A practical lens for how people approach problems: low-agency waits for circumstances; high-agency creates options and moves first.
Common usage; rooted in psychology’s locus-of-control and learned-helplessness research
“Agency” describes the felt ability to initiate action and influence outcomes.
Low-agency: asks for permission first, cites blockers, reports problems without proposals, timeboxes to tasks not outcomes.
High-agency: reframes constraints, drafts a plan, runs small tests, seeks feedback after moving, owns results.
Hiring and promotion – screen for evidence of self-started initiatives and constraint-busting.
Turnarounds – prioritise leaders who create options under uncertainty.
Product and ops – bias to small experiments over lengthy alignment cycles.
Personal productivity – shift from “what is allowed” to “what would it take”.
Define outcome in terms of user or business result, not activity.
List constraints; mark which are real vs policy habits.
Design a reversible test you can run this week; set success criteria.
Act and surface learning; escalate only with options, not problems.
Institutionalise wins into run-books; retire rules that no longer reduce risk.
Recklessness: high-agency is not ignoring guardrails; use reversible bets.
Hero culture: celebrate systems that raise team agency, not lone saviours.
Blame framing: low-agency often reflects incentives and process debt; fix context, not people slogans.
Click below to learn other mental models
Use a carefully imagined scenario to test an idea’s logic, expose assumptions, and predict consequences—before you spend time or money.
Nassim Taleb’s term for rare, high‑impact, retrospectively ‘obvious’ events.
All models are simplifications. Don’t confuse the representation (map, metric, plan, narrative) with the thing itself—and update the map when facts change.