The Strategic No: Earning Trust and Driving Impact in Internal Comms

00:00:00: In my opinion, AI is going to be the most important trend

00:00:03: In my opinion, AI is going to be the most important trend

00:00:04: because we are going to change how we are working today.

00:00:09: Not only for communicators, for the rest of the people, but in our case,

00:00:12: I think that in less than five years, we are not going to do what we are

00:00:18: doing today.

00:00:19: I'm sure that in less than five years,

00:00:22: we are going to change our tasks,

00:00:25: we are going to change our projects,

00:00:27: and we are going to change the way we are working right now.

00:00:28: and we are going to change the way we are working right now.

00:00:30: and we are going to change the way we are working right now.

00:00:31: and we are going to change the way we are working right now.

00:00:39: Hi, guys and welcome to You've Got Comms, the podcast

00:00:42: for internal communicators shaping the future of work.

00:00:46: I'm Emma Fischer, and today

00:00:47: we're going global.

00:00:49: I'm so excited to sit down with my guest

00:00:51: today, María Luisa García Pérez,

00:00:54: Global Internal Communications General Manager at Cosentino.

00:00:58: And María Luisa, you are an overall

00:01:01: communications powerhouse.

00:01:03: So, for those of you who don't know, for over 20 years,

00:01:06: she's built a global IC function from the ground up, and that's spanning

00:01:10: employees across North America, Latin America, Europe, and beyond.

00:01:16: Although Cosentino has over 6,000 employees, María Luisa has grown

00:01:20: the internal comms function from a group of just three

00:01:24: to an entire team of operators.

00:01:27: She's a true pioneer in transforming internal communication

00:01:30: into a strategic driver of culture, engagement, and business success.

00:01:36: So, if you ever felt like

00:01:37: you are not being taken seriously as an internal communicator,

00:01:41: or you're being treated as though you are a service function, this is your episode

00:01:46: and guide to being taken seriously as a strategic partner.

00:01:51: María Luisa, welcome to the show.

00:01:52: We're so happy to have you on today.

00:01:55: Hello. How are you?

00:01:57: Thank you for the invitation.

00:01:58: I am so happy to stay here today, too.

00:02:02: To get started,

00:02:03: you've led the internal comms function at Cosentino for over two decades.

00:02:08: So, in the past 20 years, what do you think is the biggest shift

00:02:12: you've seen in how organizations value internal comms

00:02:15: today compared to when you first got started?

00:02:18: Okay, good question.

00:02:19: I think that over the last 20 years, I've been working very differently.

00:02:25: And at the beginning, I only had to focus on newsletters and

00:02:30: postings and that's all.

00:02:32: And now, I'm focused on the strategy of the company.

00:02:35: So, I have changed my role from the beginning.

00:02:39: And I was, at the beginning, only an operative person, taking care of

00:02:44: sending comms and building the strategy, but it was quite easy.

00:02:51: And now, in a simple way,

00:02:55: now I'm focused on the real strategy of the company

00:02:58: and I'm focused on the more important objectives of the company.

00:03:03: So, I think that this is the most important change.

00:03:06: Of course, the tools that I have used

00:03:09: over the time, over the last 20 years.

00:03:12: At the beginning, I didn't have any professional tool

00:03:16: for intranet, for mailing, or for TV screens.

00:03:20: And now, I have very professional partners that help me

00:03:25: with the tools and that help me with the strategy of my company.

00:03:30: Do you think, as you guys have expanded across regions,

00:03:32: that has had you adapt your strategy at all?

00:03:36: Yes. I think that we have adapted

00:03:39: our strategy over the regions.

00:03:42: And we have taken care of the strategy from the beginning.

00:03:46: And we have personalized every single campaign

00:03:51: and every single comms link to the strategy of the company.

00:03:56: And of course, we take care of the segmentation of our content

00:04:02: in order to reach our employees and to reach our population.

00:04:08: A question that comes up — I've heard before — is, how far in advance do you plan?

00:04:12: Do you have a roadmap for two years, three years, five years in advance as well?

00:04:17: In this case, I have a roadmap for one year

00:04:21: because my company is growing very fast,

00:04:24: and we need to check out the strategy every single year.

00:04:29: So, every single year, or at the end of each year,

00:04:32: I have a meeting with the different vice presidents and with the executive team,

00:04:38: mainly to set up the priorities for the coming year.

