Leaked audio of JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon reveals an executive who has dug in his heels and has no interest in listening to the voice of the employee. In the clip, he essentially tells employees, “My way or the highway.”

While the return-to-office mandates don’t represent a majority of businesses, they have been high-profile, as have employee responses, most of which plead for continued accommodation of remote or hybrid work schedules. Executives, of course, are empowered to make the final decision, but ignoring the voice of the employee comes with high risks, including the loss of top talent and disengagement among those who remain.

The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that productivity and morale are higher with remote workers, but that ultimately depends on the culture the organization has established to support it. In this short midweek FIR episode, Neville and Shel listen to Dimon’s rant and offer their thoughts on the state of work in this volatile era.

Links from this episode:

• Leaked Audio: Here’s What JPMorgan CEO Dimon Said About Hiring and Remote Work
• “I’ve had it”: JP Morgan boss rails against Gen Z in expletive-laden outburst
• Meta CTO says employees who think ‘everyone has to like’ its policy changes should ‘quit’ and ‘consider working elsewhere’
• Meta censors internal dissent over Mark Zuckerberg cozying up to Trump: report
• Dimon Says He’d Be Cutting ‘Stupid’ DEI Costs Even Without Trump
• Terry Szuplat on LinkedIn: Wow. Zuck just gave every CEO a masterclass…in how NOT to announce layoffs
• Meta’s recent layoffs take an unexpected turn
• Gen Z Wants More Face-to-Face Interaction in the Workplace, Survey Finds
• Meta employees question the company’s removal of posts on its internal forum: ‘This is a free speech issue’
• Remote work is now the top requested workplace accommodation
• The Big Four are sticking with hybrid work. Here are the RTO policies of Deloitte, KPMG, EY, and PwC.
• Returning to the office? Focus more on practices and less on the policy
• In-person work doubled over the past year, survey finds
• ‘Hush hybrid’: When some employees work from home despite in-office policy
• Hybrid And Remote Work Still On The Rise, Despite Misconceptions, Study Shows
• Opinion | The unexpected impacts of ending remote work
• Hybrid Work Reigns Supreme, Despite Leadership Doubts
• Hybrid working has benefits over fully in-person working — the evidence mounts
• WFH isn’t going anywhere: 1 in 4 active job listings offer full-time hybrid; remote arrangements
• Hybrid/Remote Isn’t Going Anywhere. It’s Time to Stop Treating It like an Interim Arrangement (Shel Holtz’s blog)

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, February 24.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw transcript:

Hi everybody and welcome to episode number 451 of four immediate release. I’m Shel Holtz.

Neville: And I’m Neville Hobson. Jamie Diamond, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase made headlines last week when a leaked recording of a staff meeting captured him delivering an expletive filled tirade about remote work. His frustration was clear. He’s had it with hybrid working bureaucracy and what he sees as employees slacking off on Zoom. We’ll dive into his rant next. In his rant, diamond dismissed work from home Fridays as a fast. He claimed Gen Z employees are being left behind due to remote work and accused staff of wasting time in meetings and approvals. He made it clear JP Morgan employees should be in the office or find another job. It is a stark example of the growing divide between corporate leaders trying to enforce [00:01:00] return to office policies and employees who have embraced flexibility the way Diamond delivered.

His message raises bigger questions, not just about the future of work, but about leadership itself. Here’s a clip of the last 20 seconds of diamond’s remarks where he lays into remote work bureaucracy and his expectations for JP Morgan employees. Bear in mind the tone and included expletives, so put your earbuds in if you’re listening in the office.

Jamie Dimon: Now you have a choice. You don’t have to work at JP Morgan. So the people of you who don’t wanna work at the company, that’s fine with me. I’m not, I’m not mad at you. Don’t be mad at me. It’s a free country. You can walk with your feet, you know? But this company’s gonna set our own standards and do it our own way. I. And, and I’ve had it with this kind of stuff and you [00:02:00] know, I, I come in, you know, I’ve been working seven days a goddamn week since Covid, and I come in and I, where’s everybody else? Are they here or there? And the zooms and the zooms don’t show up. And people say they didn’t get stuff. So that’s not how you run a great company. We didn’t build this great company by doing that, by doing the same semi disease shit that everybody else does.

Neville Hobson: Well, that’s quite something. Shell really quite extraordinary. His remarks are a, a high profile example of the ongoing struggle between executives pushing for office returns and employees who value flexibility. His outburst may energize some traditionalists, but at risks alienating younger workers, harming employee morale and reinforcing jps Morgan. Morgan’s image as an inflexible employer, it serves as a strong [00:02:00] example of executive missteps in workplace communication. broader debate on remote work’s future undoubtedly continue, but diamond’s handling of the issue may not win. JP Morgan, the hearts and minds of its workforce. shell, what’s your take on his approach?

Shel Holtz: His approach suck. Is my take on his approach. Yeah. It, it’s, it’s made headlines, but the reality of the workplace tells a, a different story despite all of the skepticism from some executives. And I think it’s worth pointing out that something like 60% of organizations are sticking with their, their hybrid or remote arrangements they, they continue to thrive in this.

Configuration and the data overwhelmingly supports the staying power of, of hybrid and remote work arrangements. You have studies consistently show that nearly one in four active job listings still offer full-time hybrid or remote options. And this aligns with broader trends across [00:03:00] industries. A lot of companies recognize flexibility is a key factor in attracting and retaining talent.

I saw one study very recently that said retention is higher. In organizations that allow remote and hybrid work and, and the cost of replacing employees is high. And we, we see a lot of employees disaffected in the current work environment and even in sectors where leadership is pushing return to office, employees are resisting requests for remote work accommodations have searched, is one of the most sought

Workplace benefits, but the tension between employees and executives just keeps growing. There was a McKinsey report that highlighted the successful return to office strategies, focusing less on rigid policies and more on. Effective workplace practices, companies that force mandates without addressing employee concerns, risk disengagement, and attrition.

Deloitte [00:04:00] EY formerly, formerly Ernst and Young PWC, formerly PricewaterhouseCoopers and KPMG are all experimenting with different hybrid models. Acknowledging that one size fits all doesn’t work. The firms recognize that employees expect some degree of autonomy in their work arrangements. In fact, autonomy.

And purpose are among the key intrinsic rewards that employees seek in the workplace. And all of this is reinforced by findings in the Washington Post, which point out that businesses rigidly enforcing return to office policies are facing, push pushback, higher turnover, and decreased productivity.

There’s also a major contradiction at play. Many executives are lamenting a lack of in-office collaboration. Yet employees report feeling unheard in workplace decisions. Internal communication best practices emphasize two-way dialogue, yet a lot of leaders out there like Jamie Diamond. Are failing to listen, engage for success.

This is a an [00:05:00] employee engagement initiative over there with you in the uk, Neville, they’ve long identified employee voice as one of the four enablers of engagement. When workers feel like their concerns are being dismissed, whether it’s about work flexibility, productivity measures, or broader company policies, then they disengage.

This recent internal backlash at Meta that we’ve seen is a case in point. Employees questioned leadership decisions only to have internal discussion forums, censored that deepens mistrust. So you have this widening gulf between employees and leaders. I. Interestingly, while Gen Z employees express a desire for more face-to-face interaction, it’s not necessarily about being physically in the office five days a week.

What younger workers want is meaningful connection, mentorship and clear career progression things that aren’t automatically guaranteed just by bringing people into the office. If anything, research shows us that hybrid work when done right, can enhance [00:06:00] collaboration rather than hinder it. There was a report in the magazine nature that underscored how hybrid models improve efficiency while maintaining work-life balance.

And then there’s morale Studies are emerging around hush hybrid. This is a phenomenon where employees pretend to comply with return to office policies while actually working remotely as much as possible. It’s their supervisors who are enabling this. So we get a major disconnect between leaders and employees.

One that can erode trust and weaken workplace culture. Companies like JP Morgan Chase that fail to acknowledge this risk. Alienating their workforce, particularly when there’s clear evidence that hybrid and remote work aren’t just popular, but effective diamond’s, broader fru frustration isn’t just about hybrid work.

His comments about cutting what he calls stupid DEI costs reflect a larger mindset shift among some corporate leaders. But whether it’s workplace flexibility [00:07:00] or diversity initiatives, executives who ignore employee sentiment do so with their own peril. Companies that succeed in this evolving landscape will be the ones that balance leadership priorities with genuine employee engagement.

The world of work has changed whether leaders like it or not, the smartest companies are fighting against. These aren’t fighting against these shifts, they’re adapting to them.

