Chris Brennan (00:03)
Welcome to Modern Coms, the podcast series designed to help comms leaders navigate today's hyper speed demands and move forward with clarity, confidence and

Each episode, we sit down with experts who are shaping the future of internal and corporate comms and unpack the strategies, tools and mindsets driving real results today.

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In today's episode, we're diving into a powerful topic, how comms leaders can navigate major change from mergers and restructures

to new leadership transitions.

These are the moments that shape how employees feel, act, and ultimately perform.

I'm thrilled to welcome our guest, Patti Rivas, Transformation and Communication Leader and founder of Futurist Communications. Patti, welcome to the show.

Patty Rivas (01:02)
Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Chris Brennan (01:05)
our pleasure, our pleasure. I just thought maybe to kick us off, could you tell us a little bit about your background and your current role?

Patty Rivas (01:11)
Yeah, of course. So I, for always, I've always been a storyteller, a writer. I knew that I wanted to write, just didn't know where I wanted to channel that energy. So I studied journalism and creative writing in college and then right out of college went into a very large ⁓ public relations agency. And I did a lot of public affairs work. And that time I was located in Sacramento, California.

at the time, so worked with a lot of state government agencies. And then really, I think that's where my love of change really started to take root and understanding how communications and change go together so well and how really with a great

strategy, you can help employees or

really anybody adapt to change.

And once the opportunity came up to take my love of writing and move it to the internal side of communications, I was thrilled. So I joined an agency called Brilliant, Inc. It's a smaller boutique internal communications agency, and spent over a decade there really

figuring out what internal comms is all about, and then diving deep into the challenges, the common challenges that every employee has. No matter what industry you're in, how tenured you are in your career, there are so many ⁓ consistent changes that come up through the employee life cycle. So really spending time understanding those challenges. And I think the beautiful thing about an agency or agency life.

is the ability to work on such a diverse range of, I worked with so many different clients from so many different industries. They really did take foot in the life sciences space. But even then you just get to experience, I think a lot of situations and scenarios that you might not have the opportunity to if you had been with one company for your entire career. So that's what I really loved about it.

And I think after I was with Brilliant Inc for 11 years, and I had been flirting with the idea of going out on my own. ⁓ But it was really the beginning of this year that I decided to take the leap and thought I loved my team. I love agency life, but I really love the work. I love the work of change communications and wanted to be hyper focused on how I can help leaders navigate that change. So that's what I've been doing since.

January of this year, I started my consultancy called Futurist Communications. And ⁓ I work with HR and internal communications leaders on really navigating complex change.

Chris Brennan (04:03)
Wonderful. So while working in that agency kind of high pressure diverse system, you just kind of found the change communication as a consistent pattern that continued. And eventually you decided like that should be a focal point in and of itself to kind of base a agency on. Is that right?

Patty Rivas (04:23)
That's absolutely right.

feel like change found me as it does with, I mean, through any campaign that I worked on or big employee initiative, whether it's rolling out a new technology or helping ⁓ to raise awareness about new programs, initiatives, going through a merger and acquisition, the impetus of all of that was change. And so it really was how do you help

employees adapt to whatever change is happening around them. How do you help them understand what's in it for them? And also the perceived pain points. Because if you don't start with the what's in it for me and how this is going to affect me, you're not going to get employees to

along on that journey with you.

Chris Brennan (05:13)
It's such an important topic for especially this modern era of work where I think every concept, every facet we can imagine is being disrupted somehow. Positive, negative, opportunity, challenge. So actually having a dedicated boutique for managing and mitigating change and orchestrating communication could be very beneficial. So from your perspective, what makes these moments so unique and so challenging?

to communicate.

Patty Rivas (05:45)
Well,

a great question. And I think it really comes down to change being the only constant that we have as human beings really. ⁓ since I would say the last five years since the pandemic, change has been coming at us more rapidly than ever in my lifetime. So I think we are just as...

you know, employees as humans, are going through so much. There's constant change happening. The advent of AI is also another huge change that's disrupting every industry. And people have become fatigued. I mean, there's only so much change that somebody can handle and at any given moment. So I think what used to, I would say in the time pre-pandemic, like that it's like pre-pandemic, post-pandemic.

The I feel like was happening at a little bit of a slower of a pace. We could get ahead of it. ⁓ A lot of the clients that I work with have been, I mean, what they say is like, I'm drinking from a water hose all the time. It is the change is happening so quickly that I can't proactively plan because there's always like fires to put out. And so I think that is ⁓ helping clients understand how to navigate that no matter what gets

at

Chris Brennan (07:06)
what's interesting is you were saying how there's pre-pandemic and post-pandemic. ⁓ And yeah, I agree. It's like drinking from a fire hose.

