April 14, 2024 • 34 mins
In this episode we conclude season 3 with a UK special. Jenni Field is a renowned strategist in the communications realm, bringing more than 20 years of knowledge and experience to the conversation as we talk about her career journey, from serving as a Communications Director in the pharmaceutical sector to becoming the founder of Redefining Communications, a consultancy helping with communication, employee experience and organisational challenges.
Jenni shares her top tips for people wanting to get into communications and copywriting, or for those who are there already. We also talk about her experiences around the world and highlights from her career.
As ever it's not long before we get into AI and we talk about its emerging role in internal communication. In Jenni's view, while AI has shown promise, it's still an emerging domain with loads to uncover. We then veer into the value of tailored communication, exploring strategies for non-office based workers, with the ultimate aim of achieving greater impact and feedback.
We conclude with a discussion around burnout (and how to avoid it), as well as our favourite old topic of biscuits!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Music.
(00:07):
Charge the change of calls podcast and we've been waiting a little while to
get our latest guest on the pod and it is super cool to welcome jenny
field to the studio if you work in comms and haven't seen
much of jenny i do wonder where you've been jenny is a successful comms guru
author speaker strategist and the list goes on jenny also hosts her own pod
and we'll let jenny tell a bit more about this later but before then pete hi
(00:27):
we've been 10 minutes since we've been chatting but what's been happening in
barcelona since we last hosted the pod i've been ill so,
So loads of stuff's been happening for me all over the place,
but I won't tell you all about that.
Maybe I'll edit this one out as well. But let's get on to Jenny,
because I'm sure she's got more interesting things to say than I do.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do? Hello.
(00:50):
I can, I can. Thank you for having me. I always like it when people say,
can you tell us a bit about yourself and what you do?
Because it always makes me think of Blind Date, and then I realise how old I
am, because people don't get that reference as much anymore. more.
So I have worked in communications for around 20 years.
I started my career in public sector as a communications assistant and had a
(01:10):
variety of different roles.
In defence, advertising, agency, retail, hospitality.
My last in-house role was as a communications director in the pharmaceutical space.
And then in 2017, I decided it was now or never and set up Redefining Communications
as a consultancy, which I've been running since then.
I've been looking at some of your stuff online, Jenny, over the course of many years.
(01:34):
What always amazes me is about comms reboot.
I keep missing out on tickets. tickets every time.
I should be putting my name on a waiting list. I'll come back to that.
Something comes along and then I miss it.
It's coming up again soon, isn't it? It is. Yeah, it's on Saturday the 19th
of October and it's an unconference that we run.
So basically that means that when you turn up, you will set the agenda on the day.
(01:57):
So we should have about 150 people there. It's in London and you'll say what you want to talk about.
And then we have lots of facilitated conversations conversations about all of those topics.
It's quite a high energy day, but there's also lots of space for quiet reflection.
If you want to go and have one-to-one conversations, it's all very relaxed.
So very exciting. I just was somewhere else where we may have bumped into each
other. Did you ever go to the Big Yak?
(02:17):
Well, yes, I used to run the Big Yak. And then the Big Yak became Yeah.
So the Big Yak was part of the IC crowd and the IC crowd was something we co-founded
with with Rachel Miller and Dana Leeson.
We then decided to stop that.
So we then stopped the IC crowd just because we'd been doing it for 10 years
(02:38):
and we stopped the big yak.
And I was quite keen to kind of just keep the event and that format.
So I just agreed with the girls that I'd sort of take it on and we just rebranded
it into the Redefining Comms ecosystem.
But it's the same unconference format, almost on a Saturday.
As soon as you said the unconference, that was the trigger.
I knew there was somewhere else. It wasn't just the Malcolm days.
There you go. Oh, you see? We've just been around too long. That's what it is.
(03:02):
I know. It's what happens, isn't it?
It was really interesting to just kind of hear that little potted history about
how you started out in comms. And it's one of the things I get a lot just through
my experiences of working in different places in-house and...
If people say to me how do you get started but how
do people get started jenny what is that what is that what would be your
tips for moving into comms from a different role the main thing for
(03:25):
me is networking and i know that's you
know easier said than done and and you can network in lots
of different ways like if you're not someone that really enjoys going to events you
know linkedin is a perfect space for connecting with people
it's also a very friendly community so the internal communication
space and change communication space is
always people wanting to help other people people do
(03:45):
something that they've learned from because we've all learned something along the way and
so normally when you're reaching out you'll you'll be able to connect with people
and they'll be willing to help so I think for me it is reaching
out connecting with people it's not being afraid to ask questions it's going
to events where you can connecting with some of the really good recruiters out
there so there's people you know in comms leaders there's comma partners there's
(04:06):
you know a variety of different recruiters out there who know what's going on
in the market it in terms of how to get started.
I think there's also quite a lot of pressure sometimes to build your own brand.
And I'm not sure that that's necessarily needed. It's all about who your relationships are with.
And I think we can create this pressure on ourselves to, you know,
be publishing articles and sharing content and doing that.
And that can be important if you want to do that. But you can build relationships
(04:29):
in lots of different ways. And that's really what it comes down to.
What kind of skills are you seeing as the hot things to have?
It's interesting. I was was actually looking at two job descriptions just earlier
on today for a call with someone to help them prepare for an interview and
one of the things one of the one of
the lines on the job description was you need to be a strategist a designer
a counselor a coach an advisor I mean it was I was like they want a unicorn
(04:52):
and so you know we need to delve into what that really means but I think I think
for communication professionals now it's being a bit of a catch-all which sounds
Sounds very ridiculous,
but you have to be able to write, you have to be able to advise,
you have to be able to have critical thinking, and you have to be able to have
stakeholder management. Those things are really important.
(05:14):
Some of the specialist stuff around AI, or if you want to go into design or
copywriting, these are very specific, detailed areas of comms.
And sometimes we try and lump them all in as one thing. I'm not a copywriter.
Hey, but I can write. I've written a book. I write blogs.
But if somebody needs a copywriter, that's a different thing.
And I think that that distinction is really important, especially if you're
(05:35):
starting in your career.
You might want to do the generalist stuff so that you can then find out what's the right path for you.
But in terms of the skills people are looking for, it does seem to be a little
bit of everything, which is less helpful, I know.
I remember going back, it's probably only 14 years, I think,
roughly, I was working in London, Victoria.
Comms League came into work, a big programme I was working on.
(05:55):
It was one of probably my first change comms types as I was moving into.
And the job specs always at that point in time are saying, you know, former journalist.
I remember that clearest day of, thankfully, that is a trend that has gone, hasn't it?
Yeah, it has. that you're right that the mix of skills now and i think particularly
around stakeholders is probably the biggest trend i've seen because a lot of
senior leaders want to do their incomes.
(06:17):
They may have some help in the background in terms of structure or or you know
phraseology or something like that but they are preferring to even start themselves
this is something i see more so it's the ability to kind of coach and guide
and inform is a big part of that journey and as you say copywriting is important
you need it for web but writing for web of course is writing different for different reasons.
(06:38):
It's not copywriting, not in the truest form as say 14, 15 years ago.
Yeah. And you're right. Like when I think of copywriting, I naturally think
of sort of feature writing in a magazine because I'm old.
So whereas other people would think about writing for SEO, right,
which is a whole different sort of skill set.
And I think it's that specifics that need to be explored for a comms role and
(06:59):
whatever you're doing in comms to really clarify what you're doing.
And you're right. People do want to write their own stuff a bit more.
You you know, we need people to write more of their content.
So we know them and we understand their style and those sorts of things.
But that coaching and advising and that relationships inside organisations is
the bit that's so important.
And when I was looking at the trends for 2024, that,
(07:20):
you know, connecting people together in an organisation in that kind of more
human way of just helping people know each other is definitely starting to come
forward on the back of the pandemic and the larger political societal pressures
that there are. We talked about your career spanning 20 years.
So could you tell us about some of the highlights and things that stand out for you?
