High Agency

• Apr 2, 2025
• Concepts, Higher Education, Leadership, & Work
• 2 minutes reading time

Somewhat buried in this problematic article, High Agency — In 30 Minutes by George Mack, is a solid idea here around Agency. I'm not a huge fan of the writing style and the armchair psychology used throughout. Some of the explanations, analogies and metaphors leave a lot to be desired - but at the heart of it is something useful.

Mack outlines that there is a Spectrum of Agency, high to low, that tends to inform and elicit certain behaviours and traits. Mack defines these as skills (which I'm not sure they are) and has an odd list of "typical" traits of High Agency people - so I am having to put aside a great deal of this article.

At the heart of it, he describes High Agency as a combination of three distinct things

1. Clear thinking
2. Bias to action
3. Disagreeability

He also suggests that High agency is like a tricycle in that if you remove one of the wheels, it stops working.  I tend to agree with the following in terms of how these display a sense of high agency:

• If they can't think clearly, they will charge ahead with the first bad plan that pops into their head
• If they lack a bias for action, they'll never move their ideas from theory into the real world.
• If they aren't disagreeable, they'll quit and conform when someone in authority tells them "No".

The next part about High Agency software and Wilbur Wright is a bit of a bunk for me. So I'll skip to the Low Agency traps - which are essentially the opposite behaviours of High Agency:

1. Muddy Thinking
2. Bias to inaction
3. Agreeability

These traits of Low and High Agency resonate because they're manifest in the work I'm involved in at the moment. A big chunk of the merger involves trying to work with colleagues who come from a different culture and ways of working, and I would say that Agency is a key aspect of the underlying differences between our teams.

I have spent years cultivating a high agency environment within my team, and I have also had that as a key part of my role within the organisation, but at the moment that's not how we're operating. There is an ongoing lack of clarity around our work and no desire to seek clarity. There is little to no action possible because it's all tied to low agentic decision-making processes (everything is decided by a committee that doesn't include our voice or even acknowledge it). Finally, there is no appetite for conflict. We cannot push back on decisions or even raise valid concerns. Any disagreement or dissent is just waved away in favour of agreeability with whatever the status quo so we don't rock the boat.

The takeaway from this article is around the spectrum. It helped me see my current work environment with more clarity, but it has me thinking about agency.

Is it a skill? Is it behaviour? Is it culture? What creates and disables agentic behaviours?

• Tim Klapdor
• Adelaide, Australia
• & posts