The Power of Owning Our Agency (even in an age of algorithms)

There are two fundamentally different ways we can approach the future - especially in times of uncertainty and rapid change. The first leaves us waiting for circumstances to improve. The second empowers us to shape them.

Jonathan Merritt captured this distinction perfectly when he said,

“Anticipatory hope suggests that someday, somehow, things will get better. But it’s fragile as an eggshell. Participatory hope is rooted in the present. It sees the broken things and says, ‘Here is where we begin,’”

I was equally struck, though, by Emily P. Freeman’s reflection on Merritt’s thought -

“This distinction between anticipatory hope and participatory hope is one I will never forget. One crosses its fingers. The other rolls up its sleeves.”

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The difference, I believe, comes down to one vital element - agency.

Agency is the belief that your actions matter; that you can affect change. There is profound power in owning our agency, especially in times with the potential to diminish it.

Waiting it Out vs. Weathering Through

Early in the pandemic, I found myself writing down three personal core values to anchor me through the season of uncertainty: integrity, growth, and agency.

Why agency? Because when the world shifts beneath your feet, there is a stabilising force in remembering your power to choose. Not to control circumstances (the pandemic made clear how limited that was), but to choose your response.

The contrast is simple. Waiting for circumstances to improve, or creating meaning and movement right where you are.

The first compounds the challenges we face with a general sense of powerlessness. The second recognises that even within constraints, we have choices - a recognition that transforms how we experience those challenges.

Internal vs. External Locus of Control

This concept has cultural dimensions that shape how we see the world.

Some cultures foster an ‘internal locus of control’ - the belief that one’s actions determine outcomes. Others more naturally instil an ‘external locus of control’ - where larger external forces primarily determine what happens to us.

This spectrum is influenced by cultural narratives, historical experiences, faith paradigms, and traditions. Understanding it matters for leaders navigating diverse teams. What looks like resistance might be coming from a different cultural perspective on agency.

At the same time, research shows that those with an internal locus of control tend to be more proactive and solution-oriented, and more likely to engage in deliberate self-development. They believe their efforts shape outcomes, so they invest them deliberately.

Exercising Agency for Ourselves and Others

This week, I’ve been at the United Nations Convention on the Status of Women, and I have been struck by the sheer force of agency at work across the rooms and sessions I’ve been part of.

Thousands of women stepping up and pushing back against circumstances, barriers, and active injustice to exercise agency for the good of people all around the world - even when coming from contexts that would tell them their own agency as a woman is limited.

None of which means that challenges go unacknowledged. Rather, the difference is in their relationship to those challenges.

These leaders demonstrated neither naive optimism nor resignation, but clear-eyed assessment coupled with belief in the possibility of change - and their ability to play a role in that. Participatory hope in action. Agency at work for good.

This extends beyond gender equity. In every complex challenge - economic volatility, technological disruption, political division - the question isn’t whether the challenge is real, but how we approach it.

Algorithmic Determinism vs. Human Choice

The question of agency is especially relevant in our relationship with algorithms.

Leaving aside for a moment the types of systemic impacts of algorithms of the sort Cathy O’Neil lays out so well in ‘Weapons of Math Destruction’, there can often be a narrative (and sometimes a reality) of a kind of technological inevitability in our individual choices and thoughts.

You’ve heard it. Algorithms know us better than we know ourselves. Our perspectives and politics are being shaped by giant forces beyond our control. Our futures are predictable based on digital patterns.

There is very real evidence for algorithmic influence, and it is concerning. We know that algorithms have enabled companies to hijack our time and attention more effectively and extensively than we would like to believe. Research has also shown that our purchasing decisions are being subconsciously influenced by personalised algorithmically-driven content. We know that algorithms reward content that creates outrage, because we as humans are most likely to invest our attention in said outrage-inducing content, whether or not it is wholly factual.

“A major study at New York University found that for every word of moral outrage you add to a tweet, your retweet rate will go up by 20 percent on average, and the words that increased your retweet rate most were ‘attack’, ‘bad’ and ‘blame’. A study by the Pew Research Center found that if you fill your Facebook posts with ‘indignant disagreement’, you’ll double your likes and shares.”

- Johann Hari, Stolen Focus

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And yet.

Algorithms reflect and amplify human choice. They do not replace it.

We are each, every one of us, the captain of our soul. We get to choose.

And that doesn’t have to mean choosing to reject algorithms and AI. Much research is now being done on Human-AI Collaboration (or HAIC). Much of that work is showing that HAIC outperforms either humans or AI working alone. If used with intentionality and within the parameters of human ethics and agency, these are tools that can help us reach further, whether in complex decision-making, rapidly testing drug design that can help millions, or serving more people with limited access to diagnostics or legal support.

That is what is possible. It doesn’t mean that is what is inevitable.

And so it is incumbent on each of us - as leaders and as humans at this unique technological moment in time, to be deliberate in whether we allow the tools driven by algorithms to drive us, or serve us.

Will we mobilise them in service to the ends and ideals of our own agency?

Will we notice, resist, and take ownership of all for which it is in our power to take responsibility?

Agency Audit: Reflective Questions

Here are a few questions to reflect on the ownership of our own agency - they are ones i certainly need to keep coming back to too!

1 - Where am I waiting for circumstances to change rather than rolling up my sleeves?

2 - In what area of my life am I most tempted to cross my fingers instead of exercising my agency?

3 - What is one area where I feel stuck or overwhelmed, and what is one small choice available to me that I might be overlooking?

4 - How might my background be influencing my sense of personal agency?

5 - Where am I allowing algorithms to influence my attention, content, or perspectives more than I might want or recognise?

6 - What story am I telling myself about my capacity to influence the challenges I care most about?

Living With Agency

The challenges we face, whether individual or global, are real. But so is our capacity to meet them with agency rather than just wishful thinking. And in that choice lies not just our own empowerment, but some of our greatest contributions to the world around us!