Diplomatic Dispatches

From Valentino to Davos: finding signal through the noise

I owe you an apology.

It’s been well over a month since I last wrote. Which is… not great.

Especially when the world hasn’t exactly been calm, predictable, or easy to ignore in the meantime.

Here’s what actually happened.

I did sit down to write. More than once. With a clear idea of what I wanted to say.

And then something else happened in the world. And then something else. And then something else again.

So I did what many of us do when things start to feel wobbly: I went down the rabbit hole.

I listened to my favourite podcasters. And found new ones.
Read the long analyses.
Tried to join the dots.
Tried to find the pattern that would make it all make sense.

And instead, I lost weeks in the repetitive echo chamber of social media.

And here we are on day 25 of 2026, and I'm not so much burnt out as jaded.

There’s a difference.

Burnout is exhaustion. Jadedness is the slow erosion of belief that any of this really makes sense at all.

And then it dawned on me: if I - someone trained as a diplomat to cut through noise - can fall into this trap, then of course you can too.

The Valentino paradox

Not many people know this, but my very early, very vague post-university career plan involved taking my Italian degree and my Fashion PR masters and sashaying off to Milan to live a life of glitz and glamour surrounded by haute couture.

(Spoiler alert: this did not happen.)

So when news broke recently of the death of designer Valentino, it caught my attention.

The world remembers him as a creator of beauty.
What fewer people know is that his team actively shielded him from harsh realities.

They didn’t tell him about wars.
They filtered out global turmoil.
They curated his world so he could focus on what he did best.

It’s a lovely idea.
A beautifully protected existence.
All the jagged edges swept away so something exquisite could be made.

And completely unrealistic.

Unlike Valentino, you don’t get to opt out of a world order shifting beneath your feet.

You’re leading - or working - inside geopolitical fracture, organisational complexity, and relentless change.

You have to see clearly.
Even when clarity is unsettling.

This is where I got stuck. I swung between two extremes.

Extreme one: Ignore it all. Pretend the old rules still apply. Focus on the beautiful things.

Burnout arrives quietly.

Extreme two: Obsess over everything. Read every analysis. Listen to every podcast.

Burnout arrives loudly and faster.

I chose extreme two.

And it cost me my sleep, my optimism, my equilibrium… and, frankly, my peace of mind.

There is a third way.
It’s what diplomats are supposed to do.

And I’d forgotten it.

The rupture

This week at Davos, Mark Carney said something most leaders are avoid:
we’re not in a transition - we’re in a rupture.

The rules-based international order isn’t gently evolving. It’s fracturing.

Economic integration is being used as a weapon. Supply chains are leverage. Financial infrastructure is coercion.

If you’ve felt this inside your organisation - the unpredictability, the sense that the old playbooks no longer work - you’re not imagining it. And Carney called it out.

And I applaud him. Yes its unsettling, but actually its also clarifying. Doesn't a small part of you feel relieved that someone has named it?

What I was actually searching for down the rabbit hole was confirmation of what I already knew.

I thought more information would give it to me.

It didn’t.
It just gave me more noise.

Why more information makes it worse

This is the trap I fell into - and I suspect you might recognise it.

Your inbox is full of noise pretending to be signal. But the more you consume, the more unsettled you feel.

Because clarity doesn’t come from more information. It comes from less.

Noise looks like:

• daily geopolitical hot takes designed to provoke emotion
• endless scenario planning for unlikely futures
• performative positioning on every crisis
• trying to predict who “wins”
• the belief that one more podcast will finally make it make sense

Signal looks like:

• structural shifts that affect your leverage and dependencies
• tracking repeated behaviour, not one-off events
• focussing on where your organisation is actually vulnerable
• how power is being applied in your sector
• benefits - even when no one admits them

The difference is simple:
​signal changes what you do.

Noise just changes how you feel.

Feeling permanently unsettled without knowing what to act on is the fastest route to burnout - or jadedness - or both.

The diplomat’s filter

When I was a diplomat and an army officer, very little of my job involved certainty.
Most of it involved making sense of situations where no one had the full picture.

We relied on a small set of questions to cut through noise. I’d forgotten them. So I’m reminding myself - and you.

• What do we actually know, stripped of commentary?​
  Facts are quieter than opinions. Start there.
• What keeps happening again and again?​
  Patterns matter. One-offs mislead.
• What would make this behaviour make sense from their position?​
  You don’t need to agree with motives — just understand incentives.
• What’s driving this that isn’t being said out loud?​
  Leverage. Optics. Fear. Self-interest. Usually simpler than it looks.
• What are we assuming because it feels “normal” to us?​
  That’s where blind spots hide.
• If I ignore the story and just watch behaviour, what does it tell me?​
  Narratives shift. Behaviour is stubborn.

Apply these to your organisation. To your sector. To the relationships that actually matter.

Clarity comes faster than you think.

What this means for leadership

The leaders who navigate this rupture well will do three things:

1. See clearly without panic​
Stop pretending the old rules still work. Naming reality isn’t defeatist; it’s grounding.

2. Act decisively within your sphere​
You don’t need to understand everything only what genuinely affects you and your people.

3. Build resilient networks, not fortresses​
Diversify relationships. Don’t put all your influence in one place.

A quieter truth

Yes, 2026 already feels 10 years old.
Yes, the old certainties are gone.
And no, you can’t be shielded from reality like Valentino was.

But you can shield yourself from noise.

That’s not avoidance.
That’s discipline.

The calmest diplomats weren’t the ones who cared less.
They were the ones who knew emotion is a terrible analytical tool.

I’m relearning that. Again.

Two final truths to leave you with:

• No one ever fully knows what’s going on.
• You don’t need to understand everything only what genuinely affects you.

That’s your permission slip to stop chasing every analysis, every meeting, every prediction.

Focus on signal.
Ignore the noise.

The world will keep fracturing.
Your job is to see clearly, act decisively, and help others do the same.

And that’s how I'm going to write this year - with clarity, not just reaction.