Neville: Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting. Listen to what you’re saying. I mean, seen a lot of these surveys too in these reports, and the thing that I just wonder you know, surveys indicate time and time again that workers value flexibility with productivity studies, Showing mixed results on whether remote work hinders or enhances efficiency. many executives are struggling to enforce office attendance post pandemic, leading to tensions between leadership employees, as you point out. But this, this, we, this kind of surfaces with regularity. Every week almost seems to be, there’s another survey saying, here are the benefits, and [00:08:00] yet people like Jamie Diamond Say what they’re saying on one you know, on one level or another, a rant like his edicts about, you’ve gotta come to the office or the unspoken part, find another job. So what is it you think then that is going to, I guess. Make the common sense view as I see it according to the surveys the ascendant in all of this, and not the other way around. Because what I see almost every time I look at a business journal or the business section of the newspaper is another company’s trying to enforce you gotta come back to the office. That’s relentless. So is that, do you think?

Shel Holtz: I think it’s a combination of detachment and arrogance. I think the, these leaders are not close to their workers. They’re not listening. They’ve, they’ve shut down either their own ability to listen or the listening channels. I mean, Facebook meta, I. Has done this by censoring their internal [00:09:00] channels.

So employees can’t talk about this stuff with each other. And I think it was the, was it the CTO? I can’t remember his name, but he was reported at meta telling employees you called it the quiet part. He came right out and said, you don’t have to work here. I think Diamond said the same thing out loud too.

Neville: Oh, a number, a number of times in his rent. Yes.

Shel Holtz: Yeah. And that’s what’s happening in a lot of these return to office initiatives is that the best employees, the, the, the greatest talent in the organization, they’re the ones leaving they value the ability to have greater work-life balance that comes with a hybrid arrangement. And they’d rather work for an organization that appreciates that and accommodates it.

Rather than one that puts its foot down. Yeah. And, and there are some other issues that are emerging out of this as well. I mean, in addition to attrition, I was reading that Amazon, which has required all employees to come back to the office, finds it doesn’t have enough office space for them. So where are they gonna put ’em?

You know, I’ve probably, in [00:10:00] of the US federal government offices that are now

Neville: Well

Shel Holtz: I.

Neville: I was gonna, I was gonna mention that in, in the context of what is happening since Trump took office the firing of thousands of of public sector workers in the us. Is that, do you think I. Emboldening those companies with leaders like Jamie Diamond to really go hard on this. You’ve gotta come back and you can always leave if you don’t like the idea. stimulating, I guess more fear, more panic, more alarm about your own career and your, whether you’re gonna have a job or not. And, and so. The kind of stories that are part and parcel of the reporting, I suppose that people are leaving in droves. The best ones are going and finding work elsewhere.

Are they really? Is, is this perhaps another indicator of the you know, goodbye to the first two decades of this century? That was the golden time really of, of travel everywhere. Easy money, no low interest. Ideas people could start. the idea of [00:11:00] DEI took roots and suddenly that’s all in retreat in the face of this, this literal relentless authoritarianism we’re seeing that the US is certainly promoting and that’s having repercussions elsewhere in Europe, certainly so. Is this the end of, these choices that you better buckle down if you want to keep a job because you will not find it easy to get another one? Is that, is that what we’re looking at? Do you think?

Shel Holtz: At least the pendulum has swung that way for now. eventually swing back again, as it always does. But yeah, I think you have seen this kind of behavior from people like Mark Zuckerberg, who I think I. Initially felt like they needed to accommodate Trump in order to stay out of his crosshairs, and then found that this bro alpha male sort of approach to leadership appealed to him.

This is somebody, of course, who did not go to management school [00:12:00] or work his way up through an organization to learn how cultures work. He built a company from the ground up. He’s always been in charge and doesn’t know any better. He, he used to have Sheryl Sandberg there to sort of moderate him.

Now he’s saying she was the problem, her, her influence, led them to do all of these woke things. But you know, the job market is definitely tightening right now, but the best people will always be able. To find a job and the data that I shared, one in four job listings is either full-time hybrid or full-time remote.

Those people are gonna pick those best who are out looking for companies that accommodate that. And. You’re gonna end up with the companies like JP Morgan Chase are gonna be left with a workforce characterized by mediocrity and who wants to do business with that. I anticipate that if employees listen and say, yeah, I don’t wanna work here.

I can go get a job, I. Where I can have work life balance [00:13:00] and I can be productive and I can do great work, and I will come in when there’s a reason to come in. I, I just wrote about this today, by the way. I think face-to-face is vitally important. You just need to do it. As a mandate when there’s something going on where people are gonna be able to interact, because I gotta tell you, Neville when I am working in an open space I usually have an office with a closed door.

When I go to one of our offices, the other office I, I. Sit out in the open office environment. If I am nose down writing articles or preparing a report or editing video, I have my earbuds in so people won’t bother me. And this is really common in those environments. So bringing people into the office when the work they have to do is individual contributor work doesn’t create collaboration.

It doesn’t create innovation. It just creates frustration and isolation. Let people do that work at home, and I’m, of course I’m talking about [00:14:00] the people who can, there are obviously

many jobs out there that don’t work from home. I, I work in the construction industry. Buildings can’t build themselves with workers working from home and.

What we need to do is acknowledge that hybrid remote is the way of the world these days, and start to train managers to manage hybrid and remote teams so they understand how to do that in a way that doesn’t disenfranchise, disengage Those full-time onsite workers who feel like they don’t get to take advantage of a benefit that other workers do.

This is, this is a consequence of treating it like. It’s an interim solution to a short term problem as opposed to a tectonic shift in the way work is done.

Neville: I think another thing that got me thinking as well, listening to to diamond’s rent [00:15:00] he highlighted things. I see other people talking about other leaders and organizations, the ones who . Argue for a return to work. So Diamond’s example in this case was talking about the, the Zoom and the Zoomers who don’t show up.

I mean, I’m in on a Friday and where is everyone? They’re not here. he talks at the beginning of his rent. And this is where most of the. His expletives come in about people on Zoom calls, who all they do is is chat with each other and, and, and, you know, insult others, of what idiots they are and stuff like that. I, I, I refuse to believe that’s completely common practice in his organization that’s tells me there’s something seriously wrong in that organization. If that is the case.

Shel Holtz: What you’re looking at, there is a, a leader who is trying to force a. In the office culture on a workplace that is now hybrid and the culture has to change to accommodate it. The, the problem here is [00:16:00] not solved by making everybody come back to the office. It’s by implementing policies and building a culture in which people understand that this is the way we do things on Zoom, and this is, is not acceptable.

I mean, there to consequences for that kind of behavior, right?

Neville: Sure. I mean, he, he’s got a wholly different view to that, in which case I would argue just, if this is an example, nothing’s gonna change there at any time soon. As long as he’s the CEO

Shel Holtz: No, I don’t think anything’s gonna change there as long as the CEO is Jamie Diamond and the dinosaurs like him who look up in the sky and, and see the asteroid coming and say things don’t have to change, you know? Let’s see what happens to JP Morgan Chase’s earnings over the next couple of years as he continues alienating his workforce or building a workforce of people who, you know, are content to come into the office every day, and, you know, is that the workforce that’s gonna produce the kind of bottom line results that the shareholders [00:17:00] are looking for?

I doubt it. I, I don’t think so.

Neville: So what’s your, what would you say to communicators in an organization where this, not necessarily the CEO, but senior leadership or people in positions of power have this attitude. What would you say to them?

Shel Holtz: I think we need to as internal communicators serve as a conduit for information to move up. Jamie Diamond’s not listening to his employees beyond the messages that they are sort of inflicting on him petitions and the like. And he has said he doesn’t care. You could do as many petitions you want.

I don’t care Contextualized. By the communications team to say, look, these are the issues. This is what’s happening. Let’s look at the data. Let’s look at our attrition rates. Let, let’s look at who we’re losing and what the pool is like out there of people who are willing to come work for an organization where they can’t be.

Hybrid or, or, or [00:18:00] remote. And, and to present the scenarios that can make all of this work so that he is satisfied. I, he, he began his rant talking about young employees, right? But a young employee being in the office head down with an earbuds, with the earbuds in their ears so that they can focus on their work.

They’re not getting the mentorship. Or the exposure to the culture or the other things, you know, the, the, the clear career paths that, that they crave. And there’s no reason that that has to be . Limited to an in the office experience. I, I am a big believer in face-to-face. I have repeated a line for years I heard at a conference, which is that we we’re hardwired for face-to-face communication.

And anything that isn’t is, is a corruption of face-to-face communication. I mean, this, this goes back to, you know, the days of our lizard brains with fight and flight reactions, right? It’s all face to face. I do think that that’s important and I think . [00:19:00] A corporate or an organizational identity a sense of shared common purpose face-to-face in the real world, not on Zoom.

I is important and I think that organizations should create the opportunities for that. This, you know, you, you might. Chuckle at the idea of the company picnic, but getting everybody together for a casual non-work event where you can have exposure to the leaders of the organization in that kind of, you know, casual setting where you can.

