Less Chatter, More Matter: The Communications Podcast

#158 AI is here, and this is what internal comms needs to know (and do) (ft. Dan Sodergren)

• Mel Loy • Season 1 • Episode 158

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If you work in internal communications, you’ve probably wondered: is AI coming for my job?

In this thought-provoking episode of the Less Chatter, More Matter podcast, we speak with futurist, author and media commentator Dan Sodergren about what artificial intelligence really means for internal communicators and why this moment represents both risk and extraordinary opportunity.

Dan shares insights from more than two decades at the intersection of technology, workplace culture and human potential. From the rise of shadow AI to the dangers hidden inside poorly understood AI policies, he challenges communicators to think bigger, act braver and step into a more strategic role.

Together, they explore:

  • Why AI isn’t new — but its adoption curve is unprecedented
  • How internal comms could be amalgamated, evolved or elevated
  • The critical importance of training, trust and transparency
  • Why emotional intelligence will outlast artificial intelligence
  • And how communicators can move from content creators to culture architects

This episode is candid, energetic and at times confronting (with a tonne of insights, regardless) but ultimately, empowering. AI may automate the grunt work, but the human work, like the emotional intelligence, trust-building and change leadership are all more valuable than ever. That's where we come in.

Listen in to find out how.

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If you work in communications, especially internal comms, are you worried about the impact AI might have on your job? Maybe you're wondering, what should we be using AI for and what should we avoid? And perhaps you're wondering, what will the role of internal comms look like in a future built around ai? Well, in today's podcast, our guest, Dan Sodergren, shares his thoughts on all these questions and more. Dan is a futurist, author, and media commentator with a passion for helping professionals harness technology to work Smarter. He's a former digital agency founder, turned entrepreneur, and Dan has spent over two decades at the intersection of technology, workplace culture, and human potential. He's a familiar face on UK television. He's appeared on BBC Breakfast, the One Show Watchdog and more. And on these shows, he translates complex text trends into practical insights for everyday life. He's also the co-founder of Your Flock, an employee feedback platform, and has advised organisations across sectors on digital transformation and the future of work. Dan's books include the AI Advantage and Conquer the Room, and his speaking style is known for being energetic, accessible, and thought provoking, which you absolutely will hear in this interview. So in this episode, Dan is going to be sharing some big, bold ideas about the use of AI in internal comms, how it's shaping our profession, and what we need to stay focused on in order to stay relevant and have our value known. Dan covers a lot of ground in this episode. You won't be disappointed. So without further ado, here's Dan Dan Sodergren -, welcome to Less Chatter, More Matter. Well, it's lovely to be here. Thanks very much for asking me. Oh, thank you for coming along. Now, where are you joining us from today in the world? I have the joy of joining you from, uh, the place of revolutions, uh, which you may or may not know, is Manchester, uh, home of the Industrial Revolution. Also the home of the very first computer called Baby. So there you go. So that's why I, oh, that's not the reason why I'm based in Manchester, but it happens to have a, a rich heritage in industrial revolutions and also in computer revolutions. So it's kind of apt, I talk about the fifth industrial revolution from here in Manchester. Yeah, I love that. It's also the home of some great musicians too. Let's not forget. So absolutely. There's some great football teams, but let us not, let us not digress. We won't dig, we don't, we won't digress. So tell us a little bit about you. Who, how did you come to develop your expertise in this space? I've been very lucky, and I say lucky. It is pure fluke. I've known people, like if you know, um, you'll have heard of Google, uh, but you might not have heard of a company called DeepMind. DeepMind was the company that Google bought. Um, bizarrely enough, a friend of a friend of mine, a very close friend of a friend of mine, uh, he was his best man. Um, and I've known Demis, who, uh, runs that company. Demis Hassabis sorry, Demis, I've most probably massacred your second name. I always get it wrong. He, he's now one of the, I've known him for 30 years, and so me and Demis were geeking about AI in the potential of AI 30 years ago. Um, when everyone else thought he was, he was crazy. Uh, he, he's proven the fact that he's right as he sold Deep Mind to Google for around about $500 million. Um, but that was 14 years ago. Uh, so now he's most probably one of the most important people in AI. The point being really is I've been around geeking about this stuff for about 30 years, and so I kind of got into it through the back door, through marketing and some other things. Uh, and then of course. Uh, for a long, long time was probably more than two decades. I've been a keynote speaker on the future of work, and so when suddenly people coming to me and talking about employee engagement and, and uh, company culture and stuff, 'cause I had an HR tech company that was doing some, um, cool stuff with AI before AI really was a thing that around machine learning. Uh, and so the BBC kind of called me a tech futurist as they like to call me because I've done lots of different cool companies before they became, uh, clever ideas, let's put it that way. I'd rather be, I'd rather, I'd rather be called billionaire philanthropists, Dan Sodergren than tech futurist, but never we go. Nevermind. Uh, but yeah, so I've always been on the kind of cutting edge of these kind of stuff, only because of my luck, because I've known some of the right people and, uh, it's just a passion of mine. Um, and of course marketing is something that I started because I