Wednesday, October 29, 2025
Wednesday, October 29, 2025
Mike Klein, Editor-in-chief:
In this installment of Strategic Conversations, I explore AI’s implications for internal communication with Louise Wadman, a senior communication leader with extensive experience across major financial services organizations including Barclays and RBS.
Louise is currently conducting research into the impact of AI on internal communication. If you’re an internal communication professional navigating AI adoption, I encourage you to contribute to her survey—the insights emerging from this work matter for the entire profession.
Louise Wadman reached out to me recently to discuss her research into AI’s impact on internal communication. What began as a research interview evolved into something more valuable: a conversation between two practitioners who’ve navigated enough transformation cycles to recognize when change goes beyond tools to fundamentally reshape purpose.
The conversation mattered because Louise brings exactly the perspective this moment requires—strategic leadership forged through decades at the intersection of complex organizational dynamics and relentless technological change in financial services. Her question wasn’t “how do we use AI?” but “what does AI force us to become?”
That’s a pivotal – and highly relevant – question.
Louise’s research confirms patterns I’ve been tracking: communicators trail business leaders in AI adoption by 10-15 percentage points. We’re being more cautious than the organizations we serve.
That gap won’t remain defensible.
I’ve been challenging this for months—internal comms can’t afford to be the function that resists transformation while claiming strategic relevance.
Of the teams that are experimenting in this space, they’re exploring AI for obvious applications: drafting, editing, perhaps some research. But as Louise observed from her interviews, “Very few are examining AI for strategy, employee engagement platforms, or qualitative research at scale.”
We’re treating AI like an enhanced spell-checker when it could redefine what internal communication delivers. This is the pattern I’ve watched play out through every technological wave—communicators gravitating toward the comfortable incremental improvements rather than the uncomfortable fundamental shifts.
Louise and I quickly moved past the content generation conversation—it’s the obvious application but the least interesting one. The real opportunity lies in capabilities we’ve always needed but never possessed: qualitative research at scale, deep organizational insights delivered rapidly, data that builds an undeniable business case for strategic communication.
I’ve been arguing for years that internal communication remains the smallest, least expensive function in most organizations. Our persistent challenge has been justifying not just our budgets but our strategic relevance. AI offers the possibility—within the next year—of answering that question conclusively. We are the smallest and cheapest function in pretty much any organization. Our problem has been: can we even justify our own salaries? We can use AI to conclusively answer that question.
Not through better content. Through better insight.
Louise pushed this further, asking whether AI-enabled business partners could expand their portfolios beyond exec leadership to support entire functions. As she put it: “If you had AI capability that generates content in perfect alignment with brand tone of voice and guidelines, the internal communicator business partner could extend their portfolio of support by being AI enabled.”
It’s a logical extension of current models. But it prompted me to question whether the business partner framework remains appropriate for what’s emerging. When AI enables continuous listening across populations, when qualitative and quantitative research happens in real time within the firewall, when remaining organizational members become de facto spokespeople—perhaps we need heads of insight continuously analyzing dynamics rather than business partners servicing reporting structures.
Strategy over service. Dynamic mastery over channel management.
Louise raised something that matters for her sector specifically: whether communicators in legacy organizations—government, heavily regulated financial services—face inherent career disadvantages as AI reshapes work.
The path forward for legacy organizations isn’t simple. As Louise’s research is revealing through continued conversations, AI won’t just sit seamlessly on top of existing systems. Significant integration work will be required to make legacy infrastructure AI-functional. Organizations resisting this restructuring—or underestimating its complexity—face serious disadvantages. Their communicators will share that fate.
Louise, with her financial services background, understands this viscerally. The question becomes whether institutions built on hierarchical decision-making and legacy systems can transform quickly enough—and whether their communication leaders can drive that transformation rather than resist it.
We explored whether current internal communication platforms survive.
My view: the employer-employee dynamic persists regardless of technological change. Even if organizations shrink from 2,000 to 200 headquarters staff, the networks among those remaining 200, their information access, their decision-making alignment—all become more critical.
There’s also the reality that the dynamics of internal communication differ fundamentally from those of external communication and will continue to do so.
I returned to an analogy I’ve used before: rugby versus American football.
From an aerial view, they appear similar. At ground level, they’re entirely different games. Rugby plays behind the ball—forward passes are illegal. American football plays in front of it, with forward passes providing most of the thrills and action. Internal communication is rugby. External communication is American football.
Louise and I share something that matters in this moment: we’ve navigated multiple transformation waves. Fax to email. Email to web. Web to apps. Apps to AI. We’ve adapted through each cycle while building a deeper understanding of what actually moves people.
As I told Louise: “This is not something to be handed to digital natives because they’re digital natives. They’ve seen maybe one or two of these changes. We’ve seen four.”
What emerged through our conversation is that AI isn’t another tool for our kit. It forces an existential question: what is internal communication actually for?
If we’re simply content generators, AI replaces us. If we’re strategic drivers of organizational dynamics who leverage AI for unprecedented insight and measurable alignment, we become indispensable.
Louise is documenting this transition through her research. Over the coming months, Strategic will publish her findings—not as prediction but as documentation of a profession deciding whether it has a future worth claiming.
The transition will be uncomfortable. Current practices and roles won’t survive intact. But communicators who embrace this shift—using AI not for incremental efficiency but for genuinely different work—will define what our profession becomes.
Written by: Editor
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