What It Means to Be a ‘High-Signal’ Thinker in a Noisy World

Thinking at your highest level — cutting through noise, testing ideas before they harden, finding clarity when everything feels complex — doesn’t happen in isolation.

At PCMA’s 2026 Business Events Summit (BES) on June 21 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, opening keynoter Holly Ransom, CEO of Victoria, Australia–based consultancy Emergent Global, will help put participants in the right mindset for a productive four days. “In this keynote, I’m going deep on what I call ‘high-signal thinking:’ the discipline of directing and protecting your attention under pressure so you can hear what matters through the noise,” Ransom told Convene via email. “I’ll share what I’ve observed across thousands of rooms and hundreds of leaders about what the highest performers do differently. Spoiler: It’s not what most people think.”

The Signal to Noise Problem

Anyone who has attended Convening Leaders since 2019 will recognize Ransom’s mastery in her role as host and moderator. In addition to her work with PCMA, she has hosted live events in more than 25 countries, including the upcoming annual Energy Disruptors: UNITE conference, an event she co-founded with three other entrepreneurs in 2017. But there is more to Ransom than her host chops. She’s a Fulbright Scholar, graduate of Harvard Kennedy School of public policy, and the author of The Leading Edge, a guide for business leaders on how to thrive during times of disruption and drive meaningful change at their organizations. Her development of the high-signal thinking framework is the result of conversations she’s had with hundreds of business leaders about the real problems they face in their work — and how to communicate about them to arrive at solutions faster. “High-signal thinkers have made a fundamental shift in how they relate to information and attention. Most people treat their focus as something that just happens to them: constantly interrupted, constantly fragmented, always catching up. High-signal thinkers treat attention as something you actively direct and protect,” Ransom said. “It’s a practice, not a personality trait. These leaders set strategy and adapt with confidence because they’re working from signals rather than noise and are less exhausted. Not because they’re working less, but because they’ve stopped spending mental energy on things that don’t matter.”

This sort of laser-focused intentionality isn’t just for skimming your morning inbox, it’s how these same leaders show up to business events. “For the events industry, the advantage is direct: When you show up to a room with that kind of intentionality, you become someone others want to think with — the person who catches what everyone else missed. In a world drowning in noise,” Ransom said, “that is the only advantage that lasts.”

Part of her high-signal framework is learning what information to ignore — or at least to put on mute. “The starting point for this talk is a provocation: We have more information, more tools, more frameworks than any generation of leaders before us, and yet the people I work with are more overwhelmed and less certain about where to direct their attention than ever,” Ransom said. “We have everything except the one thing that actually matters: the ability to convert all of it into clear, sustained movement.” In other words, decision-makers are drowning in all kinds of data but starved for true collaboration. “Working up close with C-suite teams at critical moments in their year has taught me that the patterns that break performance are remarkably consistent regardless of industry or scale. The specific context changes. The breakdown doesn’t. And fundamentally, it always comes back to performance: what it actually looks like for this particular leadership team, what’s getting in the way, and what they need to start moving together,” she said.

Collaboration isn’t just about breaking out of the familiar environment of the office but putting a timer on a decision or process to achieve a measurable result. She likens this to competencies she has learned in real time while hosting live events. “There is no replacement for stage time. Not talent, not preparation alone, but actual reps under pressure,” she said — deliberately practicing skills in chaotic, high-stress environments — “with something real at stake.”

Thinking Better Together

Because Ransom also makes her living in the events world, she not only understands their power but will share strategies that BES attendees can apply to their own meetings. “After every facilitation session, I go back to the tape: What did I handle well, what would I do differently, what did the room tell me that I almost missed?” Ransom told Convene. “Reps without honest reflection are not quality reps. That discipline is exactly what I try to bring into every large-scale event, too. The architecture of a room, the frame of a day, these aren’t logistical details. They’re performance variables.”

She reframes the key value proposition of curated events like BES as leveraging the power of real-time, in-person collaboration as a catalyst for change. “A room full of high-signal thinkers can build shared clarity and leave committed to the same direction. Most event briefs ask what people will hear,” Ransom said. “The better question is what people will think, together, that they couldn’t have thought alone. That’s the real value of a great event, and it’s a harder and more important problem than most briefs acknowledge.”

Holly Ransom will deliver the 2026 Business Events Summit opening keynote address “Become a High-Signal Thinker” at 6 p.m. on June 21.

Kate Mulcrone is Convene’s digital managing editor.

On the Web

Learn more about Business Events Summit at businesseventssummit.org.
Learn more about Holly Ransom at hollyransom.com