had my own startups. And then of course, before you know it, marketing, employee engagement, communication stuff wrapped around with a bit technology. You're kind of in the world of internal comms. So yeah, I, I think I did my first keynote around internal comms five or six years ago with, uh, an organisation called the IOIC. Uh, yes, so, uh, Rebecca, et cetera. Great people. Um, and then I think they asked me again to come back and do a podcast or two, a year or so later. Then some training stuff. Then I did some work with Comms Hero. I've been doing that for about three years. And so I just love the community of internal communication people. It's a great community of folk. I know quite a few of them now. Uh, and so yeah, I just love the community. So I've been kind of helping out from, as AI's got bigger, so I've been asked to do more, let's put it that way. Well, you raised a couple of, uh, interesting points there, and one is, like you said, AI's been around for a long time, hasn't it? Like it's, I I feel like, uh, people are only just getting to know it as a chat GPT or a Google Gemini, but actually it's been around for a while, hasn't it? Oh, good lord. Yeah, I mean, and you know the people who are, if you are particularly geeky, but you might not be on this call, but I'll tell you a little joke. Which is AI is the thing you put on the PowerPoint presentation, but it's actually, it's actually MLP and machine learning, like every engineer would be very cross. I used to go to, we are doing stuff with AI and they're like, no, you're not Dan. No, no. You're doing stuff with machine learning really in natural language processing. No, it's not really ai. Well, if you say ai, you get investment. Now, that was before chatGPT;. Gotta remember, of course, chatGPT 3.5, that little giveaway 3.5, right. So it wasn't one, it didn't even have a decent name. You know what I mean? I kind of, I kind of know what happened with chat GPT one, but that is definitely an aside, but hilarious, but also a, a, a thing of legend. Um, and so, yeah, I mean, machine learning and AI; 1967, Eliza was born. There was a, you know, machine that was doing this kind of stuff. Um, you know, bef you could even go before then in reality. Um, so yeah, it's been, it's been around for a very, very, very long time. But as I say. Um, it was because open AI did what they did. It suddenly burst onto the scene. And then I think about six months later, I did a TEDx talk called The Future of Work isn't what you Think. It's Not What you Feel, it's what you love. Um, and that had a lot of a AI ideas inside it, uh, because everybody had suddenly started using it. But if you see how, I mean the, I think it, it took, I think it took chat, GPT um, oh, that, yeah, of course the humble telephone took 72 years to get to a hundred million people. Chat, BT took. 72 days, um, and chat GPT 5.2, the newest one that came out, uh, that took about 72 hours to get to 800 million people. Wow.'cause that's how many people now use it. Yeah. That, that's how quickly this thing has grown. And so, of course, you know, and it does annoy me a bit sometimes because I, I think we've used the wrong word 'cause it's not technically artificial intelligence. But don't get me started. But everybody now knows about AI and whether you love it or hate it, it's kind of here to stay. It's a bit like, um, a bit like electricity. It's like, you know, it doesn't make a difference what your opinion of it is. We're not gonna go back to the time before electricity, nor are we gonna go back to the time of AI. And yes, you could get very geeky and say, well, but Dan, what voltage could you use in your electricity? It's like, yeah, yeah, that, let's just use the metaphor of electricity, uh, rather than get too geeky about it. So, yeah, I think, uh, AI's here to stay. I, I'm not a hundred. I, I talked about this for a long time and I even, I am slightly worried about where we are with AI right now. Mm. Um, but that's a lack of regulation. It's not, you know, it's that same thing. That's why I always use the metaphor of electricity. If you have electricity and all the wires are falling down and people are being electrocuted, you can't blame electricity. You can only blame the lack of regulation because of, we are not thinking properly about health and safety. Okay. Yeah, and I, I do definitely feel like, especially, or I can only speak from the Australian context, but, uh, regulation had to play catch up to Yeah. Ai. And it was like when Uber became a thing that the, again, regulation was playing catch up. It was retrofitting legislation and and regulation to this product. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And also, so we're always just running behind. Well, and Uber took quite a long time to turn up, right? Like Uber, not, not saying that taxis take a long time to come up. That wasn't the joke. But the uh, but Uber itself, you know, it didn't happen over a weekend, did it? It didn't happen over a, you know, a week or so. We kind of saw Horizon. I had a company I was helping a company called Just Taxi. And Just Taxi was based in the UK and we were kind of going up against Uber and we were trying to help taxi drivers realise that Uber was a thing and all taxi drive companies, 'cause we were literally creating something that they could have their own Uber. It was almost impossible to sell it, right? Because every taxi driver was like, Uber's never gonna work because you have to have a medallion, you have to have the knowledge, you have to have these. And I was like, no, no, no. You don't have to. You just need to have a phone. They're like, well, that will never catch on. You know? And so it always makes me smile. This is why in 2015 I came up with the, the quote that I often use in my own keynotes.'cause I'm that egotistical, I quote from myself, which is, which is all to do with, you know, with the right people, the right technology you can take over the world- without them, that world takes over you. And I think we are now in that place now more than ever. You know, with the right people, the right technology can take over the world, but without them, that world takes over you and, and especially in internal comms, we're this, you know, I was talking about this five years ago to some pretty shocked