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Putting Human Agency at the Center of Decision-Making

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Putting Human Agency at the Center of Decision-Making

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

We live in an automated age. From the news we read and the items we shop for, to who we date and what companies we choose to work for, algorithms help drive every facet of modern life. Such rapid technological advancement has led some to predict that we’re headed for a jobless future, where there is no more need for humans.

Yet in their recent book Radically Human, Accenture’s Paul Daugherty and H. James Wilson argue exactly the opposite. In their work guiding technology strategy for many of the world’s top corporations, they have found that, in many cases, the robots need us more than we need them. Automation is no panacea.

For over a century, pundits have been trying to apply an engineering mindset to human affairs with the hope of taking a more “scientific approach.” So far, those efforts have failed. In reality, these ideas have less to do with science than denying the value of human agency and limiting the impact of human judgment. We need to stop making the same mistake.

The Myth Of Shareholder Value

In 1970, the economist Milton Friedman proposed a radical idea. He argued that corporate CEOs should not take into account the interests of the communities they serve, but that their only social responsibility was to increase shareholder value. While ridiculed by many at the time, by the 1980s Friedman’s idea became accepted doctrine.

In particular, what irked Friedman was that managers would exercise judgment with respect to the objectives of the organization. “the key point is that, in his capacity as a corporate executive, the manager is the agent of the individuals who own the corporation … and his primary responsibility is to them,” he wrote.

The problem is that boiling down the success of an enterprise to the single variable of shareholder value avoids important questions. What do we mean by “value?” Is short term value more important than long-term value? Do owners value only share price or do they also value other things, like technological progress and a healthy environment?

Avoiding tough questions leaves significant problems unsolved, which may be one reason that, since Friedman’s essay, our well-being has declined significantly. Our economy has become markedly less productive, less competitive and less dynamic. Purchasing power for most people has stagnated. By just about every metric, we’re worse off.

How The Consumer Welfare Standard Undermines Consumer Welfare

In 1978, the legal scholar Robert Bork published the Antitrust Paradox in which he argued against the rule of reason standard for antitrust cases that required judges to use their discretion when deciding what constitutes a practice that “unreasonably” restricts trade. In its place, he suggested a consumer welfare standard, which would only take into account whether the consumer was harmed by higher prices.

Much like Friedman, Bork didn’t like the idea of depending on subjective human judgment. How could we trust judges to decide what is “reasonable” without a clear and objective standard? If the government is going to block business activity, he argued, it should have to prove, through stringent economic analysis, that harm is being done.

Yet as Lina Kahn pointed out in a now-famous paper titled Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox, consumers can be harmed even as prices are lowered. If Amazon is allowed to control the online retail infrastructure, including logistics, hosting, marketing, etc., then trade is restricted, free markets are undermined and the consumer will be harmed.

To understand why, you only need to look at the recent baby formula shortage, in which only three firms dominate the market and, the leader, Abbott, is the exclusive supplier in many markets. Not only is it highly likely that the lack of competition contributed to lax quality standards at Abbott’s plant in Sturgis, Michigan, but once it went offline because of contamination, there weren’t enough suppliers to fill the gap.

These aren’t isolated examples, but indicative of a much larger and growing crisis. An article in Harvard Business Review details how the vast majority of industries are concentrated in just a few dominant players. A more extensive analysis by the Federal Reserve bank shows how the lack of competition leads to lower business dynamism and less productivity.

“Great Power” Politics

In early March, the prominent political scientist John Mearsheimer gave an interview to The New Yorker in which he argued that the United States had erred greatly in its support of Ukraine. According to his theory, we should recognize Russia’s role as a great power and its right to dictate certain things to its smaller and weaker neighbor.

Today, the idea that America should have left Ukraine at the mercy of Russia seems not only morally questionable, but patently absurd. Not only has the brutality of the Russian forces horrified the world, their incompetence has laid bare the fecklessness of the the Putin regime. How could such a respected expert of foreign affairs get things so wrong?

Once again, the failure to recognize human agency is a key culprit. In Mearsheimer’s view, which he calls, “realism,” only “great powers” have a say in world affairs and they will work to further their interests. He believes that by not recognizing Russia’s desire to subjugate other nations in its orbit, America and its allies are being silly and impractical.