Patty Rivas (07:11)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Brennan (07:16)
What are some of common mistakes ⁓ you see when trying to communicate disruptive change? And is it the same mistakes from pre-pandemic or are there actually new?

Patty Rivas (07:26)
Hmm.

Chris Brennan (07:26)
issues that people are facing when they try to communicate change and disruption.

Patty Rivas (07:31)
Also, those are great questions. I would say there is a lot of consistency. Change is change. And what I've seen, at least in the past 20 years of being a professional communicator, is that there are table stakes with every change. And number one, I would say, is gaining trust. And I think that a lot of times, companies think that this is the short game. And that's not.

because if you don't have employee trust, which obviously takes quite a bit of time to gain, then any change plan that you have, as wonderful as it may be, is just not going to stick. So I think that's always been the case, ⁓ and more so now with two-way communications from, and maybe this wasn't pre-pandemic, but if you think about the advances in technology and how employees ⁓

have just more access and more ability to their leaders, to each other. ⁓ I mean, every company that I work with has some type of ⁓ peer communication channel, whether that's they're on Teams or they're on Slack, people are talking more. And that is wonderful in a lot of ways. It helps people feel more connected to work, but it also allows the narrative

to be influenced by your people, I think a lot more. So previously, maybe one way communication was more acceptable and it was more of a top-down approach to change. You don't have that luxury anymore as a leader, as a leadership team, you need to understand that your people are going to any gaps in information or

even just withholding of information, people are going to create their own narrative and that chatter can really ramp up quickly now with technology. So I think that's something that's been consistent in a way, but also has evolved in time and leadership alignment too. think that is a, it can be a huge pitfall if there isn't alignment at the top. I know that

Sometimes change happens quickly and leaders rush to get a message out. But if it's fragmented or if you have one leader saying one thing and another leader saying another thing, that trickle down, it matters. People start talking and they're hearing that, okay, our leadership team isn't coming from the same place. ⁓ That's going to really affect the way people perceive change and how they

along on that journey. So I think those are two really important ⁓ just pitfalls to avoid. We want to make sure that we have trust and we want to make sure that we have alignment and that does start at the top

leaders.

Chris Brennan (10:40)
And then how do you think basically like it would probably take an entire strategy and a ton of communication for leaders. But if you had like five minutes with a leader who was finding these challenges, what are some best practices you could highlight about gaining the trust with transparency and aligning with other leaders as well so that the message is clear? Because I imagine one of their throwbacks would be, I'm busy.

Patty Rivas (10:47)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Brennan (11:09)
I don't have time, I'll get to it and they don't. So what is some kind of advice or best practices to avoid these pitfalls and not fall into the mistakes?

Patty Rivas (11:09)
Yes.

I think so.

Number one is just getting a seat at the table. Oftentimes I think internal communications is seen as that afterthought. ⁓ It is not. And so a lot of clients that I work with, it's really to even prior to change happening, it's really how do we elevate the role that internal communications plays to make sure that when change happens, you're at that table with leaders talking about how this change.

What are the potential risks that we might come up against and how do we mitigate them? And that, so if I had five minutes with the entire leadership team, which would be wonderful, but if I'm talking to my clients, which are typically HR leaders, internal communications leaders, it's okay. How do we sell in this change to your peers, to your ⁓ leadership team? ⁓

how do we make the business case that an internal communication strategy is paramount to the outcomes of this change? And a lot of times that's preparing them with a case study or a business case, outlining the perceived risks, looking at other companies that have really screwed up a technology rollout or a merger and acquisition and helping leaders understand that if we don't do A, then this is one of the possible

scenarios or outcomes that we may face. And I think when you can really frame things in a way that helps leaders understand what's at stake, they're more just open to your advice on, now how do we mitigate this? And you're right that a lot of leaders during time of massive change, they have other, I mean, if you're talking to legal or to finance, they have other priorities.

as they're going through a massive change, especially if it's something like a merger and an acquisition, people are tied up in a bunch of different ways, as you can imagine. But getting in there, gaining the trust of your leadership team, helping them understand the risks, and to a point where they let you go off and do what you need to do, I think that's really the best gift of all is just having their trust to move forward

use your best judgment.

Chris Brennan (13:43)
That makes sense because even, mentioned this in a recent webinar we did. ⁓ A few weeks ago, a colleague of mine who was actually a CEO contacted me on a weekend and he said, I have to record a video and it's our like new mission that I have to explain to the entire company. Like, can you come over to my house and film me on my phone? And can you challenge the script I've generated in ChatGPT? I'm just sitting there going.

