John Cutler · 5 min read · Product Teams
TBM 425: AI and Agency
Read the original on cutlefish.substack.com →
The piece argues that AI adoption should empower teams rather than strip them of agency. It contends that leadership’s emphasis on company-wide adoption often erodes trust and curiosity, turning exploration into compliance, and that agency is shaped by environment as well as the individual.
Key Takeaways
- Agency is an environmental construct; leaders must craft environments that enable experimentation with AI rather than coercively pushing adoption.
- Prescriptive mandates and gaslighting undermine trust; healthy skepticism, curiosity, and space to learn are essential.
- Distinguish between tools that aid decision-making and those that suppress it; avoid treating AI adoption as merely an education or motivation problem.
- Organizational context (layoffs, reorgs, broken promises) must be addressed to maintain loyalty and enable genuine AI exploration.
Excerpt
So you want your team to figure out how to use AI for the benefit of your company? Then stop stripping them of the agency to do it. AI is posing all of us hard questions about agency, worth, and identity. But the far bigger problem is how we’re talking about it, mandating it, and wielding it. You see leaders blabbering on about everything they're doing to drive adoption, while trampling the most basic elements of human nature: agency, trust, and dignity. Many leadership teams are engaging in what amounts to collective gaslighting of their teams. They treat resistance to…