faces. And even now when I still do talk some trainings, there's still some pretty shocked faces. And realistically, those faces shouldn't be shocked anymore because they use chatGPT almost every day anyway. It's just they don't use it well. You know, that's exactly right. Well, well let's talk about that because I think, um, and certainly what I'm seeing with my own clients in the internal comm space is, uh, co-pilot pilots are happening everywhere. Everybody's starting to use co-pilot in some shape or form or chat, GPT or Google Gemini. So that's kind of those large language models, right? But at what do you think we should be considering when we think about using AI in business in that internal comms context? Well, you've got always got a problem, haven't you? And I don't mean this in a negative way. Mm-hmm. Um, when it comes to kind using AI in these large language models, there's a big difference between what should internal comms people do and what should businesses do right now. It would be lovely if we could say, and internal comms, by the way, I wrote a piece about this and I think internal comms actually is in a really powerful position as long as they know they are to actually make a massive difference to what happens next. And actually that's how you justify being an internal comms person. But don't, don't get me started. But, um, but, but, but the, the reality is, is that you are gonna be controlled by your AI policy, right? Yeah. Now I work and I train organisations and it's quite fun 'cause I work with internal comms teams as well and marketing teams. And often I bring in tech people into these meetings and then they suddenly go, oh, oh heck, our AI policy's wrong. And I'm like, yeah, yeah it is.'cause you're making them all use Copilot and copilot isn't very good. Now, you know, let's be honest. I mean, this is why it's great being, you know, I'm not paid by um, anthropic, even though I'm gonna give a massive shout out to Claude 'cause it's 10 times better than co-pilot. I'm in no way I'm agnostic when it comes to any of these tools. If co-pilot gets better and everyone's like, Dan, why are you always bashing co-pilot? It's 'cause it's not very good. I've got no qualms with Microsoft. I used to own Microsoft shares. I don't now, by the way, they just dropped by 12%. Um, but that's different thing in time. So if your AI policy is literally saying all your employees can only use copilot, you are literally hamstringing it. You are literally, it's the leadership team is creating a problem for its own company now. I, I don't know if that's an internal comms piece or not, but certainly when I do training with tech people and internal comms and marketing teams altogether, maybe in slightly smaller organisations, but housing associations and other things, the tech team go back to the leadership team. They go, we've got it wrong because we've literally come from it from a, if it's not Microsoft, shut it down because that's their standpoint for anything as it has been for decades. Right? Yeah, exactly the same. If you remember you, you'll be too young to remember this, Mel, but I remember a time when people didn't have iPhones. And you came into work. I remember that. I'm, that's very gracious of you, but I do remember that. Okay. But you, you all remember it, right? And everyone came in. The CTO was like, no, no. Everyone has to have a Blackberry. You can't have an iPhone. Oh, if you have an iPhone, everything will burn. We'll all die. Literally, this is what they did. And they said it for, I don't know, about a decade. I remember. I mean, Blackberry should have been a Blackberry shouldn't have been a thing, but they became massive because they all linked to Internets, et cetera. We're now in the same place where it's bring your own AI to work. And so you have this massive rise of what they call shadow ai. And so one of the biggest problems I think that internal comms potentially has, and certainly maybe slightly granular, but 67% of of employees including internal comms, people are using things that their AI policy wouldn't allow, which is called shadow AI. And you're using it at home. You're using it at work, you're also using it sometimes with work information. You are also sometimes using it with a free version of the AI systems, which is the most dangerous thing you can do. Yeah, so I will come in from a cybersecurity point here and also from a, it might not be in your AI policy, but it should be only 54% of the companies right now, this is now not last year or two years ago, have an AI policy that everyone understands. You're kidding. No, that this is my thing. This is an internal comms piece. This is why we need internal comms, right? This is exactly right. My risk radar is just going off. Absolutely. Same. Same, right? Same, same. Just mind blowing. Shadow AI plus cybersecurity usage, plus them using free versions of it, plus with company data. I mean, just imagine. It's why lawyers are rubbing their hands. They're just like, oh, HR people are like, we should have had a chat about this a bit ago. Employee. I mean, employee engagement rates are going plummeting. Yeah. There's a whole host of things that are now, this is why I think it's so exciting for internal comms.'cause this is the point. This is, this is where you are meant to shine and use technology to become amazing, to solve All these problems that leadership might not even realise they've got at the moment. They might not even see them, might not even know them. That's the internal comms piece. But I say I'm not an internal comms person. I'm an outsider that utilises technology that had a, uh, an HR employee engagement tech, uh, piece. Uh, I'm not here to tell anybody what to do, but I would say if you are not thinking about how you could utilise technology and AI to do what you might consider to be impossible, then your task is pretty impossible. You know? And so lots of people talk to me and I'm sure, Mel, you've gotta have the question you, is AI coming for our jobs? Yes.'cause that's what everybody asked me. I think with internal comms, and I have to be a bit more candid here, I've worked, say, worked around the industry and kind of, and try to help for a long time. Five years, you were okay five years ago, you should have started to panic