AI and Communications: Practice, Leadership, Careers, Adaptation
People don’t adopt AI. They adopt new habits when those habits help them do better work, build their careers, earn trust, and stay relevant. Tools matter, but habits matter more. What sticks isn’t “adoption” in the abstract, but practices people are motivated to sustain.
- AIchangecommunicationsculture
Starting 2026
As we entered the second week of 2026, I sent a note to my team. I’m sharing it here, largely as written, because it reflects how I’m thinking about work, technology, and time as the year begins.
- purposeAI
What We Talk About When We Talk About Productivity
Productivity is on everyone’s mind in Canada. But it remains blurry – we are not all talking about the same thing when we talk about productivity. So, how do we move from blurriness to action? How do we crack the productivity puzzle? Clarity is step one.
- productivitycomplexity
Communication is How We Create Meaning
Our human ability to build trust, understand nuance, truly see each other, and create meaning is our most powerful answer to AI anxiety. Our distinctly human capacity for meaningful connection and connective labour iis the key to our future in an AI-economy.
- purposeworking lifemeaning at work
Advocacy in a Trade War: Canada’s Potential Grassroots Asset in the U.S.
Canada has millions of natural grassroots advocates in the U.S. They are not politicians and most aren’t CEOs; they are Canadians living in America, Americans with deep Canadian ties, and Canadians with U.S. connections. What if they could be mobilized?
- advocacy
Something to Hold On To: The Imperative of Purpose in the Modern Workplace
While purpose and meaning aren't a cure-all, they are part of the antidote for enabling strategy--some would say a substantial part. Clarifying why a business exists and what it does for people is a top leadership imperative.
- meaning at workpurpose
AI and the Knowledge Economy
Generative AI is surrounded by the same hype cycles we’ve seen before, but ignoring it is clearly naïve. The real risk is uncritical use. AI does more than speed up work; it reshapes judgment, voice, and decision-making (written in late 2023).
- AI
Creating a New Work Culture
Returning from a year of mostly remote work, for many organizations, means returning to a new work culture. One with new expectations, new opportunities, and new challenges, and one we can meet with purposeful reinvention to restore and reset.
- culture
Virtual Strategic Planning, Team Alignment, and Collaboration Workshops
I’m love helping groups reach alignment, collaborate, have meaningful conversations, and decide what to do. And I believe that one of the few positive outcomes of the pandemic's impact on work was the tremendous innovation in this medium. I continue to spend a lot of time in this field.
- workshopsfacilitation
7 shifts in culture and communications that will mark 2021
A 2021 deck on trends. What a time to be alive.
- culturestrategy
10 Reflections on 10 Years
In 2010 I started a new job, stopped being a Canadian Expat, settled in a new city, and began a new career. 10 years before that I did the same thing—minus the family, and as a new immigrant to the United States. These are some reflections I wrote at the time.
- culture
6 trends to inspire your strategic thinking going into 2020
Making predictions at any time shows a faith of conviction that is hard to muster. Writing them at the start of a decade is even more ambitious.
So this isn’t that kind of post. Instead this post shares trends and themes that excite and inspire me going in to 2020. That's it.
- culture
State of Digital Advocacy, ~2019
These core principles for approaching advocacy as an organization have been mainstays throughout my career. They work.
- advocacyculture
Strategy in Times of Transformation and Disruption
Why do companies get disrupted? And when they do how do you handle it from a communications and leadership perspective? The Theory of Disruptive Innovation and Jobs To Be Done have been critical ideas in my career.
- strategychange
Marketing a Cluster
Eastern Canada (and Canada) has tried on many different kinds of clusters, asking what can it be first, best, and only at, and what can bloom into an innovation ecosystem? This post talks about communications and marketing for clusters.
- strategycomplexityengagement
Character
Character is both who we are and what we do. It shapes outrage, trust, leadership, and the stories we tell about people, companies, and power. In our polarized age, character is no abstraction. It's everything.
- culture
Trust by Association
Every 10 years associations go through an existential crisis. This seems true, though the cycles have shortened. This post contemplates what's an association to do. This became the basis for an association strategy talk given at a national conference (Canadian Society of Association Executives).
- trustculturestrategyengagement
Big Data and Social Analytics: Reflections
Big data marked a real shift in our field. Algorithms now shape attention, privacy is fragile, and trust has eroded significantly. For communicators, the task became and still is the ethical use of data and fluency across code, social science, and human judgment. This is even more true with AI.
