.png)
Built with insights from behavioral scientists worldwide. Practical learning for leaders responsible for communication and trust
.png)
We're working on getting insights, tools, and techniques straight to your inbox on a weekly basis. No commitment required, we'll reach out again when we're ready to see if you still want to receive weekly emails.
By submitting this form, you agree to receive recurring marketing communications from Piar at the email you provide. To opt out, click unsubscribe at the bottom of our emails. By submitting this form, you also agree to our Terms & Privacy Policy
"A key part of creativity is picking up on what others overlook" - It's a fundamental concept within the psychological study of creativity and divergent thinking. For example, research might explore how "atypical salience processing" (noticing unusual or overlooked details) influences creativity.
Everyone has a list of jobs to be done. All of those jobs involve decision making. The only difference are the perceived stakes. If the stakes matter - if the job is something you take seriously, then thinking about how you think, is a criminally overlooked superpower.
If you're handling PR& Comms for your company, and you're tasked with elevating the profile of the organization, I'd argue there's no task of greater importance with the world changing so drastically around us. The age of information, automation, and thousands of decisions happening per day. With AI thinking for us, while we do the feeling part - my mission has been to find the truth.
With the rate of change predicted to exponentially continue, algorithms, consumer behavior, and consumption habits are shifting in real time.
Even AI has its detractors, some narratives coming through on podcasts, articles, and social media are about the end of 90% of jobs. Some note terms like "bubble", "underperforming", while interestingly there are some experts talking about a utopia. While I can't predict the future, I can tell you where I found the answers to my burning questions.
I found the answers in behavioral science.
You see, it turns out, with an information, capabilities, and output overload, we as a professional society, I believe are in a Diffusion of Innovations curve. Like we supposedly did when the internet came about. And with the late majority beginning to use these tools, the levels of slop, groupthink, and emotional turmoil people are experiencing in their professional lives - which is often a source of identity, is increasing rapidly.
Add to the mix political & economic headwinds like job security on the decline, and perma-crisis - things get dicier by the hour. For some people, myself included, there was a very serious sense of grief, feeling lost, and finding myself pondering the meaning of my work, my job function, and what contributions I'm making to society, and the world.
I persevered through moments of gripping angst, existential dread, and thankfully, I feel that a breakthrough has arrived. Now, while my experiences have mostly been relevant in over 15 years of boardroom meetings, conversations and work with friends and colleagues in the world of Marketing, PR & Comms, Social Media etc. I do believe that this is relevant to everyone. By design.
"Thinking about thinking" or "metacognition" is becoming of utmost importance. It's an unexplored landscape for many, and our wiring is often set up to resist it. While some of the wiring was set by ourselves, I'd argue the "geist", as it presents itself in the corporate world ie: the old way of thinking in the corporate world - has been responsible for a type of institutionalized mind. But that's a topic for another day. I myself broke the shackles of it, and these changing circumstances propelled me to pursue the truth. For myself, and as an entrepreneur and founder, to provide value in society via my companies. After all, an inspired leader has the responsibility to make their organisation antifragile, resilient, and always creating value.
The truth is, many of us, myself included - in the Marketing, Communications and Social Media world are making decisions based on assumptions, bias, myths, and misconceptions. While some of these decisions appear benign, for leaders, they involve spending large sums of money and other resources - but the resources and capital: like people's jobs, time, and effort, code, and IP. It's all decisions that have enormous amounts of risks associated. Much of the time, the sheer enormity of the risks, paradoxically, are unrecognized by the leaders themselves.
Consider this real scenario (I'm making sure no names are mentioned to preserve the identity of parties involved): The board of a large, publicly traded B2B SaaS company would gather for their quarterly meeting. YOY Business Performance was up, and their CFO accepted the Sales & Marketing team's explanation, that a recent ad campaign was delivering high quality, in-market leads. As a result, a decision was made to double down on ad spend and expand the campaign effort.
Several quarters later, they saw no pattern of change, and it was perplexing.
It turns out, that much earlier, the PR & Comms team had managed a heavy lift. They noted a lack of Executive Visibility, and managed to convince the CEO to appear on channels they secured through efforts in media relations, pitching, and calling on their contacts. This included mediums like Podcasts, TV interviews, Panel Discussions, and earned media across top tier editorial outlets, with an emphasis earned social. But it was axed due to "no immediate spike in sales". The budget was re-allocated to Sales & Marketing for the big ad campaign. The company's PR & Comms lead, seen as an accessory to Marketing, was unfortunately let go.
It's a sad reality in Publicly Traded B2B, as many organizations don't believe in PR & Comms, outside of their regulatory function.