four, three years ago should have been, you should have been actively taking part, two years ago, da da. So if you're in a place where you're honestly saying, I don't really use AI at work, you are in deep trouble. Because AI isn't gonna replace you, but somebody using it will. Yeah. I mean, and I've said that two years ago now. People throw bricks at me when I say it 'cause everyone says it so much. But the reality is, is internal comms, I think I, I don't think everybody will have an internal comms job in the next two years. Uh, the internal comms role will be amalgamated into something else unless it stands up for itself. And unless you start becoming a bit of a technologist as well as a good writer, you gotta remember AI is brilliant at writing. Right? It's one of the things it does best. Yeah. Uh, it's why marketing a demist, uh, told me like 10 years ago. It, my mate's, uh, 40th birthday shows you how old I am, almost about to be. Anyway, had a lovely time and, um. And he said, basically marketing, as we know, it's got about 10 years and I, and I was running a marketing company at the time and I was like, damnit, I've always listened to you and every time I've spoke to you, it's only about five or six times where I can remember every conversation, even though my memory is terrible. And I remember the key themes and you literally have changed my life every time I'm listening. Thank you, bro. I went into HR Tech literally about a year later. I now do still do marketing, but I help people do using AI for marketing, but I wouldn't have a marketing agency at the moment. I wouldn't have one. Tremendously. Uh, yeah, and they're really struggling too. I'm seeing that, uh, with friends who are agency owners. Uh, they're, they're hearing left, right and centre from their clients now going, well, you know, AI can do that for us. AI can create that graphic. AI can, AI can create that content. Is it any good remains to be seen.. But, but it's getting better. Ai, AI can, and all it's gonna do is get better, right? Look at what mid Journey was like a year ago, or you know, two years ago, and everyone's like, oh, this is silly. And you can tell it's got six fingers. You can't now tell with video stuff, right? You can't tell anymore. It's good. You can't, with we're in this type is worrying for society 'cause we're in this post truth world. But you think about on, think about what things like programmatic buying we're doing, um, or real time buying of, uh, things, uh, for advertising. If you're not, not too geeky about the advertising, the digital adverts, and you see pop up, you can buy them in real time and there's a massive board, blah, blah. But the human mind can't comprehend that. Right? The human mind cannot, the agency cannot create 20,000 adverts. Okay. And then pump them out and do it precisely based on the culture of the time of the moment. That's what AI potentially can do when it does it well. Now that's, that's an agency changer. You know, that that's, it is not necessarily an agency destroyer, but it's an agency changer. And if you didn't see that two years ago and you were still going, oh, we are going to pay a graphic designer to make our ads and we're gonna make 10, that's why, because now AI can make 10,000. Yeah. Now same principle. And by the way, you, you know this as well, Mel. I've used that as a metaphor, haven't I? Or an analogy. Ah, yes, of course I have. When it comes to internal comms, this is the point, right? People are talking about these, uh, you know, information fatigue, right? Uh, I dunno what the terminology is. You'll know Mel more than I course. Um, but the reason why it is, is because it's the same as seeing loads of adverts that aren't relevant to you. It's a lot of noise. Well, it's just noise. Exactly. Just noise. Yeah. And we're in a living in a very noisy time, right. Everyone's going, oh, the problem with noises. No, no, no. You are not singing the right song. It's not, you know that it's only noise when people don't like it. You know, if someone delivers me an advert right now that says, Dan, don't you wanna buy a projector? Isn't it near year 50th? Don't you wanna play on your PlayStation with a projector? They've got me bang to rights.'cause that's the exactly point I'm buying this afternoon. Now the machine could have guessed that no marketing agency in the world could have, because they'd be going, it's a 50-year-old man. Why is he buying a projector? Why is he still playing computer games? But it's about knowing me, right? And that's what internal Comm needs to do, but needs to do all mass, but based on time as well. This is the factor that I think makes it almost impossible for a human being to do. Mm. Because the time factor, so therefore we always split it into different bits, don't we? We rank it and we segment and we do all this kind of stuff, but if we could market to one person based on the exact right time for them at their exact right moment based on their psychology and the demographic, nothing would ever be noise. It would be a song they want to hear. Mm. And that's what internal comms can do, but it can't do it without technology. Well that does bring me to, I guess the question around, you know, I remember when I first started in comms, 20 something years ago, again, dinosaurs were on the earth and internal comms at that point was almost non-existent. You know, it was mostly just ex-journos going into comms and everybody was worried about external comms, they're all worried about media. They weren't worried about internal comms. And then, you know, it started to build momentum. COVID came. All of a sudden, internal comms is the most important thing that's ever happened. Um, but we're now seeing this shift again where I feel like we're, it was almost gone from, okay, create the content, do the strategies, help us build the organisational strategy, blah, blah, blah. To now, I feel from the clients that I'm working with, they're not really sure like, what is our role to play in this world that we're moving into? And you've touched on this a bit, but I'd like to hear a bit more about what your thoughts are around how internal comms. Can evolve with what's going on, what, what's out for us now? What? What are the things we just probably will never do again and what do we need