A communications team within a large, global technology company supported more than 5,000 employees across the globe, covering a wide range of transformation programs — digital transformations, organizational changes, mergers and acquisitions, major tooling shifts, and even crisis communications.

 

The pace was relentless. Comms requests often came with same-day or same-hour deadlines. Topics were frequently sensitive, affecting compensation, roles, or ways of working. The team was highly skilled, but small — just five professionals plus a manager, with no ability to backfill during a period of layoffs and attrition.

 

The challenge was clear:
Produce more, at a higher level of quality, with fewer people, under tight executive scrutiny.

AI presented an opportunity, but only if adopted with care.

Beginning the Journey: Curiosity, Skepticism, and Real Human Concerns

The team’s starting point mirrored what many communications organizations experience today:

• Some employees were curious and eager to experiment

• Others were skeptical, believing their work was too nuanced or specialized

• A few were worried about privacy or about AI undermining quality

• Everyone was stretched thin

 

These emotions were not obstacles; they were signals. Signals that adoption would require:

• Psychological safety

• Clear communication about boundaries

• Coaching and mentorship

• Respect for lived experience and craft

• A culture of experimentation

 

AI would not succeed as a mandate. It needed to become a practice.

Introducing AI: A Responsible, Guardrailed Approach

Because the company offered a private, walled-garden LLM, the team could safely work with confidential content as long as it stayed within the internal system. Still, strict expectations were established:

• AI supports drafting; it doesn’t finalize.

• All content must be human-reviewed, fact-checked, and approved.

• Public LLMs were prohibited for internal content.

• Examples of past communications were required to maintain tone and consistency.

 

At the enterprise level, IT and Legal set overarching privacy boundaries so that neither team — not even IT — could access the data employees entered into the system. This helped ease fears about mishandling sensitive information.

Early Experiments: Finding What Worked

The team began with practical use cases:

• Drafting internal communications

• Creating FAQs

• Turning raw information (emails, transcripts, notes) into structured messages

• Summarizing employee survey feedback to identify top themes

• Brainstorming communications approaches

• Tailoring versions of the same message for leaders, managers, and individual contributors

 

A required prompt-training course helped set baseline skills. One early insight was how critical examples were: by feeding the LLM examples of specific styles or voices, the team could get outputs that matched tone far more effectively.

 

This was not about replacing communicators; it was about removing the “blank page” problem and elevating the team’s creative and strategic time.

Human Dynamics: Coaching, Trust, and Growth

As with any change, the human side told the real story.

 

One junior employee — the newest and youngest — dove in enthusiastically.
With AI, she was able to deliver work that previously would have been assigned to someone far more senior. With the right coaching, she blossomed. AI became a catalyst for accelerated learning and confidence.

 

Her success demonstrated an important truth:
AI doesn’t eliminate the need for junior talent — it accelerates their growth.

 

On the other end of the spectrum, a more senior team member resisted. He believed his work was too specialized and too nuanced for AI to improve. Through patient coaching, and by showing how someone with his deep expertise could get even stronger results by prompting thoughtfully, he eventually found ways to use AI as a strategic accelerant rather than a threat.

 

The lesson:
Experienced communicators are often the ones who can get the best results, because their prompts carry deeper context.

 

Across the team, fears softened. Curiosity grew. A new norm emerged: Try it. Share it. Learn from it.

Impact: More Output, More Consistency, More Strategic Time

As adoption grew, so did impact:

• First drafts that once took hours could be created in minutes

• The team could test multiple message options instantly

• Communications became more consistent across programs

• Leaders received faster, higher-quality support

• Junior employees took on bigger roles

• Senior employees gained more strategic bandwidth

• The team was able to “do more with less” during a period of shrinking headcount

 

One especially valuable capability: AI could quickly digest large amounts of text — including verbatim survey comments — and synthesize them into trends and takeaways. This allowed the team to close feedback loops with employees far more quickly and effectively.

Lessons Learned

From this experience came several core insights that now shape Trailhead’s approach to helping communications leaders adopt AI.

 

1. Leaders must model experimentation.

Your team won’t embrace AI if you don’t visibly use it yourself. Walking the walk matters.

 

2. Meet employees where they are.

Some will be excited.
Some will be anxious.
Some will be overwhelmed.
Adoption requires empathy and tailored support, not one-size-fits-all mandates.

 

3. AI can elevate both junior and senior talent, differently.

• Junior employees can stretch into bigger work with the right coaching

• Senior employees can use AI as an accelerant for strategic thinking

 

4. Tools alone don’t change behavior; culture does.

Reward experimentation.
Celebrate wins.
Make learning visible.
And align expectations, incentives, and leadership behaviors accordingly.

Why This Matters

This case study shows what’s possible when communications leaders adopt AI with intention, clarity, and a human-centered approach.

 

AI did not replace this team — it unlocked them.

• More capacity

• Faster outcomes

• Better consistency

• Greater employee growth

• Higher strategic impact

 

Most importantly, it created a culture where people felt safe to try, learn, and stretch — a foundational requirement for any organization preparing for the future of work.

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