When you've had a career that's 20 years and is as varied as mine has been,
(07:43):
trying to think of highlights is quite hard, but not because there aren't any,
because there's almost too many.
And my career has gone very sideways in terms of levels and things like that.
But there were six things for me that were really sort of standing out.
And that is about the experience that I've had along the way.
So one is the ability to travel and the different cultures that you can often see in organizations.
(08:04):
When I worked for BAE Systems, I was lucky enough to be doing the media relations for them.
So I got to experience different cultures.
You know, I was doing a lot of work in different areas of the world.
And that was fascinating because it was exposure to something that I hadn't
had having come from public sector.
There's other things for me that are a highlight around understanding the different organisations.
(08:26):
So going from a local council to a FTSE 250 is incredibly different.
And the challenge that comes with that means you're constantly learning.
And as I was doing the highlights, I was thinking, gosh, this is all about the
constant learning that is involved in a communications role.
I think the only other things I'd probably mention, as I say it quite flippantly,
(08:46):
is the research that I've done into non-office based workers.
The book that I've published has to be a career highlight and setting up the business.
You know, it's a really daunting thing going out on your own.
And it was a real case of if not now, when and if it all fails,
we'll hopefully go and get a job.
And it's, you know, it's been seven years and I'm still here.
(09:06):
So definitely a highlight. like it
felt like when we were pete and i were talking about things that we
would discuss jenny was like that sounds like an interview question
but actually it's a really important reason for asking is because
when i read through your stuff you often mention about
reflecting upon whether the piece of work you've
done or the past few months but actually reflecting upon
(09:27):
your career is actually also kind of motivating in itself just
to remember the steps and the journey you take to get to where you are and
i would think you know if you maybe sat down with with
jenny who started out 20 years ago today and said you know
20 years you're going to have a really successful company that
spans across both the UK and America you're going to have published a book you'd
be like yeah all right yeah and you have to go back and remember these steps
(09:50):
that you take it's really important isn't it yeah I love the thing you do on
LinkedIn as well which is about asking me anything I find that quite fun what's
the most left field question you've had on there.
You're not the first person to ask me that I need to have a look because we record the sessions,
just for us we don't share them because it's a safe space but i
i'm definitely gonna have to go back and look at what's been the most sort of left field
(10:11):
i mean it's such an open thing to say you can ask us
anything i know someone that's an invitation you're gonna come to the next one
aren't you and just rock up and be like i've got a question and then you'll
just ask something about you know wallpaper or something so i think i haven't
had to be honest everyone stays within within the remit of communications,
(10:32):
leadership and engagement,
I think what's challenging is sometimes people ask really hard questions. And I don't, I don't.
Suggest that I've got all the answers, like my collective team are often on
the call and they can they can wade in. But people will ask,
you know, some some quite big questions.
And the one we had probably the most recent, which was the most sort of non
(10:52):
comms related almost was just, I'm really struggling with being motivated to do my job.
And I'm feeling quite burnt out. And I don't know how to kind of find the love for what I do again.
And I think that is happening a lot for for anyone in a job.
And I think it's certainly happening for a lot of communication professionals.
So that was was quite heavy as a question and i talked a
lot about my own experience in the last year and how we
(11:14):
sort of stay motivated and that sort of stuff but that's yeah
that was probably the most most left field if
you like i think that's something that's going to come up more and more over
the coming years as well because the way that the workplace has changed obviously
since pandemic but also the type of experiences our new workforce are having
coming into the workplace isn't the same one that we had and i remember i think
(11:36):
it was a head teacher of my my children in school say,
you know, we have to teach our children to have grit because if they don't have the grit,
they're going to find these times when they go into work really difficult to
overcome the moments where they feel a bit lower about what their role is or
what their job is and they won't have had the experience of coping because they
haven't had, you know, well, they won't have 10 years in the workplace before
perhaps that big career move happens.
(11:58):
That was a really interesting point to say. So, yeah, I wonder if that's a trend in terms of,
we talk about the ever-changing job description description of comms roles is
that actually perhaps that well-being piece actually fine-tunes itself into
comms as much as it has done into HR.
I think we're not just a voice piece. I say to Pete when he first came over
(12:18):
and worked with us in change was that we're therapists at the beginning of any change.
We'll go and tell our department something's changing and then we just won't
say anything because we know that we're going to have to listen and absorb and not to try and solve.
Therapy and then we can go back later and address the points
and i wonder if that actually becomes more of a workplace thing
(12:38):
and no longer just a change thing i don't know what your thoughts are yeah i think
that the the empathy piece i think is
really important and i think communication professionals are
naturally quite empathetic people because the nature
of kind of what we do and i think sometimes you can
absorb a lot of other people's angst and unless you're looking
after yourself that that can be very draining and and hard
(12:59):
and change programs today aren't you
know right we're going from a to b and it's going to be three months they are
two years three years and i think that's a change i've seen
in my career when i think about the change i've worked
on it's it's this is significant organizational
structural transformational change that is
long term and and that's
(13:21):
very different in terms of the resilience that
you need to keep going with such levels of uncertainty
and i think that's the thing that is is hard we've talked
a bit about highlights but it's got really depressing now
hasn't it well no it hasn't it's been it made
me think because because like you're right change it
used to be in the old days of saying i got an erp change it's going to take
(13:42):
us a year to get from here to a go live but there's no such thing as a go
live as well maybe there is but it's not as black and white as
a go live you tend to have structured go lives for operational continuity or resilience.
Don't you so you wouldn't have one big one yeah you'll do a bit and then
you'll bleed in the next bit because you can't just switch off
i think the last one of those i did was nationwide and we we were
replacing the treasury system when the old one was held together
with with sticky tape and staples so as soon as you turned it off
(14:05):
it was never going to restart so but you don't get many
of those anymore a lot of those replacements have happened haven't they
so you're right it is it is a gradual process yeah sorry yeah
that's okay um yeah it's easy to reflect on the horror
stories and but instead of some of the lowlights we
wanted to know some of the oh no's or what
are the things that stand out that have kept you awake at night that
(14:25):
that you kind of reflect on in your career in my
career or in general in the industry both
we don't have to name people or
companies but the but i love the oh no lights it was something
i picked up years ago so what's your highlights of this i mean i probably go and
watch your own no lights i was like you know where maybe a bit of a
plane falls off and perhaps you worked at the post office those
(14:46):
those are the topical things I mean I did
not work at the post office so there's a there's there's
a couple of things I I tell the story I
tell a few stories a lot about working with leaders and it being very very challenging
I'm not going to get into some of those now but I do remember launching a new
strategy in an organization where we were doing a merger and an acquisition
(15:07):
it was a bit of a blend of the two and so we were going going out to do a roadshow
to share the strategy of the new organisation.
And we'd organised it across all the different sites with manufacturing and support functions.
We were doing night shifts. So all the tick in the box stuff that you do in
terms of making sure you speak to everybody.
I had all plain English. It was all very clear. And the MD stood up and talked about the strategy.
(15:27):
And then in every manufacturing site afterwards, everyone came back and said
they had no idea what we were talking about. And I was like, no.
And there's several reasons why. And having done the research now into non-office
based workers, I understand it a hell of a lot more than I did at the time.
But it was that as much as it was plain English and we understood it and it
(15:50):
was, you know, understandable in that way.
It was just a different language to how they could understand.
It was just a completely different environment language just
didn't make sense and so that was a big learning for me in terms
of go and test your messaging with people that are going to be listening to
it so that was that was my big oh
no when you say non-office based workers you mean like factory floor that yeah
(16:11):
so like frontline deskless what kind of things did you find that you needed
to do differently so at that time I I didn't really know what I needed to do
differently and it was only talking to sort of the head of manufacturing and
understanding where we got it wrong.
We then started to just talk about things differently, be a bit more visual, be more verbal based.
So we were relying on managers to do shift briefings and things like that rather
(16:34):
than getting, you know, wheeling out the royalty as, you know,
the royal visit as we often call it.
We just kind of stopped doing some of that stuff because it didn't work and
it didn't do what we needed it to do.
