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Ten seconds of audio is now enough to clone your voice, MPs are opening their speeches the way ChatGPT told them to, and the models are quietly training on their own output. When everything polished sounds the same, the edge is the thing AI can't fake: one clear message, said first, delivered with your own slightly messy human energy. Also sleep matters, and that is a hill Kirsty is prepared to die on at 4:40am.
1. One message, said first
Most people walk into the meeting with 39 slides of context and bury the lead. Kirsty's rule: get total clarity on the one thing you need your audience to receive ("you can trust me with this", "give me that budget"), distil it to its core essence, and say it first. Chris Anderson, who runs TED, calls it a through line: after every section, you should be able to repeat the point and have it fit.
“Here are my notes for [meeting]. In one sentence, what is the single message I need this audience to receive? Then list anything in the notes that doesn't feed that message, so I can cut it or move it.”
Leader's note: words tell people what to do. Your energy tells them how to feel about it. If you're going to broadcast one message, broadcast it with both.
2. The five-minute morning VA
The highest-value, lowest-setup AI win Henry knows: a morning assistant that reads your inbox and calendar before you do. In Claude, click the plus button by the prompt box, choose Connectors, and connect Gmail or Microsoft 365. In ChatGPT it's under apps. If you're on Copilot, it already sees Outlook, SharePoint and your calendar, and this is one of the things it genuinely does well.
“Good morning. Scan my inbox and calendar. Tell me: every email I've read but not replied to in the last 14 days, today's meetings, any correspondence or files relevant to them, and anything that clashes.”
Leader's note: the point is starting the day on the front foot instead of in triage. Set it up once, then it's one message every morning.
3. The passphrase
If any recording of your voice exists online, an Instagram reel is plenty, it can be cloned in a couple of clicks. The scam doesn't need to be perfect: it sounds like a loved one in distress down a bad phone line from overseas, asking for money now. So agree a passphrase with the people you love. Spoken, never written down. "First pet" and "where was our first date" are one LinkedIn stalk away from being guessable.
Leader's note: run the same drill with your finance team. Any urgent voice or video request to move money gets verified on a separate channel, every time, no exceptions for people who sound exactly like the CEO.
4. Bot or not: don't scrub every flub
Henry's verdict this week is a not. Descript will happily auto-delete every um, ah and cough from a recording, and when he tried it, it sounded awful: janky cuts, no rhythm, especially with two people talking over each other. The ums were doing work.
Leader's note: this is the delegation question in miniature. Automate the drudge, keep a human on the judgment, and know which of your team's work is "care about the result" work before you automate it away.
1. Say it first
Before your next meeting, write your one message as a single sentence. Then say it in the first thirty seconds. The corporate version is fine: “I'm going to walk you through our Q3 strategy. I need you to know it's a strong strategy and we should go with it. Let me tell you why.” The most important person always leaves the meeting halfway through, and that's fine, because you've already said it.
2. The unprepared rep
Everyone can sound polished now, which means polish is worthless. Once this week, take a question, an update or a two-minute talk with no notes, no script and no rehearsal, and let it be a bit messy. Notice that the aliveness is the point. The ability to perform whilst unprepared is going to be an edge.
3. A day without the first pass
Kirsty caught her own brain mid-sentence reaching for AI to check her structure, and she's only been using it for a couple of years. Draft your next important communication, the announcement, the difficult email, the pitch, entirely without AI. Notice how slow it feels, and do it anyway. Bring the machine in afterwards to stress-test, not to start. The minute your brain can offload something cognitive, it will.
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