Engage with a lot of people that you don’t see all the time and have a sense, wow, this is, this is the company. It’s not just my team that I interact with and my internal clients that I interact with. I get a sense of this broader team. The same thing with town hall meetings. Get everybody together, have a social hour before that with, with some beverages and, and some hors d’oeuvres, and then let people mingle for an hour after the town hall is over and have this interaction and have [00:20:00] this opportunity.

To see the whole organization or your part of the whole organization together. Bring people into the office when there are big meetings to be had or, or celebrations, or recognitions reasons to have everybody in the same place at the same time. Focus on the reason. For having people work from home or come into the office rather than they need to be here five days a week, or they need to be here three days a week, even if they are gonna jam earbuds into their ears and, you know, focus on their, their single, you know, individual contributor work.

Neville: Yeah. I find it very surprising that that we’re, you know what you just outlined, here we are in 2025. I remember this kind of thing in the mid nineties talking about this town halls, picnics, or get togethers with everyone in an informal setting in the organization. So here we are 25 to 30 years later and we’re still talking about that.

Something’s not right here. It seems to me.

Shel Holtz: [00:21:00] No, I agree. And, and I think it’s intractable leadership that is to blame here. They’re not listening, they’re not engaging, they’re, they’re not collaborating. Something that they’re telling everybody that they’re bent on is, is more collaboration, but they’re not doing it. And, and again, this is a minority of organizations, most are still.

Embracing hybrid and remote. But they’re gonna continue to have conflict. They’re gonna continue to have disaffected, disengaged employees until they wrap their minds around the fact that that hybrid and remote are here to stay. Either that or, you know, they die and are replaced.

Neville: Yeah. Well, it’s a, it’s a huge topic and we’ve touched on something that’s made the news headlines last week. it makes us think about this. And indeed listeners, if you have any thoughts on this topic, any experiences you wanna share, we’d love to hear them. So let us know.

I.

Shel Holtz: We definitely would, and the link to the full rant as it was recorded in a leak will be in the show notes and that’ll be a 30 for this episode of [00:22:00] four immediate release.

The post FIR #451: Return-to-Office-Obsessed Execs Are Minimizing the Employee Voice appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the importance of mentorship for small agency employees. They explore various approaches including informal and formal mentorships, organic development of mentor-mentee relationships, and bringing in external consultants for mentorship.

Gini shares her personal experiences, highlighting the challenges of forced mentorship and the benefits of organically developed relationships.

The hosts emphasize the need for managers to support and mentor their employees, leveraging both internal and external resources, and the value of making time to mentor individuals outside one’s own organization. [read the transcript]

The post ALP 261: How to get your team the mentorship they need appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Listen to communicators talk about their impact on their organizations and you would be forgiven for thinking that executives find their communication teams to be indispensable. Recent research says otherwise. As complexities mount in the worlds of business, media, and politics, less than 20 percent of senior executives are confident their communicators and public affairs professionals are up to the task of navigating the current environment. Neville and Shel outline the research results and discuss ways communicators can reverse this troubling trend.

Links from this episode:

• CEO confidence in communications dwindles, new report
• Study: Only 17% of Executives Have High Confidence in Their Comms Function

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, February 24.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw transcript:

Hi everyone, and welcome to episode four 50 of four immediate release. I’m Neville Hobson. And I’m Shell Holtz. And there’s a very troubling trend emerging one that might be surprising given all the rhetoric we’ve heard about how communications Star Rose during the CO pandemic four years ago. What we’re seeing today is.

Kind of the opposite of that the declining confidence that CEOs have in their communication leaders and teams. This isn’t just an anecdotal observation. There’s a new study from Weber Shandwick and KRC research that finds that only 17% of senior executives have high confidence in their communications and public affairs functions.

That means more than 80% of executives feel that their comms teams aren’t where they need to be. That’s a striking statistic, and it suggests that many CEOs and senior leaders don’t see their communications teams as ready to handle the complex challenges that [00:01:00] those leaders are facing today. We’ll dive into this research right after we try to sell you something.

So what’s driving this lack of confidence among CEOs in their communicators? One factor is the sheer complexity of the business landscape. The environment today is unpredictable. Geopolitical conflicts, economic uncertainty, social movements, misinformation, campaigns, and other things may get harder than ever for companies to.

Consistent and trusted messaging. At the same time, digital transformation and AI driven automation are changing the way companies engage with employees, customers, and the public. Executives who participated in this study ranked delivering economic value as the highest priority. At 41%, functional value came in second at 24%.

Almost half the number of executives who ranked economic value as most important ethical, societal and emotional values ranked significantly lower each with [00:02:00] less than 15% of executives saying they were top priorities. And that says something. It suggests that many leaders are still viewing communications primarily through a financial lens, how comms supports revenue growth, investor confidence, market performance.

While that’s understandable, it also reveals a gap in how communications is valued as a strategic business function. I. Take stakeholder priorities. For example, the study found that while 79% of executives say it’s very important to consider all stakeholders, there’s a big gap in which stakeholders actually get attention.

Customers and shareholders remain the top priority, but only 45% of executives see employees as key stakeholders in decision making, and just 22% consider the communities where their businesses operate to be essential. That’s a problem I. Employee engagement, company culture and corporate reputation are all directly tied to communication effectiveness.

If leaders don’t see employees as central to [00:03:00] the company’s success, they may also fail to recognize how critical internal communications is in shaping workforce alignment, motivation, and retention. This desk this disconnect extends to what CEOs expect from their communications leaders. The research shows that many CEOs are looking for a T-shaped communicator, someone with broad knowledge across multiple areas, but deep expertise in a specific function.

Sustainability. For example, finance or employee engagement. That makes sense given the complexity of moderate business. But it also suggests that communication professionals need to move beyond traditional PR and corporate messaging to embed themselves deeper into business operations, risk management, and strategy.

That’s interesting. In light of the study we reported just a few months ago that found more and more CCOs, chief communication officers are in fact seeing their roles expand beyond communication. Another issue is the rapid rise of AI and automation, [00:04:00] which is reshaping communication workflows, and executives may not be seeing their communication teams leading the charge on these innovations.

If comms leaders aren’t proactively demonstrating how AI and digital transformation can improve corporate storytelling, employee engagement and crisis response, CEOs may assume they’re not adapting fast enough. The study also reveals that in large companies, that’s companies with more than 50,000 employees operating in 20 or more countries, executive confidence and communication teams is even lower.

This suggests that as organizations scale, the ability for communication teams to maintain strategic alignment and influence across global markets becomes much harder. So what should communication professionals be doing to rebuild confidence? First, comms teams need to demonstrate their business value more directly.

That means tying communication outcomes to clear business metrics, whether that’s revenue impact, employee retention, or brand trust. Leaders who speak [00:05:00] the language of business finance risk operational efficiency, we’ll command more credibility in the boardroom. Second, communicators need to play a bigger role in shaping corporate decision making.

The fact that employees and communi communities rank so low as stakeholder priorities suggest that communication leaders need to advocate for a broader view of corporate responsibility. A company’s reputation today is shaped by form, far more than just financial performance. It’s about trust, credibility, and how well an organization engages with its employees, partners, and society at large.

Third communication teams must embrace emerging technologies like AI and automation. If CEOs feel that their comms teams aren’t adapting quickly enough to the modern landscape, that could be another reason for the declining in confidence. Communicators should be at the forefront of leveraging AI for content creation, crisis monitoring, and data-driven audience insights.

And finally, it’s [00:06:00] time for communication teams to prove their ability to navigate uncertainty. Today’s CEOs face unpredictable challenges from regulatory changes and political instability to generative AI disruptions and cybersecurity threats. Communication leaders who can help companies stay ahead of these issues rather than just react to them, will be the ones who earn their seat at the table.

Neville, what did you take away from this report? A lot actually, and you covered most of it. I think your last point is the starting point. I would look on this, and this is reflected in other surveys we’ve commented on, which is agility. It’s being able and willing to go hand in hand to pivot, react, adapt, whatever you might wanna call it, rapidly and confidently.

That means you need to know a lot more than you. Possibly are know about today. And therefore you need to be very proactive to ensure that you do know literally everything possible that is related to what you need to do as a [00:07:00] communicator. That’s probably something many of us are doing now anyway, but if you’re not, you really do need to do that.

It doesn’t surprise me. It’s troubling a lot of this. That headline figure only 17% of senior execs have confidence that their communicators are well prepared to tackle the current volatile environment. And a lot of this relates to the shifts we’ve seen in the last month led in the United States.

By the actions of new President Trump on his second term and the executive orders and all the stuff he has as we see literally almost daily on the TV news. This phenomenal signature on these executive audit documents that he physically signs and weighs ’em at the camera. They’re having repercussions everywhere.