00:04:43: That's so important.

00:04:44: So, I know that imagine that next year, 2026,

00:04:49: I'm going to have like four or five priorities

00:04:52: because those priorities are linked to the business,

00:04:56: and those are the most important things to my business.

00:05:00: So, I try to set up my internal comms plan, and all my actions

00:05:06: and all my campaigns should be linked to those topics or to those strategies.

00:05:12: I think that that's the most important thing, to plan

00:05:16: every single campaign and to know what's going on

00:05:20: and to have time for each action, activity, or comms.

00:05:25: That's so important.

00:05:27: And I guess when everything is linked back to a specific objective, that makes . . .

00:05:30: I know this is the biggest challenge in internal comms is measurement.

00:05:35: So, I think that makes it pretty clean.

00:05:37: When you want to prove exactly why you're doing something,

00:05:39: you can immediately be like, "I'm doing this,

00:05:41: and then it's tied to this objective."

00:05:44: Exactly.

00:05:45: I used to measure every single channel because, for me,

00:05:49: the KPIs are so important.

00:05:51: So, if I have, for example, the newsletters, the email,

00:05:55: an intranet, or even if I'm trying to organize a

00:06:00: breakfast with managers, or with teams, a town hall,

00:06:04: I used to find out the main KPIs and the main numbers and figures

00:06:11: in order to see if my actions

00:06:14: have impact on the business.

00:06:17: So, if I decide to send out a campaign or an internal comms,

00:06:22: I define with the project manager, or if I'm

00:06:26: the project manager, I decide which KPIs are going to

00:06:31: say the

00:06:31: success of my campaign. Imagine that

00:06:36: I'm sending a campaign, for example, about open job positions

00:06:40: internally, and then a KPI for success.

00:06:44: It could be the number of people

00:06:46: who apply to the different job positions.

00:06:49: This is an example.

00:06:51: And I used to mix different KPIs,

00:06:55: for example, numbers, figures, and opinions.

00:06:59: In my opinion, I think that it's so important to have

00:07:01: a mix of KPIs and statistics, and

00:07:06: the perfect mix, it could be numbers,

00:07:10: and of course, it could be the opinion of your community.

00:07:15: I love that.

00:07:17: Do you have any specific tools or platforms

00:07:19: that have made the biggest difference in creating that two-way

00:07:22: dialogue between the internal comms team and the community?

00:07:26: Because I know you guys have reached an open rate, I believe, of 75%,

00:07:29: which I think a lot of companies would love to emulate that.

00:07:34: Exactly.

00:07:35: For example, I have a platform for emailing, and I'm so happy, of course.

00:07:40: And the platform for email reach, I could see the number of opens.

00:07:45: That's so important.

00:07:47: And of course, the engagement of my community,

00:07:51: because for every single comms or newsletter,

00:07:54: I insert emojis,

00:07:57: and I insert a survey, and then I analyze the survey.

00:08:01: And within the survey, I have the opinion of the community

00:08:05: related to this campaign. And of course,

00:08:08: sometimes, if I'm sending different campaigns, for example,

00:08:14: Environmental Week or the Health and Safety Week,

00:08:17: I used to pick up or select 80 people.

00:08:22: And then I send out

00:08:25: a survey to those 80 people

00:08:28: around the world from different roles

00:08:30: in order to see their opinions, their comments,

00:08:34: and to know if they participate in the campaigns.

00:08:38: So, that's so important and I think that those feedbacks are so

00:08:43: important for me as a project manager and as an internal comms responsible.

00:08:49: And do you see that a lot of people respond to the surveys?

00:08:52: Not the 80 people, of course, but maybe

00:08:55: half of the population, and with half of the population,

00:08:59: with 40 and 50 people, for me it's enough because it's like a sample.

00:09:05: Of course, it's difficult to have the whole universe,

00:09:09: the whole team, but a sample, it could be like the sample

00:09:12: of okay, for my numbers, and this is the opinion of 40 people,

00:09:18: and this is a sample of, a representation of the company.

00:09:24: When I finish a campaign,

00:09:26: When I finish a campaign,

00:09:26: I used to prepare a PowerPoint

00:09:29: or any document with the main KPIs,

00:09:32: including the survey, including the results of the survey.

00:09:38: So, imagine that I'm launching a campaign about a new launch product.

00:09:43: Then I used to

00:09:46: specify every single action or comms, or impact.

