---
id: "claim-markdown-highest-leverage"
type: "claim"
source_timestamps: ["§ Data: Make it plain text."]
tags: ["data-engineering", "quick-wins"]
related: ["concept-human-formatted-data", "action-convert-to-markdown"]
confidence: "high"
testable: true
speakers: ["Harang Ju"]
sources: ["agentic"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-agentic"
originDay: 6
articleStem: "hbr-ext-17-workplace-set-up-for-agents"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2026/01/is-your-workplace-set-up-for-ai-agents"
sourceTitle: "Is Your Workplace Set Up for AI Agents?"
---
# Converting data to plain text is the highest-leverage immediate change.

Ju claims that converting policies, procedures, and institutional knowledge from PDFs and formatted documents into plain-text formats like markdown, stored in searchable directory structures, is the highest-leverage change most organizations can make immediately to prepare for AI agents. This operationalizes [[concept-human-formatted-data|the human-formatted-data problem]] via [[action-convert-to-markdown|converting institutional knowledge to markdown]].

**Confidence:** high · **Testable:** yes.

**Enrichment / validation:** the premise that plain-text/structured data greatly improves agent utility is well supported (RAG research; docs-as-code and knowledge-base best practice). 'Highest-leverage' is a reasonable heuristic but is not empirically ranked against alternatives such as data integration, API exposure, or governance, whose impact may rival or exceed it in some settings.