It’s actually quite extraordinary. She, frankly. The Trump effect that is global, that’s taking place every single country is impact or paying attention to wondering what is he going to do next. So this is truly quite extraordinary, I think. So that’s part of the environment. And the tariff wars that are about to [00:08:00] begin by all accounts are definitely gonna have an impact on global business.

We’re already seeing. Effects in the financial markets in stock markets, we’re seeing that in interest rates that are they gonna go up and go down or whatever it might be. And the nervousness that is derived from that, we’re also seeing which is mentioned here a real change in DEI initiatives in organizations.

And in fact, we’re seeing I have to say mostly American companies that are backpedaling like crazy to. Ditch these that’s gonna have a big impact on perceptions. And they we’re not yet seeing exactly what that impact’s gonna be. ’cause it’s only been the last week or so that this is impacting people’s perceptions and opinions and therefore their behaviors perhaps.

But that is part of the landscape. Whether it’s temporary, pardon? That we don’t know. I just was just reading a story literally before we, we got together to record this episode about what Disney. Is decided to do, which is literally pull back completely on [00:09:00] DEI and speculation now about what impacts that can have on their animation studios and therefore perceptions of kids.

You could project this out in a big way. So 17% of senior execs don’t have comp, or only 17 have confidence that communicators are up to it basically. The other thing I think just to mention was. And maybe this goes hand in hand with DEI, I don’t know, but the the metric talking about how employee communication is way down the priority list on the stakeholder total of who you’re paying attention to, customers, et cetera.

Employees aren’t as high as I would’ve thought they should be. So there, there’s lots here that is concerning the provoke media story. Talks about, in fact, it’s not provoked, it’s the exo story talks about. So it’s some interesting things I think that are worth paying attention to.

Particularly their concluding point about no scenario plan is ever gonna survive contact with the amount of volatility that’s out there. And that [00:10:00] again. Be prepared, be make yourself agile, get to know exactly all these various things that are happening and try and understand what they mean. So you need to be paying attention to that.

So 70% according to S’S interpretation of of Weber Sandwick survey, 70% are anticipating heightened volatility in the year ahead, and very few of them feel prepared. That’s not a good. At all? No, as I said at the top troubling and I think DEI is probably an excellent example to elaborate on a little, because as you look at what has happened in just the three weeks since Trump took office and began his executive assault on DEI, what have we seen?

We’ve seen some. Companies, several companies do what Disney has done and many others, especially those in the tech industry although I saw a statistic the other day that said 65% of companies are not changing [00:11:00] their DEI programs, and of those 22% are actually planning to invest more in 2025.

So they’re defiant. But among the companies that have. Scaled back, they’re starting to see blowback from their customers. Take target for example, the retail giant here in the us. Target said that they were going to scale back their DEI in response to the administration’s mandates and customers revolted.

There has been a sell off of their stock. Their share price has. Taken a precipitous drop. There has been a considerable fall off on sales as customers have called for boycotts of the organization, and they have actually reversed themselves as a result of this. So public pressure brought to bear has created a whiplash at Target. Now, how good are their communicators at reading the marketplace and advising leadership on what [00:12:00] stakeholder audiences are saying and thinking in order to help them with their decision making? I would say based on what I’ve seen from Target, not very well. So I think it’s vital that communicators understand the issues that are roiling out there.

In the media space, in social media, in the business world and be doing environmental scanning. This is a term I learned from IABC research Foundation’s excellence study, years and years ago. What was that like 19 86, 87, around then. But environmental scanning means that you are on top of.

What the trends are and what the thinking is and what the sentiment is around these issues. And essentially you’re doing an every morning intelligence briefing like leaders of countries do so that you can let management know what’s going on. I woke up. Some mornings ago to the news that the Trump [00:13:00] administration was going to impose 25% import on all imported steel and aluminum.

I work in the construction industry. We work with a lot of imported steel. We set prices for the buildings that we’re building based on what the price was of steel at the time that those. Deals were made. If those prices go up 25% the building’s gonna cost more. Are we prepared for that? Do our employees know what’s going on?

If they’ve heard about these tariffs, are they worried about our ability to be profitable? We need to tell people. So the first thing I did is fire off a message to one of the senior executives saying, we need to let employees know where we’re at with this. He thought it was a good idea. This is the kind of thing communicators need to do in order to build that confidence at the leadership levels.

You can’t just be reacting to things and reporting what the leaders say. We need to be counselors who are advising them based on our read of what’s going on out there. Yeah, you’re right. And one other [00:14:00] point related to all of this that struck me as well, was the metric in the report that leaders of larger companies and those operating in more than 20 countries are more likely to report a loss in comms and public affairs confidence.

It got me thinking that much of the examples that we might. Discuss or read about or in the us not outside the US yet. I wonder some of these larger global multinationals, whether they’re American or whatever they might be with operations in other countries, what’s the effect gonna be if the US company, the owner, the kind of parent company rolls back on DEI and that meets with fierce resistance in, in, in some of their subsidiaries or associated companies elsewhere around the world, then what?

What are we gonna do about that? I did read, and I don’t have the details in front of me, so I can’t remember the name of the company. One company has already experienced that with employees in Germany, France, and the UK saying, no, we, we refuse to implement this and this big turmoil going on internally in that organization.

So [00:15:00] will we see a lot of that? I would suspect we will. In which case, what’s the impact? Project out what the questions are we need to be asking that if we are communicate is what does this mean? To what do we need to do? What do we need to advise? How do we prepare for this? So that you’ve gotta have that in your planning list.

If you are in that position with a company in that situation. You’ve then got larger Italian companies. What about in the in the Arabic speaking world, out in Asia, et cetera how does this impact those? Is this a ripple effect? We’ll see from DEI. ’cause you are seeing. Again, it’s largely in the US according to Axios, they talk about several CEOs are tripping over themselves to appeal to the new Trump administration.

I call that sucking up like big time. Really, it’s embarrassing seeing some of the behaviors by these CEOs, yet pragmatism, I suppose you might call it the effect on the share price if they’re publicly listed. All these things. Are very distasteful, but this is reality. What do you do [00:16:00] about this?

And what about the values you profess, this is a long discussion. We’ve talked about this before. Yeah. You say these things, we stand by this. And I remember that conversation we had in a recent episode. She, and that particularly did a total reversal and said what we said then is not the case anymore.

We don’t believe in that. So where does all that fit into this overall landscape? So the volatile. Picture is very wide. It’s a very large landscape to look at. Yeah. You, I had not heard about this company that had the the uprising from among employees in other, I’ll see if I can dig out the note on it.

Yeah. Good. But I think one of the things and. Ties directly back to the results of this survey is that A CEO sees this happening in their foreign subsidiaries or affiliates, and they say, our internal communicators aren’t doing their job because they didn’t create alignment around this decision.

Yeah. As opposed to counseling the leadership to say, this is how you’re going to [00:17:00] experience a response from our. Subsidiaries in Germany and France and Italy and the like, based on the fact that we have employee profiles that, that cover our geographic regions and we can project based on, it could even be AI analysis of our employee sentiment data from.

Everything that we’ve done in Teams and Slack and email and the other channels that employees are engaging in, we can come right out and say, this isn’t gonna fly. You’re going to have some unhappy people and that’s gonna affect productivity. Let’s rethink this. That’s the kind of counsel that we need to give, not, oh, yes sir, we will communicate that we’re doing this even though we know you’re gonna run into resistance.

The other thing I’m seeing and this is really interesting and I’m seeing this mostly on LinkedIn, is. Experts in DEI who are providing counsel on the difference between legal and illegal DEI as defined in the Trump administration’s executive orders saying that [00:18:00] basically illegal DEI is anything that elevates somebody.

Because of their protected class or background or what have you, which frankly, that’s not D-E-I-D-E-I does not do that. D that, that’s equality, not equity. Equity is creating a level play playing field that gives everybody the same opportunity and that they’re saying is legal. DEI under the definition, who’s.

Reading all of this and going to their leaders and saying, we can continue to offer DEI that is in compliance with what the Trump administration is asking. If we do A, B, and c based on my reading of what the experts are saying, again, this is proactive rather than reactive, and it’s what we need to be doing.

It is. So a lot to pay attention to with this, I think. And the DEI, I guess is the hot one on everyone’s radar because of the rolling back on it as per an executive order. But all the other [00:19:00] elements, indeed looking at what Axios is interpreting from the port, from the from the survey on the share of CEOs who say they plan to expand specific functions, top of the list marketing and brand building or marketing communication and brand building.

And that I think, does reflect what you said at the very start, that the focus is external on this and employee communication is actually second on that list, but there’s quite a big gap between the numbers. And then all the other functions, investor relations, public relations, crisis, et cetera.

But marketing, communication and brand building is number one. So if you’re a marketing communicator, pay close attention to that one. Absolutely. And of course DEI was just an example. Yeah, there, there are tons of issues out there that could be affecting your organization, that could be challenging your leadership.