The remaining team members were then tasked to focus on supporting GTM efforts with SEO optimized articles, despite the rise of AI-generated citations and the growing importance of being mentioned when prospects ask ChatGPT about solutions in the category.
The time lag of the big ad campaign on actual sales was overlooked, and so was the time lag on PR & Comms activities on impact. Instead, there was a massive assumption in the boardroom about where the sales spike was coming from that had enormous risks associated with it. In the end, by making those decisions of allocating capital(both financial and human resources) based on an assumption - ended up costing them even more money in wasted efforts, more time in wasted opportunity cost, and they let go of a brilliant PR & Comms lead who can join a competitor who values their efforts even more.
Adoption of generative AI by B2B buyers is accelerating quickly. Just 12 months ago, nearly 70% of buyers said AI tools played no role in their research process. By October 2025,industry studies show that about one in four B2B buyers now rely on AI more than search engines at the vendor discovery stage. In the technology sector specifically, adoption rates have crossed 80%.
This shift changes how content gets attributed. Academic research from the University of Toronto demonstrates that AI search engines overwhelmingly cite earned media over paid and brand-owned content in their generated answers. In controlled experiments across industry sectors, more than 80% of sources surfaced by AI models came from third-party earned media. Google's search results? Less than half.
Organizations still dependent on pre-AI attribution models risk undervaluing the rapid, measurable impact of earned media exposure. The reality is that buyer behavior has already evolved. The models haven't caught up yet.
Ask a behavioral scientist, or someone in change management, and they'll likely agree, that people don't want to be wrong... They don't like change, and many times - this is a bit controversial, but they don't even want to know the truth because of the existential dread, the implications of what it could cause. The disruption it could cause on their livelihood, and for their families, and to their sense of identity, to the point where they don't want to "think" about it.
It was highlighted in an experiment conducted by Psychology Researchers at The University of Virginia and Harvard University, where people were asked to sit alone with their thoughts for 15min with no distractions. It was so painful to sit in silence, so many had such difficulty being alone with their thoughts for that period of time, that 67% of men and 25% of women chose to press a red button in front of them that would cause (slightly) painful, electric shock...
The thing that is even more frightening in my opinion is the degree to which our over-equipped modern workplace is with crutches. It's alluring, and intoxicating for a professional who's already stretched in bandwidth, who's struggling to prove their value in the boardroom, and likely viewed by the C-Suite as an overhead expense, rather than a strategic asset. It's an attractive proposition to reply to the time pressure, and feed the ego by pushing the "red button". While it's different from the red button from the experiment at Harvard, it's rather the Staples / Office Depot ad campaign with the "Easy Button". Sadly differing the work of writing, reasoning, and overall thinking and decision making to AI. It's sad because it's an act which counterintuitively lets your agency slip, and dulls your faculties, it dulls your shine...
Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of Gen AI for specific, controlled, replicable tasks, and even a bigger believer in the world of Causal AI to get a grip on the "Laws of Business Physics" like cause & effect, inertia, time lag (gravity) etc. But certainly no believer in using AI (namely Gen AI or Agents) as an alternative to thinking. Because in the wave of completely reimagining value creation as a business, now, more than ever; ideas, your thinking, human creativity - is currency.
Finding a way to "audit" your own thinking, identify underlying assumptions, biases shaping decision making, and risks built from misconceptions are, in this current reality, and for the foreseeable future - of absolute utmost importance. Especially if you're building reputation, crafting messaging, analysing performance, and shaping strategy.
These questions help surface the mental shortcuts that worked before but may produce unexpected outcomes that actually work against you in the long run, or sooner.
It's time to de-risk. It's time to Think about Thinking.
The irony is that examining our thinking actually saves time in execution. When we question our assumptions upfront, we avoid the costly rework that comes from discovering our mental shortcuts led us astray. The compound benefits (like building confidence& trust in the boardroom) of getting decisions right the first time far outweigh the discomfort of intellectual humility.
For communications professionals, this means developing comfort with uncertainty while maintaining the confidence to act. It means building frameworks that adapt as quickly as stakeholder landscapes change. Most importantly, it means recognizing that in a world where AI can handle execution, your ability to think clearly about complex, ambiguous situations becomes your most valuable asset.
I want to stress, that if you're not in a Communications role, and you've read this far - this was still meant for you. It's just as relevant for you too. Embody this message and I promise you, only good things will come from it.
...
Tanzeel "Tan" Sukhera is the Co-founder & CEO of Piar. Tan is based in Montreal, and has 7 years of experience in Media Monitoring & Social Listening, PR & Comms Measurement, Strategy & Analysis. Through events and workshops, Piar helps PR and communication leaders apply behavioral decision science to real-world campaigns, messaging, and stakeholder work. Learn more or reach out at piar.co.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tsukhera/ 👈