Now I've done the research, I understand why that doesn't work and
part of that is just the cultural difference between the two types
of of worker was very different in terms of
what your what your purpose is what you're there to do what
(16:56):
your connection is to the organization all those sorts of things and i
didn't do it again i think we just you know worked
through trying to fix it in different ways by briefing managers and just doing
it differently i certainly didn't just yeah go and wheel everyone back out again
i wasn't doing that part of the challenge i find is in getting that feedback
from the people on the front line in the first place know whether or not they've
(17:18):
They've understood it and it's really difficult to get through that filter of the managers.
You know when you go out to managers, you know, did everybody in your team understand?
They're like, yes, yes, they've understood it perfectly.
Yeah yeah yes yeah but
i never i never i always bypass the managers like
and i'd and every quarter i'd when i was working in retail hospitality
(17:39):
every quarter we would be out walking around
train stations airports whatever it was talking to the team
like i and i knew the managers you know we would do an annual
conference for them all 500 of them so i
knew them relatively well so i wasn't too fussed about them
they had access to the internet that was fine but going and spending
time on the shop floor and doing you know we would do back
(18:00):
to the floor day so i'd go and work in a upper crust on
a train station for a day and stuff and actually experience things that's
for me that's quite important when you've got a very different workforce
is upper crust still going i haven't seen that for a while
yes still there still there i
think they've done the train station for a while that's the only place they're at isn't it
it is yeah yeah yeah they are i think that's
(18:21):
on my quarter train in a while i suppose that's
the part of the changes as well it's it's it is it
is yeah it's because i mean and we've had a session before
where we've talked to someone about kind of tasting the streets was the term
that was used but you have to understand the culture of the people you're talking
to it's not the culture of the organization as such it's the culture
of the people who work in the organization and depending on where that is is
(18:41):
a different outcome right you've referenced that research now is that in your
book or is that available to to purchase online or download how do we get our
hands on it so the research into deskless workers is called remotely interested
i've done it twice i did it in 2019 2019 and then I did it again after the pandemic in 2023.
Just to understand if there were any differences because of the pandemic and
(19:01):
the investment in technology.
Spoiler, there's not really. But we did go deeper in and understand more about the challenge.
So I've done a podcast recording about the 2023 research, which you can listen to.
And then both those research reports are available to purchase on our website
as well. Are you using Copilot?
No. Have you seen many companies use Copilot? No.
I'm on a trial of it at the moment. It's quite interesting. is it good it's
(19:24):
it's doing its job for him it's interesting it's interesting because.
It's interesting because it does it does i think it's
learning i'm not i'm not 100 sure but i
think it's learning so for example we were in a meeting the other day and it
assigned every action to the room which was great because that was never going
to get done then was it so yeah but i think it's it's got a journey to to learn
(19:46):
but i'm yeah i wasn't sure whether you've seen many other organizations or whether
you guys in in your organization are using it yet you mean the The Enterprise version?
Yeah. Yeah, okay. So I just fiddle around with the free...
Personal version a bit sometimes but you're actually going for it
in meetings as well yeah yeah the free version you
can use online is really great if you're just trying to fix you know some passive
active voice type stuff and you know if you're in a bit of a hurry or you know
(20:08):
there's an awful lot of it and it's just going to take forever then actually
pumping some of that stuff in and you know about eight percent of it comes out
all right but yeah we're using the enterprise stuff which is you know i think
it's going to be a bit of a game changer to organizations if it is a learning
tool and it does grow but i wasn't sure how far wider it is out there yet jenny,
Yeah, I mean, I saw Microsoft speak at a conference at the end of 2023,
(20:29):
and they were talking about Copilot there.
And they also shared some of their data, which I think was published back in
May from the Work Trends Index, which talked about something like 64% of people
don't have the time to do their jobs, which made me laugh.
Because at the same time, they're then talking about how they should be posting
content on all these online platforms.
I'm like, hang on a minute, 64% of people don't have time to do their jobs.
(20:50):
But if you could all share loads of content, that would be great.
So they were talking a bit about it there. And there was quite a bit of talk
about AI at that conference.
I think for the people I'm talking to, and when I looked at the trends for 2024,
AI is one of those trends, but a lot of the trends insight comes from tech firms.
So therefore, it's naturally going to raise the profile of AI in our industry
(21:12):
because they want you to buy their product. so we can have a bit of a bias in
what we think is going on in internal comms because so much of the voice comes
from some of the tech companies that are providing products.
But when you look at it across the range, there are other trends that are coming through.
I don't know anyone that is using AI inside an organization other than the firms
(21:33):
that have kind of built their own.
And I know a few firms have built their own internal AI and they're using that.
We have used a bit of chat GPT, but that's for stuff that's not secure and not
confidential to kind of help with templates or coming up with ideas and stuff.
That idea generation, I think it's got quite good legs.
But for me it's the it's not
got to the place where i need it to be so if i think about the
(21:55):
fact i've got 90 documents to look at for something
each document ranges from 10 to 50 pages they are the same type of document
so they're all bylaws document if i could put all of those into something and
then it could tell me what the differences were and all that and it could and
that's really helpful okay but we're just not we're not really there yet to
(22:16):
be able to do stuff stuff like that.
And so the stuff I want to be able to do, it's not doing.
It's some of the more basic stuff of, can you write me a headline on this?
I know copywriters that are using AI for that to give them a prompt of going,
oh no, I wouldn't do that. Or that's nice, I can build on that.
So it's when you work on your own and you're a small team, which often you are
in communications, having someone to talk to and bounce that idea around is
(22:41):
sometimes all you need to unlock something in your creativity.
And I don't think there's any harm in that. No, I agree. And,
you know, not everybody is super creative.
They can know what they want to say, they can articulate it well,
and it will serve the purpose of the comms.
But asking someone then to write a really catchy headline in the tone of a radio
presenter, it's not going to happen.
But you put that in ChatGPT and it will smash it out of the park every time, right?
(23:01):
Yeah i'm with you so yeah at the moment it's it's it's not and i kind of agree
as well actually the the ai stuff i see is is is not there and it's it's a long
way from replicating us in our roles but it is able to provide a bit of convenience
the other day i was looking at something.
Well just it reminded me of when
i was younger looking through all of those getty
(23:24):
images and stock images websites just i
don't think will be a thing for much longer if the image generation side
of things can get good enough that you
as long as you could put the right prompt in
you won't need to be scrolling through what was
it like dream i can't dream time or whatever it
was the all the those stock image websites so i think i've started noticing
(23:48):
actually a lot a lot more you can tell where people are using ai generated images
in things like newsletters and things and the image stuff i find really interesting
and i watched the christmas lectures on the BBC over Christmas.
And the three episodes this year were on AI. And I found that more helpful than
some of the AI for comm stuff that I've attended and listened to,
(24:11):
because it was AI in the broader sense.
So you can look at it in a much bigger way in terms of how it could be applied.
But I think it's in the second one, there's someone who's an AI artist who's.
Who is talking about how he's creating art, basically through just typing into
AI stuff, a cat and a cat eating an apple, and then the AI kind of does it.
(24:33):
And that for me is interesting that there's an AI artist, you know,
but it's just prompts and it's just asking it to do stuff.
And I think that's interesting. And it has a huge ethical implication for people
that work in that industry as well, which I, you know, legally,
all that sort of stuff. I just don't, I'm not sure about some of that.
I don't like the AI headshots. I was talking about that to someone today.
I was like, it just doesn't feel genuine to me. Even if you declare this is
(24:56):
an AI version of me, I'm like, just take a picture.
No one cares that much whether it's amazing.
Just take a picture that you like and put it up. It's your face.
I saw that on LinkedIn actually earlier today. Someone was posting about the
importance of a good picture.
And remember, it's 2024, not 2004.
Oh, yeah, you've got to be in the picture as well. You look at some of the AI stuff.