You need to know what those are, and you need to be monitoring all of those and providing counsel on how stakeholders will react and what the impact of the business will be from the wrong messaging. And that’ll be a 30 for this episode [00:20:00] of four immediate release.

The post FIR #450: Senior Leaders Doubt Communicators’ Abilities appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this episode, Chip talks with Steve Guberman of Agency Outsight about coaching agency owners through problems that they universally face.

Steve shares insights into setting realistic expectations with clients, avoiding over-servicing, and adjusting scopes and pricing appropriately.

Key topics include continuous communication, team involvement in the sales process, and the value of postmortems to learn from both successes and failures.

Additionally, they discuss the benefits of asking questions, remaining curious, and leveraging referrals and testimonials for business growth. [read the transcript]

The post CWC 104: How agency owners can avoid scope creep (featuring Steve Guberman) appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the complaint from owners that AI is preventing junior employees from learning how to do their jobs the right way.

They refute arguments that AI is detrimental to learning the fundamentals, comparing it to outdated technologies like fax machines and card catalogs. They advocate for embracing AI, citing its efficiency and evolving intelligence in completing tasks.

They emphasize training teams to use AI effectively, focusing on editing and verifying AI-generated content rather than doing things ‘the old way.’ The episode concludes with practical advice for integrating AI into agency processes and improving productivity. [read the transcript]

The post ALP 260: AI no threat to agency employees learning fundamental skills appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

How AI is transforming communication beyond content creation to curation AI, including predictive analytics and sentiment analysis, is at the heart of this FIR Interview with Silvia Cambie, an independent communicator with deep expertise in journalism, internal communication, and AI-driven change management.

Much of the conversation around AI in communication has focused on generative AI (ChatGPT, Bard, Claude, etc), yet Silvia argues that curation AI is just as important. By analysing patterns and predicting audience reactions, AI can provide communicators with deeper, data-driven insights into how messages are received and acted upon. Those communicators who have worked with enterprise social networks (ESNs) like Yammer, Jive, and Chatter may already have transferable skills. Extracting data from ESNs and mapping a company’s social graph can help train AI-powered assistants that improve internal communication.

AI is also revolutionising communication measurement. Silvia shares a case study from a major UK retailer, where AI-driven surface occupancy data helped better reach deskless workers, moving beyond traditional surveys. Silvia notes that a growing concern in AI adoption is bias in training data. She highlights the impact of misinformation in AI models, particularly when large language models (LLMs) are trained on public internet data. Another key challenge is AI bias — as LLMs train on internet data, misinformation risks grow. Communicators must collaborate with IT and vendors to ensure ethical AI use.

Silvia also discusses Agentic AI, where autonomous AI agents manage data, track sentiment, and support decision-making. She sees AI-assisted writing as a shift, not a threat, encouraging communicators to embrace it as a strategic partner.

AI’s impact goes beyond business — Silvia envisions AI shaping storytelling in space exploration, reinforcing its role in preserving human narratives.

About Our Conversation Partner

Silvia Cambie is an accomplished professional who works at the crossroads of communication and technology. Her background includes business journalism, corporate relations, internal communication, consulting and digital transformation.

Throughout her career, Silvia has worked for companies like IBM and Wipro. Her experience in tech spans enterprise collaboration, Cloud, AI and change management. In IBM she used to focus on the application of Watson’s AI to the workspace. She has consulted with organisations in a wide range of sectors in the UK, continental Europe, the US and Middle East.

Silvia is a former member of IABC’s International Executive Board and used to serve as President of IABC EMENA. Fluent in four languages, Silvia is a recognised public speaker and published author.

Follow Silvia on social networks:

• LinkedIn profile
• LinkedIn articles
• Bluesky

The post Silvia Cambie on AI’s Overlooked Role in Communication appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

As the digital age continues to evolve, communicators face unprecedented challenges in maintaining ethical standards. Recent incidents, from a PR agency spreading false stories about a client’s rival through social media channels to a New York Times reporter’s alleged breach of privacy within a private WhatsApp group, the challenges to ethical behavior are mounting. Add to that the ethical implications of using artificial intelligence in content creation, with discussions focusing on the balance between innovation and ethical responsibility, and the need to define our ethical foundations couldn’t be clearer. Our panel fellows will explore these timely issues, offering insights and guidance for communicators striving to navigate the complex ethical terrain of today’s communication environment.

Shel Holtz, SCMP, will moderate the panel, which is set for noon EDT on Monday, February 24. Tune in live and participate by asking questions, sharing observations, and offering up comments to which the panel can react. If you are unable to join us for the livestream, watch the video replay or listen to the audio podcast, both of which will be available shortly after the livestream ends.

About the panel:

Diane Gayeski is recognized as a thought leader in the practice and teaching of business communications.  She is Professor of Strategic Communications at the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College and provides consulting in communications analysis and strategies through Gayeski Analytics.  Diane was recently inducted as an IABC Fellow; she’s been active in IABC for more than 30 years as a featured speaker and think-tank leader at the international conference, the author of 3 editions of the IABC-published book, Managing the Communications Function, and the advisor to Ithaca College’s student chapter.  She’s led more than 300 client engagements for clients, including the US Navy, Bank of Montreal, Fiat, Sony, Abbott Diagnostics, and Borg-Warner, focusing on assessing and building the capacities and new technologies for workplace communications and learning teams.

Todd “Tosh” Hattori — Leveraging 20+ years of leading in-house communication functions within a variety of organizations and industries, Tosh shifted his career focus toward helping organization leaders address business challenges by setting and implementing organizational excellence strategies. He is currently the continuous improvement lead for F5, Inc. where he leads Lean Six Sigma practitioners who collaborate with cross-functional teams to eliminate waste and establish consistencies that deliver exceptional employee and customer experiences; and organizational change management practitioners who help employees navigate shifts in organizational processes and practices to achieve functional and enterprise success. As a passionate advocate of his rich Japanese heritage, Tosh serves as the F5 Asian & Pacific Islander employee inclusion group co-chair, raising awareness of the rich and  diverse Asian and Pacific Islander cultures, beliefs, and perspectives within the F5 workforce; and helping members and allies advance awareness and understanding within our communities to achieve support, safety, and success.

Jane Mitchell’s career began at the BBC in London on live TV programs. She moved on to producing award-winning films and videos for public and private sector organizations and developed groundbreaking employee engagement programs. Since 2006 when she formed her own consultancy, she now guides organizations, (some of which have experienced cultural trauma), with embedding values and ethics through understanding culture and leadership and their link to high-performing sustainable organizations. She has worked with Top 100 companies across the world, is a regular conference speaker and writer, and is a Director of two highly successful UK-based agencies. Jane has been a member of IABC since 2008 and has had the privilege of serving on local, regional, and International IABC Boards. She is currently Chair of the 2021 World Conference and was awarded the honor of IABC Fellow in March.

Caroline Sapriel, a member of the 2021 class of Fellows participating in her first Circle, is a seasoned international crisis resilience professional with over 25 years experience in risk, crisis, and business continuity management; she has extensive expertise in crisis communication. Caroline is an accomplished coach, trainer and facilitator in my field and is acknowledged industry wide for her ability to provide customized, results-driven counsel at the highest level of organizations across industry sectors globally.

The post Fellows Panel to Explore the Growing Need for Ethical Communication Standards appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Employees everywhere are using AI to save time and be more productive. The thing is, many of them are using tools their employers have not approved and they’re not telling anyone. Companies are benefiting from this stealth approach to using generative AI, but there are plenty of risks, too. Neville and Shel look at the data and discuss approaches companies can take that will benefit both them and their employees.

Links from this episode:

• Why employees smuggle AI into work
• FIR #419: Is Shadow AI an Evil Lurking in the Heart of Your Company?
• The Rise of Shadow AI is a Double-Edged Sword for Corporate Innovation – NevilleHobson .com
• Chasing Shadows: Getting ahead of Shadow AI
• Half of all employees are Shadow AI users, new study finds

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, February 24.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw transcript:

Hi everybody, and welcome to episode number 449 of four immediate release. I’m She Holtz. I’m Neville Hobson. In episode 4 1 9 last July, we explored the concept of shadow AI questioning its potential risks within organizations. Shadow AI refers to the use of unsanctioned artificial intelligence tools and technologies by employees without the knowledge or approval of their company’s IT governance.

This practice can lead to security and vulnerabilities, data breaches and compliance issues as these tools operate outside established protocols. A recent survey by Software Ag highlights the surveillance of this phenomenon revealing that over half of all employees admits to using AI tools that work artificial approval.

The survey underscores the need for organizations to address this growing trend by implementing clear policies and providing sanctioned AI resources to ensure security and compliance. So what does this latest survey add to the topic we [00:01:00] discussed last July? We’ll discuss the picture next.

