What's the best way to use AI for strategic work in internal communications?
According to Erik Sebok, the most effective approach is to bring AI in at the very start of the strategic process — and to feed it context progressively. That means layering in business strategies, transcripts, employee feedback, and leadership inputs step by step, rather than dumping everything in at once. This incremental method lets you test directions, challenge your own assumptions, and correct course in real time.
The logic is simple: treating AI as a thinking partner from day one changes the quality of the output. Instead of asking it to polish a finished draft, you invite it into the messy, uncertain early stages where strategic choices are actually made. Breaking the work into small steps means each prompt builds on the last, and the conversation deepens as more context accumulates.
Sebok is candid that this took time to develop. Over nearly two years, his prompts grew from two lines to four or five hundred words — a reflection of how much richer his context-setting has become. He sometimes starts these sessions as early as 5 a.m., pointing to the simple fact that a well-configured AI is available whenever the thinking needs to happen. The practical payoff is significant: revision rounds on a single leadership message dropped from around 20 to roughly 1. You can hear the full conversation on Listenly.
"I don't want to do the same old things just faster. I want to do a better job. Time saving is not really on my agenda — I don't think I've saved a single minute using AI because I just put everything back into the work."— Erik Sebok, Unprompted: Real AI in IC · S01 EP3
Erik Sebok has spent approximately 14 years working in internal communications, with a consistent focus on strategy, leadership communication, content, and helping organisations navigate change. His work sits at the intersection of what organisations need to say and how employees actually receive it — a space where clarity and trust are built or lost.
For nearly two years, he has dedicated a significant portion of his professional practice to exploring what it really means to use AI strategically — not as a shortcut, but as a genuine thinking partner embedded in the work from the beginning. That means moving well beyond content generation into areas like strategic framing, challenge and iteration, and building richer, more contextualised prompts over time.
He is well known on LinkedIn for sharing detailed, real-world case studies drawn directly from his own day-to-day practice — making his perspective especially valuable for internal comms professionals trying to move beyond surface-level AI experimentation.