How Comms Teams Can Get Started on Real AI Adoption

Happy Wednesday! Before we get started, one final reminder — my Claude Code for Comms webinar starts in only a few hours!

Join me at 1pm et for this free session. We’ll build a “Comms Gut Check” tool, a web app that takes a draft communication and analyses it for tone, jargon use, clarity, and audience pushback. Hope to see you there!

— Dan

The word "real” should be italicized there. Because there’s a difference between a team that uses AI and a team that has operationalized it. Most comms teams have crossed the first threshold. Someone is using ChatGPT for first drafts. Someone else discovered that Perplexity is good for quick research. There may even be a Slack message from a month ago that said "we should probably get more intentional about this."

But intentional is hard. And "more intentional" rarely happens accidentally — the words are virtual opposites.

I’m helping a couple of organizations make that leap, focused on general ADKAR principles, the change management model from Prosci that maps out five stages of adoption: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement. But this week, I want to focus on something more immediate: how do you actually get started?

A useful blueprint landed in my inbox this morning. Tyler Denk, CEO of beehiiv, published a behind-the-scenes look at how his company approached AI adoption across all 130 employees. In four months, they went from scattered individual use to 85% of employees using AI at least daily. It’s not about comms adoption, but a lot of it applies, and it’s worth adapting. Here are some things I think that beehiiv and Tyler did well that will translate to communications teams (with some adjustments).

This is probably the most important step — and the one most teams skip. The goal here is to be intentional, and there’s no better way to do that than to outline your why and so what before you hit the what and the how.

Before Tyler launched anything tactical, he sent his team a detailed email in February laying out why AI adoption wasn't optional — connecting it to the company's financial situation, its growth goals, and his belief that they could scale to $100M+ in revenue with the team they already had.

That email does the work that a good manifesto does. It's direct, specific, and personal to their situation. Some of the framing — talking about ticket velocity and headcount freezes — may not resonate in a comms context, and honestly, leading with "we're not hiring until you use AI more" may quickly generate resentment rather than buy-in, particularly in cultures where AI adoption is lagging or in traditionally non-technical environments like comms. But the underlying move is the right one: leadership putting in writing why this matters and what we're trying to do together.

One thing that drives me crazy is when engineers and other tech-centric employees get access to all the fun today, and communicators don’t. I get the reason why — companies are trying to keep AI costs down, and each seat and each set of tokens costs real money. But that sends the wrong signal: it positions AI tools as a perk for the tech-savvy, and gives others (like us) an excuse for why we’re not adopting it.

Tyler and beehiiv onboarded every single employee onto the company Claude account. This is the right call, and the right tool. Claude — especially with access to Cowork for task automation and Claude Code for building custom workflows — gives communicators a surprisingly wide range of capabilities, from research and drafting to building custom tools without a developer. But even if this wasn’t the right tool set, the signaling value of giving everyone access is critical. AI is for everyone, and actions need to match those words.

It can be as simple as a Slack channel. It probably should be as simple as a Slack channel. We’re all learning, and you learn better when you learn together. The beehiiv team created a company-wide one, which works for a 130-person company that is working on a technology solution — but that’s probably not the right fit for you. For most comms teams — especially in-house teams at larger organizations — you want something smaller and more focused. A channel that belongs to your team, not the whole company, lets people share work-relevant examples, ask questions without an audience of thousands, and build shared vocabulary around the work you actually do.

Most companies measure AI adoption quantitatively — percentage of people using Copilot each day/week/month, token use, etc. — and I think that’s a mistake. We don’t measure output by the number of emails you send or how often you boot up PowerPoint (that’d be awful). We shouldn’t measure AI use that way, either. We should focus on comfort level and excitement.

Two months into the AI adoption work, beehiiv sent an all-employee email asking those types of questions. That’s a smart move. You're not trying to prove ROI to a CFO in month two. You're trying to understand where people are, so you can meet them there. Ask your team how comfortable they feel using AI for their actual work. Ask what's blocking them. Ask what they've tried. That's your diagnostic.

The beehiiv team identified “AI champions” among the existing team, tapping them to help carry the work forward past that 60- or 90-day beginning. It’s a good move for them, and the right idea generally, particularly at the earliest stages of the adoption and ADKAR process. But I don’t think it’s the right “how” for us.

Most comms teams aren't tech-first organizations. The organic AI champion — whoever happens to be most curious — may not have the time, the mandate, or the structural support to actually move the team forward. This role needs to be formalized: a dedicated resource, whether that's a fractional outside consultant or an internal FTE with at least half their time allocated to AI adoption. Someone who can diagnose where the team is stuck, build the training and tooling to address it, and maintain momentum as things change. Without that, AI adoption becomes someone's fourth priority, which means it's no one's first.

Ideally, this AI leader comes into the picture before the manifesto, helping draft that document — as comms pros, we know the value of being in the room when the initial communication is written, and we should therefore take that lesson to heart here. While “write the manifesto” is the first thing I list above, your real first step is to identify the experts who can help you write it.

Think of it this way: ADKAR doesn't work without someone who owns it. Awareness fades, Desire stalls, and Reinforcement never happens if AI adoption is everyone's responsibility in theory and no one's in practice.

Your next steps:

The Comms Stack exists because I've spent years watching communications teams try to figure out digital communications on the fly — and I wanted to create a resource that actually helps. But I also work directly with organizations navigating that same challenge in real time.

I help communications teams with:

If your team is trying to figure out where AI fits — or you already know and just need someone who's been in the weeds on it — I'd love to help.

A new LexisNexis report on AI in PR and communications landed this week, and the headline number probably sounds familiar: 55% of PR professionals are already using AI for content, but most don't fully trust it.

That gap between usage and confidence is the through-line of the whole report. Content creation is the top use case for generative AI in the sector — but also the highest risk. The researchers found that only a small fraction of those using AI can confidently explain how it works, creating a gap between usage and understanding. For us and our peers, the numbers are even more striking — PR and media professionals report the highest levels of misinformation concern across the industries Lexis surveyed. And even though awareness of the risks is high, the deadline pressures are higher: nearly 60% of respondents report using generative AI tools without approval, exposing governance gaps.

Why it matters: This is the tension every comms team is living in right now. You're using the tools — you have to, or you'll fall behind — but you're not sure you trust them, and your organization probably hasn't caught up with a governance framework that gives you guardrails. (And they probably don’t have a manifesto, either!) The misinformation finding is especially important for comms pros: our credibility is the product. An error that slips through because someone leaned too hard on a generative output isn't just a mistake — it’s a reputation-killer.

Your next step: Treat the trust gap Lexis identified as a feature, not a bug — it tells you exactly where your governance document needs to focus. Start by documenting what you're already doing, and bring that to leadership as the foundation of a policy, not a confession. Governance built from real practice tends to stick better than guidelines written from theory.

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Until next Wednesday,

Dan

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