What do we do about low-agency

after a meeting where no one talked // july 18 2024

We live in a moment of empowerment. A few years ago the term was the super-empowered individual, applied to the malicious cretins like Osama bin Laden who with a relatively small resource footprint was able to catalyze the US into a 20 year war. It's the Arab Spring, or the Kardashians or the unlikely 2016 Trump victory or AOC or any of 1000s of other examples.

It's the power of the ordinary joe, typing away a viral tweet that flashes around the world. Cell phones that enable more communication power than even the President of the United States up to say, maybe the 80s?

Obviously, the super-empowerment of social-mobile-internet-(and now)-AI is a pure crystalline narcotic for high agency individuals.

But what about those who do not possess this gene? What about the wait-ers. The timid. The over analyzers. The nervous. Or the just plain dispossessed.

What of them? It’s the problem of now. We are in a post-covid, WFH, coccooned world.

I can see it the companies I meet. There is a cadre of high agency folks literally running wild - they've never had it better. And then there are a lot of people that are simply LEFT BEHIND. They can't keep up. If you are driving a software product, and building a software product org or company, you need to deal with this problem. We've lost a lot of mojo in the last few years.

So, ok. Not everyone can be a 10x dev. Not everyone can be a A player, Stanfurd grad, CS major. Or whatever the archetype is of the super-performer.

It also strikes me as a puny cop out to believe that the answer is "A's hire A's and B's hire C's". I think there is more to it.

I think we need to deal with this. It's probably not just making everyone get back in the office. Though I do think more socialization is useful to improve the mood of most companies.

But WFH / remote is probably not going away. People like it. So what is the antidote?

I think its more along the lines of teams and cadence. A way for everyone to have a place, to find a place, to find a way to contribute and be part of something bigger. A way that the aces can find their home where they can be an ace. And the clydesdales, the workhorses can fit in too.

// more later