00:09:51: And then I include the KPIs from my email platform,

00:09:56: and I include the KPIs

00:09:59: from the community, their opinions.

00:10:03: I think if you get 50% responding to a survey, that's a great way.

00:10:06: And if you overestimate how many people you send to, that's

00:10:09: a really good way to get a solid sample size.

00:10:11: Yes.

00:10:13: Now, as we move on,

00:10:15: there is something I actually wrote down last week when the two of us talked.

00:10:19: And you said, "In less than one year,

00:10:22: all of us are going to use agents in our personal lives, too."

00:10:27: So, now, as we dive into AI a little bit,

00:10:30: how does using agentic AI give you a competitive advantage,

00:10:34: and what advice would you have for helping other communicators leverage the tools?

00:10:40: Okay, I think that

00:10:41: AI is so important for a professional,

00:10:44: even if you are in the communication field

00:10:48: or in another kind of work.

00:10:52: But in my opinion, AI is going to be the future for all of us,

00:10:56: and we should use it as an important tool for us.

00:11:01: So, agents are going to be so important, or are so important,

00:11:05: because if you need to work in repetitive tasks,

00:11:11: or if you want to improve, for example,

00:11:14: your content, your policy, your strategy,

00:11:17: maybe you could create an agent for each single task,

00:11:21: and you are going to multiply your productivity.

00:11:25: So, in my opinion, I think that you need to take advantage of AI.

00:11:30: And for us, it should be as a tool,

00:11:34: for example, Photoshop or PowerPoint, or other

00:11:39: type of

00:11:39: tools that we could find in the market.

00:11:42: I think that with the agents,

00:11:45: you will be able to reach more employees and to be more productive,

00:11:52: and of course, to prepare all your work

00:11:56: with a lot of efficiency and to reach more projects.

00:12:01: So, in my opinion, we should face AI

00:12:05: as the best partner that we could have.

00:12:09: They are not going to replace us, I think,

00:12:13: because finally, you need to implement, you need to be the leader of your company,

00:12:19: you need to lead your campaigns, your projects,

00:12:24: and AI is going to help you with all of this.

00:12:29: I think that's absolutely the mindset that we need to embrace.

00:12:32: And one that you mentioned is reaching every employee,

00:12:35: but there are definitely times when that's not the goal.

00:12:38: If you have a company of 6,000 people, like you guys do at Cosentino,

00:12:43: not every message belongs with every department.

00:12:47: So, how do you personalize your messages to avoid that

00:12:50: message overload that a lot of people . . .

00:12:52: I know that leads to disengagement?

00:12:55: This is a good question.

00:12:57: For example, I used to reduce the number of employees

00:13:02: per comms or per action.

00:13:05: In this case, I used to personalize

00:13:08: every single comms or every single campaign.

00:13:11: And for example, if my universe is 6,000 people,

00:13:12: And for example, if my universe is 6,000 people,

00:13:16: I don't send any comms to the whole company,

00:13:18: because I prefer to send it by market

00:13:21: and to adapt the message, the content, the photos, and everything,

00:13:26: or I prefer to send it by role, for example.

00:13:30: And if it's a global campaign, of course,

00:13:33: I take into consideration the linguistic differences.

00:13:37: And of course, I take into consideration different aspects.

00:13:41: But in my opinion, I think that you need to know your

00:13:46: employees, your user persona.

00:13:48: That's so important.

00:13:50: If you know which kind of people or

00:13:53: which kind of employees do you have within your company,

00:13:57: you will be able to personalize the messages to them.

00:14:01: So, if I have, for example, people between 30 and 40 years,

00:14:05: or between 30 and 50 years, I need to reach those employees.

00:14:11: I need to use a different language and a different channel, too,

00:14:15: because maybe, as you may know, a lot of people, they don't want to read.

00:14:19: So, if they don't want to read, I need to change my strategy

00:14:23: and I need to use videos rather than letters or newsletters.

00:14:28: So, in my opinion, I think that you need to personalize your content to reach them.

00:14:34: And of course, you need to know who is your user persona.

00:14:39: I really like that, because it also reminded me of something

00:14:42: we said last week.

00:14:44: I think this is part of the reason why you've been so successful,

00:14:47: because one thing I really admired

00:14:48: about you is, I think, your confidence in delivering messages.

00:14:52: So, how do you decide when you have to say no to somebody?

