Comms professionals have spent the last decade succeeding beyond our wildest dreams. We convinced executives to embrace “thought leadership” as a way to improve company reputation and overall market presence in mediums ranging from interviews to op-eds and social media posts.
Then AI came and ruined it. Executives wanted to spend seconds of their important time on content instead of minutes or hours. A lot of PR professionals panicked. We tightened transitions, swapped verbs, eliminated em dashes, and sent back drafts that were much improved … by about 3 percent.
Comms professionals saw the best content we’ve ever made. Executives saw a slower and more involved process requiring a six-figure compensation package instead of a small monthly subscription.
The new successful communications professional must bring thought partnership from the start of the executive conversation, or we’ll never prove that fast AI slop is just that.
Here’s how we make it happen.
The Beginning of a Wonderful Partnership
I first read the term “thought partnership” in the bestselling sales book The Challenger Sale. The authors explain how great sales managers don’t tell frontline salespeople what to do; instead, they train and advise before and during complex sales operations. Communications practitioners who want to thrive must do the same by leading out (clients) and up (in-house) instead of fighting the executive on commas and sentences after the fact.
Becoming an early partner starts on day one by asking executives questions about their goals, the organization’s communications strategy, what works and what doesn’t.
“I recently worked with a founder who developed an innovative approach to a significant environmental challenge,” said executive communications advisor Chris Thiede, who said that his client’s technology was important — but the thinking was even more so.
Thiede said he dug deep into the founder’s unique story. “I asked him about the experiences that shaped his perspective. What convinced him there had to be a better way? What does he see coming that others aren’t paying enough attention to? And what would the world look like if we fundamentally changed the way we think about the issue?”
Asking questions does two things. First, it helps you earn trust by looking smart and insightful, digging deep to help the executive. Second, going back to another lesson from The Challenger Sale, executives won’t feel that comms is pushing them around in the first meeting. The best salespeople create tweaks to a buyer’s thinking, earning trust throughout the complex sale so that by the end, the salesperson’s solutions are the only ones worth investing in.
In other words: Questions help the executive begin to see how a communications leader helps make his or her thoughts more of a leader than ever.
Teaching Executives What They Don’t Know They Need To Know
Once you’ve asked the right questions, it’s time to teach. Again, you’re not trying to blow a busy executive’s mind; you’re coaching him or her in real time so he or she trusts your judgment more over time.
“If you understand the business, you can have a much more useful conversation with an executive,” said Stephanie Roberts, Head of Communications at Hitachi Americas. “You can say, ‘Here’s what I’m hearing from employees,’ or ‘That may be what we want to say, but I’m not sure it answers the question customers are asking.’ Executives don’t always have the time or perspective to see how a message will or will not resonate with every audience. Part of my job is to bring that perspective into the conversation before the message is decided and to do it in a way that helps the executive a) understand comms better, and b) trust me more as their comms leader.”
Understanding the business of the business helps us shape the executive’s thinking. Suddenly, content — and, as a byproduct, comms — isn’t something just thrown up because something is better than nothing, and a media interview isn’t something the executive can wing. Comms is now a key function, and you have created a valuable partnership.
Keep AI as a Junior Partner
Don’t ditch AI. It can help with research, ideation, editing, and more. But when everyone can produce mediocre content quickly, the only thing that separates one executive from another is what only they have: their experience, their judgment, their company’s proprietary data, and the customer story.
Once the thinking is done, speed is back on the table, so it’s time to use AI. The difference is that content now starts from something worth saying.
“AI can draft in seconds, but it can’t decide what the moment means,” Erin Miser, a corporate communications and corporate affairs executive, told me. “During a major aerospace and defense acquisition and separation, the most valuable work was rarely the writing. It was turning legal and regulatory language into a plain narrative and deciding what employees, investors, media, and regulators needed to hear, and when. Do that thinking first, and AI speeds up something worth saying. Skip it, and AI just speeds up noise.”
Thought Partnership: The Next Frontier For Corporate Comms
AI is here to stay, and fighting it is like being Borders, the bookstore that couldn’t make the digital jump and liquidated in 2011. Or you can be Barnes & Noble, which partnered with TikTok to create a new expansion with younger audiences. It was a retro brand that combined a bookstore’s strengths with viral social media.
The same goes for communicators. Great writing has always had good judgment, a journalist’s instinct for digging up a good story, and the ability to understand what content will stand out. Those skills are more important than ever in the era of AI.
Thought leadership was always supposed to mean presenting leading thoughts, not just saying things. Good judgment, a journalist’s instinct for digging up a good story, and the ability to understand what content will stand out. Especially if the competition is using AI slop — and your executive has invested in thought partnership.
Dustin Siggins is the founder of Proven Media Solutions.