Stuff you can that's not you just look like a robot you're close like
(25:19):
a robot and i was watching something the other day my husband works in gaming
so we were looking at that the evolution of of
of faces in gaming and how that's evolved and there
was one example and it was trying to show how how much
the artificial intelligence has moved on so that you could can you
tell if this face is a real person or not and i was like it's not it's not
a real person and we will always be able to know that as human beings
(25:40):
it's going to have to go a phenomenally long way for
us in our our instinctive human nature to go oh i think that is a you know we
we would just know because that's built in us have you got any pets jenny no
i was gonna ask if you'd put your dog in a movie poster my best friend lives
there two doors down they've got a dog i'll get them to do it.
(26:03):
You got you got you got to literally ask that i think it's
on on via being on copa you said you say i put my
pug in a movie poster about toys or something i'm gonna
do the world definitely i have done it
it can't get spelling right though that's the one thing it doesn't yes it
doesn't spell right yeah it's that's that's really
weird isn't it i know there's a local university who had
done some stuff actually on ai imagery and they were asking it to show in each
(26:26):
picture which was a dog and which was a wolf and it got it right literally every
time but when they put another metric in there for it to check against it kept
getting it wrong and it took months to work out yeah i say months i don't know
i'm repeating the story but it took a long time to to work out what the problem was.
It was because it wasn't identifying a dog or a wolf or whatever this third.
Piece of criteria it was recognizing backgrounds and it
(26:47):
was learning that a wolf lived in a forest but that's
so amazing i love that that's amazing that that's the
because it's and that's why i like the christmas lectures
because it was helping you understand what you know it's looking at the criteria it's
not looking at the words it's looking at the the
pattern it has interpreted from that to
make it make sense of other things like that's like google translate doesn't
(27:09):
know that you're saying hello and then a different language it just
knows that pattern and that pattern and how they overlay that's
that's it it's not like oh it knows the language and that
actually kind of same thing when you know you punch into
the typical ai type things and you see stuff appearing
on linkedin and other other sites you can always see it wasn't written oh yeah
kind of see you can see the patterns in the words and you know it won't music
(27:34):
is a great example because you know most songs use the same four keys or they're
all four beat and pete's going to tell me i'm wrong but super musician that
he is but i think i'm roughly right you've You've got the gist.
I've got the gist. But I think AI has a similar pattern that most sentences
seem to have the same amount of syllables, the same number of words in it when
it's producing sentences.
And that's all it's able to do at the moment as an intelligence that is artificial.
(27:57):
Yeah, it really is interesting. Do you see this in the long term as a threat
to comms and change roles, Jenny?
I think it will change comms. I think it will change how we do things.
I think it will free up some time. You know, if I look back on my career,
there's things that you would never do now, right?
One of my jobs I had to do when I worked in the local council was we'd get the
newspapers in and I would cut out any article that talked about the council.
(28:21):
I would then have to stick it on a bit of paper that had at the top the ability
to write, you know, the date and the sentiment.
I would then measure it with a ruler in terms of the size of the article, right?
No one is doing that today. day. Okay. But that job of being a communications
assistant still exists, but the tasks that I'm doing would be different. I was faxing.
(28:42):
Press releases like no one's doing that today so the
the role is there but the tasks are different and i think that's
the thing that we have yet to understand what those different
tasks will be and if someone is out there you
know cutting out newspapers and sticking them on a bit of paper measuring them then
let me know because i'll that's like proper
record you know we should.
(29:03):
Bring that out like retro we should it's
like that instagram like knee deep in the 90s that I love which
is like we should have like a comms and go back to what we.
Were doing my first boss hey you said yes did you yeah my.
First boss made me do some press cuttings and.
He told me off for not doing them properly and I had the same thing
was that back in my day I used to do this all the time
(29:24):
yeah he said it was a lost art even when I
started my career so yeah but it's
there's a distinction between a job going and a task going
and I think that's where we're we're merging the
the two things together and if you look you know
even if we had even if ai evolves to the point where
we have driverless cars yeah right that doesn't mean that
(29:45):
people that are driving cars won't won't have a different job
to do it might just be that they if you are a taxi driver your job
will be different yeah you know it might not be that you're
not driving a car it might be that you're in the car but you're doing something else for
the person you don't mean like it could be anything it doesn't it's such
an important distinction the first time i've heard someone would say that
like as clearly as that is yeah it's not the job that's
(30:06):
going i was reading and i this might not be
quite right but i think the headline was something like that
there would be 10 billion jobs lost by 2030 but
within that they were saying that every month
i think in the u.s there are 7 million jobs lost
7 million jobs created so the the
actual number of jobs remains remains the
(30:27):
same it's just that the tasks change and different things come in or go hey
one thing that we won't be we will be quite happy now is like when you ever
get those tasks or someone comes say to you as a comms person can you draw me
a picture yeah and your eyes would roll with you all right but now actually
ai yes what would you like in your picture yeah.
(30:48):
How many pugs would you like to appear in the background i have
just the pug i'm just glad we've all moved on from clip art to
be honest i mean no one's doing that either you see there's so many things
from our our careers that we look back on and go god you'd never
do that now no yeah clip i
forgot all about that i've got a word art where you'd like a word yeah so you'd
get the word and then you'd you know make it spin and be like bubble letters
(31:10):
and stuff oh no the water background is so there we'll see how triggering is
this episode being this is going to be like a flashback we're going to have
to kind of cut this into two Oh,
we should do that. That's going to have to be.
Yeah the nostalgia the nostalgia just have
a big board on the wall people have to draw their their memories
(31:32):
i like that i'm gonna do that on i'm gonna do that at comms reboot this year
we'll have a little nostalgia board we haven't asked the biscuit question yet
chris i think you should ask it no i'm just pete hold on i'm trying to plug
a free ticket we'll have a chat afterwards.
(31:52):
See i told you this goes anywhere it does i
like it i like it i'm really intrigued about what the biscuit question
is now uh yeah go on pete this
is something we traditionally ask our guests is um what's your favorite biscuit
which sounds quite straightforward but it seems to lead to some interesting
answers so i mean i i i'd love a biscuit and i i grew up with tea and biscuits
(32:15):
And my favourite biscuit is a Fox's Viennese sandwich,
which in my house are called Nice Biscuits.
So not the actual Nice Biscuits that have nice written in them.
But we've grown up with, can I have a packet of Nice Biscuits?
And it's a whole packet because you can't eat half. So they're my favourites.
But the regular biscuit in my household is a milk chocolate digester.
(32:38):
That's a very popular choice.
Isn't a Fox's Viennese biscuit like a posh? Yes, it is posh.
I used to get them from Marks and Spencers before Foxes took them over.
So, yeah, you've totally outed me on my posh biscuit preference.
And to be fair, I don't mind a fig roll, but the fig roll's got to be dunked.
And that's kind of a cake. So we're getting into tricky territory there.
(32:58):
That's tricky territory. Yeah. I feel like we have stumbled.
Did you ever watch The Hotel on Channel 4 with Mark Jenkin? No,
I don't think I did. Probably about 10 years ago.
So he was based in Torquay, in a hotel down in Torquay.
It's really great. you can probably catch up on it I would say probably YouTube
now and he's quite a character as well,
he's like a wacky hotel owner but trying to do his best with a good hotel and
(33:20):
he had the thing about sausages he'd have posh sausages and cheap sausages depending
on what type of room he's in and you've got the same with chocolate biscuits you do I do we rock up,
the wrong time of year I'm just going to get kind of like a supermarket but
if I come at Christmas I'm going to fuck with you if you come in the summer
it's a fig roll but if you come at Christmas where Sylvia Fox is.
(33:42):
Oh my word, I'm so going to judge you on your biscuits at your conference.
I'm going to have to send you a biscuit hamper now.
Biscuit hamper, that's amazing. That is so cool.
It's been super great having you on the pod, Jenny, and I hope we get to do it again soon.
We'll find out maybe later on in the year once we see more of the adoption of
some of these kind of trends and changes.
(34:03):
Because I do recommend those who are listening to go and check out the trends
post and particularly the two articles that Jenny's posted so far.
