Make Sure What People See Matches What You Mean

In the last issue I introduced a hierarchy related to a company story and how it's perceived. The base is the story. I think of the ways we support and express the story as signals, and the way it’s perceived as surfaces. In recent years, especially in digital media, the focus has been on maximizing the impact of surfaces—optimizing for visibility through SEO, keywords, and algorithms to make sure our content shows up when people are searching for problems we think we solve.

This is a new concept for me as well. One of the serendipities of writing this newsletter is discovering new aspects of ideas that have been floating around in my head for a long time.

What Are Surfaces?

Surfaces are where your story meets the world — human touchpoints of meaning where perception completes the story. They’re where attention meets interpretation—the visible layer of influence. What we see, what we share, what we say about someone or something—all of it lives on a surface.

A blog post, a web page, a LinkedIn post, a Reddit thread, a Yelp review. These are all surfaces. So are customer interactions, social feeds, search results, press and media mentions. They’re even private community conversations in Slack groups and WhatsApp threads and how your employees talk about you to their friends and peers. And yes, AI-generated summaries. 

But surfaces don’t exist on their own. They’re the result of everything beneath them: your story, your signals, and the gravity of trust that holds it all together.

Together, they form an influence model:

The first three layers — Story, Signals, and Surfaces — describe expression.

Gravity is the counterforce: the pull of trust and alignment that keeps the system coherent. Without it, your story drifts, your signals fragment, and your surfaces lose integrity. 

That gravitational pull is trust — the invisible force that gives meaning to your story and coherence to your signals. It’s what keeps everything aligned beneath the surface.

At its core, this issue is about understanding and managing visibility as an expression of narrative alignment. It’s not enough to be seen — you have to be interpreted correctly.

Influence isn’t a matter of exposure; it’s a matter of coherence. 

Your surfaces are where that coherence—or confusion—shows up. 

They are the visible tests of your deeper story and signals, the places where meaning meets attention and interpretation takes shape.

Influence is the alignment between what you mean and what people perceive. Your surfaces are where that alignment is proven—or lost.

From Story to Signal to Surface

In Optimization Without Story Is Just Noise, I introduced the idea that story, signals, and surfaces are connected layers of visibility.

Your story defines what you stand for. 

Your signals are how that story behaves in the world. 

Your surfaces—the last layer—are where the story becomes visible and open to interpretation. 

Surfaces are the moments when your story collides with someone else’s context.

What We Can See (and What We Can’t)

Surfaces come in many forms. Some are obvious: your website, your product, your social feeds, your leadership voice. Others are subtle: how your team answers an email, how you handle customer questions, how people describe you when you’re not in the room.

They can be algorithmic, shaped by recommendation engines and feeds. 

They can be social, built through relationships and networks. 

They can be institutional, amplified by media, communities, or ecosystems. 

And they can be human, revealed through behavior, tone, and presence.

Each of these surfaces reflects the clarity—or confusion—of the story beneath it.

Visibility Isn’t Influence

Influence isn’t just about being seen. It’s about being understood. You can buy reach, but you can’t buy resonance.

Surfaces that look polished but lack narrative alignment create noise. They may generate clicks, impressions, or engagement—but those are only surface metrics. Real influence happens when what people see matches what you mean.

If your surfaces misrepresent you, the problem isn’t visibility. It’s alignment.

Why Surfaces Matter

Surfaces aren’t the goal. They’re the result.

The goal is a better story—one that produces stronger, clearer signals. When your story and signals are aligned, your surfaces take care of themselves. They become the natural, authentic expression of what you stand for.

But that also means your surfaces are diagnostic. They reveal whether your story is healthy, coherent, and trusted.

Here’s why that’s true:

1. Surfaces are emergent, not engineered. You can design logos, campaigns, and messaging—but your real surfaces are what emerge when you’re not looking. They’re how your employees talk about the company when they’re off the clock, how customers describe you when you’re not in the room, how partners explain your value when you’re not there to correct them.

These surfaces form naturally from the clarity (or confusion) of your story and signals. When people inside and outside your organization understand you clearly, your surfaces align. When they don’t, the cracks appear first on the surface.

2. Alignment creates coherence, and coherence is visible. You can feel when a company’s story hangs together. It’s not about perfection—it’s about consistency. The same principles, tone, and intent show up across everything they do. You can also feel when it doesn’t.

Disjointed messaging, mixed signals, contradictory experiences, — all those breakdowns don’t start on the surface. They just show up there.

3. Narrative strength is tested under pressure. Healthy narratives hold up when things get tough. They stay recognizable even when the story is challenged or the environment shifts. Weak ones fracture under scrutiny—tone-deaf statements, defensive reactions, inconsistent messaging.

Your surfaces are where that strength (or fragility) becomes visible.

4. Proof doesn’t mean perfection—it means evidence. Your surfaces are evidence of what your organization actually values and believes. They show what your story looks like in the wild. The proof isn’t in how polished they are—it’s in whether they align with what you claim to stand for.

Berkson's Bits

The first curve of expertise is knowing how things work.

The second curve of expertise is to know when they stop working.

Everything we create — every framework, every process, every tool — eventually reaches diminishing returns. Sometimes the right question isn't "how do I scale this?" but "how will I know when to let it go?"

What I'm Watching...

When my daughters say I have to watch something, I watch it. This time it was KPop Demon Hunters. I'm familiar with K-Pop mostly through Dream Academy (which I only saw parts of) and KATSEYE.

I don't know if your experience will be quite the same without my daughters' voice-over editorials, but I highly recommend it. It's on Netflix.

A Quick Audit

Look across your surfaces.

• Do they tell a consistent story?

• Do they reflect the trust you’ve earned—or the attention you’ve chased?

• Do they invite the right kind of interpretation?

Surfaces are where your story meets the world—human touchpoints of meaning where perception completes the story.

Have you taken the time to build the foundation of story—or are you just polishing surfaces?

Looking forward to continuing the conversation… 

 Alan