By Monica Talan, Partner Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Meredith Klein for an upcoming episode of If I Only Had 10 Minutes, Season 3. When I asked her to choose one word that describes great communications, she said: trust. That answer stayed with me, especially after reading the new Burson Pulse 2026⁠ research. The study captures something many communicators are feeling right now: people are anxious, skeptical, and paying closer attention to what [...]

By Jane Randel, Partner For most of us, community came bundled with a job. You didn't have to seek it out. It arrived with your ID badge: people to eat lunch with, a shared problem to solve, a reason to be in the same place at the same time, and an identity reinforced every day. When you leave corporate life, you may look forward to saying goodbye to office politics, endless meetings, and a calendar [...]

What Executive Recruiters Say It Takes to Get Hired Today The people with perhaps the clearest view of the communications profession speak every day with CEOs, boards, and comms leaders about what organizations need next, but they aren't sitting inside companies. They’re executive recruiters from some of the industry's premier search firms, and they share at least one remarkably consistent perspective: the communications hiring market has fundamentally changed. The profession has never been more influential, [...]

Fractional leadership is no longer an emerging trend. It has become an accepted business strategy. Recent research suggests that approximately one-quarter of U.S. companies now utilize some form of fractional executive leadership, with organizations increasingly engaging experienced CFOs, CMOs, CHROs, CIOs and other C-suite talent on a part-time or project basis. The appeal is clear: access to seasoned executive expertise without the cost or long-term commitment of a full-time hire. Communications is beginning to follow [...]

By Chris Gee, AI Strategist Eighty percent of companies that cut staff to fund AI saw no improvement in returns. That's not a hot take from an AI skeptic, that's Gartner, surveying 350 global executives at companies with more than a billion dollars in revenue. The organizations that got ahead didn't reduce headcount. They gave their people capabilities they didn't have before. Here's why that should matter to everyone reading this newsletter: the same logic [...]

Communications teams are used to being brought in after a strategy is developed. The plan is set, the decisions have been made, and the tools have been selected. Communications’ job is to explain the change. In the AI era, that approach is becoming increasingly risky. As organizations race to deploy AI, many are treating it primarily as a technology initiative. The focus is on models, agents, automation, software licenses, and productivity gains. Yet some of [...]