Annalisa Unfiltered
I haven’t been posting a lot on LinkedIn lately. And when I behave differently, I usually get curious with myself. Why am I avoiding LinkedIn? After some thought, I realized it is because I’m afraid I might sound like what I’ve been seeing a lot: I call it LinkedIn Thought Leader Beige.
That is why this line Julie Sweet from Accenture recently said resonates with me: effective use of AI isn’t just “human in the loop”, it must be “human in the lead.” In other words, I do not want to review what a machine wrote. I want to direct the work, control the standards, and decide what actually reflects my writing and my thoughts.
AI makes it easy to produce words. It does not make it easy to produce voice. It will default to what the internet rewards, and right now, from what I keep seeing all over my feed, the internet rewards Beige.
That matters right now because attention is not what it used to be. There is more content than any of us can absorb, and I don’t think I’m alone in finding that my default response is to either skim or completely disengage. I used to frequent LinkedIn and even looked forward to some posts. Now I find myself avoiding it. If we want people to read what we are writing, we cannot flood them with good enough. We have to earn their attention. That means we must write less Beige.
Here’s what bothers me. So many LinkedIn posts read like every other post. They may be about completely different subjects or even industries, but the setup, language, and “arc” of the post are the same. It sounds confident, but there are no specifics. You get statements halfway through that say something like “but here’s the thing” or “what no one tells you,” before they say something that is ultimately noncommittal or ubiquitous.
They often have stand-alone sentences instead of paragraphs.
Or even sentences that aren’t full sentences. Like this. Or this.
(see what I did there?)
I know this can sound like nitpicking, but in a field built on trust, the way we write signals the way we think. I am being this direct not because I want to criticize anyone’s writing, but because I know that AI makes Beige effortless. And we all have limited time and a lot of demands. But over time, people will stop listening to us. AI is ultimately just a tool. If you don’t lead it, it will turn your voice into one that sounds like everyone else, and that is exactly how you disappear.
The way I use AI in fundraising is not to generate more content. I use it to jump-start my process and to increase quality while moving faster. My AI writing process always starts with constraints. I literally start by telling the tool not to write yet. I make it repeat back the brief, the plan, the proposal, or the draft in plain language. I correct it until it is sharp. I have created overarching directions to prevent hallucinations, requiring the tool to always provide links to research, links back to my original thoughts, or my outline so I can see where the claim comes from. I write one section at a time and iterate, and sometimes even kind of argue and debate with my AI tool, and I do not move on until each section meets my requirements.
That is what “human in the lead” looks like in my fundraising work. AI can help me get better through iteration. But it doesn’t develop the argument or set the tone. It checks grammar and helps me find my mistakes. It helps me make sure my own writing is good, and that it still sounds like me. AI can make you faster. But your standards will decide whether it makes you better.