Tan Chuan-Jin outlines the leadership edge data and AI cannot fill

AI can automate execution, data can sharpen targeting and algorithms can optimise performance, but Tan Chuan-Jin believes none of that solves business' oldest problem: earning trust.

Speaking at Digital Marketing Asia Singapore, the former Speaker of Parliament and senior military officer argued that as organisations become increasingly sophisticated in their technology and systems, the human layer risks being overlooked.

“In everything that we do as a leader, a lot of it boils down to trust,” Tan said. “I think in marketing, you have many tools and technology for you to sell your product. But ultimately, it is how do you build up and win trust?”

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For leaders, that question becomes more pressing as technology continues to accelerate the pace of decision-making and execution. More data and more tools can help teams act faster, but they do not necessarily make it easier to decide what matters, build confidence internally or create relationships with audiences.

Tan also outlined the hardware–software–heartware framework he uses in his work with Sensemaking Leadership, which separates organisational capabilities into three layers. Hardware refers to knowledge and skills, while software covers systems and processes. Heartware is the human layer, encompassing trust, purpose, leadership and the ability to get people to work towards something beyond themselves.

He argues that most organisations are often more deliberate about developing the first two than the third.

“If people are key, then we need to move beyond the motherhood statements of 'Oh, people are key to us’ and put in the deliberate work” he said.

Every organisation has people, but that doesn't mean they are great organisations.

Trust fills the data gap

That human layer and ability to trust becomes particularly important in crisis situations and when teams are operating without complete information - something increasingly familiar to marketers navigating shifting platforms and venturing into untapped spaces.

Tan drew on his experience during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, when Singapore mounted a large-scale relief operation despite uncertainty over where exactly resources would be needed and what conditions teams would face.

“You will not always be able to go into a situation knowing everything,” he said. But the way forward is by having a north star.

During the 2004 crisis, the starting point, he recalled, was establishing the national objective. Once that was clear, teams could determine not only what needed to be done, but how they should approach it.

The lesson was not to wait for perfect information, but to rely on preparation, training and a clear sense of purpose.

“What we knew was the things we had done to prepare ahead. We knew the training that we had. We knew the capabilities we had."

For the marketers in the room, that advice translates into creating enough clarity on the company's objectives, and creating psychological safety for employees to practice and allow room for mistakes over and over again, during non-crisis situations.

Applying that advice to innovation, Tan argued that organisations often tell employees to innovate, but undermine that message when experimentation produces an undesirable outcome.

“You need to create a climate for yourself and your team where people dare to push boundaries, people dare to make some of these difficult decisions,” he said.

At the end of the day, Tan argues that leadership comes down to providing both clarity and the conditions. “One is to be able to distil clarity, and secondly, to create a climate where people dare to run with that clarity,” he said.

Tan also pointed to a military principle he has carried into leadership:

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

The idea is that preparation and consistency can create stronger outcomes than constantly rushing to respond.

Escaping the 90-day cycle

That becomes harder when businesses are structured around short-term performance. Businesses today are often expected to demonstrate results within quarterly cycles. Tan argues that what organisations measure and reward ultimately shapes how people behave.

“Structure drives behaviour,” he said. When leaders are constantly responding to short-term pressures, longer-term investments in people, culture and trust can become harder to justify.

“You're looking at long-term sustainability and success. When you build that, your value will come,” he said.

That does not mean ignoring performance metrics. Rather, Tan argued that leaders have to recognise the agency they retain even within systems designed around short-term targets.

Part of that is giving employees a reason to connect their work to something larger than an immediate KPI.

“And the funny thing is that you do things for the right reasons, and you actually begin to build up trust amongst your people,” he said. “When they are able to connect the dots to something that's even bigger than themselves, you watch them run.”

For Tan, this is ultimately what heartware is designed to address. Skills can be trained and systems can be implemented, but trust has to be built deliberately.

Leaders, he said, need to understand who they are and what they believe in rather than simply performing what they think a leader is supposed to look like.

“I think at the end of it, what people respond to is authenticity,” he said. That means being comfortable enough to acknowledge what one does not know, seek out the expertise of others, and allow teams to challenge assumptions.

“None of us know everything,” he said. “We have so much more wisdom out there, so much more information. We should embrace that, but then we need to be comfortable in our skin to do that.”

As AI and automation continue to reshape how marketing gets done, Tan's argument is ultimately less about rejecting technology than recognising what technology cannot replace.

It is not just about businesses. It's the life of the employees that are working and how we impact them.

“And I think it's important for us as leaders to think about it." 

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