Outsourced thought leadership isn't thought. Or leadership.
Those wise LinkedIn leadership posts? Often written by a virtual assistant making $7 an hour, applauded by fake commenters. When authenticity becomes the rarest skill at work.
Nobody wrote the AI rules your employees are breaking
Your employees are pasting company data into AI tools and guessing whether it's allowed, because nobody told them. That's not a discipline problem. It's a communication vacuum, and it has your name on it.
The layoff memo blames AI. The data doesn't.
Gartner found companies cut jobs at the same rate whether AI delivered returns or not. If you're writing the layoff memo, that data is your leverage.
Empowerment is just dependence with better branding
Job descriptions promise autonomy, leaders praise their empowered teams, and every real decision still needs a sign-off. The gap between responsibility and authorship is where ownership quietly dies.
Your intranet has a business case. Most people haven't built it yet.
Budget isn't being denied because your intranet lacks features. It's being denied because most IC teams are making the wrong argument to the wrong people. Here's what to do instead.
What your employees really think of your communications
New research from Axios HQ puts a number on something most internal communicators already suspect: leaders and employees are experiencing the organization differently. 27% of leaders believe their employees are fully aligned with organizational goals. 9% of employees agree. Chuck Gose and Jenni Field dig into what the data means — and whether "improving communication" is still the honest answer.
Your culture video might be making things worse
A culture video won't fix a culture problem. But video, done right, can surface what's real, close the gap between leadership and employees, and show culture in ways that words on a wall never will.
How to read the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Workplace Experience Applications if you're a communicator
The 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Workplace Experience Applications lives in facilities and IT. But as companies rewrite return-to-office policies, the physical office experience is landing squarely in communicators' laps — and several vendors on this report will already look familiar.
Howe To: Win the Strategic Global Awards
Greg Howe won Internal Engagement Campaign of the Year at the inaugural Strategic Global Awards in Brussels. Judges called it "a masterclass in translating strategic intent into measurable business impact." Here's his full nomination submission, word for word, plus the planning framework he used to pull it off.
94% say internal comms is respected; only 30% can prove its working
Oak Engage surveyed 250 IC and HR professionals. 94% feel respected. Only 30% can prove their work is making a difference. Those numbers don't point to a measurement problem — they point to a positioning one.
Stop calling us strategic advisors
The 40-point performance gap between organizations that invested in communication tools and training and those that didn't isn't a culture story. It's an execution story — and it has an org chart problem at its center.
Better Signals, Less Noise: Join the Expert Panel on June 23
The Korbyt + Reworked research is in: employees aren't overwhelmed by volume, they're disengaged by irrelevance. A live expert panel on June 23 breaks down what the data means and what communicators should do next.
The room block for Flyover Festival is open
The room block for Flyover Festival is open. Here's where to stay and how to book before the July 27 cutoff.
Unscripted culture: why your values video isn't working (and what to do instead)
Culture storytelling is one of the hardest things to get right on camera. Not because it's technically difficult, but because most of us are filming the wrong thing.
There’s now a marketplace for your internal communications
A startup called SimpleClosure is helping shuttered companies sell their internal data, including years of Slack messages and email threads, to AI companies. The employees whose conversations are in those archives were never asked. This is already happening.
BrightSide 2026 has a strong ICology presence
Four ICology members are on the BrightSide 2026 speaker lineup, covering culture, values, employer branding, and employee listening. Here's what they're bringing to Omaha on September 23.
Your engagement score is lying to you
Firstup's 2026 engagement reports surveyed more than 6,200 employees across North America and the UK. The headline numbers look reassuring. What's underneath them is a different story.
The firm that helped cause the opioid crisis would like to teach you about trauma
McKinsey paid $1 billion for its role in the opioid crisis. Now they're publishing guidance on trauma-informed leadership. Ellen Griley, who lost her brother to the crisis McKinsey helped accelerate, has thoughts — on the data, the source, and what the Trauma Industrial Complex gets wrong.
One employee stopped working for a year. Nobody noticed.
A software employee stopped working entirely for a year and nobody noticed. Her story isn't the outlier it looks like — and the data behind it should make every communicator uncomfortable.
Most organizations are branding their culture, not building it.
Culture isn't what you say it is. It's what your leaders, systems, and incentives reinforce every day. I talked with bink. CEO Ann Melinger about the gap between cultural intent and employee reality — and why knowing about it without acting on it might be the most dangerous move of all.