Patty Rivas (14:11)
Mm.

Chris Brennan (14:12)
I have no idea even what you do. Like I know, like why don't you have like an entire team doing this with you? And also I'm going all the way over to your house to hold your phone. So I was like, well, clearly I'm not doing that, but I can help you. So he sent me the script and I went, dear God, do not say any of this. This is super aggressive. I know it's kind of like you want to come across strong, but.

Patty Rivas (14:14)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Chris Brennan (14:39)
A lot of this rhetoric is quite like aggressive. I was like, tone a lot of it down, but also where's your internal comms team who you should be collaborating with. And funny enough, it's a little plug even for cofenster. It's like, we're actually built specifically for this. So a comms team can send you a link with prompts about what to say. So they're telling you what to say in your busy day. And it was just so funny because it was clear that he had no...

Patty Rivas (15:04)
Mmm.

Chris Brennan (15:07)
visibility of what his team can do to help. So we went to somebody with video experience that he knows outside of it going, I need to do this, make it quick. And I was like, dude, yeah. So it's just funny because even in your example of be at the table, like a lot of, a lot of it's visibility and like, just didn't think of going to them to actually help do this. He went, they've given me this task. I independently have to produce this on my own. It's like, well, nobody said that. Like nobody invented that rule.

Patty Rivas (15:13)
How?

Yeah

Mm-hmm.

No, no.

Also, you're a very good friend

to pick up that call on a weekend and respond to it. So make sure you tell them that next

Chris Brennan (15:42)
Yeah. Yeah.

For sure. Okay,

so let's say that you did get the trust of the leadership team, and now they want to send the message to their teams. So in your experience, what actually helps the employees actually understand and absorb the change rather than just hear about

Patty Rivas (15:53)
Mm-hmm.

Yes. So I think what I had said before, I'm going to reiterate, helping them understand how it affects them. So a lot of times, and when I say start at the top with alignment, it's not just alignment about the change and how we roll it out. It's the why behind why we're rolling it out. What is the business rationale for this change? And then we start to think about, now how is this going to affect our

different employee segments, because obviously change is going to affect people in a lot of different ways. ⁓ Perhaps, you you are having a massive reorganization that affects a big portion of your workers. ⁓ It's not going to just affect those workers, maybe they're maybe they're layoffs, maybe they're being rolled into another ⁓ function, it's going to affect everybody that comes in contact with those folks. So

I think it's understanding the why, understanding how it affects your different segments and then equipping the managers. And I can't stress this point enough is that managers are your key to success, not just for change, but really for anything, anything that you are rolling out within an organization, your managers are your gatekeepers because they're the first line of defense.

for your people. If I have a question as an employee or concern, I'm not going to go three levels up to leadership and ask them about this change. I'm going to go to my direct manager. And if my direct manager doesn't have the information or is wishy washy about the change or doesn't understand how it's affecting our team, then that leaves me with that absence of information and also leads me to go ahead and create my own story. So I think it's making sure that we're

Translating the change in a way that it's going to resonate with people and what people want to know is how is this going to affect me? What's in it for me? What are the potential watchouts? And and I think with that and even if it is I think a

of leaders are afraid to communicate change that might not be the best change. But if you withhold information because you're afraid of the outcome

that's just going to bubble over. People want to hear, even if it is something that's going to not be advantageous to them, they want to know about it as soon as, you know, as soon as they're able to so that they can make decisions that are right for them. So yes, I think

those are.

Chris Brennan (18:52)
Yeah, I can see that because

those scenarios or those moments also lead to information gaps that people will fill with each other through gossip, conjecture, hearsay. So even though they think they're avoiding the negative qualities of the communication, those negative qualities of those gaps will be filled with something that's inaccurate, irrelevant, or even more hazardous than the truth.

Patty Rivas (18:57)
Yes.

Almost always, almost I would say almost

when that rumor mill starts going, is ⁓ a

mean, the fallout can be really significant for, ⁓ for information that may have not even made a blip in the radar. So I think yes, it's really being honest with as much as you can provide and making sure that your managers are equipped to.

to be those messengers for you. And not just the one way communication, but you want to be able to hear what the feedback is, how people are receiving information. And again, those managers are going to be crucial to that. So creating a feedback loop with your managers involved is just going to help you be nimble and adapt to ⁓ if you have a set communication strategy, you might have to shift real quick if you're finding out that there is this one group that's

really not understanding what it means for them or there is a lot of backlash. You have those feedback loops to understand that information quickly and adapt to it.