00:14:55: Because I know a lot of people maybe misunderstand

00:14:59: the role of an internal communicator, and they'll come to

00:15:00: you and be like, "Send this message, send this message." How do you decide

00:15:04: when you have to say no, and then you make that polite but also firm?

00:15:11: I think that this is a wonderful question, too, because

00:15:15: because I used to say no thousands of times. Why?

00:15:19: Because I have a clear strategy within the company

00:15:23: and I know my priorities.

00:15:26: And my priorities are linked to the business.

00:15:29: So, if I have, I don't know, 20, 30 requests and they are not linked

00:15:35: to the business objectives, I used to say no and I used to explain then why.

00:15:40: I think that the most important thing is to say no

00:15:43: and to explain then why, they will understand that.

00:15:47: And of course, to try to explain then

00:15:50: a solution or to try to find a solution for them.

00:15:53: Imagine that you can't assume

00:15:56: everything, every single comms within the company.

00:15:59: This is my case. If I have

00:16:03: 100 departments, for example, or 80 departments,

00:16:07: I can't offer my service to the whole team

00:16:10: because we are a small team and we can't reach all of them.

00:16:15: So, I think that the most important thing is to clarify the rules,

00:16:20: to set up the rules, and to establish a policy.

00:16:24: And then, within the policy, you could say, "Okay, if you want

00:16:29: that I send out these comms, you need to wait for,

00:16:32: imagine, 10 days or 15 days." And if they say no,

00:16:36: you could say, "Okay,

00:16:37: this is the policy, I'm so sorry, but those are the priorities for the company,

00:16:41: and this is the option that I could offer you.

00:16:45: Maybe you could do it, following those guidelines."

00:16:49: And I think that this is the key to set up your priorities and to have the support

00:16:55: from your managers and, of course, to give them or to offer them a solution.

00:17:02: This leads

00:17:03: really well into the next question because what you're saying is internal

00:17:06: comms is not a service department, it's a strategic department.

00:17:11: But unfortunately, that's not always what people have the perception of.

00:17:16: What advice would you give to other communicators

00:17:18: who are trying to build trust with their executive team?

00:17:23: I think that the most important thing is

00:17:25: to have meetings with the executive team or with the directors or with the leaders

00:17:32: and to ask them about their needs

00:17:36: related to internal comms and to take notes of everything

00:17:40: and to clarify that you are not going to be able to reach

00:17:45: every single action or every single step,

00:17:48: but of course, to set up a strategy.

00:17:53: Follow those recommendations.

00:17:56: So, in my opinion, I think that you could transform your internal comms department

00:18:01: from an operative department to a more strategic department

00:18:06: if you focus on the strategy of the company

00:18:10: and if you focus on the strategy of the rest of the departments.

00:18:15: But you need to have meetings with the leaders,

00:18:19: with the vice presidents or directors,

00:18:22: and you need to, for example, establish

00:18:26: two or three priorities for each department,

00:18:29: and then you need to create a roadmap

00:18:32: following those recommendations.

00:18:35: And you need

00:18:37: to decide

00:18:38: what you are going to achieve or what you are going to focus on the coming year

00:18:43: because, of course, everything is going to be impossible.

00:18:47: So, if everything is going to be impossible,

00:18:50: you need to be smart and you need to focus on the real

00:18:56: strategy of the company.

00:18:58: I think that this is the best way to show up

00:19:01: your value within the company.

00:19:04: I really like that because it helps you come prepared

00:19:07: so that you don't risk being caught off guard.

00:19:10: Yes, exactly.

00:19:12: Now, as we start to wind things down,

00:19:15: I would love to ask you a few rapid-fire questions.

00:19:18: So, these are questions we haven't discussed,

00:19:20: but you can just give me a quick response, whatever comes to you.

00:19:24: The first one is, when it comes to work, what is one app or software

00:19:29: that you just could not live without?

00:19:33: I think that I couldn't live without my planner, for example,

00:19:40: because I plan everything, and for me,

00:19:43: to be an organized person is so important.

00:19:46: And I couldn't live without my agenda and my personal planner

00:19:51: or professional planner because it's so important to know

00:19:55: what's going on next and to set up your daily tasks and your priorities.

00:20:01: I totally agree with you on this one.

00:20:02: I really like that answer.

00:20:04: Do you have a book or a podcast that you would

00:20:07: recommend to your fellow communicators?

