Why executive AMAs are the mixternal secret weapon you're missing
Turn one Ask Me Anything conversation into content for every mixternal channel you manage
You’ve got 30,000 employees spread across 12 offices in five countries. Post-covid, they’re even more scattered, working from kitchen in Kansas and co-working spaces in Copenhagen and garages in Karachi. Your CEO hasn’t set foot in the Lisbon office since 2019.
Your regional teams feel like they’re working for a faceless corporation rather than a company with actual humans at the helm.
Meanwhile, your executives are drowning in repetitive interview requests from different teams across internal comms, PR, and analyst relations—all asking variations of the same questions about market strategy, company direction, and leadership philosophy.
Here’s the mixternal solution: Executive Ask Me Anything sessions—held on a chat platform like Slack—solve multiple problems at once while creating content that works across every channel you manage.
Why AMAs Are Perfect for Mixternal Comms
Traditional exec comms is inefficient. Your internal team interviews the CEO about quarterly results for the employee newsletter. Two weeks later, your PR colleague books the same exec for a similar conversation with a trade publication. Then your analyst relations manager schedules yet another briefing covering overlapping territory.
AMAs flip this dynamic completely. One conversation. Multiple outputs. Maximum efficiency.
🪄 Here’s the mixternal magic: A 60-minute AMA session becomes your core narrative that adapts across every channel you manage.
The raw transcript becomes an in-depth intranet feature.
Key quotes become social media content.
Strategic insights become external thought leadership.
And that
authenticunscripted executive voice is what every audience craves.
Plus, the barriers to entry are basically nonexistent. Every employee already knows how to use chat platforms. No training required. No fancy video setup. No travel budget. Just dynamic conversations in a low-threat environment.
Three Types of AMAs for Different Mixternal Goals
I’ve identified three distinct approaches that serve different strategic purposes:
The True AMA opens the floor to any employee, regardless of hierarchy, with no topic restrictions. This format generates the most authentic content because executives can’t over-prepare for unknown questions. It’s perfect for creating raw material that demonstrates genuine leadership thinking.
Thematic AMAs focus on specific topics like “Market Expansion Strategy” or “Our Approach to AI Integration.” These work exceptionally well for mixternal purposes because the focused conversation creates content that’s immediately valuable to industry analysts, trade publications, and LinkedIn thought leadership while giving employees deep insights into strategic decisions.
Granular AMAs dive into highly specific topics with targeted audiences. Think “Sales Strategy for Product X” with the global sales team or “How to Integrate Company X” for the HR group during an acquisition. While these seem internal, they can generate compelling external content because they reveal how successful companies operate. It’s behind-the-scenes insight that business journalists love.
Convincing Executives: The Mixternal Pitch
Unless your boss is naturally comfortable sharing unfiltered thoughts with employees (spoiler: probably not), you’ll need to make the business case.
Here’s how to frame it: This isn’t a ploy for employee engagement (longtime readers know how I feel about that.) Rather, the AMA is strategic content creation for a comms campaign that serves multiple business objectives simultaneously.
One hour of executive time generates weeks of content across mixternal channels.
5 selling points that work:
It’s just 45-60 minutes with no travel required
No prepared remarks or slides needed
Direct employee engagement that improves culture metrics
Creates authentic content for external thought leadership
Generates quotable material for internal storytelling, media interviews, and analyst briefings
Here’s where AI becomes your secret weapon. Use role prompting to prepare your executive for potential questions.
Ask ChatGPT to “act like a skeptical employee in engineering” or “play the role of a concerned sales rep in Europe” and generate potential questions.
Your exec goes in prepared but not (over-) scripted.
The Technology Stack (Keeping It Simple)
Any chat platform works: Slack, Google Chat, Teams, even WhatsApp for smaller groups. The technology matters less than the conversation quality.
But consider these factors before committing to a platform:
Security: External platforms store data off-site, creating potential vulnerabilities your risk team won’t love
Scalability: Can your platform handle hundreds of participants simultaneously?
Accessibility: Will the technology work in all your global locations?
Content capture: You need to export the full transcript for editing and redistribution
Pro tip: Require participants to use their real names. Anonymous questions minimize silly off-topic submissions or provocations and ensure conversations stay professional enough for external repurposing.
The 8-Step Mixternal AMA Process
Here are the step-by-step instructions for planning and executing your AMA and what to do when it’s a wrap.
Step 1: Strategic Planning: Identify which executive should participate and connect it to larger business narratives. Is there a product launch coming? Strategic pivot? Market expansion? Use the AMA to create content for employee communication and external storytelling needs.
Step 2: Targeted Invitations: Craft invitation copy that generates excitement while setting clear expectations about the conversation’s scope. Your sign-up process becomes market research about which topics employees (and by extension, external stakeholders?) actually care about.
Step 3: Question Collection: Solicit questions in advance for multiple purposes: anonymous submission for sensitive topics, timezone accommodation, executive preparation insights, and backup content if conversation lulls.
💭 Use AI to analyze submitted questions for themes and sentiment before the session.
Step 4: Day-of Coordination: Send reminder communications and save participant lists for follow-up content distribution. This audience can be your employee advocates for future external content amplification.
Step 5: Live Facilitation: Open the conversation with clear ground rules and strategic first questions that set the tone. An hour provides enough content for weeks of derivative materials.
Step 6: Content Capture: Download the complete transcript immediately for editing and stakeholder sharing. This raw material becomes your content foundation for multiple channels.
Step 7: Success Measurement: Evaluate both participant engagement and content quality. Ask the executive about insights gained and comfort level with the format. Survey participants about value and future interest.
💰 Step 8: Mixternal Distribution: Here’s where the real value emerges. Transform that single conversation into multiple pieces of content:
Edit the transcript into a readable Q&A for your intranet.
Extract key quotes for external thought leadership.
Create social media content highlighting employee engagement.
Develop talking points for future media interviews.
If the conversation generated significant strategic insights, pitch them to relevant trade publications as an exclusive executive perspective.
And then some… You know the drill by now on how to remix content 16 different ways. Get creative!
AI-Powered Content Multiplication
Once you’ve captured the executive conversation, AI becomes your content multiplication engine. Use role prompting to adapt the same core insights for different audiences:
Ask ChatGPT to “rewrite this executive response about market strategy from the AMA transcript as if you're writing for industry analysts who care about competitive positioning.”
Then ask it to “take the same insight and write it for employees who want to understand how this affects their daily work.”
👉 Related: You might want to step through How to Teach AI to Write in Your Exec’s Voice to maximize the content creation potential from your AMA transcripts.
💥 One insight + multiple formats = maximum efficiency
The Mixternal ROI
Traditional exec comms require multiple interviews, multiple approval cycles, and multiple content creation efforts for each audience.
AMAs do away with all that. Simultaneously one conversation becomes a core narrative that efficiently serves internal storytelling, external thought leadership, and media relations objectives.
Your execs get clarity on employee concerns that inform their external messaging.
Employees get authentic leadership access, something they constantly crave.
External stakeholders get genuine insight into leadership thinking rather than corporate-speak.
Most importantly, you get the breathing room to focus on strategy instead of constantly chasing execs for repetitive interviews across different teams.
At the end of the day, working smarter beats working harder—especially when you’re already behind next week’s campaign planning session.