Hopefully, we can learn some lessons from the war in Ukraine. Strategy is not a game of chess, in which we move inert pieces around a board. People have the power to make choices. Ukraine chose to undertake tough reforms and arm itself. Russia chose an autocracy which rewarded loyalty over competence. That, more than anything else, has driven events.
The Real World Isn’t An Algorithm

A joke began circulating in the late 1970s, often attributed to management consultant Warren Bennis, that the factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment. Today, even with offshoring, about 10% of Americans work in factories.

When you scratch below the surface, the joke has less to do with technological advancement than it does with derision and control. Bennis wasn’t just any business consultant, but a renowned expert on leadership, who wrote books, published articles in top journals and even advised presidents. That he would promote the view, even as a joke, that leaders should deny agency to employees is as troubling as it is telling.

If you believe that human judgment is a liability rather than an asset, you manage accordingly. You treat employees as cogs in a machine rather than partners in a shared enterprise. You invest in offshoring rather than up-skilling, schedule shifts without regard to people’s lives, deny benefits such as parental leave. We’ve seen where that’s gotten us—lower productivity, worsening mental health and a society that is more unequal and less just.

We need to get back to the business of being human. Our economy should serve our people, not the other way around. The success of a society needs to be measured by the well-being of those who live in it. If we increase GDP, but our air and water are more polluted, our children less educated, we live unhappy lives and die deaths of despair, what have we really gained?

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credits: Pixabay

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The Psychology of Winning

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An Interview on Mindset and Agency

The Most Important Choice We Make is Choosing How to Think

GUEST POST from Robert B. Tucker

I began my career interviewing thought leaders, futurists, innovators, and visionaries as a Los Angeles-based journalist. For the May 1982, edition of PSA Magazine, I interviewed renowned speaker and behavioral psychologist Dr. Denis Waitley, whose “Psychology of Winning” cassette learning system was riding high on bestseller lists, and Waitley’s calendar was full of speaking engagements.

Waitley’s ideas were pivotal in fueling my own career trajectory and belief system, for he and other human potential leaders opened my eyes to how far you can go if you work to control your thoughts and self beliefs. Waitley and I eventually wrote a book together called Winning the Innovation Game, and sadly, we have lost touch.

Nevertheless, when I came across this interview the other day, I thought about Waitley’s ideas on not blaming others (“the government,” “racism,” “the other party,” “the Deep State,” “growing up in poverty,” etc.), I couldn’t help notice how the pendulum has swung even more towards victimization. These days, we seem to be moving away from our own sense of agency (“If it’s going to be, it’s up to me”) and towards nursing grievances and blaming others for our lack of results, rather than taking responsibility for our lives and making it happen every day by the way we control our thoughts.

TUCKER: Of all the characteristics of high-achieving individuals that you’ve had a chance to observe, which one seems to define them best?

WAITLEY: It’s their understanding of the degree of control that their thoughts have over the actions that follow in their lives. Whether they happen to be astronauts or parents or prisoners of war, these people have taken responsibility for their own achievements. They’re self-managers.

TUCKER: What does that mean?

WAITLEY: Self-management is declaring that life is a do-it-to-myself project. Instead of just letting life happen, I’m going to make it happen for me, and I’m going to exercise the greatest freedom I have, which is the freedom of choice. The deepest, most significant choice we make is in the way we choose to think.

TUCKER: Isn’t controlling one’s thoughts one of the hardest things to do?

WAITLEY: No, but I think one of the hardest things to believe is that it can have any effect on your life. Almost all people believe that they are victims of environmental circumstances, the government, the weather, their horoscopes, certainly the economy. They feel they must wait for luck or fate or karma to change before they can have some effect on their lives. What’s hardest to understand is that we’re doing it every day, using our self-talk either for or against ourselves.

TUCKER: What do you mean by self-talk?

WAITLEY: We’re talking to ourselves every moment of our waking lives. It comes automatically. We’re seldom even aware that we’re doing it. We all have a running commentary going on in our heads on events and our reactions to them. By changing what you’re saying, you can change your behavior.

TUCKER: Should we consciously try to stop thinking negative thoughts by repressing doubts and fears?

WAITLEY: No. Those are natural emotions.

