Everyone has their opinion about generative artificial intelligence. And those opinions range from doom and gloom, to nirvana, and everything in between. And here comes another.
It is a new chapter for communications that cannot be overlooked or underestimated. All signs point to the fact that AI will have an impact on how we work. Hopefully, leaning more toward the positive outcomes we will deliver. Just as the internet changed many aspects of how we go about our business, making our craft more precise, more measurable and more indispensable, so too will AI leave its indelible mark.
I am likely not alone with a newsfeed filled with new stories about AI. Plenty of them clamoring to offer up the next shiny AI object.
For years now — predating the rise of generative AI — the conversation has focused on what AI will replace. Particularly in our industry, replacing the mundane, everyday tasks delegated to the most junior members of our team. Some are suggesting that AI will wipe out a level or two of staff, making them obsolete and unnecessary. Deleting a row of the Scope of Work document. I sure hope not.
Rather, shouldn’t this be the opportunity to train and cultivate the next generation of communicators in ways that will further broaden, deepen and democratize strategic communications — critical thinkers across the generations at the table, shoulder to shoulder with colleagues and clients?
A lot has been written about the artificial side of things that will replace humans. Loss of jobs to machines that can do it faster and cheaper. We cannot overlook this, but I believe we can shift the conversation to how business can be re-imagined for less loss and more gain. In our busy lives the ‘to do’ list often gets the best of us. Time to think — consider a new path, explore the unknown, challenge the status quo — falls to the bottom of the list way more often than any of us would like.
Yet the very thing we need more of, now more than ever, is critical thinking and business acumen. And not just from the most experienced among us. Given time and space, our next generation of communicators should be right there with us collaborating and challenging, perhaps earlier than they currently are.
Imagine having the time to train those just starting out to be critical business thinkers. To not expect they will pick up on it just by being in our presence, but to actively teach the art of asking questions, how to become subject matter experts, how to articulate and advance an outside point-of-view.
To be clear, those entry-level tasks are important in understanding and appreciating the building blocks of communications. We can expose our teams to that, and pivot to put them on a path to more intellectually interesting work. This is not about cutting out assistant account executives and account executives (outdated titles, but a topic for another day) but committing to nurture them early on into strategic thinkers, planners, storytellers and more.
Therefore, could the rise of AI be the dawn of a new era that makes room for more of what we want to do to nourish our minds and spirits? If AI is the great disruption of this era, so too can we disrupt our daily lives with what we are gaining — time, space, and the opportunity to focus on what matters to each of us.
In the meantime, for our industry, let’s not reduce this to eliminating jobs, or even worse, lowering our fees (!), but rather advancing all that we communicators can address with our acumen and our actions.
Barby Siegel is the chief executive officer of Zeno Group, overseeing a global organization of 750 staffers with operations across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Under Siegel’s leadership for the last 12 years, Zeno has experienced annual double-digit growth while staying true to the firm’s core values of being inclusive, ambitious, kind, entrepreneurial, collaborative, and fearless. She is a member of the USC Center for PR board of advisers.