Chris Brennan (20:28)
Yeah, that's super interesting. I also think that a lot of people when they receive communication, they're trying to figure out how specifically it impacts them. Do you find a lot of times that leaders communicate on how it affects the company at large or themselves and that leads to ⁓ the recipient of the information to go, but what about me? Because I can see that happening quite often where after this big town hall,

Patty Rivas (20:53)
Yes.

Chris Brennan (20:58)
45 minute one way stream of communication and everyone is just sitting there going, so what does that mean to me? What does that mean? like, it's like you didn't properly convey to your audience how it impacts your audience.

Patty Rivas (21:11)
Yes,

yes, absolutely. And that's, know, when we think about having these massive town halls and right now I'm working with a company, it's a smaller biotech. were just, well, they're in the process of being acquired. So that announcement has, was just made public about a few weeks ago. And there's a lot of anxiety, as you can imagine, like, what does this mean for me? So we have, we've,

started making town halls more frequent, not that there is, we're in this like squishy gray area where we can't say an awful lot because the deal's still in progress. But in creating more points of contact with folks, more FaceTime with leaders, starting to solicit all of the questions and making a commitment that when we have answers to these questions, we're going to get back to you in quick order. And then after the town halls, to your point,

Yes, this one way communication stream, it's really nice for them to, for employees to have access to leaders and have leaders be visible during times of change. But once those town halls are over, making sure that you have managers in place to field the questions, to host smaller meetings with their teams, to ask questions about, okay, what is, what's giving you angst or what's giving you pause right now?

And then making sure that they are then cascading all of those questions and comments back up the leadership chain so that there is this constant evolution of information and making sure that you're getting back to folks with the answers they need to make informed decisions.

Chris Brennan (23:00)
That's true, because I can also tell in a lot of these town hall scenarios when it's in all hands, ⁓ when it comes to the questions part, does anybody have any questions? A lot of people do, but they don't want to be seen publicly asking the question. So then if the manager isn't prepped, that person might go to them or they might just hold onto it and then again, gossip starts. But from the leader's point of view,

Patty Rivas (23:16)
Yes.

Chris Brennan (23:28)
They went into a session, there was no questions asked, so they might leave going, I really got the point across, didn't I? Because nobody asked a question. And then they get back to their busy schedule.

Patty Rivas (23:35)
Yes, and

that's

important role that we as communicators have to play is making sure that leaders aren't disillusioned and also making sure that there are mechanisms set up for folks to ask questions that may not feel comfortable asking questions in public. taking anonymous questions prior to town halls and having

a follow-up mechanism. making sure that people know that it's safe to ask questions afterwards if they want to go to their HR team or to their internal communications lead or to their direct manager and that there is just an opportunity to continue to ask questions. Even if we can't get back to you right at this moment with information, we're going to document these questions and we will get back to you at

some point and if you have that information of when that information will be available, let them know. We're getting this information in three weeks and we'll follow up with an FAQ.

Chris Brennan (24:43)
There's a trick we use a lot of times in presentations and webinars, knowing that it's hard to warm up an audience and basically you just need one person asking a question. So everybody else goes, okay, now I can. So what we sometimes do is we actually plant a couple of questions in advance. So people go, yeah, yeah, the questions are rolling in. Is that some practice that you do or do you recommend for these kind of moments? you can actually, one of the benefits too is you can curate some of the

aspects that may not have been mentioned or clear so you can kind of control a bit more of the narrative from the question side while also warming up the entire audience to go, ⁓ it's okay now, other people have asked the questions. Is this a practice you've seen or you've done in the past?

Patty Rivas (25:27)
Okay.

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. think it's,

it's, I, for the reasons that you had mentioned, I think it's

it's, ⁓ nice to open the door for folks to walk in. ⁓ so having those questions teed up and it's also really nice. If you don't get any questions, then you're not just sitting there with, ⁓ dead

And so you, and you

Chris Brennan (25:53)
Yes.

Patty Rivas (25:55)
usually, ⁓ tell.

what kind of questions are going to start bubbling up. Either you have your ear to the ground or you've been through situations like this before and know what the common questions will be. So I think going in with, let's answer those upfront and hoping that other people join in is yes, absolutely best practice. And it's always nice to have, because here's the other thing, if you are in this place where you can't disclose a lot, you don't want every question coming in to have

the same response of, don't have that information yet, but we'll get back

you as soon as we do. having some of those questions that you do have an answer to, yeah, ask those so that it does feel like people are getting some, they're walking away with some information.