Are they are interesting they are relevant and after time so keeping
on top of this stuff particularly if you're career minded it's important you
know we said at the beginning of the call it's about the stuff that
you do yourself as well as you know the stuff that you expect others to help
(34:23):
you with so personal research is just as good as a rocking up at a conference
so take a moment to read we'll put some links in the chat any closing words
pete thanks for spending the time jenny it's been a lot of food for thought
that's given me and i'm looking forward to editing this one it should be a good laugh so,
I can't wait for you to edit it thank you very much for having me it's been a really good.
(34:45):
Music.
Music.
(00:07):
Charge the change of calls podcast and we've been waiting a little while to
get our latest guest on the pod and it is super cool to welcome jenny
field to the studio if you work in comms and haven't seen
much of jenny i do wonder where you've been jenny is a successful comms guru
author speaker strategist and the list goes on jenny also hosts her own pod
and we'll let jenny tell a bit more about this later but before then pete hi
(00:27):
we've been 10 minutes since we've been chatting but what's been happening in
barcelona since we last hosted the pod i've been ill so,
So loads of stuff's been happening for me all over the place,
but I won't tell you all about that.
Maybe I'll edit this one out as well. But let's get on to Jenny,
because I'm sure she's got more interesting things to say than I do.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do? Hello.
(00:50):
I can, I can. Thank you for having me. I always like it when people say,
can you tell us a bit about yourself and what you do?
Because it always makes me think of Blind Date, and then I realise how old I
am, because people don't get that reference as much anymore. more.
So I have worked in communications for around 20 years.
I started my career in public sector as a communications assistant and had a
(01:10):
variety of different roles.
In defence, advertising, agency, retail, hospitality.
My last in-house role was as a communications director in the pharmaceutical space.
And then in 2017, I decided it was now or never and set up Redefining Communications
as a consultancy, which I've been running since then.
I've been looking at some of your stuff online, Jenny, over the course of many years.
(01:34):
What always amazes me is about comms reboot.
I keep missing out on tickets. tickets every time.
I should be putting my name on a waiting list. I'll come back to that.
Something comes along and then I miss it.
It's coming up again soon, isn't it? It is. Yeah, it's on Saturday the 19th
of October and it's an unconference that we run.
So basically that means that when you turn up, you will set the agenda on the day.
(01:57):
So we should have about 150 people there. It's in London and you'll say what you want to talk about.
And then we have lots of facilitated conversations conversations about all of those topics.
It's quite a high energy day, but there's also lots of space for quiet reflection.
If you want to go and have one-to-one conversations, it's all very relaxed.
So very exciting. I just was somewhere else where we may have bumped into each
other. Did you ever go to the Big Yak?
(02:17):
Well, yes, I used to run the Big Yak. And then the Big Yak became Yeah.
So the Big Yak was part of the IC crowd and the IC crowd was something we co-founded
with with Rachel Miller and Dana Leeson.
We then decided to stop that.
So we then stopped the IC crowd just because we'd been doing it for 10 years
(02:38):
and we stopped the big yak.
And I was quite keen to kind of just keep the event and that format.
So I just agreed with the girls that I'd sort of take it on and we just rebranded
it into the Redefining Comms ecosystem.
But it's the same unconference format, almost on a Saturday.
As soon as you said the unconference, that was the trigger.
I knew there was somewhere else. It wasn't just the Malcolm days.
There you go. Oh, you see? We've just been around too long. That's what it is.
(03:02):
I know. It's what happens, isn't it?
It was really interesting to just kind of hear that little potted history about
how you started out in comms. And it's one of the things I get a lot just through
my experiences of working in different places in-house and...
If people say to me how do you get started but how
do people get started jenny what is that what is that what would be your
tips for moving into comms from a different role the main thing for
(03:25):
me is networking and i know that's you
know easier said than done and and you can network in lots
of different ways like if you're not someone that really enjoys going to events you
know linkedin is a perfect space for connecting with people
it's also a very friendly community so the internal communication
space and change communication space is
always people wanting to help other people people do
(03:45):
something that they've learned from because we've all learned something along the way and
so normally when you're reaching out you'll you'll be able to connect with people
and they'll be willing to help so I think for me it is reaching
out connecting with people it's not being afraid to ask questions it's going
to events where you can connecting with some of the really good recruiters out
there so there's people you know in comms leaders there's comma partners there's
(04:06):
you know a variety of different recruiters out there who know what's going on
in the market it in terms of how to get started.
I think there's also quite a lot of pressure sometimes to build your own brand.
And I'm not sure that that's necessarily needed. It's all about who your relationships are with.
And I think we can create this pressure on ourselves to, you know,
be publishing articles and sharing content and doing that.
And that can be important if you want to do that. But you can build relationships
(04:29):
in lots of different ways. And that's really what it comes down to.
What kind of skills are you seeing as the hot things to have?
It's interesting. I was was actually looking at two job descriptions just earlier
on today for a call with someone to help them prepare for an interview and
one of the things one of the one of
the lines on the job description was you need to be a strategist a designer
a counselor a coach an advisor I mean it was I was like they want a unicorn
(04:52):
and so you know we need to delve into what that really means but I think I think
for communication professionals now it's being a bit of a catch-all which sounds
Sounds very ridiculous,
but you have to be able to write, you have to be able to advise,
you have to be able to have critical thinking, and you have to be able to have
stakeholder management. Those things are really important.
(05:14):
Some of the specialist stuff around AI, or if you want to go into design or
copywriting, these are very specific, detailed areas of comms.
And sometimes we try and lump them all in as one thing. I'm not a copywriter.
Hey, but I can write. I've written a book. I write blogs.
But if somebody needs a copywriter, that's a different thing.
And I think that that distinction is really important, especially if you're
(05:35):
starting in your career.
You might want to do the generalist stuff so that you can then find out what's the right path for you.
But in terms of the skills people are looking for, it does seem to be a little
bit of everything, which is less helpful, I know.
I remember going back, it's probably only 14 years, I think,
roughly, I was working in London, Victoria.
Comms League came into work, a big programme I was working on.
(05:55):
It was one of probably my first change comms types as I was moving into.
And the job specs always at that point in time are saying, you know, former journalist.
I remember that clearest day of, thankfully, that is a trend that has gone, hasn't it?
Yeah, it has. that you're right that the mix of skills now and i think particularly
around stakeholders is probably the biggest trend i've seen because a lot of
senior leaders want to do their incomes.
(06:17):
They may have some help in the background in terms of structure or or you know
phraseology or something like that but they are preferring to even start themselves
this is something i see more so it's the ability to kind of coach and guide
and inform is a big part of that journey and as you say copywriting is important
you need it for web but writing for web of course is writing different for different reasons.
(06:38):
It's not copywriting, not in the truest form as say 14, 15 years ago.
Yeah. And you're right. Like when I think of copywriting, I naturally think
of sort of feature writing in a magazine because I'm old.
So whereas other people would think about writing for SEO, right,
which is a whole different sort of skill set.
And I think it's that specifics that need to be explored for a comms role and
(06:59):
whatever you're doing in comms to really clarify what you're doing.
And you're right. People do want to write their own stuff a bit more.
You you know, we need people to write more of their content.
So we know them and we understand their style and those sorts of things.
But that coaching and advising and that relationships inside organisations is
the bit that's so important.
And when I was looking at the trends for 2024, that,
(07:20):
you know, connecting people together in an organisation in that kind of more
human way of just helping people know each other is definitely starting to come
forward on the back of the pandemic and the larger political societal pressures
that there are. We talked about your career spanning 20 years.
So could you tell us about some of the highlights and things that stand out for you?
When you've had a career that's 20 years and is as varied as mine has been,
(07:43):
trying to think of highlights is quite hard, but not because there aren't any,
because there's almost too many.
And my career has gone very sideways in terms of levels and things like that.
But there were six things for me that were really sort of standing out.
And that is about the experience that I've had along the way.
So one is the ability to travel and the different cultures that you can often see in organizations.
(08:04):
When I worked for BAE Systems, I was lucky enough to be doing the media relations for them.
So I got to experience different cultures.
You know, I was doing a lot of work in different areas of the world.