to be looking to, well, I think if you're just purely looking at it from an AI technology point, sure. You are rightly so. Is that anything that's kind of repetitive... Anything which is the grunt work as I like to call it, that's kind of gonna go. But we also want it to go because that doesn't have any human finesse and has no nuance. And therefore really, I mean, lots of people who are internal comms love writing. Right. Um, lots of people, internal comms, you know, love the, love the people they work with, and, you know, they're emotionally intelligent. That emotional intelligence part is gonna be the most important bit, right? Mm. But the grunt work, the writing, the doing those things, that's gonna be done with AI because as I say in my keynotes, AI is like an automated intern. It's just an automated intern. And as long as we understand that, this is why phrasing is so important, this is why words are so key, right? If we look at it as anything more than that, then we're gonna be in trouble. But if we realise it's just an intern, it's an automated intern. What would you do in your job if you had five automated interns? You know, if you had a team behind you, what could you do? And that's what you've got right. Now, You know, for me personally, I had a choice. It's just me and my business. Now I had a choice. Do I, um, work harder and work longer hours and do all this stuff, which is always stressful. Or do I look after my daughter more? Well, my automated interns, my AI helps me. So I'm 40% more productive. That means I can do other stuff less, which is awesome for me. But if you're in internal comms and you're like. We don't really have time to have the meetings and meet people and have the empathy and really gather that information and, you know, be, be emotional around folks. I'm too busy. That's why you use AI. Yeah. Same principle. If you're a doctor and you're like, oh God, I don't have time to really talk to patients. That's why you use AI. AI just saves you time. Okay. Doesn't replace you. It saves you time. And I just don't, I don't get it why people don't use it, but I also don't get why people don't rapidly learn about it as quickly as they possibly can, like their lives depend on it, because your livelihood depends on it. Whatever you do. You've gotta, you cannot presuppose that my job will be around tomorrow, because it was around yesterday when actually it wasn't around two days ago. Like, it's just, it doesn't make any sense. But what you can do is say, oh, wait a minute. My, the, the job of helping people understand why and where falls of the organisation is not going to stop that. Should I say, should I say the task of that rather than the job of that? It just depends whose job it is right now. What happens if the, I don't know, the marketing person can suddenly take it on. Yeah, because they've suddenly become 40% more productive. Yeah, yeah. And then they can take, by the way, I'm not saying that marketing people can, I don't think they could, but they might. Right? You might get certain marketing people, communications background that worked in HR before. There's a whole host of things you can do. What happens if HR takes it on? I'm not saying they will. I don't think they will, but they could. What happens if the tech company takes it on board? What happens if they outsource it to a fractional person? Because that person can actually do 10 different companies at the same time. Now that functionality, that moment. I think that's very likely. Mm-hmm. And, and then of course you've got this bit about, I talk about this in my talk, I talk about independent intelligence being key. We've got, in the fifth industrial revolution, you've got four intelligences, you've got artificial intelligence, we talked about gonna be massive emotional intelligence. I think you've, you know, that's why you focus gonna win it. Um, there's organisation intelligence, which I actually think is one of the danger points for you.'cause I think that's the bit you can't control at the moment. Then independent intelligence, do you have the independent courage? Do internal comms people really want to have a seat at the table?'cause we've been telling, we've talking about getting a seat at the table for five years. Do they really want a seat at the table? More importantly, do they really wanna be involved with technologies as they see it and AI as they see it?'cause they think it's complicated. We do training right now and people aren't coming to the training sessions. And I'm like, but this is the most important thing you can do. Right. But it isn't, of course.'cause it isn't for them. It is. I'd rather not think about it.'cause they're human beings. Human beings get scared and we get worried and we think, actually maybe I just don't really want a job next year. And that's okay. Maybe in a position where you don't have to have a job next year. And that's cool. I I have a feeling that a lot of internal comms roles will disappear. Yeah. Um, or say be amalgamated or... They evolve. Uh, in fact, it becomes even more important. And I think if you have the courage to start learning about AI, it's not in any way complicated. I mean, I do it, I learn it, and I, I'm a marketing person and I've learned it. And I suppose it's that, it's that taking the first step. I suppose the other thing is, 'cause we do worry about this, and this is the thing, you have to now start to have collaboration with other parts of the organisation for it to work. Mm. And this is the organisation intelligence part, right? If you think you could just... Basically a key one. I'll, I'll stop now 'cause I know that I, when I waffle about data, everyone gets very, uh, confused or annoyed. But the data's key thing, right? If you don't really have a true point of data, don't really have a true map of the employee experience, we don't really know the individuals, then those messages are actually gonna offend rather than not. And there is actually a deeper point here where you talk about if you give a million messages, how do you pull those million peoples together after you've given the personalisation? I think that's why internal comms is still a role. That's the human part, right? Yeah. If the machine could do that, Microsoft would bring out a copilot that was just called