Making AI Work: Lessons from PwC’s Transformation

In this episode of The New CCO Brief, Megan Noel, former Senior Managing Director for communications and corporate affairs at PwC, shares how change management was the key to unlocking AI’s full potential. From upskilling 75,000 employees to building trust across the organization, she reveals the practical strategies that made AI work at scale—and why communicators are best positioned to lead this transformation.

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Transcript

AI Generated, some errors may appear

[00:00:00]

Eliot Mizrachi: Welcome to the new CCO Brief, our short format series that gives you actionable insights in under 10 minutes. Today we spotlight a real world case study about AI adoption at scale.

I'm Eliot Mizrachi

Megan Noel: I'm Megan Noel I'm the global president of corporate affairs at Golin

Eliot Mizrachi: But this story actually starts earlier.

Megan Noel: So prior to being at Golin, I spent 10 years at PwC running their comms function and PwC global accounting and consulting firm

Eliot Mizrachi: Megan shared that they started their AI journey with a ton of different tools, and they experimented with all of them.

Megan Noel: you know, we, we were learning a lot. And then we started to realize really coming out of, Davos two years ago, when AI started to really catapult that this was going to be transformational, not only across the comms scene, but across business writ large,

Eliot Mizrachi: That experimentation and that [00:01:00] realization led to a billion dollar investment in AI, and resulted in a number of partnerships and collaborations with tech companies together with investments in their own infrastructure.

But that on its own didn't ensure the organization's AI adoption until Megan and her team used a classic communicators tool, change management, to help transform her function and the organization.

Megan Noel:

I think what's so important and probably most interesting is an investment in upskilling at 75, 000 people in AI. And so we spent a bunch of time. really investing in change management around AI and what is that going to look like in HR and in finance and in audit and in consulting and in operations?

Megan Noel: And, you know, it's going to look different in every part of the organization. So from a communicator who was charged with driving not only the communications and change management. of the process for my own team, but also the entire [00:02:00] enterprise, I learned a ton and I think a couple of things that I've now brought to Golin in my current role in advising, different clients is obviously the tech is super important but equally, if not more important is the change management strategy that you're going to apply.

Okay. I think a lot of employees early on. We're talking about this notion of job loss. I think now the conversation in a good way has evolved to productivity and efficiency and a I is your. Co pilot in your journey and then the innovation that it's going to create that you can reinvest your time and higher value skills.

Will it change the way functions work from HR to finance to market incomes? Of course. But I think then the stuff that we used to spend a ton of time on now it's just gotten shorter and we can reinvest that time. Into new and different [00:03:00] things that will add value to the organization at that at the higher level and so helping An organization as complex as PWC and now with clients do that has been quite fascinating and the lesson learned that I've, taken away all along the way is focus on the tech, but equally, if not more, focus on the change management.

Eliot Mizrachi: Yeah, I, I want to double click into that if I could, because, you know, it's, I, I've heard it said, like an organization will spend, you know, 10 times as much on the kind of adopting of a tool than on the tool itself, the training and integration, all that kind of stuff. And you mentioned like at least two things of the change management, one being psychological, like.

Is this going to put me out of work, and needing people to understand how they fit in a company that's infused with AI. but the other piece is obviously all the kind of like technical, how do we build a tech stack that has all these capabilities and have the right policy framework. Can you talk about how you conceptualize what that change management journey should look like and how you [00:04:00] implemented it?

Megan Noel: Yeah, I think you have to take it in parts and pieces. you mentioned the policy I love that you did that I think first and foremost, not enough companies spend time on the responsible AI policy. It's really important to not only build trust with your employees, but build trust with your entire stakeholder group of how you are approaching AI, especially New regulations are starting to pop up across the country and across the world that policy and framework for how you will, mitigate risk management, how you will drive tech buying, approaches, but equally an important how you will infuse this and how you won't.

across your organization, especially for those organizations like a PWC or JP Morgan or many others that are handling confidential data on behalf of their clients. It's super important to have that policy right from the start. Then I think you have to look at what are the changes that are going to take place across the organization?

What is the technology implementation going to look like? What are the people and organizational changes in the ways of [00:05:00] working changes that you're going to want? And then ultimately, what are the goals that you want to come out of that? Not only hard KPIs of productivity, efficiency, changes in ways of working, but equally the, I would say the soft KPIs of how does this change how we interact with each other?

How do we, start to think about our jobs? differently. I started my career faxing press releases. Well certainly I'm not doing that now and it's been kind of fun mid career to have a total democratization of learning and learn alongside my juniors at the same time. Of of how A. I. Is going to change our job in the future, and I think every organization is going through that.

And I think each organization has to look at their business model and then make those decisions. themselves, but going along that entire journey is, is critical.

Another example I'll use on internal. And this goes [00:06:00] to scaling. when I was at PWC, 75, 000 people were a part of our employee base. They're not monolithic, right? They are sort of unique and have their own audience and employee personas.

We used AI to supercharge how we do internal newsletters. So instead of all 75, 000 people getting the same newsletter, we actually were able to do 75, 000 different newsletters powered by AI and technology. So Megan got her own newsletter on information that mattered to her. If Mike and Dan were at the organization, they would get their own and it was all done By technology and A. I. That empowered that custom newsletter. So it can be applied in so many different ways from strategy to execution to be able to bring to life.

Eliot Mizrachi: And there you have it, AI isn't just a tool, it's an opportunity for communicators to lead business transformation. As [00:07:00] Megan explained, successful AI strategies aren't just about technology, they're about changing the organization, and that's where communicators excel.

CCOs understand the complexities of aligning employees, building trust, and shaping strategy across the organization. AI adoption needs that same skill set.

Those who lean in now, who define how AI is integrated rather than waiting for it to be imposed, will ensure that their organizations and their communications function stays ahead of the curve.

This has been the new CCO Brief. I'm Eliot Mizrachi we'll see you next time.