TUCKER: If you’re giving a speech, for instance, and you’re nervous, should you go ahead and admit it to the audience?

WAITLEY: No, because that is self-fulfilling and becomes a habit. It’s much better to go on and do it anyway and listen for positive responses from the audience and try to reward yourself for a successful speech. It’s not so much the performance that counts, because on any given day your performance will be good or not so good—a lot of factors affect your performance. But your response to it is what’s most important of all.

TUCKER: But people do have fears. Businesspeople worry constantly about a slump in their businesses, and salespeople worry about blowing a sale. Are you suggesting we shouldn’t verbalize those fears?

WAITLEY: I see the expression of fear as fine, but most fears and phobias are imaginary. A Michigan study found that 60 percent of our fears are totally unwarranted; 20 percent have already passed and are out of our control entirely; and another 10 percent are so petty that they don’t make any difference. Of the remaining 10 percent, only 4 or 5 percent are real and justifiable fears, And even of those, we couldn’t do anything about half of them! The other half we could easily solve by seeking out further information. Fear is not an effective emotion. It’s an emotion you should feel under physical danger.

TUCKER: How do you control your interior dialogue? What instructions can you offer?

WAITLEY: The self-talk of winners is affirmative and directed toward the results they want: after a poor performance, a winner would say, “That’s not like me, I can do better than that. I need more information about the target because I didn’t hit it. Therefore, I’ve either set the target too far off for right now, or I don’t have enough to go on.” The immediate self-talk of that performance should be, “target correction necessary.” After a good performance, on the other hand, the immediate feedback would be, “Now we’re getting somewhere. This is the way I see myself performing.” Non-high-performance individuals will have a good day or do something exceptional, but they’ll totally defeat themselves because they’ll have convinced themselves that it was a fluke.

TUCKER: So you believe in coaxing the mind toward the goal, almost talking to yourself?

WAITLEY: Absolutely. I believe in talking to myself in words, pictures, and emotions for a long time before a performance and just afterward. It’s even more important after a successful performance to assimilate it.

TUCKER: You recommend using simulation also as a way of improving performance. How does the system work?

Waitley: The neat thing about the brain is that it is a mimic of what we put into it in advance. Airline pilots have been using simulation for years. But it’s also a technique that businesspeople and everybody can practice, just by creating each experience that we want in our imagination first, before the event. The other day on a flight to Chicago, I was sitting next to a fellow who was making a weird, high-pitched humming noise, with his eyes closed. I turned the overhead air nozzle on his face and asked him if he wanted me to call the stewardess to come to his aid. It turned out that he was an oboist for the Chicago Symphony and he was practicing for that night’s performance. I met a world-champion Russian figure skater who told me that she rarely falls because she practices each sequence in her imagination at night with her eyes closed. She could probably perform her entire routine blindfolded with no hesitation. Simulation is the ability to do within when you’re without.

TUCKER: What is your primary message to those you teach?

WAITLEY: That the period of time we’re living in is no worse than any other period in history, and probably better. Because problems are normal and inherent with change. And since society is changing rapidly, it’s up to the individual to view change as normal and to see many of the changes taking place as positive rather than negative. But we’re not historians by nature. So we’re not apt to say, let’s look at what happened in the past for guidance. There’s such an incredible focus in society on deviant behavior, bad news, and things going wrong that most people take it all on their shoulders. They feel that things were better before and will probably be better at some unpredictable point in the future called “someday.”

TUCKER: Do you consider yourself a psychologist first or a motivator?

WAITLEY: I’m a motivational trainer first. I teach people how to view the world, how to view themselves in the world, and how to establish some rules of conduct toward their personal and professional lives. So in effect, I’m a performance enhancer. I consider myself a psychologist second, although I’m constantly trying to make sure that the techniques, I’m applying have some basis in fact and have been researched.

TUCKER: What do your audiences want from you?

WAITLEY: They think what motivation is is a pump up, let’s-go-out-there-and-kill-’em mentality. Motivation has been one of the most misunderstood, oversold words I’ve ever come across. What researchers have found is that the old locker-room psych-up causes you to peak too early. The adrenaline athletes have pumped up in the locker room tends to make them overanxious, and they make mistakes. They go out there, and instead of being relaxed and knowing exactly what they’re going to do, they’re actually too aroused to think. The new way is to have quiet time in the locker room —this applies to both Olympic and Super Bowl athletes- when athletes sit and listen to soft music and rehearse in their imaginations the game they know they are capable of playing because they’re prepared. And it’s really the same situation in life if you think about it.