internal comms 50. Uh, You'd all be replaced in a minute. Yeah, a hundred percent. And it is so right. And so much of what we do is change related too. And change is inherently human. It's a technology change, but it's A human change, you know, and change would be easy if it weren't for people. That's what I always say. We could flick on a switch tomorrow and everything would be fine. Uh, but it is that human piece. And also trust, I think that trust in, I, I trust, I build trust in a person. I build trust in a brand. And some of that can come through things that are generated by ai. But at the end of the day, I wanna connect with human beings because I am a human being. And that where is where I feel like there's that piece there you were talking about around the emotional piece, the emotional intelligence piece is how do we evolve our roles so that we're building connections and using those connections to get strategic outcomes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. As I say in my keynote, the human psychology is much more important than the AI technology. Mm-hmm.' cause it is.'cause if it wasn't. Then everyone would be using ai, right? And if it wasn't, then everyone, you know, can you remember how long it took us all to kind of try to persuade people to use the internet even though they still don't? Or you know, how long the fact it took the iPhone to be all nice and sexy and sleek before people really use phones a lot? You know, there's a whole host of things which is psychological way, way, way, way more important than technology.'cause if it was, as you said, brilliantly said, you know, change would be easy. It wasn't for the people. But you know, you look at the how to do complex change, it's like, do you have the vision? Did they have the skills? Did they have the resources? You know, all these things, the five pillars. Um, action plan and all the rest. And incentives. The incentives is the key one for me. We are yet to realise how do we incentivise the fifth industrial revolution for human beings? That is a massive problem. This is why internal comms has to come in because, you know, and again, I could, I talk about it and wax lyrical but you know, if you've got a great prompt, let's say, and prompt is a silly way of putting it, but let's say you've got good at using ai. How do you, what's your incentive to helping somebody else become good with ai? What is the company incentive, right? What is the company incentive to share information? Well, where is the place where you would share information? This is where, uh, the Comms Hero, uh, brilliant, uh, organisation. Comms Hero. I was a judge for their AI stuff in 2025. I'm very proud to do so. Some of the, uh, people, the nominees with that, they'd done some amazing work behind the scenes of how they've got AI champions and how they'd then shared resources and how they'd and literally changed the company and how the company used ai. Gotta remember, I did the work with Pasonio and 66% of us, 66% of us don't think we've had enough AI training. Two thirds of people haven't had enough AI training, and everyone's like, oh, what? What are we gonna do in the next little bit? You're gonna be doing that. I mean, you know, like you're gonna be, you're gonna be talking about the AI policy in a way that people understand. You're gonna be making sure that you can cultivate it. You're gonna be making sure people do the training, you're gonna be checking all those different things. You're gonna be making sure everyone comes along on the journey.'cause most of the people right now are resistant to it because there are no incentives. There is no incentives for it. And most people have got anxiety because you haven't trained them. And so you're just creating anxiety. There. There is no, there is no bigger time in the world ever for internal comms to be needed than right now. It's whether it's needed in a year or two years, and it's whether it's needed with you, because if you haven't changed and evolved, but you've asked everyone else to, then you are gonna be in trouble too, right? Come on, journey. Yeah. Love that. There's one last question I wanna ask you. It's kind of flipping it a little bit, and for me, one of the really exciting things about HR in the workplace, but also just more generally, is how it enables accessibility. And so I think about, so for example, my niece, um, and I've talked about this in the podcast before, um, A-S-D-A-D-H-D sensory processing, but also dyslexia. And particularly the dyslexia piece now that she's in high school, um, you know, that could be so challenging for her because her literacy and numeracy is very poor. But she lives in an age where she could literally talk into her phone and dictate her assignment and it, and then ask it to fix the spelling and grammar errors, and then ask it to create a PowerPoint. I just feel like that's such an exciting part of this that not a lot of people are talking about, or at least not in the world I live in. No, no, no. I think you're absolutely right. I mean, you know, I've been championing, uh, you know, diversity and inclusion for a long time. We've managed the publicity association and others, and I think this is one of the most important things. One of the most exciting things is tech for good, right? And, and we miss the fact that I actually, you know, the 3% of people I was on the radio the other day talking about how, you know, if we get the home hub sorted with ai, we can completely change how people live because we, and we don't need to have robots in our houses. We just need to have a, a kind of a mind that's kind of caring enough. To kind of go, oh, actually Granny needs to get some more carrots. Okay, we'll make sure that Iceland deliver them. Right? Or, you know, God forbid she's had a fall and she's shouted to the Alexa, okay, someone will be there in five minutes and then talk to her through the whole thing. One of the great things and one of the biggest dangers, by the way, with AI, so I'm just gonna contradict myself slightly, is that, I mean, a) education. I used a, I did a non-for-profit the other year or so. We, uh, called the, um, AI teacher course and we were desperately trying to get, uh, teachers to use AI more and also teach their students how to. So a hundred percent