And that was fascinating because it was exposure to something that I hadn't
had having come from public sector.
There's other things for me that are a highlight around understanding the different organisations.
(08:26):
So going from a local council to a FTSE 250 is incredibly different.
And the challenge that comes with that means you're constantly learning.
And as I was doing the highlights, I was thinking, gosh, this is all about the
constant learning that is involved in a communications role.
I think the only other things I'd probably mention, as I say it quite flippantly,
(08:46):
is the research that I've done into non-office based workers.
The book that I've published has to be a career highlight and setting up the business.
You know, it's a really daunting thing going out on your own.
And it was a real case of if not now, when and if it all fails,
we'll hopefully go and get a job.
And it's, you know, it's been seven years and I'm still here.
(09:06):
So definitely a highlight. like it
felt like when we were pete and i were talking about things that we
would discuss jenny was like that sounds like an interview question
but actually it's a really important reason for asking is because
when i read through your stuff you often mention about
reflecting upon whether the piece of work you've
done or the past few months but actually reflecting upon
(09:27):
your career is actually also kind of motivating in itself just
to remember the steps and the journey you take to get to where you are and
i would think you know if you maybe sat down with with
jenny who started out 20 years ago today and said you know
20 years you're going to have a really successful company that
spans across both the UK and America you're going to have published a book you'd
be like yeah all right yeah and you have to go back and remember these steps
(09:50):
that you take it's really important isn't it yeah I love the thing you do on
LinkedIn as well which is about asking me anything I find that quite fun what's
the most left field question you've had on there.
You're not the first person to ask me that I need to have a look because we record the sessions,
just for us we don't share them because it's a safe space but i
i'm definitely gonna have to go back and look at what's been the most sort of left field
(10:11):
i mean it's such an open thing to say you can ask us
anything i know someone that's an invitation you're gonna come to the next one
aren't you and just rock up and be like i've got a question and then you'll
just ask something about you know wallpaper or something so i think i haven't
had to be honest everyone stays within within the remit of communications,
(10:32):
leadership and engagement,
I think what's challenging is sometimes people ask really hard questions. And I don't, I don't.
Suggest that I've got all the answers, like my collective team are often on
the call and they can they can wade in. But people will ask,
you know, some some quite big questions.
And the one we had probably the most recent, which was the most sort of non
(10:52):
comms related almost was just, I'm really struggling with being motivated to do my job.
And I'm feeling quite burnt out. And I don't know how to kind of find the love for what I do again.
And I think that is happening a lot for for anyone in a job.
And I think it's certainly happening for a lot of communication professionals.
So that was was quite heavy as a question and i talked a
lot about my own experience in the last year and how we
(11:14):
sort of stay motivated and that sort of stuff but that's yeah
that was probably the most most left field if
you like i think that's something that's going to come up more and more over
the coming years as well because the way that the workplace has changed obviously
since pandemic but also the type of experiences our new workforce are having
coming into the workplace isn't the same one that we had and i remember i think
(11:36):
it was a head teacher of my my children in school say,
you know, we have to teach our children to have grit because if they don't have the grit,
they're going to find these times when they go into work really difficult to
overcome the moments where they feel a bit lower about what their role is or
what their job is and they won't have had the experience of coping because they
haven't had, you know, well, they won't have 10 years in the workplace before
perhaps that big career move happens.
(11:58):
That was a really interesting point to say. So, yeah, I wonder if that's a trend in terms of,
we talk about the ever-changing job description description of comms roles is
that actually perhaps that well-being piece actually fine-tunes itself into
comms as much as it has done into HR.
I think we're not just a voice piece. I say to Pete when he first came over
(12:18):
and worked with us in change was that we're therapists at the beginning of any change.
We'll go and tell our department something's changing and then we just won't
say anything because we know that we're going to have to listen and absorb and not to try and solve.
Therapy and then we can go back later and address the points
and i wonder if that actually becomes more of a workplace thing
(12:38):
and no longer just a change thing i don't know what your thoughts are yeah i think
that the the empathy piece i think is
really important and i think communication professionals are
naturally quite empathetic people because the nature
of kind of what we do and i think sometimes you can
absorb a lot of other people's angst and unless you're looking
after yourself that that can be very draining and and hard
(12:59):
and change programs today aren't you
know right we're going from a to b and it's going to be three months they are
two years three years and i think that's a change i've seen
in my career when i think about the change i've worked
on it's it's this is significant organizational
structural transformational change that is
long term and and that's
(13:21):
very different in terms of the resilience that
you need to keep going with such levels of uncertainty
and i think that's the thing that is is hard we've talked
a bit about highlights but it's got really depressing now
hasn't it well no it hasn't it's been it made
me think because because like you're right change it
used to be in the old days of saying i got an erp change it's going to take
(13:42):
us a year to get from here to a go live but there's no such thing as a go
live as well maybe there is but it's not as black and white as
a go live you tend to have structured go lives for operational continuity or resilience.
Don't you so you wouldn't have one big one yeah you'll do a bit and then
you'll bleed in the next bit because you can't just switch off
i think the last one of those i did was nationwide and we we were
replacing the treasury system when the old one was held together
with with sticky tape and staples so as soon as you turned it off
(14:05):
it was never going to restart so but you don't get many
of those anymore a lot of those replacements have happened haven't they
so you're right it is it is a gradual process yeah sorry yeah
that's okay um yeah it's easy to reflect on the horror
stories and but instead of some of the lowlights we
wanted to know some of the oh no's or what
are the things that stand out that have kept you awake at night that
(14:25):
that you kind of reflect on in your career in my
career or in general in the industry both
we don't have to name people or
companies but the but i love the oh no lights it was something
i picked up years ago so what's your highlights of this i mean i probably go and
watch your own no lights i was like you know where maybe a bit of a
plane falls off and perhaps you worked at the post office those
(14:46):
those are the topical things I mean I did
not work at the post office so there's a there's there's
a couple of things I I tell the story I
tell a few stories a lot about working with leaders and it being very very challenging
I'm not going to get into some of those now but I do remember launching a new
strategy in an organization where we were doing a merger and an acquisition
(15:07):
it was a bit of a blend of the two and so we were going going out to do a roadshow
to share the strategy of the new organisation.
And we'd organised it across all the different sites with manufacturing and support functions.
We were doing night shifts. So all the tick in the box stuff that you do in
terms of making sure you speak to everybody.
I had all plain English. It was all very clear. And the MD stood up and talked about the strategy.
(15:27):
And then in every manufacturing site afterwards, everyone came back and said
they had no idea what we were talking about. And I was like, no.
And there's several reasons why. And having done the research now into non-office
based workers, I understand it a hell of a lot more than I did at the time.
But it was that as much as it was plain English and we understood it and it
(15:50):
was, you know, understandable in that way.
It was just a different language to how they could understand.
It was just a completely different environment language just
didn't make sense and so that was a big learning for me in terms
of go and test your messaging with people that are going to be listening to
it so that was that was my big oh
no when you say non-office based workers you mean like factory floor that yeah
(16:11):
so like frontline deskless what kind of things did you find that you needed
to do differently so at that time I I didn't really know what I needed to do
differently and it was only talking to sort of the head of manufacturing and
understanding where we got it wrong.
We then started to just talk about things differently, be a bit more visual, be more verbal based.
So we were relying on managers to do shift briefings and things like that rather
(16:34):
than getting, you know, wheeling out the royalty as, you know,
the royal visit as we often call it.
We just kind of stopped doing some of that stuff because it didn't work and
it didn't do what we needed it to do.
Now I've done the research, I understand why that doesn't work and
part of that is just the cultural difference between the two types
of of worker was very different in terms of
what your what your purpose is what you're there to do what
(16:56):
your connection is to the organization all those sorts of things and i
didn't do it again i think we just you know worked
through trying to fix it in different ways by briefing managers and just doing
it differently i certainly didn't just yeah go and wheel everyone back out again
i wasn't doing that part of the challenge i find is in getting that feedback
from the people on the front line in the first place know whether or not they've
(17:18):
They've understood it and it's really difficult to get through that filter of the managers.
