Strategic advisory for communications leaders

Your comms function is
producing more than ever.
Leaders still don't know
what's working.

Signal Intent redesigns how large organizations build, operate, and measure their communications function — for an AI-driven world.

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Experience inside
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Our conviction

Employee communications will change more in the next three years than it has in the last thirty.

The organizations that navigate this well won't get there by accident. They'll get there because someone deliberately redesigned how their communications function works — before the pressure made it unavoidable.

Who we work with

Senior leaders inside large,
complex organizations.

Typically the people responsible for making communications functions work at scale — and being asked to prove it.

Heads of Internal or Employee Communications

You're being asked to prove impact in a language your current metrics don't speak. Open rates and impressions don't tell you whether understanding changed, whether the right people acted, or whether leadership trust improved.

  • You know the value is there. The problem is making it visible and defensible to the people who control your resources.
  • You've introduced AI into your team's workflow, but you haven't redesigned how the team works around it.
HR, People, and Digital Workplace Leaders

You're accountable for how AI integrates into how people work — safely, ethically, and in ways that don't create more confusion than they resolve. The technology is moving faster than the governance.

  • You need an operating model that answers "how do humans and AI work together here" before someone above you asks.
  • Your channels have multiplied. No one is governing them. You're not sure anyone could.
C-Suite and Senior Executives

You're receiving more reporting than ever and trusting less of it. The dashboards show activity. They don't tell you what employees actually believe, where confusion is concentrated, or whether your communications are moving people toward the decisions you need them to make.

  • You want someone who can read the system and tell you what's actually happening.
  • You're getting more dashboards and reports. You trust them less every quarter.

"A global technology firm came to us unable to explain to their leaders why their communications weren't shifting manager behavior. Twelve weeks later they had a measurement model that could."

Signal Intent, in practice

The problem we solve

Most large organizations are generating more internal communications than at any point in their history. And most communications leaders still can't answer the question their CEOs are asking:

"Is it working?"

The gap isn't a data problem. It's a design problem. Communications functions were built for a different era — when the job was production, distribution, and reach. That model is broken.

AI is accelerating production faster than organizations can absorb it. Channels have multiplied. Teams are being asked to prove strategic value while still running the content machine.

Getting there requires redesigning the function itself — how it's structured, how it operates, how it measures its own impact, and how humans and AI work together within it. That's the work Signal Intent was built to do.

"We have dashboards full of data. We still can't answer the question."

AI tools are dramatically increasing how quickly teams can produce content. But the governance, measurement, and judgment structures haven't evolved at the same pace. The result: more activity, less clarity.

It's a design problem, not a data problem

The gap isn't a technology problem. It's a design problem.

Most teams are adding AI on top of a function that was already unclear about its role. You can't automate your way out of an operating model problem.

What we do

We work across four areas.
Most engagements touch more than one.

All of them connect back to the same objective: a communications function that can tell leaders what's actually happening — and is built to keep doing that as the organization and technology change around it.

01
Future state communications design

We define what your communications function should look like in an AI-augmented organization — what your team owns, what AI handles, where human judgment is non-negotiable, and how the two work together in practice. This isn't a vision deck. It's an operational blueprint for how your function runs two years from now.

02
Content and channel architecture

We redesign how content is created, routed, and governed across your channels — reducing duplication, eliminating noise, and building workflows and guardrails that let AI accelerate production without degrading quality or trust. The result is a system where more gets done with less, and the organization can tell the difference.

03
Operating model and team capability

We define the roles, workflows, and decision rights that make a modern communications function run — then build the skills and habits your team needs to actually work that way. This is the work that makes the strategy real. Without it, future-state designs stay in slide decks.

04
Signal-based measurement and insight

We replace volume metrics with measurement that tracks what leaders actually need to know: whether understanding changed, where confusion is concentrated, how employee sentiment is shifting, and whether communications are connecting to the behaviors that drive business outcomes. We've done this work inside organizations of 100,000+ people. It produces insights that survive the hot seat.

We are advisors, not implementers. We design the system and the roadmap, then set teams up to run it themselves. Every engagement ends with your team capable of running what we built together.

What this looks like in practice

Results that
survive the hot seat.

Each engagement is different. The pattern is consistent: leaders get answers they couldn't get before, and teams get systems that keep working after we're gone.

Future state design
A global media company built the wrong comms function after an AI rollout. We helped them redesign it.
Output dropped. Impact increased. The function moved from content machine to editorial and advisory layer.

A global media company didn't know what its communications function should look like after an AI rollout — so it built the wrong one.

They had invested significantly in AI content tools and given their team access. Twelve months later, productivity had increased and quality had dropped. The team was producing more, faster, with less editorial judgment involved in any of it.

The problem wasn't the tools. It was that no one had defined what the human role in communications was supposed to be once AI handled production. Signal Intent designed the future-state model: what the team owned, what AI handled, where human judgment was mandatory, and what governance sat around the boundaries.

The function stopped running as an accelerated content machine and started operating as an editorial and advisory layer. Output dropped. Impact increased.

