In the publishing industry, artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini are presenting challenges most of us did not anticipate. My friends and I have talked about these challenges and have brainstormed solutions. The difficulty of finding solutions is coupled with the likelihood that the solutions we arrive at probably will not be adopted quickly by the organizations that own and control publications.
Organizations, especially larger ones, are known to be slow to change and adapt. There are bureaucratic approval processes to go through and then budgetary approvals that also must be obtained before change can be implemented.
“The Future is Happening, Don’t Wait to Respond” Messaging
In publishing, AI tools mean people no longer need to visit our Websites to get information we and our competitors create. When I have a question, I go to ChatGPT for the response. I know that within seconds, I will be presented with detailed information that is summarized from multiple sources, with no need for me to sift through search listings and then visit numerous Websites.
Publication Websites typically sell advertising based on site traffic, such as the number of page views. If people no longer need to visit your site to get the information they need, how will online publications remain relevant to advertisers and continue to attract visits?
A corporate culture that is not future-focused would have an executive who would say in response: “Those are great observations as we move forward. We’re not there yet. Site visit metrics are still working for us and people still find reasons to visit us, even if our numbers (coincidentally?) are down this year. However, we don’t know how this is going to evolve yet. Let’s watch this over the next couple of years, and then when we eventually do a site redesign, we can consider specific changes we might want to make.”
The wait-and-see, cautious mode is understandable but may result in missed opportunities or even a publication going out of business before it has time to change.
A workforce that has been trained to be future-focused would have an executive who would say: “You know, those are great points. I’m going to call a meeting with our Web development team and bring up these points you’ve raised. I’d like you to be in the meeting with us, so you can explain your concerns and the solutions you are proposing.”
Working Together to Facilitate Multifaceted Change
In the publishing world, it’s still common for e-newsletters and other communications to be sent via e-mail. The problem? People increasingly are moving from having to open and look through their e-mail for messages to receiving messages in the form of alerts on their phone.
Now what happens if all your advertising has been sold via e-newsletters? An executive who is not future-focused might say: “Well, that’s a moot point. Whether or not people prefer to receive messages with links to our articles via e-mail or as alerts on their phones, we have sold advertising embedded in our e-mailed newsletters.”
A leader who has been trained to be future-focused would say: “Well, that’s true. Like most people, I see the messages sent to my phone much faster than I see anything sent to my e-mail. I also receive so many e-mail messages that I often never open the e-newsletters I receive. I just delete them en masse. We need to change our content delivery approach to keep pace with the way our readers live their lives. Let’s meet with both the IT team and the advertising sales team to find out what would be required technologically to deliver our content as alerts or messages to people’s phones and how our advertising opportunities would need to change.”
It Starts with Culture
There is a tendency in organizations that are notoriously slow to respond to market changes to keep quiet. You’re in a meeting ostensibly to discuss the future, but you know you’ve been partially gagged—that truly future-focused ideas will not be received well, and you may even be made to feel like an unrealistic fool for raising questions.
A company with a culture that is focused on the future would have meetings in which leaders themselves pose questions about how the business will operate in the future even if they, themselves, don’t know the answers to those questions. They would ask those questions precisely because they don’t know the answers.
For example, a leader trained to be future focused might say in a meeting: “AI has changed the way I personally am searching for information and finding resources. How does our Website need to change? What AI technologies or tools can we update our site to incorporate? We’re early in this evolution, but there’s no doubt it’s already affecting us. I’d like each of you over the next week to put together a few ideas for ways we can make our own site more in line with AI tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini, so people get an experience on our site that is more like what they are quickly coming to expect.”
A well-trained leader knows that even when a new technology, and way of living, has just arrived, that it’s swiftly on the way to becoming just the way things are done now.
Do you train your employees to be truly future focused?