It’s kinda slimy and predictable in all the worst ways. And yet, it’s so tempting when you’re staring down a pile of technical data that you hope to humanize, you just wish the robots could do it for you.

Look, we’ve all asked ChatGPT to make our lives a little easier, but for now, if you’re a tech leader, I fear it’s doing you a disservice.

We’re drowning in dashboards, jargon, and AI slop: polished content that sounds smart but often says very little. That’s exactly why companies are suddenly paying a premium for people who can make meaning out of complexity. 

LinkedIn data cited by the Wall Street Journal found U.S. job postings using the word “storyteller” doubled last year, and roles like “head of storytelling” are now showing up in enterprise org charts. (Axios).

Lucky me! 

For IT leaders, this shift matters more than most.

For years, most tech execs that I worked with could get by on technical fluency alone or punt the storytelling to the comms team or to me at their PR agency. Build the system. Ship the platform. Present the roadmap. But those days are over. Today, if you can’t explain why a technology investment matters in plain English, someone else will control the narrative for you, and probably the budget, too.

Storytelling has become a personal strategic advantage, for your career and your colleagues. But don’t believe me.

Deloitte’s 2025 Technology Executive Survey found that 36% of senior technology leaders say measuring and articulating technology’s business value is a top priority. In other words: the work matters but explaining the work matters even more. And McKinsey found that nearly half of leaders said, if they could do a transformation over again, they would spend more time telling the change story. 

That’s because people don’t rally around tech specs. They rally around clarity.

What if:

Your cloud migration isn’t a systems upgrade. It’s a speed story.
Your AI rollout isn’t a pilot. It’s a trust story.
A cybersecurity investment isn’t a line item. It’s a resilience story.

The leaders who get buy-in fastest are the ones who connect technical decisions to human emotions, and the consequences that happen after the implementation.

And yes, data matters. But data without narrative is just expensive wallpaper.

But let’s not kid ourselves: no software can manufacture judgment, empathy, or credibility.

People can smell canned messaging a mile away. Especially now.

What makes a story land is not slick production. It’s whether the person telling it actually understands what’s at stake, for the listener. 

So, if you’re leading technology today, your job is not just to implement change. It’s to help people make sense of it and their place in it.

Because in a world flooded with synthetic noise, the clearest voice usually wins.

And increasingly, the clearest voice is the one that earns trust, secures resources, and gets to lead what comes next.