Roundtable Recap: Serve up value when you get a seat at the table

Communicators need to be more ambitious about demonstrating their business value.

By Mike Prokopeak, director of Council learning, community and content

Ask a room of senior communicators to describe their work as a meal, and you get a crowded menu.

That was the opening exercise at a leadership roundtable held Oct. 13 during Ragan’s Internal Communications Conference at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Communications leaders gathered to talk about the value of their function amid widespread transformation, and how technology and shifting market forces are changing the nature of the work.

Mary C. Buhay, Ragan’s chief growth officer and head of the Communications Leadership Council, asked participants to pick a meal that captures the state of communications heading into 2027.

The answers ranged from old standbys like meat and potatoes, chef’s salad and shepherd’s pie to universal favorites like spaghetti and pizza. Others offered up ideas like a charcuterie board and Uncrustables. Salad was a popular pick because it can take many forms and is (usually) a healthy option.

There were different dishes but a shared recipe: versatility, layering and constant change, served in a format that has to be quick, portable and easy to digest.

From activity to impact

Whatever the dish, the ultimate test is how it tastes, and communicators are under pressure to deliver a satisfying result. As organizations plan for 2027, that means showing business impact, not just activity. And leaders want proof.

One participant from a science-driven organization said executives want evidence that comms is “moving the needle,” not a tally of what was produced. Some leaders even ask for raw survey data so they can analyze it themselves.

Trust is emerging as one of the most compelling ways to frame that impact. One communicator’s team asks the same set of trust-related questions in every quarterly town hall survey. Those questions tie directly to the CEO’s goals, and tracking them over time demonstrates progress.

Employee engagement data offers another lens. One participant noted that the division their team supports consistently outscores others on engagement and trust, a potential differentiator for the comms function. Another team focused heavily on its least-engaged audience and delivered a marked improvement year over year.

Risk mitigation is another source of value, though a harder one to quantify. One roundtable participant described a cybersecurity incident this year. The team made its case by showing that the news cycle moved on quickly and internal blowback stayed minimal.

Still, measuring the absence of a negative outcome remains difficult. Long-term relationship building, such as with policymakers, faces the same problem: Its value becomes obvious only when a crisis hits.

AI and the authenticity problem

From there, the conversation shifted to AI and how it is delivering real productivity gains while straining governance and raising new concerns about authenticity.

The technology could help solve the function’s measurement problem. One participant observed that comms is still treated as an art, while finance, HR and sales have standardized metrics. Comms also has to “serve everyone’s needle,” and those needles change with each new executive. AI could bring more science to the function and help translate comms’ value for each stakeholder at scale.

But the downsides are piling up. AI has made it easy for other business groups to write and send their own communications. The resulting noise makes priority messages harder to land, and one participant said some engagement metrics are dropping as a result.

Then there’s AI slop, which younger employees in particular reject. Some participants said AI detectors falsely flag human-written content, leading employees to question everything. Others tied the issue to a broader decline in institutional trust and critical thinking.

At one organization, employees ran a company communication through AI to find out “what it’s really saying” and came away with the wrong conclusions. The comms team is now testing messages through AI before sending them.

Some stakeholders now send AI-drafted content and expect comms to simply distribute it, which often creates more work, not less. Still, AI can work in communicators’ favor here, too. One team uses it to strip out corporate jargon and make messages feel more conversational.

Trust as the foundation

For all the talk of metrics and tools, participants agreed that trust is the foundation that makes every other comms effort possible. And small missteps can quickly become amplified.

Looking ahead, many hope 2027 brings fewer restructures and a more realistic “new normal” as the AI hype cycle settles, giving communicators a chance to rebuild belief and work with what they have.

The roundtable closed with a call to raise the bar. The profession, Buhay said, needs to be more ambitious in showing its value as a business asset.

The discussion made clear that shift is already underway, as comms leaders move from reporting outputs to demonstrating business outcomes. Trust, retention and crisis containment are emerging as the language of that value.

The ingredients are there. Now it’s up to communicators to show leaders what they bring to the table.

The next Leadership Roundtable will take place on Wed, Nov. 11 at Ragan's Future of Communications Conference. Interested in attending? Send an email to [email protected].