Working in Internal comms professionals can sometimes feel like Groundhog Day — living the same year over and over again.
New tools, new platforms, same problems.
That sense of déjà vu is what inspired our new podcast, The Stuck Record. It’s designed to bring the ideas behind our upcoming book, People-First Internal Communication, off the page and into conversation - exploring what it really means to work in IC today: the meaningful, the messy, and the mildly absurd.
Our first episode, Track 1: How Did We Get Stuck?, sets the scene. We explore how internal communication began, as a genuinely people-first discipline, grounded in connection and trust. And how over time it drifted towards process, control, and content overload.
Despite all our digital progress, the same core frustrations persist: lack of influence, disengagement, and the ongoing struggle to make communication matter.
We ask some challenging questions:
- If AI can handle the mechanics of communication, what’s left for us?
- Have we become so focused on outputs that we’ve lost sight of impact?
Of course, The Stuck Record isn’t all theory. Each episode includes B-Side Banter — a light-hearted space where we share the strange and sometimes hilarious stories that every comms professional has tucked away.
In Track 1, I shared my Pink Panther story - entire buildings painted pink, cardboard cut-outs everywhere, themed everything — a creative spectacle that left me wondering what it all achieved.
Lee shared his Who Moved My Cheese conference story, complete with cheese props (yes, really).
They made us laugh, but they also highlighted a truth: in IC, it’s easy to mistake movement for progress.
