We’ve spent decades herding professionals toward the middle of the communication bell curve, asking them to adhere to rules about how to write, speak, or present. We’ve demanded conformity, because we didn’t have a way to bridge the differences between the fast-talking interrupters and the quiet, deliberative listeners. We didn’t have a way for the data nerds to talk to the word nerds, or for the word nerds to communicate with the people who think visually.
The result: Very few of us got to be our full selves or bring our full range of ideas to the table, because the table only had room for presentations that looked a certain way, or emails that followed a certain structure. In the effort to create common ground within an eclectic organization, we forced people into a very limited model of communication—a model that, not coincidentally, reflected the communication preferences and styles of the people in charge. Through a thousand little signals about what’s “professional” or “appropriate,” we let people know which communication styles were valued, and which ideas needed to be dampened or disguised.
In AI, we finally have a way to bridge our different ways of thinking and communicating, rather than making everyone fit the same mold. AI can turn a 1500-word discursive email into four clipped bullets, or turn four terse dot points into a diagram. Let the data folks talk data and the storytellers share stories, then use AI to help each person make sense of how other people on their team think and communicate.
In a post-automation world, there's no longer much value in meeting in the middle of the bell curve, because AI can now be the bridge across it. We need humans to lean into their edges, and show up with the surprising, unpredictable ideas that the algorithm can’t yet anticipate.
