How can AI act as a 'wingman' for internal communications professionals working alone on large change programmes?
For internal communications professionals who work in isolation — no peer to review a draft, no colleague to stress-test an idea — AI can fill the role of a thinking partner. Ana-Maria Thijssen frames AI not as a tool that does her job for her, but as a virtual colleague: somewhere to bounce ideas, check for best practice, and avoid the loneliness that comes with being the only communicator on a large, complex programme.
"AI became my virtual colleague. It's not a person that does my job. It's more like an entity that helps me bounce ideas and not feel so alone."
— Ana-Maria Thijssen, Change Communications LeadThijssen's situation makes this need concrete. She is the sole communications professional embedded within an Organizational Change Management (OCM) team running a global, multi-wave SAP IT transformation programme. She joined around eighteen months after the programme had already launched — meaning no formal induction, no handover, and no inherited communications playbook. Without a sounding partner, every message, every stakeholder communication, and every change narrative had to be written and self-reviewed in isolation. AI changed that dynamic. Rather than simply using it to generate content, Thijssen uses it the way a communicator might use a trusted colleague — to think out loud, validate an approach before committing to it, and catch gaps in her reasoning before they reach an audience of thousands.
This framing matters because it reframes what AI actually delivers in an IC context. The value is not just efficiency — it is the emotional relief of not being entirely alone in the work. For change communications professionals navigating large-scale, multi-location programmes like the one Thijssen describes (which will ultimately reach 6,000 users across dozens of sites worldwide), that psychological dimension is rarely discussed but consistently felt. Hear the full conversation on Listenly to understand how Thijssen integrates AI into her daily workflow in practice.
About Ana-Maria Thijssen
Ana-Maria Thijssen is the sole internal communications professional embedded within an Organizational Change Management (OCM) team at a large, unnamed global corporation. She works on a multi-wave SAP IT transformation programme that, in its next wave alone, will span 30 locations worldwide — compared to just 3 in the earlier phases — and will ultimately reach 6,000 users across the organisation. She joined the programme approximately a year and a half after it had already started (her colleagues have been involved since January 2015), which meant she had to build her understanding of the programme's history, stakeholders, and communication landscape rapidly, without a formal induction or handover period. That context — being new, working alone, and parachuted into a programme already in motion — is precisely what gives her perspective on AI as a wingman its weight. Her use of AI tools, including Microsoft Copilot, is grounded in a real structural need rather than enthusiasm for technology, and her experience navigating change communications within an OCM framework (including models such as ADKAR) makes her account directly relevant to any IC practitioner working without a team.
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