Chris Brennan (26:44)
That's great. Yeah, it's a good move for every party involved in lots of different scenarios. So I can imagine that that would be a really nice tactic to do, especially for difficult strategic change communication. ⁓ So let's actually pull it back a little bit to this is when they're communicating the change, but what about more high stakes change or ⁓ things that have occurred that are a bit more last minute or immediate?

Patty Rivas (26:49)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Brennan (27:13)
how much practical prep can you actually do in advance and how much can you get leadership to buy in? Because again, I imagine a lot of the issues are, I don't have time, we'll do it later, later this week, push it to next week. So it's great to have your documents, your frameworks, but how much can you practically prep in advance?

Patty Rivas (27:16)
Mm.

I would say even in areas where you might have more information, you're never going to have all of the information at the ready ⁓ during any time of change. But you do have your experience, right? have, ⁓ particularly if you've been through some kind of change like this, guess what? We also have tools like AI tools and Google. You can figure out what kinds of ⁓

potential outcomes ⁓ you might be able to expect. So I think scenario planning becomes your best friend in any kind of change. You might not be able to prepare for the exact situation with the exact outcomes, but you can prepare for if XYZ happens and this could happen and how are we going to prepare for this. So I'll use the example right now, but I'm currently working, like I said, with a ⁓

a company that's going through an acquisition, the deal is still in progress. So we are, it really is, it's business as usual right now. ⁓ Because if we were to make any massive shifts and then let's just say, and there's no indication that the deal won't go through, but if it doesn't, ⁓ and we've been resting on our laurels or we've been, you know, just looking to change course drastically,

that's going to, ⁓ it's not going to be good for the company. that's, but that's one of the situations that we've been planning for. So we'll have the, know, if the, if the deal goes through as expected, here's where we may net out in the next couple of months. If it doesn't, here's where we're going to net out. So making sure that we're still working on these high priority initiatives and people strategies that we've been working on all year.

this is really important because this could still very much matter. So I think those are the types of things that you can help leaders and their teams understand. And let's use another example of like a new intranet. about rolling out a new intranet and anybody, any communications professional that has done any kind of technology rollout, you know, it's never.

⁓ as expected ever, ever, ever. The timeline shift, ⁓ you have leaders who just won't get on board, who aren't recognizing the priority. Content migration becomes this beast of a challenge to rally behind. just again, helping leaders understand, okay, we need to move on this timeline. This is what could happen if we miss deadlines.

And just communicating like what are the potential risks if ⁓ things go one way or the other. think just bringing that context to the table really,

goes a long way.

Chris Brennan (30:43)
I've seen with our ⁓ platform, we have AI video assistants, so they handle a variety of different outputs and topics. And we have one called Ella that basically allows people to request videos through prompts and links. And so what we've seen is a lot of our comms customers are creating scenarios in advance with prompts and having them at the ready. So if need be, they can then send it to a leader.

Patty Rivas (31:06)
Hmm.

Chris Brennan (31:10)
and they've got all the details. They can read it as a full script that's generated by AI or just keep it as a bullet point if the person wants to speak more freely about the details. But it's really interesting when you see, as you were mentioning with very scenario-based and using technology and new tools and AI to basically prep in advance as much as you can, because I know like, again, it's very difficult, especially with the concept of changes, it's never the same.

But potentially what we're seeing with customers is they're creating ⁓ templates in advance to kind of give them a little head start to kind of get into it. So they have the template ready, modify it a bit quickly, and then ship it off so that they can communicate in a very strategic, considerate manner that lands the message fast. Because I think speed is such an important part of change communication.

Patty Rivas (31:41)
Hmm.

That's cool.

It is. And can I ask a question back to you? So how

Chris Brennan (32:12)
Yeah, of course.

Patty Rivas (32:14)
with that new technology? Because I feel like some leaders are maybe not as quick to either adopt different technologies, even with like video. I think that we've had some, it's just, it's harder for folks that are outside of the communications world to like get on board and fully embrace it. But have you found that

people are really open to the idea of ⁓ these kind of like AI assisted ⁓ video templates and yeah, how like the adoption of it, is it then, what

you hearing from folks?

Chris Brennan (32:55)
Yeah,

it's happening a lot more because of the technology. So one of the biggest barriers we've seen with comms teams is lack of video experience. So you'll tell somebody you should make a video. They go, how do I record it? What does the person say? How do I ask the person to say it? How do I edit it? Whereas with AI video assistants, they handle a lot of that for you automatically. So it takes away ⁓ the reason why you shouldn't do it because of lack of experience.

Patty Rivas (33:07)
Yes.