00:20:09: Yes.

00:20:11: I don't know if it's in English yet, but maybe we are going to translate it.

00:20:16: Here we have

00:20:19: an association of directors,

00:20:21: and we just wrote a book

00:20:24: about internal comms with a lot of recommendations.

00:20:28: I'm going to speak with the association because I would like to translate

00:20:32: the book.

00:20:32: And yes, this is a book that we published two months ago.

00:20:38: I wrote two articles,

00:20:41: one about how to measure internal comms and another one,

00:20:45: it was about the latest trends

00:20:49: within internal comms, including AI.

00:20:52: and it could be a very good book to read.

00:20:56: And yes, I think that it's in Spanish, but

00:21:00: I would like to speak with the association in order to translate it.

00:21:05: Awesome.

00:21:06: We can link all of that in the show notes.

00:21:08: At least one of the good things about all the technologies these days is

00:21:11: it also does help you access other languages

00:21:14: because there's a lot of tools for translation.

00:21:17: I will link the book, and yes, maybe it could be interesting for them.

00:21:22: And about podcasts, I used to listen

00:21:25: to thousands of podcasts.

00:21:28: For example, from Staffbase, your podcast,

00:21:31: and from a lot of resources, so, from a lot of places.

00:21:35: So, I love podcasts and I used to listen

00:21:38: to podcasts when I'm driving.

00:21:41: Of course, I used to listen to TED Talks and a lot of content.

00:21:46: So, I consume a lot of content.

00:21:48: It could be books or it could be podcasts because I think that this is the best way

00:21:54: to learn new things and to improve yourself.

00:21:58: Yeah, I love audiobooks personally.

00:22:00: I have just one more quick question.

00:22:02: I think this actually

00:22:03: might be hard for you because you've been in this position for 20 years,

00:22:07: but if you weren't in communications, what would you be doing today?

00:22:12: I think that I would be working

00:22:15: as a teacher, as an English teacher, for example,

00:22:18: because I love English, I love teaching things, and

00:22:23: of course, I love my job, but I would love to teach, too.

00:22:28: I think that it could be a wonderful job for me.

00:22:32: I think that makes sense because an internal communicator is also an educator.

00:22:35: Exactly, yes.

00:22:38: I'm teaching, training, and helping people.

00:22:41: This is my role, and this is part of my

00:22:47: core values.

00:22:49: I have just one more question, and this might be actually

00:22:52: in relation to what you were saying.

00:22:54: I saw that you've recently contributed

00:22:56: to the Internal Communications White Paper 2025.

00:22:59: Maybe that was the trends paper you were speaking about.

00:23:02: So, what trends do you believe are going to most shape

00:23:06: our profession in the next few years?

00:23:10: Of course, as you could guess, it's going to be AI.

00:23:14: In my opinion, AI is going to be the most important trend

00:23:19: because we are going to change how we are working today.

00:23:24: Not only for communicators, for the rest of the people, but in our case,

00:23:28: I think that in less than five years, we are not going to do what we are

00:23:35: doing today.

00:23:36: doing today.

00:23:36: I'm sure that in less than five years,

00:23:39: we are going to change our tasks,

00:23:42: we are going to change our projects,

00:23:45: and we are going to change the way we are working right now.

00:23:50: So, in my opinion, this is my personal opinion,

00:23:54: we need to elevate our role.

00:23:56: We need to be more creative

00:24:00: because the repetitive tasks

00:24:03: are going to be done by AI.

00:24:05: If you want to work in internal comms

00:24:08: or in a business, or

00:24:12: in another company, you need to be more creative.

00:24:16: And you need to add the value

00:24:19: that the AI couldn't do.

00:24:22: So, I think that we need to be open-minded,

00:24:26: and we need to change the way

00:24:29: that we are working today because it's a reality.

00:24:34: This is my opinion.

00:24:35: Well, I think the advice you gave today certainly helps people prepare themselves

00:24:40: and show the strategic side of comms, and that really helps

00:24:43: clarify and differentiate why we need humans as well.

00:24:46: So, thank you so much for the talk today,

00:24:49: María Luisa, we really appreciated having you on.

00:24:52: Thank you for your time.

00:24:54: I think that it was a wonderful talk.

00:24:57: And see you soon. Thank you for your time.

00:25:00: Thank you, guys.

00:25:01: That was You've Got Comms.

00:25:02: We hope to see you next time.