3 Internal Comms Shortcuts That Will Save You 3 Hours a Week

Let’s jump right in. One tool, one AI build, one behavior. Pick one and start this week.

1. Don’t write a word until you’ve met.
2. Let an AI agent build the monthly newsletter.
3. Relax. Relate. Release.

Before you draft anything, put 30 minutes on your stakeholder’s calendar and go through the 8 sections of the Comms Brief together. What you’re saying and how you’re saying it. Who approves it. How you’ll both know it worked.

Take it from me: this is where the back-and-forth edits stop. When they help build the brief, they have skin in the game. You stop guessing what they want, and they stop rewriting what you guessed.

Don’t send them the brief to fill out. Sit with them (virtually or in-person). Half the value is collaborating and hearing them say out loud what they actually need.

We all have one. That pesky monthly newsletter. Still building yours in Word? Pasting it into SharePoint? Wrestling with the formatting in Outlook again?

Build an agent and let it do the heavy lifting every month.

Don’t know how? Ask the AI tool you already use for every step. I’m serious. Get inquisitive with the tool about the thing you want it to produce. Like this:

“I put together our employee newsletter every month. I want to build an agent that does most of it for me. Before you suggest anything, ask me questions until you understand how I build it today, where the content comes from, and who approves it. Then walk me through setting it up, step by step.”

Then keep asking. What should I hand you each month? What am I still doing by hand that you could do? The questions are the skill.

The request comes in. It’s urgent. It’s due tomorrow. And you heard about it two days ago.

That’s not realistic. If you jump to answer, you’re right back on the reactive hamster wheel you’re trying to get off.

So instead:

Relax. It’s probably not as urgent as it sounds, and it probably doesn’t need to go out tomorrow.

Relate. Ask why it’s urgent. Sometimes just asking settles them, because they finally get to say what’s really driving the deadline.

Release. Let the false deadline go. Half the time they’ll get there on their own: “Oh, wait. Maybe it’s not. Maybe we can push it a week.”

Skip the brief, and you pay in revisions: three rounds of edits on something one conversation would have settled.

Skip the agent, and you rebuild the same newsletter by hand twelve times a year.

Skip the pause, and you teach everyone that your calendar belongs to whoever panics first. Every rushed yes makes it easier for them to send the next request late too.

_{What I Would Do If I Were You is a weekly newsletter to help you lead with strategy and a little audacity.}

_{Each issue gives you “the how” you can use by your next Monday meeting. Plus, how to make it a habit. Even when saying “sure, I’ll get that out” feels easier. (Old habits die hard, I know).}