Chris Brennan (33:25)
So now it's, that's why we call them assistants because they really do feel like they're giving you your in-house videographer. My background in marketing up until now has been people come to me when they need any type of video. And now they're at the behest of my schedule. When I say I can get to it, maybe by the end of the week, then I'll put that off. And so now with AI video assistants, you can communicate in a variety of different ways. So with

Patty Rivas (33:43)
Yeah.

Chris Brennan (33:55)
Ella, you can send that recording link and it gets somebody to record a message. So it could be about change. So we need a succinct message about the upcoming all hands to kind of give people a little prep in advance to know what we're gonna get into. Great. And then you just read it off the screen and it's really clear. There's also Theo, which is corporate enterprise level text to video. So you can actually take that PDF or that slide deck.

Patty Rivas (34:20)
Mm.

Chris Brennan (34:22)
and convert it into a 90 second video with text and a voiceover so you're actually getting your point across in a more dynamic manner. And all of this is edited for you and stays on your company corporate branding as well. So once people, the barrier is they're still afraid because they don't know how to do video and then once they see, ⁓ my gosh, this will do it for me, it becomes so much easier. And what I love to see is,

their thoughts about what opportunities they can use video for, because for the first time it's opening up a completely new dynamic mode of communication that's been previously off limits for them because of experience or budget. Like, comms leaders don't go, let's hire a freelancer to do this. It just doesn't happen. That's why they go, marketing Chris, come over here. Can you film this thing? So it'll even plan it, because another aspect is comms leaders will say, I don't know what the video should look like.

Patty Rivas (34:55)
Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Thank ⁓

Hahaha!

Chris Brennan (35:21)
with LA, it'll actually create the prompts for you, the template, the storyboards. So what it's doing anymore is it's enabling and empowering comms teams to utilize the most impactful form of communication for the first time, which is video, which is really exciting. So there's a lot of disruption happening, lots of opportunity and challenges in this modern era of comms, but at least a lot of the AI tools are actually opening up.

Patty Rivas (35:26)
Wow.

Chris Brennan (35:49)
the opportunities to really communicate in this more modern manner because across the board, people are wanting more information upfront in the short-term philosophy. So let's have a 45-minute PowerPoint-based one-way communication. It's gonna be difficult to get people off of that mindset, but you could follow it up with a 90-second text-to-video wraparound

Patty Rivas (36:03)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Brennan (36:19)
of the main points of that entire presentation. So you really can ensure that the point got across. Whereas what I know of, and we've done research, and lots of people have done research, about 10 or 15 minutes into the all hands, everybody's on different tabs, just back to work. And it's like, are you, do you want to speak or do you want to be heard? Because they're two separate things. And I think what's happening is people are speaking, but their audience is stopped listening.

Patty Rivas (36:35)
Yep. Yeah.

Ha ha ha!

Yes, that is so true. And I think I would say that is our even ability to tune in for that long. mean, that's with, if you look back, when did Twitter, the advent of Twitter was 2005 maybe. And I feel like since then we've just been conditioned to digest these bite size pieces of information. And even now I have

Chris Brennan (37:05)
around that.

Patty Rivas (37:16)
three kids who are, I really never got into the YouTube trend, but now it's all they want to watch. It's the shorts, you know, they just, and,

how their generation is growing up. So this isn't just a fad. Like this is, this is the new way that we're consuming information. We don't have time. We have a million things to do all the time. It's kind of the same with learning and development at, at work. You know, it's something that everybody wants to do, but the time to dedicate to it.

is just becoming less and less because we just have so much going on.

I love that. think that the 90 second video bites of information, that's what people want and that's what's going to actually resonate. Because yeah, the 90 minute, the day of the 90 minute PowerPoint presentation is dead.

Chris Brennan (38:08)
It's true, you can even see this in just culture as well. So what they're still doing for filmmaking is they're producing movie trailers, film trailers, where you cut together two minutes of a montage of what the story's about. But if you watch modern trailers now, they actually add like a 15 second juicy action packed set up at the beginning. So your trailer now comes with a pre-trailer just to keep people watching.

Patty Rivas (38:19)
Hmm?

Chris Brennan (38:37)
which tells you a lot because what you're trying to get them to do is watch two minutes, but you have to engage them in the first 15 seconds. And if you take that mindset that we have culturally in our day-to-day life, and then you start going into the corporate world, we're still decades behind in how we communicate. And I think especially with the new generation coming in who are raised on this form of communication, they're just completely bewildered by these long form.

Patty Rivas (38:41)
Hahaha

Hmm.

Chris Brennan (39:07)
meetings of they're

Patty Rivas (39:08)
Yes.

