Driving the AI Change Management Conversation

The Marketing AI Institute’s annual “State of Marketing AI Report” came out last week.

Among the nearly 1,800 marketers surveyed, they found a year-over-year uptick in both enthusiasm for and adoption of AI.

The institute also highlighted, though, the pressing need for more formal training and guidance to support this profound shift in the way we work.

Zooming in on one aspect of this infrastructure, researchers found that, although more GenAI policies have been rolled out since last year, still, a total of only a little more than a third of companies overall have adopted a formal policy.

In an industry rife with SOPs and best practices, inserting ourselves into the conversation about yet another policy can feel exhausting and daunting.

However, an org’s core AI policy has the potential to function as an arbiter of a consequential workplace dynamic change.

And if we’re not careful, there could be implications for company culture, too, an especially dangerous possibility we need to keep in check in an industry that prizes innovation and forward-thinking.

In some ways, the introduction of AI is classic change management: share a vision, tell a story, make it inspiring, show not just tell the path forward and what the future could look like.

Striking that balance of ensuring there’s not an over-reliance on comms to drive the actual transformation for full AI adoption with our responsibility to help drive the conversation as comms counsel is delicate.

But as the connection nodes that all of us are, we’re up to the task, to advocate for governance frameworks that allow for individual experimentation and creativity.