You know when you go out to managers, you know, did everybody in your team understand?
They're like, yes, yes, they've understood it perfectly.
Yeah yeah yes yeah but
i never i never i always bypass the managers like
and i'd and every quarter i'd when i was working in retail hospitality
(17:39):
every quarter we would be out walking around
train stations airports whatever it was talking to the team
like i and i knew the managers you know we would do an annual
conference for them all 500 of them so i
knew them relatively well so i wasn't too fussed about them
they had access to the internet that was fine but going and spending
time on the shop floor and doing you know we would do back
(18:00):
to the floor day so i'd go and work in a upper crust on
a train station for a day and stuff and actually experience things that's
for me that's quite important when you've got a very different workforce
is upper crust still going i haven't seen that for a while
yes still there still there i
think they've done the train station for a while that's the only place they're at isn't it
it is yeah yeah yeah they are i think that's
(18:21):
on my quarter train in a while i suppose that's
the part of the changes as well it's it's it is it
is yeah it's because i mean and we've had a session before
where we've talked to someone about kind of tasting the streets was the term
that was used but you have to understand the culture of the people you're talking
to it's not the culture of the organization as such it's the culture
of the people who work in the organization and depending on where that is is
(18:41):
a different outcome right you've referenced that research now is that in your
book or is that available to to purchase online or download how do we get our
hands on it so the research into deskless workers is called remotely interested
i've done it twice i did it in 2019 2019 and then I did it again after the pandemic in 2023.
Just to understand if there were any differences because of the pandemic and
(19:01):
the investment in technology.
Spoiler, there's not really. But we did go deeper in and understand more about the challenge.
So I've done a podcast recording about the 2023 research, which you can listen to.
And then both those research reports are available to purchase on our website
as well. Are you using Copilot?
No. Have you seen many companies use Copilot? No.
I'm on a trial of it at the moment. It's quite interesting. is it good it's
(19:24):
it's doing its job for him it's interesting it's interesting because.
It's interesting because it does it does i think it's
learning i'm not i'm not 100 sure but i
think it's learning so for example we were in a meeting the other day and it
assigned every action to the room which was great because that was never going
to get done then was it so yeah but i think it's it's got a journey to to learn
(19:46):
but i'm yeah i wasn't sure whether you've seen many other organizations or whether
you guys in in your organization are using it yet you mean the The Enterprise version?
Yeah. Yeah, okay. So I just fiddle around with the free...
Personal version a bit sometimes but you're actually going for it
in meetings as well yeah yeah the free version you
can use online is really great if you're just trying to fix you know some passive
active voice type stuff and you know if you're in a bit of a hurry or you know
(20:08):
there's an awful lot of it and it's just going to take forever then actually
pumping some of that stuff in and you know about eight percent of it comes out
all right but yeah we're using the enterprise stuff which is you know i think
it's going to be a bit of a game changer to organizations if it is a learning
tool and it does grow but i wasn't sure how far wider it is out there yet jenny,
Yeah, I mean, I saw Microsoft speak at a conference at the end of 2023,
(20:29):
and they were talking about Copilot there.
And they also shared some of their data, which I think was published back in
May from the Work Trends Index, which talked about something like 64% of people
don't have the time to do their jobs, which made me laugh.
Because at the same time, they're then talking about how they should be posting
content on all these online platforms.
I'm like, hang on a minute, 64% of people don't have time to do their jobs.
(20:50):
But if you could all share loads of content, that would be great.
So they were talking a bit about it there. And there was quite a bit of talk
about AI at that conference.
I think for the people I'm talking to, and when I looked at the trends for 2024,
AI is one of those trends, but a lot of the trends insight comes from tech firms.
So therefore, it's naturally going to raise the profile of AI in our industry
(21:12):
because they want you to buy their product. so we can have a bit of a bias in
what we think is going on in internal comms because so much of the voice comes
from some of the tech companies that are providing products.
But when you look at it across the range, there are other trends that are coming through.
I don't know anyone that is using AI inside an organization other than the firms
(21:33):
that have kind of built their own.
And I know a few firms have built their own internal AI and they're using that.
We have used a bit of chat GPT, but that's for stuff that's not secure and not
confidential to kind of help with templates or coming up with ideas and stuff.
That idea generation, I think it's got quite good legs.
But for me it's the it's not
got to the place where i need it to be so if i think about the
(21:55):
fact i've got 90 documents to look at for something
each document ranges from 10 to 50 pages they are the same type of document
so they're all bylaws document if i could put all of those into something and
then it could tell me what the differences were and all that and it could and
that's really helpful okay but we're just not we're not really there yet to
(22:16):
be able to do stuff stuff like that.
And so the stuff I want to be able to do, it's not doing.
It's some of the more basic stuff of, can you write me a headline on this?
I know copywriters that are using AI for that to give them a prompt of going,
oh no, I wouldn't do that. Or that's nice, I can build on that.
So it's when you work on your own and you're a small team, which often you are
in communications, having someone to talk to and bounce that idea around is
(22:41):
sometimes all you need to unlock something in your creativity.
And I don't think there's any harm in that. No, I agree. And,
you know, not everybody is super creative.
They can know what they want to say, they can articulate it well,
and it will serve the purpose of the comms.
But asking someone then to write a really catchy headline in the tone of a radio
presenter, it's not going to happen.
But you put that in ChatGPT and it will smash it out of the park every time, right?
(23:01):
Yeah i'm with you so yeah at the moment it's it's it's not and i kind of agree
as well actually the the ai stuff i see is is is not there and it's it's a long
way from replicating us in our roles but it is able to provide a bit of convenience
the other day i was looking at something.
Well just it reminded me of when
i was younger looking through all of those getty
(23:24):
images and stock images websites just i
don't think will be a thing for much longer if the image generation side
of things can get good enough that you
as long as you could put the right prompt in
you won't need to be scrolling through what was
it like dream i can't dream time or whatever it
was the all the those stock image websites so i think i've started noticing
(23:48):
actually a lot a lot more you can tell where people are using ai generated images
in things like newsletters and things and the image stuff i find really interesting
and i watched the christmas lectures on the BBC over Christmas.
And the three episodes this year were on AI. And I found that more helpful than
some of the AI for comm stuff that I've attended and listened to,
(24:11):
because it was AI in the broader sense.
So you can look at it in a much bigger way in terms of how it could be applied.
But I think it's in the second one, there's someone who's an AI artist who's.
Who is talking about how he's creating art, basically through just typing into
AI stuff, a cat and a cat eating an apple, and then the AI kind of does it.
(24:33):
And that for me is interesting that there's an AI artist, you know,
but it's just prompts and it's just asking it to do stuff.
And I think that's interesting. And it has a huge ethical implication for people
that work in that industry as well, which I, you know, legally,
all that sort of stuff. I just don't, I'm not sure about some of that.
I don't like the AI headshots. I was talking about that to someone today.
I was like, it just doesn't feel genuine to me. Even if you declare this is
(24:56):
an AI version of me, I'm like, just take a picture.
No one cares that much whether it's amazing.
Just take a picture that you like and put it up. It's your face.
I saw that on LinkedIn actually earlier today. Someone was posting about the
importance of a good picture.
And remember, it's 2024, not 2004.
Oh, yeah, you've got to be in the picture as well. You look at some of the AI stuff.
Stuff you can that's not you just look like a robot you're close like
(25:19):
a robot and i was watching something the other day my husband works in gaming
so we were looking at that the evolution of of
of faces in gaming and how that's evolved and there
was one example and it was trying to show how how much
the artificial intelligence has moved on so that you could can you
tell if this face is a real person or not and i was like it's not it's not
a real person and we will always be able to know that as human beings
(25:40):
it's going to have to go a phenomenally long way for
us in our our instinctive human nature to go oh i think that is a you know we
we would just know because that's built in us have you got any pets jenny no
i was gonna ask if you'd put your dog in a movie poster my best friend lives
there two doors down they've got a dog i'll get them to do it.