Chris Brennan (39:08)
like, well, like they'll just literally go, how does it affect me? It doesn't really, but it's important for you to know. It's like, that's it just doesn't compute. Like they're not built that way.

Patty Rivas (39:14)
Okay.

at all? Nope,

nope. And yeah, I mean, that's that

I think this trend of like, newsletters, for instance, I don't think that they are going away. But it is, I remember 10 years ago of having these like long form newsletters that would land in your inbox, maybe it was once a week, maybe it was once every other week. And then I was working with companies that would have dozens, dozens of different newsletters from different functions or different teens and

I mean, the main complaint from really any of my clients is how do I cut through the noise? How do I get through to people? Well, it's, I'll tell you something. It's not by sending 10 long form newsletters every week. ⁓ so yes, I love that. And I think making video easier because it is, it's the learning curve. It's the resources. mean, folks used to have companies that have hundreds of thousands of dollars allocated to video that.

now is just not realistic. People's budgets get cut and typically those are the first things that start to go as well as internal communication support and headcount. doing as much as like doing more with with less resources and having the ability for anybody to do video I think is that's the wave of the

really.

Chris Brennan (40:45)
And from your vantage point, though, are you starting to see fatigue or a lack of impact for a lot of these more traditional communication formats? Like you mentioned newsletters, but even company updates, notion pages full of updates, slide decks. Are you seeing that they're still consistent or effective, or are you actually seeing that there's a need for a more modern shakeup in that kind of...

those literal channels and formats of internal communication.

Patty Rivas (41:19)
I do think that there is a need for more shakeup. think there is certainly, I don't think slides are going away anytime soon. I think there is a place for them in the corporate world. ⁓ Any kind of strategy when there are still ⁓ meetings happening and especially I would say at the leadership level, still seeing PowerPoint being, I still use PowerPoint all the time for developing business cases.

laying out frameworks or strategies, but in communicating to employees on a large scale, just don't know that ⁓ that's really, there is like, there is the place for it, but I don't think that's what's getting folks to come to the table. I think finding those.

little minutes of time that people have between this meeting and that meeting. Cause that's really, mean, many people that are working, especially behind a desk are in meetings almost all day long. They're running from one thing to the next. If they're out on, you know, maybe they're a part of a field team, then they're out on the road. So it's like finding those moments of opportunity, knowing when they have those moments. Maybe it's earlier in the day for.

⁓ one team, like the, let's say you have a field operations team and you know that for the majority, they're really packed with meetings from, you know, early afternoon or mid afternoon, I'm sorry, mid morning to afternoon. Then how do you get in front of them in that like first hour of their day? ⁓ whether that's with, you know, maybe it's, ⁓ we used to do a lot of podcasting for folks that were on the road. ⁓

But if you're behind a desk all day, maybe it's sending that video link on Slack or Teams around their lunch hour. And that's where really employee personas comes in, ⁓ understanding that it's not a one size fits all approach and knowing who your different audiences are, what matters to them, what their communications preferences are. Because different channels, people are going to have

different appetites for different forms of media. You have maybe the older generation like myself of professionals that might want to, you know, click on the internet article and read something that's a little more verbose. And then you might have other folks that, okay, I have two minutes, tell me what I need to know and I'm going to be on my way. So really, I think it starts with understanding.

who your people are and how they want to receive information, that's going to be your best bet and

communications that are going to resonate with them.

Chris Brennan (44:11)
That makes complete sense. So it's more about diversifying your message across many channels rather than eliminating a traditional format to supplant it with another, which makes complete sense. It's very interesting you mentioned employee personas. Do you think that it's time to redo them for this new modern culture? Because I've been researching that a bit more recently. And it looks like a lot of companies just don't have employee personas. Or if they do,

They're from 2016, maybe earlier. And that feels like a lifetime ago. So do you think that it's important for like 2026 that companies and comms teams actually completely redo employee personas to see what their actual audience are looking for in this modern work place?

Patty Rivas (44:43)
Yeah.

Yes.

my short answer is yes. think that, and I would assume that you coming from a marketing background really see the value in personas, as do I. I think that there is, from my experience in working with communications professionals, HR professionals, know, spanning leadership, I work with IT a lot, but I think the value of personas isn't totally,

understood sometimes. ⁓ And I've worked with teams to develop personas

then sit on a shelf and are never really utilized. ⁓ I also think that the evolution of AI has allowed us to utilize personas a lot more effectively ⁓ because it's really about customization, right? And I think a lot of big gripe that I've heard and completely empathize with is I don't have the time.

