Responsible AI Culture Still Eats Strategy for Breakfast

June 17, 2025

Even the best strategy will fail without a Responsible AI culture that starts at the top. From real-time feedback loops to Board members bringing AI tools into meetings, leadership must model transparency and trust in how these tools are used.

I just wrapped a great week at the IABC World Conference in Vancouver, where I had the chance to engage with an incredible community of business strategists, CEOs and communicators from around the world. AI was the hot topic – but not in the way you might expect.

Here are five takeaways that stuck with me and may help shape how you lead your organization through the next wave of transformation:

1. Communicators are leaning in.
The energy around AI wasn’t just hype. It was grounded in curiosity, creativity, and a genuine willingness to experiment. What I saw was a profession showing a real growth mindset – and a readiness to evolve with renewed tech intensity.

If you think marketing and communications roles are less technical and dragging their feet on AI, think again.

2. Real-time feedback loops are changing the way audiences engage.
During my sessions, I use Slido to check in with the audience – live polling, open Q&A, the works. With 98% participation at IABC, the message was clear: people want to be part of the conversation, not just passive recipients. That feedback helped me adjust in the moment and made the session more relevant to where the audience actually was.

Leaders: if you’re not building two-way communication into your change efforts, you’re missing a huge opportunity.

3. Responsible AI culture eats strategy for breakfast.
A benefit of the interactive polling was grounding on Responsible AI policy-setting in organizations. 78% of employees using AI outside the office are bringing those tools into the office. Plenty of organizations have drafted AI policies focused on security, compliance, and data privacy. But too many are still missing the mark when it comes to culture.

Another scenario that’s becoming alarmingly common: sales teams using tools like Otter.ai to record calls—without notifying the customer. In states with two-party or all-party consent laws, that’s not just a policy oversight—it could be a violation of wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, carrying serious civil and criminal consequences.

This kind of misstep has triggered more than a scramble for technical guardrails. It’s a wake-up call for cultural and behavioral change.

In fact, two CEOs recently told me their own Board members have started bringing unauthorized AI notetaking tools into meetings. If leadership isn’t modeling responsible use, how can we expect teams to follow suit?

If Responsible AI doesn’t start at the top, your policies will be paper-thin. Culture, as always, wins.

4. Show, don’t just tell.
The best reactions came not from frameworks or theory, but from live demos and “day in the life” workflows. Big thanks to my friend and Microsoft VP Steve Clayton – his storytelling brought the room to life and set up some fantastic real-world examples. (If you’re not already reading his The Friday Thing on LinkedIn, fix that.)

When you’re evangelizing AI or any emerging tech – lead with the practical, not just the promise.

5. The em dash (—) IS the new AI tell.
One of the liveliest moments? My throwaway comment about how overused the em dash (—) is in AI-generated writing as the new tell that something was generated, even if you tell it to stop using emojis (the first tell).
It turns out, not many people know how to type it manually:

Mac: Shift + Option + Hyphen (-)
Windows: Alt + 0151 (numeric keypad)
Most modern word processors: Two hyphens (--) often autocorrect to an em dash.

It’s a fun litmus test: if a draft is littered with perfectly placed em dashes, ask yourself… was this actually written by a human?

What are your AI tells?
Drop me a note or connect on LinkedIn – I’d love to hear what signs tip you off that something was written (or helped) by AI.