5 Things Every Change Manager Should Be Doing With AI

We have all read that the Artificial Intelligence revolution is coming, and it will either make things easier for everyone or wipe out all our jobs. The questions should be about what has already changed and what tools are available for you as a change manager today. We know that AI is not going away, and its capabilities are only going to grow, so we as change managers have a choice to be early adopters and start integrating it into our projects or drag our feet and resist what we know is coming.

This article will explore five simple tasks you can do today to use AI to make your change management initiatives more productive, allowing you more time to focus on the things that matter in making your change successful. To take it one step further, we have also provided short YouTube examples of each of these methods to help you see how easy they are to implement in your workplace today.

1. Communications: Whether or not you are a good writer, there is no doubt that a successful change management program relies heavily on effective communication. ChatGPT can easily be used to create most communications, whether it be a kick-off email about a project, follow-ups to encourage training attendance, or key talking points for an executive presentation. The best part is that it gets you past staring at a blank page. It is so much easier to review content, add, edit, and change to make it fit your organization than to start from scratch, and with a few quick prompts, ChatGPT can do that for you.

In addition, it can help you subtly adjust the tone of your content. Would you like it to be more playful, serious, and academic?  All these versions can be created with the entry of a single prompt, giving you multiple versions to pull and work from. Customization for different groups is also easily available, as you adapt voice for content that is specific to a sales team versus IT.

Tutorial Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6DKCWfemCg (8 Mins)

2. Data Analysis: When we enter a change project there are usually hundreds of documents to review as we work to get up to speed on the culture of an organization, how it does business, and the tools, platforms, or initiatives they are looking to implement or change. ChatGPT can easily summarize documents, pull keywords, share themes, and help you to draw connections between key artifacts. This output is also adjustable, you can summarize a twenty-page document into one paragraph or one page depending on the level of detail you are looking for and the amount of time you have for review.

Another great opportunity for data analysis is in the information collected. How many times have you done an employee survey that had easily actionable ratings, but where you had to sift through hundreds of open-ended comments to see examples or themes that played out around those? AI can easily review and summarize those in minutes, pulling out themes, key ideas, or references to the concepts you would like to see highlighted.  If you see that employee engagement scores are low, ask it to summarize the comments that note this, and provide example quotes to support and solutions to these issues.  Again, you do not need to use the content in its exact format, but it gives you a rich data set from which you can now craft your messages.

Tutorial Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-quC5i44SsI (7 Mins)

3. Chatbots: The world of frequently asked questions (FAQs) is behind us. How many times have you been on a project with hundreds of questions and answers, all documented in unsearchable PDFs, used as a blanket source of complex information for all colleagues? Or worse yet distilling those questions down to a “top 10” that barely scratches the surface of what colleagues want to know about.

Chatbots are easily available now on multiple platforms and can be fed all the information in FAQs, PowerPoint decks, white papers, and more to learn and answer simple questions. They give colleagues a single place where they can go for multiple types of information from project status and delivery dates to benefits and impacts. Most of these are not advanced programs, so they take little knowledge to set up and do not have the capability to go off-script or create information that you do not input on the back end.  Having a chatbot allows you to easily share information with colleagues and takes your initiative from boring to cutting edge in a matter of minutes.

Tutorial Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYs16FnkkJk (15 Mins)

4. PowerPoint: A good PowerPoint presentation has always helped effectively communicate change. The ability to shift levels of information for audiences from the c-suite to the operating floor and partner that with visuals that drive the point home. If you have struggled with PowerPoint in the past, AI is answering your prayers. You can now easily ask ChatGPT to outline key topics for a presentation based on documentation and even output the code for the deck itself. ChatGPT can help to summarize key talking points, short summaries, and again tone for your slides.  You can also output the content directly into PowerPoint, with pre-formatted slide headers and content.

With your content prepared the next step is formatting and the design software already imbedded in the PowerPoint tool, makes it easy for anyone to become a PowerPoint guru or at least have enough content to get by and focus your time on making the message resonate, not moving around boxes on slides. Explore the design section to review different graphic layouts, and how to incorporate media and format slides to drive focus to key points. With this section of the tool, you can switch from one slide format to another with just the click of a button.

Tutorial Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK8ix1PXd5k (10 Mins)

5. Meeting Summarization: No matter how you meet with colleagues, via Zoom, Teams, Face to Face, or over the phone, there is no longer any excuse for not having a well-documented set of notes from the meeting. There are numerous programs available that will transcribe your meeting, show you who attended and even summarize the next steps. These are incredibly valuable tools because they can allow you to be focused and in the moment during meetings, not worrying about taking detailed notes, especially if you are gathering information about impacts, learning about the organization, or outlining the next steps for the project.

In addition, they can make you look like a rockstar by quickly sharing the meeting summary, driving agreement on action items, and clarifying any open questions while they are still fresh in your mind. Book 30 minutes after a key hour-long meeting to review, summarize,, and send out transcripts and see the impact it makes for your team and your change projects.

Tutorial Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XitWgXTFfSc (6 Mins)