I might have these personas that represent different audiences, but I have no time to personalize communications for anybody. It's, you know, I'm lucky if I get enough time to proactively get one proactive communication out a month. So I think with AI, that's really allowed us to create customized communications for your different personas. But getting back to your original point, is it time to redo them? Yes.

I mean, I think there's always, it's always a good time to take a gut check to see if these, these are still our audiences. Is this still resonating? Not just with personas, but with your, you know, employee value proposition, really anything that's been sitting on the shelf for some time. Give it, give it some pressure testing. Certainly start with something like one of the, I think best

tools communications professionals have is the survey and understanding a communications preferences survey goes such a long way. And if you're not doing one regularly, I would say how, you know, but if you're doing an engagement survey, how can you just insert a few communications preferences questions into your annual or biannual engagement survey to understand how people are.

how they like to receive information, what they want to know about, what might feel like superfluous information that they're currently receiving. Those types of things are going to help you adapt your personas in real time. So it's not just a one and done, but taking a look at it year after year and really benchmarking it against the any kind of employee data that you're getting in to see if this still matches. I think that makes it

a lot lighter of a lift if you're doing it gradually and making sure that you have governance around it, that you're actually keeping up with it and adapting it so that you're not, yes, like looking at it from 2016 and saying, wow, these are completely obsolete. So yes, everybody look at your personas. And if you don't have them, now's the best time to start creating them because you do have all these tools at your disposal to

create them, fine tune them, and then create communications

complement them.

Chris Brennan (48:30)
And then when the change communication comes, you'll actually be prepared to target your audience in the right way.

Patty Rivas (48:35)
Yes.

Exactly, exactly.

Chris Brennan (48:40)
All right, so we're about to wrap it up, but I just thought I might ask two more questions. ⁓ Basically, the first one is, what advice would you give to comms professionals preparing to organize, preparing their organization to go through a major change?

Patty Rivas (48:56)
Well,

if you're preparing to go through a major change, I still believe that the philosophy of gaining trust, that is number one. So even if you're not preparing for a change, start that effort now, because it really is going to go such a long way when you are rolling out any change. I think, again, like that alignment at the top, making sure that number one, you have a seat at the table and that you have a voice at the table.

helping leaders understand and align on why change is happening, what it means for your people, and what risks you could potentially be up against, and then coming up with a plan on how to mitigate those risks. So doing that all in alignment with your leadership team is going to save you so much time down the road in trying to backpedal or put out fires. I think being accessible too.

as a communications professional being accessible and also encouraging your leaders to be accessible. Having feedback loops and mechanisms for asking questions, getting feedback. When you roll out a change and you have the leaders in the back office, they're not out there talking to people. It does send a message without sending a message. So make sure that your leaders are out there, they're present.

Your HR team is equipped to handle questions. And then finally, coming back to those mid-level managers, those are your gatekeepers for information, for any kind of change, and they're going to be the make it or break it when it comes

rolling out change successfully.

Chris Brennan (50:41)
Makes perfect sense. I love it. Okay, and final question. What's one trend or shift in the comm space you're personally excited about right now?

Patty Rivas (50:50)
I continue to be very excited about AI. think that as

early adopter of, you know, open AI, use, and as an independent consultant without a team, I'm very used to having a team of colleagues around me. I love working on my own, but I also, I really have used it in new ways to poke holes in my strategy to

help me find things that I'm missing to take care of the more tactical tasks so that I'm really focused on the big change, big impact. Those are the things that I continue to be excited about and learning new ways to use AI. And some of that comes from conversations like this.

staying in touch with my internal communications colleagues and my network. It's really cool to see how it's evolving and how different unique use cases people have. So I would say, like, I'm just going to keep asking questions of my colleagues. I hope everybody else is doing the same and that we're all just sharing the knowledge and yeah, sharing the knowledge together and also the risks. ⁓ That's.

big part of it too and then helping us roll it out responsibly with our different organizations.

going to be cool to see what happens in the next two years if the last two years was any indication.

Chris Brennan (52:23)
Yes, for sure, for sure. Absolutely agree. Well, Patty, that's it. Thank you so much for your time. This is a pleasure of a conversation, really insightful as well.

Patty Rivas (52:24)
haha

This was wonderful. It was so nice to meet you. yeah, I'm just excited to ⁓ hear what's next. And I want some of your case studies as well. So we'll have to be in touch after this.

Chris Brennan (52:43)
You got it. We'll absolutely do it. For sure.

And that's a wrap.

We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you wanna learn more about how Cofenster works, we definitely recommend you check out our website, cofenster.com, or book a free interactive demo with one of our advisors.

whatever platform you're listening or watching so you don't miss the next episode.

My name is Chris Brennan and until next time have a great week.