TUCKER: Why is it more important to replay a successful performance than to analyze a bad one?

WAITLEY: Because most of us don’t spend enough time preparing for or simulating success in advance, and we aren’t prepared for it when we achieve it. We haven’t spent enough time thinking about how good it is going to feel to be successful. For whatever reason we become successful, we don’t completely understand it. And because of this, we don’t feel deserving of it; it comes upon us like instant stardom or winning the sweepstakes. Right away, our self-talk begins to tear down the success, and we get back to where we were before or we go back to being our “practiced selves.”

TUCKER: Of the high-achieving people you’ve observed, do they seem to be

goal-oriented?

WAITLEY: It’s definitely a common denominator of successful people. I find that the most common problem with people who never reach their goals is that they never set them. It isn’t that goals are unreachable; it’s that most people never take the time to write them down. They spend more time planning Christmas or a vacation than they do their lives. I’ll ask people what they are going to do in 1983 and they’ll say, “Who can tell? It depends on whether Reaganomics works.” Then I’ll ask, “What are you going to be doing by 1985?” they’ll reply, “Well, it will probably be worse, with the interest rates and all. We don’t have any idea.”

TUCKER: What’s your method for setting goals?

WAITLEY: I believe it’s best to write out your life goals first, the things you want to do in the long range. Then, break down your goals into intermediate ones: What do you want to accomplish in the next three years? What do you intend to accomplish in the next six months? And then, after you’ve done this, how are you going to achieve them? It’s very important to be specific; not just that you want to be happy. You want to be happy in what way? Do you want to be happy with your children at night when you come home? To answer these questions, you’ll have to put down certain affirmative statements that will project you toward your goals.

TUCKER: What do you say to people who reach their goals and find that they still aren’t happy?

WAITLEY: If your goals are symbols of success—a mansion, a yacht, a certain position in business or in the university—those I call shallow and superficial targets. If your goal was to make a million dollars and you made it, you’d find it shallow, because no one really cares. It isn’t the achievement of the million dollars that’s important; it was the process you went through in achieving it. So, goal setters have to be careful. They must understand that life itself is a process and that there is a big picture, that they fit into the big universe and that the most successful people look beyond themselves and their own goals for meaning and purpose in life.

These people are the ones who are busy planting shade trees under which they know they’ll never sit. The biggest fools are the ones who look at the destination as the answer and not the process of the journey as being important. But it’s equally foolish to go out there and just journey without having a destination.

TUCKER: What role does ambition play in your psychology of winning?

WAITLEY: A great one. Ambition is the role of imagination. It’s simply a desire for change or a dissatisfaction with the status quo. A desire for change means that I can see something out there that is better than what I have.

TUCKER: You mentioned earlier that we Americans may be working so hard that we may not be taking enough time to relax and reflect. What do you recommend as ways to keep from becoming too narrowly focused in one’s work?

WAITLEY: I think reading the best-selling nonfiction books is important. And if you don’t have time to read those, then definitely read the digests of them. They even have digests of medical breakthroughs, and they’re starting to put these digests on tape, so that what we used to think of as downtime in rush-hour traffic can be come in your auto-classroom. Attending seminars and lectures of all kinds, is important. Even more important is talking to people who have different views from yours.

TUCKER: Do you advocate having a specific daily routine?

WAITLEY: I’m a big believer in a success routine if the things you are doing are really beneficial. That might include getting up half an hour earlier, to ask yourself, “What is the most important thing I can do today that’s going to benefit me and those close to me?” Unfortunately, routines often end up stifling growth; we start resting on our laurels, becoming complacent, thinking about retirement. And then some young Turk comes along who’s not in a routine and can knock you right off your perch.

TUCKER: The direct opposite of resting on one’s laurels would be continually innovating, and continually undertaking new projects. What are your thoughts on that?

WAITLEY: I have a rule for that. If you’re just starting to succeed, keep repeating the success, and don’t innovate at the beginning of a successful pattern, but continue until you have succeeded for some time. Once you’re successful in your own eyes and in the eyes of the audience, then diversify, because people will help you do anything you want to after you are successful in each field.

