scale with purpose. Don’t just track usage. Track value. Where are you saving time? Where is productivity up? Where is human potential being unlocked? This is not another one-and-done checklist. Its my AI compass. Because AI transformation isn’t just about tech adoption. It’s about trust, learning, transparency, and bringing your people with you. Help me make this plan better? What else should I be thinking about?

AI PR Nightmares: Part 1 – When AI Replaces Humans, But Humans Still Want to Talk to Humans In 2023, Klarna replaced 700 customer service agents with AI. By mid-2025, they were rehiring human staff. CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski admitted what customers had already made clear: “The quality went down… we underestimated how important it was for people to feel heard by a person.” That’s not a press release buried on page 6. That’s a full-blown course correction. Meanwhile, Salesforce reduced engineering hires in 2024, citing productivity gains from AI agents. But they also quietly reassigned more than 500 service team members to other roles. CEO Marc Benioff said bluntly: “AI has fundamentally changed how we build and support products. That doesn’t mean there’s no role for humans—it means those roles must evolve fast.” 💥 PR & Issues Management: What This Moment Demands: If your company is integrating AI to replace or “augment” jobs, this isn’t just a tech story—it’s a reputational event. Here’s what sophisticated comms leaders are doing now (not later): 1. Put a real human face on AI changes Use executive video messages from CEOs, HR leads, or department heads explaining how roles are shifting—and why. Klarna could’ve softened the backlash by pre-empting it with this kind of proactive leadership visibility. 2. Hold live town halls + small-group forums Yes, even in 2025. Salesforce’s internal comms team leaned on live, moderated Q&A sessions with engineering and service teams. This gave employees space to ask hard questions and gave leaders the chance to reinforce purpose. 3. Explain not just what’s changing—but what’s not Reassure customers and employees what remains human-powered. Make escalation paths to human support easy to find. Position AI as a tool, not a gatekeeper. 4. Step in fast when AI gets weird When the agent doesn’t just fail to resolve an issue—but starts sounding loopy, condescending, or manipulative (it happens more than brands admit)—you need trained humans on deck to de-escalate and reset trust in real time. 5. Translate tech to outcomes Saying “we’re using AI to increase efficiency” isn’t enough. Try: “This helps us respond 2x faster during peak hours—but we’re still here for you when the issue needs human understanding.” 6. Have a prepared response when things go sideways When customer satisfaction drops or a screenshot goes viral (“I just got ghosted or berated by your AI agent?!”), you need a rapid response protocol that includes human re-engagement, public acknowledgment, and next-step transparency. We’re at the front end of a reputational reckoning for agentic AI. 📌 It’s not just about whether these systems work—it’s about how companies introduce, explain, and manage them in the real world. 👇 Comment if your company has deployed agentic AI—or if you’ve seen a comms win or fail worth spotlighting. And remember: AI might handle the script. But real humans still need to deliver the message.