behind you on that. I think it's an amazing opportunity, and I think especially for those who, uh, whose education is slightly missed or I think maybe rephrase that, they need more help and that's what AI can give them, you know? Yeah. And I dunno if you've seen the study done in Nigeria, the Nigerian, uh, education system. And this is mind blowing, right? They, they, um, it was six weeks with a tutor, almost two months with a tutor, gave the same amount of learning as two years face to face. Wow. So two months with a personalised tutor, the same amount of value as two years face to face. Now, this was particularly prevalent in and particularly wonderful for women, well ladies, young women who were got shunned out of education. Well, you know, weren't always there also sometimes couldn't be there. Had to be at home for a variety of reasons. We're not gonna get into now, but they have mobile phones and they can use the mobile phone. Amazing. Just awesome. Right. Well imagine that, but in your, all, in your organisation as well. And so we, we, we are kind of, we're kind of missing the AI will educate our employees right Now, the danger here, and I've gotta be careful with the danger here, is that, and this is what we talked about, unregulated electricity, right? The unregulated version of that. Is a worry or the non-controlled version of that by the company. And this is why organisation intelligence is so important. You really should be going to your boss and saying, or your leaders, I hate the word boss, I've used it for 30 years though, um, the leaders and saying, do you know the danger of using Microsoft and using co-pilot? You know, there is a danger in this and they don't seem to realise there's a danger. And that is because data is oil okay, and you're giving away the oil. But actually data is soil. Okay. It's more important than oil. You have to move the idea of oil made into soil.'cause soil is how you grow a brilliant company culture. But if you gave away the soil and what your business was grown on, which you are doing by using co-pilot and Microsoft and these large LLMs, they can remove it at any point. Also, here's a weird one for you, this might blow your mind. Me, you might already think where we're going with this. You know, with that training piece and the uh, and accountability coach that AI can become, well, what happens if copilot becomes that person? For the individual, totally fine so far. Right. Copilot. Microsoft also own LinkedIn. Yeah. What happens if LinkedIn can pay for ads in Microsoft's copilot that persuades the person to leave and they know when they're gonna leave because they know they've been moaning about work and then they say, oh, I tell you what, there's a great company to work for. It's called Microsoft, what I'm sort of trying to get to is the point that I normally end with, which is your people need training, trust and transparency, but that trust piece is so important that you own the technology. Because you are, everyone's trusting large businesses that have nothing to do with their business to act in their interest, which they won't. And then they'll go, yeah, but we pay them. It won't make any, they a, they'll increase the price, which is fine'cause that's what they'll do.'cause that's what they do.'cause that's capitalism. B, they own the data. Yeah. Now think about the, the amount of emotional intelligence data that you might not even understand as an idea yet. But it's there. Right? It's a bit like, um, native Americans selling land for like pennies because it had this, you know, black sticky stuff that killed their crops in it. But it was oil. That was oil. Yeah. And people go wrong. Oh, don't worry. We'll take that off your hands for you.'cause obviously that's all rubbish. And we'll take that made trillions of pounds right now, Mike, I'm not saying that Microsoft, if you read the terms and conditions inside Microsoft's AI policy. Especially in copilot, I would, you'd wanna be looking at what that really means. Mm. And you should be rapidly considering every organisation, more than 200 people should be rapidly considering an on-premises small language model as soon as possible, because there is an intrinsic danger by letting these people have that data because they consider it to be theirs, not yours, theirs. Now, that is a worry now. If you're internal comms, all that stuff needs to be communicated and that's why you are in a really powerful position. As long as you use AI or as long as there's like 20 of you rather than one of you.'cause it's a big job. It's a massive job. Yeah. Dan, I could talk to you for hours, but I know you don't have the time and people should actually just go and do your course anyway. Uh, but I do have three questions I ask every guest on the podcast. Are you ready for those? Yeah, I am! Well, let's do it. First one is, what's the best communication lesson you ever learned and how did it change the way you communicate? Oh, um, you've got two ears and one mouth, you know? Yep. Uh, and it's still hard for me to do now, as you know, Mel.'Cause I'm always a guest and I'm, I get paid to talk. Right. But the most important thing I ever learned, um, and that is times 10 when it comes to. Uh, internal comms and, and communication, um, especially using technology. And by the way, that's why, because we don't just have two ears now. We've actually got 10,000, you know, but we're not using them. And then we're just, yeah. And everyone's saying, oh, there's a lot of noise. Well, that's if we shut up for a bit. Yeah. Love it. Second question, what's one thing you wish people would do more of or less of when communicating? Ah, well we just did the listening one, Well, so I can't do that twice, can I? Mm-hmm. Um, I'm gonna go for lack of empathy and a lack of emotional intelligence. Um, and the empathy thing, empathy isn't sympathy. Um, and that's really important. Um, and then of course I'll reiterate that, you know, listen more, talk less, um, but, you know, putting your, if you can put yourself in their shoes, I know it's not always possible for lots of people, including myself. I'm not emotionally intelligent. It takes me a lot of stopping and thinking to do that. But if you're purely talking about communication, you can link in marketing, internal comms here, it's the most important thing. Mm. It's the most important thing is to put yourself in their shoes, work it out. And if you're saying, oh, I dunno what their shoes are. Well, that's the problem. Yeah. You need to find out what your shoes are. Yeah. It's one of those things I, I really wish, and I think they do it more now in schools, but emotional intelligence wasn't something that was talked about at school. It was just, you know, harden up and off you go. Um, whereas I see, you know, my, my oldest niece in particular, uh, you know, she's coming home from school one day. Um, you know, such and such are being so mean and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I think it's because she's got a lot going on at home. I was like, okay, I never learned that till I was an adult. