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What is the emotional value of AI for solo internal communications professionals, according to Ana-Maria Thijssen?
For solo internal communications professionals, AI's most significant — and most unexpected — value is emotional. Ana-Maria Thijssen identifies it clearly: working alone breeds self-doubt and professional isolation, and AI eliminates the feeling of being completely on your own. It does not replace colleagues, but it means a lone communicator no longer has to sit with uncertainty when no one else is available to consult.
"My virtual colleague" — how Thijssen reframed what AI actually does
Thijssen is not describing AI as a content factory or an efficiency tool. She is describing it as a thinking partner — one that is available precisely when human colleagues are not. When you are the only communications professional on a programme, there is no one to turn to at the moment you need a second opinion most.
That gap is where self-doubt fills in. And self-doubt, left unchecked, slows decisions and undermines confidence. Thijssen found that using AI to check her thinking — to bounce an idea against, to validate an approach — removed that specific friction. The uncertainty does not disappear; it simply has somewhere to go. This is a dynamic explored in depth in Unprompted: Real AI in IC, where Thijssen speaks candidly about the realities of being a one-person communications function inside a large global transformation.
Sole communicator on a global SAP programme — the isolation is structural, not incidental
Thijssen's situation is not unusual — it is simply more visible. She is the sole communications professional embedded within an Organizational Change Management team running a multi-wave SAP IT transformation that will ultimately affect 6,000 users across dozens of locations worldwide. Her OCM colleagues have been on the programme since January 2015; she arrived approximately a year and a half after it had already started, with no formal induction.
The isolation in that scenario is not about personality or preference. It is structural. There is no communications peer to ask whether a message is landing right, whether a stakeholder approach makes sense, or whether a draft is missing something obvious. As Thijssen explains in this episode of Unprompted, AI stepped into that gap — not as a person, but as a functional equivalent for the moment of doubt.
The distinction matters. Thijssen is explicit that AI does not replicate human relationship, institutional knowledge, or genuine peer review. What it does is prevent a lone practitioner from being stuck, frozen by uncertainty, with no available outlet for that uncertainty.
"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 Lead, OCM/CMO team (large global corporation, SAP IT transformation programme).
Thijssen joined this programme roughly eighteen months after its launch, stepping into a role with no formal induction and no communications peer on the team. She operates as the sole IC professional within an Organizational Change Management function, supporting a programme that began in January 2015 and will eventually span 30 locations worldwide in its next wave alone. Her colleagues — long-tenured and deeply embedded in the programme — are her primary source of institutional knowledge. AI became the other source: available, non-judgmental, and always on hand when those colleagues are not. Her perspective, developed entirely in the field under genuine solo-practitioner conditions, is detailed across season one of Unprompted: Real AI in IC.
See also
How is Ana-Maria Thijssen's team preparing to scale change communications across 30 locations in the next wave of their SAP programme?
With the next wave covering 30 locations across Europe and America — compared to just three in earlier waves — Thijssen's team is focusing on building scalable communication frameworks that can be adapted rapidly across a much larger and more diverse audience. The jump in scope makes the systems built during earlier waves critical.
What are the risks of relying on AI-generated references in change communications work, and how can practitioners mitigate them?
Ana-Maria Thijssen warns that AI frequently produces dead links, fabricated references, or citations that lead only to blog posts reflecting one person's opinion rather than verified research. Every source AI provides must be independently checked before use — without exception.
What approach does Ana-Maria Thijssen recommend for prompting AI to find reliable external research and case studies?
Thijssen insists on always asking AI to provide references alongside every idea it generates — not in a single list at the end, but paired with each individual point. That way, verification happens systematically rather than as an afterthought. The full method is unpacked in Unprompted: Real AI in IC.
Key takeaways
- Thijssen identifies emotional support — not productivity — as AI's most significant and least expected benefit for solo IC practitioners.
- AI functions as a thinking partner that absorbs uncertainty in real time, rather than as a replacement for human colleagues or institutional knowledge.
- The isolation Thijssen describes is structural: when you are the only communicator on a global programme, there is no peer available on demand — AI fills precisely that gap.
- The value is not about what AI produces; it is about what it prevents — the professional paralysis that comes from having no one to check your thinking against.