This week the BBC reported on this latest survey noting that many employees resort to unauthorized AI applications to enhance productivity, especially when official tools are lacking or inadequate. This unauthorized usage shadow AI mirrors the earlier concept of shadow it where employees used unsanctioned software or devices for work purposes.

The report suggests that organizations should proactively engage with employees to understand their needs. And provide appropriate AI tools, thereby reducing the reliance on unsanctioned applications. And we have three good examples of how different organizations are addressing shadow ai. In response to the growing use of unsanctioned AI tools, banking giant JP Morgan Chase develops an internal generative AI assistant called Index GPT for over 60,000 employees.

This tool assists with tasks such as document summarization and problem solving, [00:02:00] ensuring that employees have access to approved AI resources within a secure environment. The Australian Telecommunications Company, Telstra has implemented a rigorous process to assess all AI tools and capabilities within its business.

Telstra maintains a list of approved generative AI tools and provides guidelines on their usage. For instance, while the company has not officially banned the use of Chinese AI model deep seek, it discourages its use and prefers employees to utilize Microsoft’s copilot for which it is rolling out 21,000 licenses.

And US Retail Giant Walmart monitors AI use within the company and prefers in-house tools, but does not strictly prohibit external platforms. This approach allows Walmart to balance innovation with security by providing employees with approved AI resources while maintaining oversight of external tool usage.

So there’s a number of takeaways here. Shell, I think the first one being there’s a prevalence of shadow ai. Over half of employees use [00:03:00] unsanctioned AI tools at work, posing potential risk to organizations. Those risks from using unauthorized AI can lead to security vulnerabilities, data breaches, and compliance issues.

Proactive organization responses play an essential part in addressing this. Companies like JPMorgan Chase, Telstra, and Walmart are proactively engaging with employees who understand their needs and provide appropriate sanctioned AI tools, thereby reducing your reliance on unsanctioned applications.

Your thoughts? I think that, first of all. Organizations that are restricting the use of ai, which is leading employees to practice shadow AI so they can, enjoy the benefits that AI is going to deliver to them. These organizations need to understand what’s happening with these tools, what these employees are using them for.

I don’t know if it was the same survey you were looking at ’cause what I was. Reading didn’t cite the source of this, but it was a recent survey that found that knowledge workers [00:04:00] are using shadow ai. 83% of them say to s save time. 81% to simplify tasks and 71% to increase productivity. Those are just horrible things.

What business would want that? And I think there. Are misconceptions at leadership levels people who really aren’t paying attention to what’s happening that’s preventing the organization from implementing tools that employees could use with permission. . And that’s driving a lot of this.

I think it’s. Got to be more understanding at the most senior levels of the organization of what these tools bring to the table. Then it’s a question of. Education of employees. Employees really need to understand, first of all what the risks are of using unapproved tools. They need to understand the organization’s process.

Where I work, we have gone to great pains to explain the process of identifying, not just ai, but any. [00:05:00] Technology that might be beneficial and how it is evaluated how it moves into testing and then how it moves into common use across the organization so people understand that there’s a process and if there’s a tool that you like, recommend it and.

It will be put into that process. And finally, I think employees need to understand what tools are available to them. For example, today I will be communicating to employees in our organization that the tool they already have access to, which is co-pilot baked into Office 365 now offers. Access to chat GPTs full complete reasoning model.

You have to pay extra for this if you just have the access to, to chat GPT. But Microsoft decided to, to bake it right into co-pilot at no additional cost. So I’m gonna talk to our employees about what a reasoning model is, when you might want [00:06:00] to use it and hey, you can extra cost. No hassle right there within copilot.

So I, there are steps that organizations can take to minimize the use of shadow it shadow ai. I think what’s concerning is that they’re not taking these steps. They’re just worried about it. Yeah I think that’s the key point. She, what I took mostly from those examples for instance, those three companies in different industries and different countries even are doing is the key to this.

Particularly what struck me was, um, Telstra in Australia. I. Who are right on the ball with the latest thing going, which is deep seek the Chinese AI model that they haven’t abandoned at all, but they’re discouraging its use. So what does that tell me? That little bit of information, not the detail of anything, is they’re communicating something that employees might be wondering about.

They’ve read about deep seek and some might be thinking, oh, I’d love to try that, but can I, should I? Now they’ve got some clarity. They’d rather you didn’t, [00:07:00] and presumably they’re giving some reasons why not and so forth. So it’s not quite clear from that example, but it illustrates, jP Morgan Chase has taken a whole new level.

They’re rolling out an internal generative AI tool for 60,000 employees. So they, at that level, that’s way advanced than just simply explaining what AI tools are and whether you can use ’em, not, they’ve embraced that. They’re rolling that out. Then you’ve got the other extreme, which is Walmart, who, don’t who prefer in-house tools, but don’t strictly prohibit external platforms. I think they, I’m assuming therefore that they’ve explained the reasoning behind all of that. But the point is though they’re proactively communicating, which is the exact thing organizations should be doing.

They need to be proactive for a lot of reasons, and not the least of which is the speed with which all of this is advancing. I was listening to a marketing AI podcast just yesterday. Excellent podcast by the way, called the Artificial Intelligence Show. Yeah. And they were talking about the fact that there is this.

Benchmark [00:08:00] that has been introduced recently called Humanity’s Last exam. You’ve probably heard of it, I think it’s 3000 questions that are asked of a new large language model and it evaluates how well they answered the questions and the. First time it was used, and I can’t remember which models were used in which sequence, but one of them scored something like 8%.

Then the next one a new model was released by a different AI company and it scored something like six 16%. And then a new model was released by another AI company and it scored 24%. These are not. Trick questions, but they’re not simple answers where it could go into its training set. It has to reason to get to the answer.

And what was frightening was that the time that last between that first test that did six or 8% and the last one that did 24. Was about two weeks. So that’s how fast all of this is advancing, which leads a lot of people [00:09:00] to think that we’re probably closer to artificial general intelligence than we had thought we were before.

And companies that are sitting on their hands with this are just opening the door to more and more problems. You talked about deep seek. . If you use deep seeq on the web, one of the many interfaces that allow you to play with it. You’re exchanging data with servers in China and that could be proprietary company data.

There is some statistical evidence about the amount of proprietary information that has been shared using shadow ai. I don’t have the number in front of me, but it’s not inconsequential sharing that with. Open ai, sharing that with Google or Anthropic is one thing. Sharing it with the People’s Republic of China is another

Now I’m playing with Deep Seek. I like it. I love R one watching it think the process it goes through and it’s almost like watching a human think with the text. Displaying on the screen, but I’ve installed it on my computer. It’ll run [00:10:00] if I disconnect myself from the internet completely.

That’s the whole idea of these open source models, is that they don’t call out to any servers anywhere, any data centers. It’s all contained right there on your hard drive if you wanna be able to. Let your employees use this thing, consider an implementation behind your firewall that’s completely protected.

But we have to start thinking about how we give these tools to employees so they can be more productive and efficient. The company can do better, and we don’t run the risks associated with employees bringing tools into the organization behind the backs of it. So bottom line effect, essentially it comes down to communication, doesn’t it?

Because everything you’ve outlined, it requires that proactive engagement with employees to help ’em understand why you’re doing it. What is it, how they can take advantage of it, and the pros and cons of all. The point is though clarity that there is no question in the employee’s mind, [00:11:00] can I use this?

Should I, or I better bring my own? And I think one other thing that you need is not just communication to employees, but engagement with them around this. I will share one other thing that we’re doing where I work, we’re establishing an it an AI committee. And we have an open call for membership on this committee.

And I’m. Not responsible for this. It’s out of the IT department. But what they’re looking for is a cross section of the company. They don’t care how well you understand AI or how much you’ve used it or what level in the organization you’re at. They’re looking to get people from all across the organization.

So there is representation from all corners of the company Yeah. In the decisions that are made about this. And that will be thoroughly communicated. So people don’t think this is executives in the ivory tower, or this is the software police in it. These are representatives from our parts of the organization.

That have [00:12:00] looked at the issues. They’ve looked at the risks and they’ve made these decisions. And I think that makes it a lot more understandable and a lot more acceptable. So engage employees in the process. Yeah, I would agree with that. Shell. So we’ll have a link in the show notes to this survey.

To all the references we’ve made here that you can take a look yourself and get up to speed, but there’s some useful stuff to understand here and for employers. Yeah, you build up that proactive engagement with employees on this very topic and you will be, I’m certain, please, with the outcome from that, I would say, and that’ll be a 30 for this episode of four immediate release.

The post FIR #449: Employees’ Use of Shadow AI Surges appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the importance of satisfaction from the work you do for clients, both for agency owners and their teams.