TUCKER: In your book, The Psychology of Winning, you talk about creating a model for yourself. Could you explain the idea?

WAITLEY: Throughout the first half of most people’s lives they operate under a system of trial and error. Finally, we get smart through our failures and begin to repeat a success. It’s a heck of a way to live, yet everyone says you must go through it. But you really don’t. What is important is for a person to find a role model or a success model of someone who seems similar in intelligence and maybe even background, and maybe in a similar field. The only difference is that this model has had a great deal more success. Modeling is looking at other people’s lives, how they do what they do, interviewing them, reading about them, listening to them, really studying them, and finding out how they do it.

This article originally appeared in Forbes
Image credit: Pexels

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The Agency Revolution

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What People Really Want from Employers Today

LAST UPDATED: April 19, 2026 at 5:38 PM

The Agency Revolution

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

The Death of the “Conscript” Mentality

For decades, the traditional employment contract was built on a transactional foundation: the “Conscript” model. Organizations expected employees to trade their time, compliance, and cognitive labor for a steady paycheck and a cubicle. But the world has shifted. In a landscape defined by rapid technological acceleration and shifting social values, the era of the industrial-era conscript is officially over.

Today, people are looking to be Architects and Magic Makers. They are no longer content being cogs in a machine; they want to be the designers of the machine itself. This shift represents a fundamental move from passive participation to active contribution. If innovation is truly the act of removing friction from the human experience, then as leaders, we must start by removing the friction within our own organizational structures.

“The most attractive employers in 2026 aren’t those offering the flashiest perks, but those who provide the highest level of Human Agency.”

In this article, we explore how the most successful organizations are moving away from managing “headcount” and toward empowering individuals to own their impact, drive change, and find a sense of true agency in their professional lives.

Radical Transparency & Psychological Safety: The Fuel for Change

Innovation and change are inherently risky endeavors. If an employee fears that a failed experiment or a dissenting opinion will lead to professional exile, they will naturally default to the status quo. Psychological safety is not a “soft” HR concept; it is the essential fuel for an agile organization. Without it, your innovation engine is running on an empty tank.

To move forward, leaders must dismantle the “Zero-Error Trap.” In many corporate cultures, the cost of being wrong is perceived as higher than the benefit of being right. This creates a culture of silence where employees hide their best ideas and mask emerging problems. To thrive, we must shift the focus from “avoiding failure” to “maximizing learning velocity.”

Achieving this requires Radical Communication Loops. We need to create direct, unfiltered lines of communication from the “edges” of the organization — where the employees interact with customers — to the “center” where strategy is formed. When people see that their insights lead to tangible change, they stop being observers and start being owners.

  • Safety as Fuel: Creating an environment where curiosity is prioritized over compliance.
  • Dismantling the Zero-Error Trap: Celebrating the “intelligent failure” that provides a competitive roadmap.
  • Edge-to-Center Feedback: Ensuring the front lines have a voice in the boardroom.

The “Agency First” Model: Automating the Mundane to Elevate the Human

We are entering an era where the value of a human being in the workplace is no longer measured by their ability to perform repetitive tasks. The “Agency First” model focuses on Cognitive Offloading — using AI and automation to strip away the “mental noise” of administrative drudgery. This isn’t about replacement; it’s about liberation. When we automate the mundane, we don’t just save time; we reclaim the cognitive bandwidth necessary for deep thought and creative problem-solving.

This shift requires a fundamental evolution in management: moving from Monitor to Mentor. Instead of supervisors checking machine-generated outputs, the modern employee takes on the role of a system architect or “AI Coach.” They are responsible for the Human-in-the-Loop upgrade, ensuring that technology serves human goals rather than the other way around.

Ultimately, people today want to focus on Intent. In a world of infinite digital “busyness,” the most valuable skill is the ability to define the Commander’s Intent — the “why” behind the work. By letting intelligent systems handle the “how,” employees are empowered to steer the ship rather than just rowing in the galley. This is how we move from a workforce that is merely busy to a workforce that is profoundly impactful.