Future state design
A Fortune 500 technology company was restructuring its comms function without knowing what it was restructuring toward.
The restructure was completed with a rationale leadership could defend and a model the team could operate inside.

A Fortune 500 technology company was restructuring its communications function and didn't have a clear picture of what it was restructuring toward.

Leadership knew the current model wasn't working — too many people doing production work, not enough strategic capacity, no clear accountability for measurement or insight. But redesigning the function required a view of what it should become, not just what it currently was.

Signal Intent mapped the future-state operating model: the roles the function needed, the capabilities it was missing, the work that should be eliminated, and what a transition from the current state to the new one actually looked like in practice. The restructure was completed with a clear rationale that leadership could defend and the team could operate inside.

Content and channel architecture
A global telecoms company was running 35 departmental newsletters in a single month, with no governing logic connecting any of them.
Volume dropped. Impact didn't. The team stopped operating as a news desk and started operating as a strategic function.

A global telecoms company was running 35 departmental newsletters in a single month, with no governing logic connecting any of them.

Every department had built its own channel. Every channel had its own audience, cadence, and voice. Nothing connected. Employees were receiving a constant stream of messages from different parts of the organization on overlapping topics, and the communications team had no real visibility of the full picture or the capacity to do anything but keep feeding the machine.

We led an employee-first channel audit, mapping the full spread of what was being sent, to who and why. The result: a consolidated channel architecture that eliminated the noise, switched off legacy channels that had outlived their purpose, and gave the communications team actual control over what went out and when.

The team stopped operating as a news desk and started operating as a strategic function. Volume dropped. Impact didn't.

Signal-based measurement
A global technology company couldn't explain why engagement was falling — so it kept producing more content.
Sentiment improved. Leadership had a real explanation instead of a theory. The team could surface this kind of insight before it became a leadership concern.

A global technology company couldn't explain why engagement was falling — so it kept producing more content. It wasn't the fix.

Analysis of internal conversation patterns revealed that employee frustration was concentrated around one specific issue: inconsistent manager communication during a major organizational change. The fix wasn't more executive messaging — it was clearer briefing materials and sharper communication expectations at the manager layer.

Sentiment improved. Leadership had a real explanation instead of a theory. And the communications team had a measurement model that could surface that kind of insight before it became a leadership concern.

How we work

Three stages. No slide decks
handed over and forgotten.

1
Diagnose

We start with a short, structured diagnostic — not a proposal. We map your current state: what you're measuring, how your function is set up, and where the gap between signal and intent is largest. Most teams find clarity in the first conversation.

2
Design

We co-design the future state with your team. The people who have to operate the new model are part of building it — not handed a document after the fact. This is where the strategy becomes real, not theoretical.

3
Build

Every engagement ends with your team capable of running what we built together. We don't create dependencies. We build capacity — the roles, rhythms, systems, and skills that keep working after we're gone.

About Signal Intent

Signal Intent was founded by Luke Sinclair, who has spent his career working at the intersection of employee communications, measurement, and organizational change inside some of the world's most complex organizations.

The pattern he kept seeing: organizations generating more communication than they could interpret, and communications functions being measured on the wrong things — volume, output, activity — while leaders made decisions on incomplete or misleading information.

Most recently, he designed measurement frameworks that connected communications activity to real business outcomes across a workforce of more than 100,000 people. That work made one thing clear: the gap between signal and intent isn't a data problem. It's a design problem.

AI is accelerating that gap faster than most organizations are prepared for. The communications functions that will lead through that shift aren't the ones producing the most content — they're the ones who can tell leaders what's actually happening and are built to keep doing that as the technology and the organization change around them.

Signal Intent was built to help those functions get there.

Luke Sinclair
Founder — Signal Intent

Let's talk

Do any of these
sound familiar?

If two or more of these feel true, it's worth a 20-minute conversation.

?
You can tell leadership how many people opened the message. You can't tell them whether understanding changed.
?
You've introduced AI into your team's workflow, but you haven't redesigned how the team works around it.
?
Your team is fully allocated to production and has no real capacity to advise.
?
You're being asked to redesign how your function works and you don't have a clear model for what that looks like.
?
You're getting more dashboards and reports. You trust them less every quarter.

Two or more feel familiar?
That's the starting point.

In a 20-minute conversation, we can usually identify where the gap between signal and intent is largest in your organization — whether that's measurement, operating model, AI integration, or something upstream of all three.

  • What's blocking you from proving impact — measurement, operating model, or both
  • Whether AI is adding value or just adding volume
  • What needs to change for your team to operate differently
Book a 20-minute conversation

No pitch. Just clarity on what's actually holding you back.

Most engagements run 6–12 weeks. We start with a 20-minute conversation.

Let's talk

Say hello.

Book a 20-minute conversation directly, or write to us at hello [at] signal-intent.com — we'll get back to you the same day.

Get in touch
Book a 20-minute conversation

Or write to us: hello [at] signal-intent.com

+1 917 410-0254

New York · London