They explore how satisfaction can drive motivation, the significance of setting boundaries with clients, and the need for purpose in work. The conversation emphasizes the balance between achieving satisfaction and pursuing business growth, as well as the evolving nature of what satisfaction means over time. [read the transcript]

The post ALP 259: The value of getting satisfaction from client work appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Change leadership consultant Caroline Kealey thinks change management is dead. Communication leader Sharon O’Dea thinks Enterprise Social Networking (ESN) is dead.

That’s right: It’s time for another installment of “X is Dead.”

In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel outline the cases these two communication thought leaders make and offer our own thoughts.

Links from this episode:

• 2025: The Year Change Management Died
• Sharon O’Dea’s LinkedIn post on Enterprise Social Networks

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, February 24.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw transcript:

Hi everyone and welcome to four immediate release. This is episode 4 4 8. I’m Neville Hobson. And I’m Shell Holtz. And it is time for another segment of our recurring series X is dead. This is X as the algebraic symbol, not former elite Twitter. It’s been a long time, but we do occasionally dedicate some time to arguments that something we’ve been all.

Taken for granted is dead. And in just the last week, I saw two of these both on LinkedIn and both making pretty compelling cases. We’ll discuss both of them right after this.

Let’s start with change management. Carolyn Keeley wrote this one titled 2025, the Year Change Management Died. I’ve known Carolyn for years through IEBC, and she has a global practice in change leadership. A point she makes in the article. She calls it a sobering realization given her work in change management for the last 20 years.[00:01:00]

But she says change management isn’t working. It had been a useful third pillar in the traditional triangle of strategy, project management and change management when deploying planned transformations. She writes, that was then. This is now. Carolyn says, we’re now operating in a fundamentally different world.

The assumption of toggling between periods of change and of business as usual, entrenched in traditional change management now seems quat. She writes a variety of patterns. Account for change, management’s demise, including the dismantling of trust and legitimacy across all sectors. There’s a pervasive AI inspired fear of becoming obsolete.

Employees feel overwhelmed and underwhelmed at the same time. Silos are calcifying as we retreat to information cocoons and people are in a perpetual state of continuous partial attention. Carolyn is certified in the ADKAR model of change management, but she says that the [00:02:00] thing that. Changing isn’t clear.

The essential quality of organizational today tends to be emergent, not planned, making it hard to progress through a change sequence and the acar model. That’s awareness, desire, knowledgeability and reinforcement falls apart these days at the desire checkpoint. Where we go now, she says, is to clarify the North Star and the fog of chaos.

Many teams have lost the plot. She writes, before introducing a map, focus on the compass. Make sure your teams are crystal clear on which way is north. That is ensure the goal of your goals is well defined. Second, cut out or trim the noise in your organization so your employee’s attention and focus are on the right things.

And third. Cultivates Sturdy leadership. The second piece is from Sharon O’Day, founder of DW Access and Litho Partners, a pair of communication focused firms in the Netherlands. For Sharon, its enterprise social networks That’s dead. [00:03:00] She says she was speaking to a comms leader who was surprised when the hashtag they created for a public launch wasn’t used by anyone other than members of their own team, not a single mention across external social or their internal social channels.

She ascribes the death of enterprise social networks to the shift to short form video as the social networks where we all used to immerse ourselves. Twitter, Facebook have gone bad as public. Social media turns toxic. People have shifted to sharing in small groups or not at all. She writes a phenomenon that you and I have discussed a lot recently, Neville.

It’s no surprise then that we’re all seeing that shift reflected in how people communicate at work. And she says. She’s hearing a lot of that participation in, so enterprise social networks is failing. A lot of companies are shutting them down. She also sees digital fatigue as a contributor. One thing she wrote gave me pause.

She says, Viva, engage, which is what Yammer evolved into, continues to lack [00:04:00] clarity of purpose. A report that looked at data from hundreds of organizations concluded that Veeva Engage has shifted from a collaboration and community tool to a broadcasting platform for communicators. To me that’s blaming the tool for how people use it.

Kind of like blaming PowerPoint for bad presentations. In any case, Neville, change management and enterprise social networks. What do you think? Are they done? They ought to be ? I think when I read Caroline’s piece, it’s a very well written article and it does provoke a lot of thought. Even though I don’t see a lot of

Trenchant discussion going on. It’s a lot of agreement to her points in the comments which is good. But a couple things stuck out to me, like flashing lights almost. Some of the comments she made one is unquestionably a reality of what’s happening now. And this is. Connected directly to what we’ve been talking about recently, the collapse of trust.

So she says, just when we crave institutional stability the most, we are seeing the [00:05:00] dismantling of trust and legitimacy across every sector, politics, business, culture, education, religion. So if you extrapolate that to Edelman’s Trust, which we’ve discussed in two episodes recently that is spot on.

In terms of what’s actually happening collapsing trust, I’d say it’s collapsing as opposed to declining. It’s in serious trouble. People do not trust organizations and the people who lead them. And we’re seeing that played out in reports like this, including the other one we talked about in the last episode from Fleischman Hillard in terms of focus on corporate affairs, so that.

Is a kind of a yes. We need to recognize that, which is part of her argument. But then at the end I think is a is a point as well. So we recognize col trust has collapsed, which is behind a lot of these shifts that are happening. Caroline says in her concluding points, what the world needs now is a forward motion propelled by a new form of leadership.

One that holds the tension between being grounded and [00:06:00] unleashed between head and heart and between fear and hope. The collapse of traditional models is an invitation for the brave to challenge, to reinvent, and to create absolutely spot on in my view. So the old models change management. I see some comments.

Cognize. This is a term and maybe the way it’s been practiced that’s been going for . Two decades and more. I can remember a decade ago when I worked for IBM that was what I was doing was attached to change management programs in the mega enterprise monolithic style. Here’s the Rigid Rule book.

We follow this every step, and there’s absolutely no divergence from this. And so you think that? I, in fact, I now think about it, question, was that really effective back then? I don’t believe that works at all today in this current change in climate. So where are the new leaders then who can nod and say, yep, absolutely.

It’s all changing. So what are you gonna do about it then? So that’s a big point that’s come out of Caroline’s article. Sharon’s article. Is also [00:07:00] great. Is enterprise social over, I would say the way it’s been done for X years ought to be over. We need something different, she says.

Again, this struck out to me, one of the comments she men mentioned anecdotally. She says, I’m seeing more comms Pros report declining participation and engagement. On their ESNs, they’re questioning whether to relaunch them or close them down. I’d say the latter is probably the best route to go if you’re asking this or that.

But I think also people, is it perhaps that there are too many organizations who have these expecting it’s almost like saying if we put it up there, they will come. Use it. If we build it, they will come. They’re not doing that’s the thing. And with the lack of trust, and again, these are very generalized comments I have to say, but we’ve talked about this.

The younger you are, the more questioning you are and the willing less willingness to accept. You must do this simply because [00:08:00] some senior person with a long job title tells you that. Or we’ve done the survey that says this is where we’re gonna go. People want to be I guess schmoozed a lot more, they need to be schoo, that’s the word, not schmoozed, smoothed a lot more to recognize value that.

They provide to the organization. ’cause they’re the future. They’re the future. But it works both ways. You’ve gotta have a bit of give and take Here we’re not seeing that it’s there’s too much. In fact, it’s not even carrot and stick shell, I don’t believe. You don’t, there’s no dynamism in my view, with some of these things.

Yes, all these tools are there expecting miracles to happen. And I think, again, back to my IBM days this rather cool tool at the time, the name of which I can’t recall offhand. It was a a bit like GaggleAMP, that kind of tool, an employee advocacy tool as part of an advocacy program where you have

Pre-written text people would share across social networks. And there was a laity to do this gamification approach to it. You get rewards and there’s peer pressure and competitions, all that. I think those are absolutely [00:09:00] artificial now, frankly. In the sense of. Advocacy in such a controlled manner.

So those are all things that maybe we ought to be questioning how they fit in an enterprise in particular. And so it probably means I’m just glancing through Caroline’s. Sorry, but Sharon’s article, do we need to review the role of ESNs in the channel mix? Yes, we do. I believe, or just accept things change and maybe the time’s just coming to end.

That could be the answer too, but something must replace these things, I would say. So this is therefore the time perhaps. Turmoil again that we haven’t seen in quite a while. The way we’re seeing it, that’s a reflection of what else is going on. So these are all jigsaw pieces in the big puzzle, it seems to me.

But change management, as Caroline writes, I don’t believe that has a future at all in that form. But I can’t tell you ’cause I’m only just reading this, what I think should replace, I don’t know that I think that needs some more conversation. But it’s excellent what both of these have written [00:10:00] because it’s stimulating discussion.

Absolutely. I thought both of them were outstanding pieces. Yeah. And I am in I’m largely in agreement with some caveats. Yeah. With Carolyn’s piece on change management. I, all of the conditions she outlines all of the changes that we’ve gone through, where people are at I and the nature of much of the change organizations are facing these days.