“The goal of digital transformation isn’t to make people work more like machines; it’s to use machines so that people can work more like humans.” — Braden Kelley

The Experience Nexus: Co-Creating the Workplace

In the past, organizations treated Customer Experience (CX) and Employee Experience (EX) as separate silos. Today, we realize they are two sides of the same coin. I call this the Experience Nexus. To deliver a seamless external brand, you must first design a seamless internal culture. We are seeing the rise of the Experience Management Office (XMO) — a centralized hub that integrates CX, EX, and Partner Experience (PX) to ensure every touchpoint is human-centered.

Modern employees don’t want to be passive recipients of HR policies; they want to be active designers. This is where the Employee Advisory Board comes in. By involving staff in the co-creation of the workplace — from hybrid work rituals to the selection of software — you shift the dynamic from “us vs. them” to a shared mission. When people help build the house, they care more about the foundation.

However, co-creation requires Radical Transparency regarding the data we collect. As we move toward neuroadaptive workplaces and advanced sensing, maintaining Data Sovereignty is critical. People want to know what is being measured and why. They want the assurance that technology is being used to support their flourishing, not just to track their keystrokes. Transparency builds the trust that makes innovation possible.

  • Unified Experience: Bridging the gap between how we treat customers and how we treat our team.
  • Co-Design Principles: Moving from top-down mandates to collaborative culture-building.
  • Privacy as a Pillar: Respecting individual sovereignty in an increasingly digital environment.

Meaning as the North Star (Not Just “Happiness”)

There is a common misconception in leadership circles that the ultimate goal is “employee happiness.” While happiness is wonderful, it is a trailing indicator. The leading indicator — the one that actually drives retention and brilliance — is Meaning. People don’t just want to feel good at work; they want to feel that their work matters. They want to see the direct line between their daily tasks and the success of the customer.

This shift requires us to rethink performance management entirely. We need to move away from the industrial mindset of “weeding out” low performers and toward a philosophy of “Re-potting.” Often, an employee isn’t failing; they are simply planted in the wrong soil. By identifying their unique aspirations and shifting them into roles where their specific talents can flourish, we honor the human being while optimizing the organization.

The Dream Organization is one where the friction between individual aspiration and corporate objectives disappears. When a company’s North Star aligns with the employee’s personal sense of purpose, you don’t need to “manage” them in the traditional sense. You simply need to provide the resources and get out of their way. In 2026, the competitive advantage belongs to the companies that can bridge the gap between “making a living” and “making a difference.”

“Stop trying to engineer happiness. Start designing for significance.”

Conclusion: Getting to the Future First

We are currently living through a profound transition in the nature of work. We are moving from a world where we use tools to perform tasks, to a world where we inhabit intelligent systems. Navigating this shift requires a FutureHacking™ mindset — the ability to look at the horizon not with fear, but with the intent to shape it. The future isn’t something that happens to us; it’s something we build through the choices we make today.

As leaders, our primary call to action is simple yet challenging: Stop trying to “make people happy” and start making their work important. When an individual understands their role in the larger story of innovation and human experience, engagement becomes a natural byproduct rather than a forced metric. We must provide the agency, the safety, and the tools that allow our teams to move from being participants in a process to being masters of their craft.

Change doesn’t happen in the boardroom through slide decks and mandates. It happens in the hearts and minds of the people on the front lines who choose to bring their best selves to work every day. By designing an organization that honors human potential, you don’t just stay competitive — you get to the future first.

The question isn’t whether the workplace will change, but whether you will be the one to lead that change. Let’s build something meaningful together.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the difference between a “Conscript” and a “Magic Maker”?

A “Conscript” is an employee who performs work based on transactional compliance — trading time for a paycheck. A “Magic Maker” is an empowered individual who uses their agency to solve problems, innovate, and create value through human-centered design and passion.

2. Why is psychological safety considered the “fuel” for innovation?

Innovation requires the freedom to experiment and fail. Psychological safety ensures that employees can take calculated risks and share dissenting opinions without fear of retribution, which is essential for rapid learning and organizational agility.

3. What does “re-potting” talent mean in a modern organization?

Rather than traditional performance management that “weeds out” low performers, “re-potting” involves identifying an individual’s unique strengths and moving them into a different role or environment where they can better flourish and contribute to the mission.

Image credit: Google Gemini

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