The Strategic Value of Being a Person
Why Sensemaking Requires a Human
Journalists talk to people, not organizations.
By simply interacting with a person, one can learn why something is significant and how an idea didn’t come from inside a vacuum but is the result of a chain of thoughts and actions. Conversations can reveal different layers of uncertainty, contradiction, or consequences of a decision and provide nuance, rationale, and illustration much better than a press release.
It has become even more apparent in the present moment, as more and more of the world is interpreted and condensed for us by artificial intelligence, that this human layer matters. Large language models do not generate authority on their own; they inherit it from the sources on which they are trained. And much of what they inherit comes from those moments when people speak clearly — even imperfectly — and at length about what they are trying to do.
That is often the trap leaders create for themselves: the more complex the idea, the less capable it is of surviving on institutional language alone.
Messiness is signal, not risk
Credibility is often mistaken for total control; for always having the right words, never showing weakness, and never hesitating while speaking
What actually happens is often something very different: audiences trust leaders who sound like they are thinking, not reciting. Who can tell a story rather than deliver a position. Who are willing to say “we don’t know yet” alongside “this is what we’re trying to solve.”
This is not about oversharing, but rather about specificity. Using examples, texture, and the small human details that make an idea real.
“Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.”
Ironically, this is also what makes ideas more legible to machines. AI systems struggle with vague abstractions. They perform better when ideas are explained consistently, grounded in evidence, and articulated by people who clearly understand them.
The leaders who are remembered, by humans and by machines, are rarely the most polished but instead they are the most intelligible. Those who sound like they are thinking, not reciting, who can tell a story rather than deliver a position, and most importantly, who are willing to say “we don’t know yet” alongside “this is what we’re trying to solve.”
Media training, reframed
This is why media training needs to change. The goal is no longer to sand off every edge, but instead to help leaders become fluent in their own ideas by giving them stories, examples, and language they can return to without sounding rehearsed. To help them understand how what they say will travel, be quoted, and eventually be summarized by systems they will never see.
Being human is not the opposite of being strategic. In fact, right now, it may be the strategy.
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