I think she’s right. It is emergent. There is still programmatic change that happens in organizations. There are mergers and acquisitions. There is a change in a core technology that the organization uses and you have to get employees from here to there in a defined period of time. And I think largely the principles of change management up continue to apply in those.

Narrow circumstances in terms of enterprise social networks. I think that and this is based largely on my experience, 21 years as an independent consultant working [00:11:00] with organizations on their digital, internal media, and most of them are introduced to the organization using what I have for years called the Godspeed method, which is, here you go, everybody, Viva, engage.

Godspeed. And what we need is a culture of messaging. It was Pitney Bowes maybe . 23, 24 years ago, I was at a conference and I heard somebody from Pitney Bowes talk about message, mission control. Somebody needs to establish the culture of messaging and reinforce it. This is what this tool is for. Here’s how you use it.

This is what this one’s for. Here’s how you use it. We don’t use it for this, we use it for this. We use this for that. Reinforce that through, among other things, reward and recognition. If you call somebody out for having used a messaging system in support of organizational goals, other employees look at that and go, oh, is that what you get recognized for around [00:12:00] here?

I can do that. And. We need tools that allow employees to share knowledge and information with each other. And Carolyn in, in the change piece talks about calcified silos. And that’s absolutely happening in organizations. We can’t let that happen. That means organization is trapped in those silos and people who need it can’t use it.

Back in 1996, and there were no intranets, there were no. Enterprise Social Networks. Bob Buckman at Buckman Labs started a social network at his company called Kinetics, and it was for one specific reason. It was for people who needed information in order to. Do something work related would post it and everybody was expected to check in daily and if they had the answer, they were expected to share it.

He was not looking to establish enterprise social networks and [00:13:00] make them succeed. He was looking to create a knowledge-based organization rather than one where people kept their knowledge because it was. Power and sharing it should exact some sort of cost which is what happened in a lot of organizations.

And it was wildly successful, largely because he was the most active user. Everybody saw him out there and knew that he would see them sharing or soliciting information. And he would also notice the people who weren’t participating. This is what I mean by establishing a culture. Of messaging.

This wasn’t, Hey, let’s have an enterprise social network and we can throw hashtags out there when we’re launching a program. This is a very well-defined network that had a clear purpose and clear expectations, and everybody could see how it benefited the organization. I. But he was clear. He came right out and said in a memo to employees that if you don’t use this there are opportunities in this organization that are gonna close up to you.

So I think you can have success with [00:14:00] these, and I think we need to find success with these, especially in a world where we have a lot of workers who are remote or hybrid. And we’re not all in the same room at the same time to be able to share knowledge and information. But it needs to be ingrained in the culture, what it’s for, how it’s used, what we use it for, what it’s not for and what the expectations are.

I think I remember one of the conversations we had in an episode within the last six months I think talked about people in organizations, in teams trusting their direct supervisor, the person they report to in the team. And I think that’s where. This needs to focus. So one of the points that Caroline makes in the three step to consider I think this would be very germane to this part of the conversation.

She says, organizations are aching for sturdy leaders, change agents, managers, and executives who have the fortitude, the skill and capabilities to support [00:15:00] and galvanize teams building fit for-purpose, leadership capabilities in leading through change, chaos, and ambiguity is vital. So that stuck with me in, now, in the context of what you’re saying here, that in my view is how you need to galvanize people to participate in knowledge sharing in an organization, not the kind of almost threatening approach.

I see. You are not using the network and. These things are gonna be close to you. If I don’t see you doing this here, that ain’t gonna work today. That worked 30 years ago. And I’m thinking now in many organizations, I’m just reflecting on one in particular that I did some work with last year, that everyone was, looked about 12 years old.

You mean? They’re under 30? Most close to 20. And their whole approach was different, and that, that struck me as an observer. It wasn’t at all in any way negative at all unless you were someone who really had difficulty handling with, [00:16:00] dealing with people younger than you who were utterly different to you.

I think. We’re seeing that more and more. We’ve talked many times about the new wave coming into the workplace, who were born after 2000 who are different. Expectations are different. Our structure’s that different. I’m not in the enterprise loops as much as I used to be working for big organizations.

But what I observe, what I hear anecdotally Sure is you’ve gotta make connections with their younger generation. You are on their mobile phones and all this kind of stuff. If you build an internet, it’s there. They’ll come. They won’t, if they can’t get it on their mobile device in a way that is easy.

User interface, all that. So these are I think elements of the points. Caroline’s making in particular, and the points that Sharon makes too in what she’s saying about enterprise social networks. So it maybe reminded me actually when she talks about Yammer Viva engaged. Now I remember this is about 15, 16 years ago, introducing Yammer to an organization that [00:17:00] I felt this was perfect for this organization and employees with

Alacrity jumped on this before you knew it. 60 people had signed up and we were chatting away and I thought, oh my God, we got an emergency here. Because there was no strategy behind it. There was no guidance on what to do and how to use it. And of course, some significant issues, particularly as some of the senior leaders in the organization didn’t think it was a good idea at all.

Others did. So that. Wasn’t the way to do it. But what struck me about it was an un a kind of a hidden and suddenly emerging desire by people to share things that way that didn’t exist in any shape or form. And they just jumped on it like nobody’s business. It’s often, I’ve often reflected on that as an example of great outcome, but absolutely not the way to aim for it.

So the point I’m making though. Is that it helps you discover, I think preferences of people in ways that are live right in front of your eyes. You can see it. And if you [00:18:00] can somehow embrace that, and that to me means not the CEO or a very remote senior leadership figure, particularly if you’re a big organization, but that small.

Part of the organization you are in and your leader, if you see he or she embracing this, and you trust that person, and that’s becoming more important. Forgotten who it was. Sharon or Catherine talked about cocoons the old silos that we’re talking about getting calcified.

I agree, but they’re still there in many organizations. So silos aren’t necessarily a bad thing if they’re not closed. Silos, in fact, silos, the ventilations. You need small groups of people. That’s more, maybe that’s more in line with what we’re seeing externally. The shift away from centralized social networks to more dynamic niche per, personal interest ones.

How can we replicate that in organizations without the risk of them becoming their own silos that no one’s allowed in ’cause it’s a small niche. Big challenges, I think. So these are great. Aspects or milestones really along that [00:19:00] road to where we’re gonna get to with this chaos all around us, I think.

Yeah, you’re absolutely right. That Bob Bachman’s threat wouldn’t carry much weight today. It was a different generation that was in the company. It was also a group of people who had never experienced any kind of social network before. I, how many of them had been on CompuServe?

Probably very few. So there he needed to use every tool in his toolkit to, to get people. Started with this. But the idea of a network, I think continues to be important. And, Yammer I mean I saw many terrible implementations of Yammer, but I read a report from Deloitte where they worked with a company to launch it.

And what they did was initially have three pilot groups. They identified three groups of employees who were struggling. Largely because they were dispersed different time zones, different geographic locations. Yeah. And it, it was communication the need for asynchronous communication that would improve what they were doing.

And [00:20:00] so they created these three pilot groups and they held their hands through 90 days of using Yammer to help ’em get their work done. One of them was a group of people who used to work in the field. I think the report referred to them as gray beards. And now they had jobs in the offices and these were people who were the least likely to use a social network like a Facebook or a Twitter.

But they became great champions of this because their cycle time, their time to market. Was reduced by 30 or 40% because of their use of Yammer. But they were using it in a strategic way with guidance from a group of people who knew what they were doing. And they were able to take those three pilot groups and tell those stories to the rest of the organization and have the people who participated service champions so that when the rest of the organization adopted it, they adopted it for what it was.

Intended in that organization to do and was very successful. So go figure, if you’re strategic about something, it works better than if you’re not. And I, yeah I think that’s what’s needed here. [00:21:00] I’m not suggesting that, the, the typical enterprise social networks that we have seen over the years, and I’m trying to remember the names of some of them that I have worked with a lot back 10, 15 years ago.

May not be the solution, but channels that allow people to engage and share information when they’re, when some are remote and some are in the office and some are in the field and some are in the off the main office, the headquarters and some are in different time zones in different countries.

I think we still need that. We just need a culture of messaging that provides the guardrails and the. The rationale for why, this is, why using this is part of the way I get my job done. It’s not extracurricular. It’s not something we do for fun. It’s not something we do to build camaraderie.

This is the way we work here. And then they’ll work fine. Yeah. The I love your optimistic view there. Shell really, I do. But I don’t disagree with you. One comment I did like in in Sharon’s LinkedIn piece there’s lots [00:22:00] I liked actually, but this one in particular from Susie Robinson says, I think this is a complex topic that can’t be answered with a binary yes or no, as there are so many variables.

I shared some thoughts, but not exhaustively and honestly think it depends. I agree with that. I love this woman . And that’ll be a 30 for this episode of four immediate release.

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