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I learned that. I learned that about 10 years ago. Alright. Ah, the kids are gonna be okay, right? And they're gonna be okay. That's the importance of changing the curriculum, right? So again, I talk in my keynotes, and this is by the way, when I say curriculum, not education, but the world curriculum, especially around employee things. You know, those things that we used to call the hard skills. The soft skills that we got, those soft skills are power skills, okay? Mm-hmm. That is gonna be your differential point for everybody who's employed. The emotionally intelligent people will do better and get more promotions. The people who you are very technically good at stuff, we are not go, it won't make any difference because the AI will do that. Mm. So if you're an amazing coder, but you can't talk to people, you're gonna have to be in the top 1% of coders.'Cause that that's the, that's the cutoff point. That's how good AI's now got. If you're in the 99% of people in that role, use and use AI to help you. But if you're in the top 1%, do what you want.'cause you can, you're the best of the best. But most people, including myself, are not the best of the best. And what are the things that I've gotta get better at? Employee engagement, uh, is, is so low at the moment. But everyone keeps blaming AI say, oh, it's 'cause AI and everyone's scared of their job. It isn't. It's much deeper thing in their right. It's the rampant sexism, it's lack of diversity, inclusion. There's the no emotional intelligence that leadership is back in the day 1940s style of command and conquer. Mm-hmm. In a brand new world, which isn't gonna take that anymore. And so people leave. But that's leadership. Right. That's a leadership problem. Yep. And I know it's not nice 'cause you're gonna have to kind of manage up and you have to say. We do know that being emotionally intelligent might be quite cool. It might be a good thing to do for your own career, but that's what we're gonna have to start doing. And those people who don't, I don't know if they're gonna be, they might be around for a bit like the old guard sticks around for a while, doesn't it? It's whether that old guard will stick around in the revolution or whether they'll be the first to go. If we say that, if we can educate up, that'd be great. But also we've got to be aware that with the organisation intelligence, there will be a bit where there'll be more... Decentralised teams and smaller teams making decisions quicker based on emotions will be the, the norm. And if you, if we can't, if your leadership can't get their heads around that, then that, I think that's when heads will roll. But I only said heads to a roll 'cause it sounded cool. That's a great song. Uh, last question. Who do you look to for communication advice? Um, I've gotta be honest with you. I know this sounds like a bit of a double shout out to Mike Klein, But you know, Mike does a brilliant job with strategic, but also I think the way that he thinks about internal comms. I know it, it might not be fashionable, uh, yet, and it might be the fact that a lot of people think it's a bit too hard-nosed 'cause it's to do with business and business cases. But I have a feeling just the gut feel, and I'm not used to gut feels, I have a gut feeling that that is not necessarily the future. You gotta remember, um, the future isn't necessarily what you want it to be unless you're creating it right. You know, so you can look at it and go, you've gotta sometimes look at the world as how it is, not as how you'd want it to be. I was always doing things with environmentalism and trying to change the world and doing all the stuff with AI and trying to change the world. It's not the fact you shouldn't try to change the world, but you've gotta at some point look at it and go, actually what is, what is the world right now? It's like that, right? And if it is at the moment because of economic factors and a variety of other things. The bosses are saying, or leaders are saying, okay, prove to me the finance behind this. By the way, if you've got a way and I don't mean get a way, but if you've had a job where you don't have to justify the financial reason that exists, like I work in marketing, like it's just basic. Now, internal comms, what's the average tender point for an internal comms professional? I do not know. My advice is, I dunno. My advice is don't use AI to ask.'cause it does hallucinate. That's the thing. If you're gonna use anything, use perplexity.'cause perplexity will is really good for research. So maybe that's something worth thinking about. There you go. Yeah. There you go. Well, Dan, thank you so much for your time today. If people want to learn more about you or learn from you, what's the best way for them to do that? Best thing to do is to find me most probably on LinkedIn. Uh, 'cause I'm normally there quite a lot, so LinkedIn, so simply Dan. So that's DAN and then S-O-D-E-R-G-R-E-N. Uh, you come to my website, which is dansodergren.com Um, I'm also doing some great work with, uh, Mike, Diana with Sarah as well, and another folk from find Out about that. In fact, actually what I'll do is I will link From this podcast to that event because it is Oh, amazing. Uh, it is based over in Australia, through the power of the internet coming to Australia. Yeah. That's amazing. Oh, well that's super exciting. Thank you so much for being on Less Chatter, More Matter. Fantastic. Thanks Mel. Thanks for inviting me.