(26:03):
You got you got you got to literally ask that i think it's
on on via being on copa you said you say i put my
pug in a movie poster about toys or something i'm gonna
do the world definitely i have done it
it can't get spelling right though that's the one thing it doesn't yes it
doesn't spell right yeah it's that's that's really
weird isn't it i know there's a local university who had
done some stuff actually on ai imagery and they were asking it to show in each
(26:26):
picture which was a dog and which was a wolf and it got it right literally every
time but when they put another metric in there for it to check against it kept
getting it wrong and it took months to work out yeah i say months i don't know
i'm repeating the story but it took a long time to to work out what the problem was.
It was because it wasn't identifying a dog or a wolf or whatever this third.
Piece of criteria it was recognizing backgrounds and it
(26:47):
was learning that a wolf lived in a forest but that's
so amazing i love that that's amazing that that's the
because it's and that's why i like the christmas lectures
because it was helping you understand what you know it's looking at the criteria it's
not looking at the words it's looking at the the
pattern it has interpreted from that to
make it make sense of other things like that's like google translate doesn't
(27:09):
know that you're saying hello and then a different language it just
knows that pattern and that pattern and how they overlay that's
that's it it's not like oh it knows the language and that
actually kind of same thing when you know you punch into
the typical ai type things and you see stuff appearing
on linkedin and other other sites you can always see it wasn't written oh yeah
kind of see you can see the patterns in the words and you know it won't music
(27:34):
is a great example because you know most songs use the same four keys or they're
all four beat and pete's going to tell me i'm wrong but super musician that
he is but i think i'm roughly right you've You've got the gist.
I've got the gist. But I think AI has a similar pattern that most sentences
seem to have the same amount of syllables, the same number of words in it when
it's producing sentences.
And that's all it's able to do at the moment as an intelligence that is artificial.
(27:57):
Yeah, it really is interesting. Do you see this in the long term as a threat
to comms and change roles, Jenny?
I think it will change comms. I think it will change how we do things.
I think it will free up some time. You know, if I look back on my career,
there's things that you would never do now, right?
One of my jobs I had to do when I worked in the local council was we'd get the
newspapers in and I would cut out any article that talked about the council.
(28:21):
I would then have to stick it on a bit of paper that had at the top the ability
to write, you know, the date and the sentiment.
I would then measure it with a ruler in terms of the size of the article, right?
No one is doing that today. day. Okay. But that job of being a communications
assistant still exists, but the tasks that I'm doing would be different. I was faxing.
(28:42):
Press releases like no one's doing that today so the
the role is there but the tasks are different and i think that's
the thing that we have yet to understand what those different
tasks will be and if someone is out there you
know cutting out newspapers and sticking them on a bit of paper measuring them then
let me know because i'll that's like proper
record you know we should.
(29:03):
Bring that out like retro we should it's
like that instagram like knee deep in the 90s that I love which
is like we should have like a comms and go back to what we.
Were doing my first boss hey you said yes did you yeah my.
First boss made me do some press cuttings and.
He told me off for not doing them properly and I had the same thing
was that back in my day I used to do this all the time
(29:24):
yeah he said it was a lost art even when I
started my career so yeah but it's
there's a distinction between a job going and a task going
and I think that's where we're we're merging the
the two things together and if you look you know
even if we had even if ai evolves to the point where
we have driverless cars yeah right that doesn't mean that
(29:45):
people that are driving cars won't won't have a different job
to do it might just be that they if you are a taxi driver your job
will be different yeah you know it might not be that you're
not driving a car it might be that you're in the car but you're doing something else for
the person you don't mean like it could be anything it doesn't it's such
an important distinction the first time i've heard someone would say that
like as clearly as that is yeah it's not the job that's
(30:06):
going i was reading and i this might not be
quite right but i think the headline was something like that
there would be 10 billion jobs lost by 2030 but
within that they were saying that every month
i think in the u.s there are 7 million jobs lost
7 million jobs created so the the
actual number of jobs remains remains the
(30:27):
same it's just that the tasks change and different things come in or go hey
one thing that we won't be we will be quite happy now is like when you ever
get those tasks or someone comes say to you as a comms person can you draw me
a picture yeah and your eyes would roll with you all right but now actually
ai yes what would you like in your picture yeah.
(30:48):
How many pugs would you like to appear in the background i have
just the pug i'm just glad we've all moved on from clip art to
be honest i mean no one's doing that either you see there's so many things
from our our careers that we look back on and go god you'd never
do that now no yeah clip i
forgot all about that i've got a word art where you'd like a word yeah so you'd
get the word and then you'd you know make it spin and be like bubble letters
(31:10):
and stuff oh no the water background is so there we'll see how triggering is
this episode being this is going to be like a flashback we're going to have
to kind of cut this into two Oh,
we should do that. That's going to have to be.
Yeah the nostalgia the nostalgia just have
a big board on the wall people have to draw their their memories
(31:32):
i like that i'm gonna do that on i'm gonna do that at comms reboot this year
we'll have a little nostalgia board we haven't asked the biscuit question yet
chris i think you should ask it no i'm just pete hold on i'm trying to plug
a free ticket we'll have a chat afterwards.
(31:52):
See i told you this goes anywhere it does i
like it i like it i'm really intrigued about what the biscuit question
is now uh yeah go on pete this
is something we traditionally ask our guests is um what's your favorite biscuit
which sounds quite straightforward but it seems to lead to some interesting
answers so i mean i i i'd love a biscuit and i i grew up with tea and biscuits
(32:15):
And my favourite biscuit is a Fox's Viennese sandwich,
which in my house are called Nice Biscuits.
So not the actual Nice Biscuits that have nice written in them.
But we've grown up with, can I have a packet of Nice Biscuits?
And it's a whole packet because you can't eat half. So they're my favourites.
But the regular biscuit in my household is a milk chocolate digester.
(32:38):
That's a very popular choice.
Isn't a Fox's Viennese biscuit like a posh? Yes, it is posh.
I used to get them from Marks and Spencers before Foxes took them over.
So, yeah, you've totally outed me on my posh biscuit preference.
And to be fair, I don't mind a fig roll, but the fig roll's got to be dunked.
And that's kind of a cake. So we're getting into tricky territory there.
(32:58):
That's tricky territory. Yeah. I feel like we have stumbled.
Did you ever watch The Hotel on Channel 4 with Mark Jenkin? No,
I don't think I did. Probably about 10 years ago.
So he was based in Torquay, in a hotel down in Torquay.
It's really great. you can probably catch up on it I would say probably YouTube
now and he's quite a character as well,
he's like a wacky hotel owner but trying to do his best with a good hotel and
(33:20):
he had the thing about sausages he'd have posh sausages and cheap sausages depending
on what type of room he's in and you've got the same with chocolate biscuits you do I do we rock up,
the wrong time of year I'm just going to get kind of like a supermarket but
if I come at Christmas I'm going to fuck with you if you come in the summer
it's a fig roll but if you come at Christmas where Sylvia Fox is.
(33:42):
Oh my word, I'm so going to judge you on your biscuits at your conference.
I'm going to have to send you a biscuit hamper now.
Biscuit hamper, that's amazing. That is so cool.
It's been super great having you on the pod, Jenny, and I hope we get to do it again soon.
We'll find out maybe later on in the year once we see more of the adoption of
some of these kind of trends and changes.
(34:03):
Because I do recommend those who are listening to go and check out the trends
post and particularly the two articles that Jenny's posted so far.
Are they are interesting they are relevant and after time so keeping
on top of this stuff particularly if you're career minded it's important you
know we said at the beginning of the call it's about the stuff that
you do yourself as well as you know the stuff that you expect others to help
(34:23):
you with so personal research is just as good as a rocking up at a conference
so take a moment to read we'll put some links in the chat any closing words
pete thanks for spending the time jenny it's been a lot of food for thought
that's given me and i'm looking forward to editing this one it should be a good laugh so,
I can't wait for you to edit it thank you very much for having me it's been a really good.
(34:45):
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