In The Race Toward AI Integration, Classic Change Management Principles Deliver Results

Enterprise AI integration succeeds when leaders discard the hunt for shiny new playbooks in favor of change management fundamentals that have anchored technological shifts for decades. By treating AI as a force multiplier for existing goals, prioritizing transparency, and adopting a cohesive comms strategy, organizations can convert technological anxiety into a structured, mission-driven evolution.

For Sarah McCarthy, Global Head of Corporate Affairs at OneSchool Global, change management is a familiar challenge. An award-winning C-suite executive and one of Ragan’s Top Women in Communications, McCarthy has built her career on leading large-scale transformations. In her early career, she helped teams navigate what felt like a massive shift from Lotus Notes to more modern email platforms, so when AI showed up, she didn’t see a threat. She saw an opportunity that calls for established comms principles.

"AI is like any change project. How do you take people on the journey, show transparency, involve them early, and allow a bit of experimentation for the organization?" McCarthy believes that although there's more fear around AI than past technological shifts, success still comes from a disciplined focus on traditional frameworks.

• Leading with trust: Employees often feel that new technology is being forced upon them. According to McCarthy, leaders can build trust by being open about both progress and setbacks and involving team members with tried-and-true tools like focus groups and pulse surveys. "Good comms change principles are universal, regardless of what the initiative is."

• Start with why: Though it's tempting to get distracted by the technology and its features, McCarthy argues that the focus must remain on the core mission. "What is the outcome we're trying to achieve?" For OneSchool Global, for example, everything centers on the overarching objective to educate students and enable life-readiness. McCarthy says any organization can apply a similar objective-driven approach. "How does AI enable the outcome? That's the end goal."

That goal-centered playbook is put into practice daily by McCarthy's nimble 13-member team that supports more than 120 campuses across 20 countries. She says they thrive by treating AI as a force multiplier that helps them manage an ever-growing workload. "The goal is to use AI as an extension of our team to become more efficient," McCarthy states. "We are being asked to take on more, and this is how we do it."

She says data analysis is one area where AI has proven its time-saving abilities and shifted the team's focus to higher-level strategic work. Instead of simply parsing through social media comments, they can now analyze the trends and sentiment behind them. "Gone are days where you're reading every single social media comment. Using AI tools to synthesize data and identify trends, we can now produce a report in one hour that used to take two weeks."

• The governance imperative: McCarthy acknowledges that AI presents a novel set of safety complexities, which are paramount to properly address. Her experience in highly regulated fields has shaped her perspective on procedural safeguards. She explains that in environments where trust is the bedrock of the institution, strong governance is a prerequisite for survival. "I've spent most of my career in organizations where, if you don't have good governance, your organization doesn't exist."

• Guardrails for progress: Rather than slowing progress, McCarthy says clear rules create the confidence needed to move forward quickly. A solid framework acts like guardrails, preventing missteps and empowering teams to innovate without fear of causing organizational risk. "Governance isn't a brake on innovation. It's the structure that allows an organization to scale AI safely and confidently."

Too often, AI adoption is fragmented as each department adopts its own tools on its own timeline. McCarthy believes giving comms leader a seat at the table helps ensure a more streamlined, transparent rollout. "Comms leaders need to be in those early conversations to understand the AI roadmap and how it leads back to business strategy," she says. The human-centric storytelling that comms teams excel at can be an asset. "That's where our function can come in to weave the magic and tell the stories. We don't need to own the AI, but we've got to help support the organization in that journey."

She points out that regardless of business function, every single initiative has a comms element. By treating communication as an organizational through-line, these individual initiatives can be woven into a compelling, cohesive narrative across the organization. "When we have that early involvement, we can help connect the dots and figure out how all the different pieces come together."