When we talk about things like High-impact ICs and speed as a moat, everyone gets excited. But you don’t get those through ‘AI transformation initiatives.’
Sure, having the right AI tools and skills is part of the equation. But even the best employees with all the most magical tools will get trapped… if your org structure and culture don’t adjust.
Right now, many companies already have the technology they need to go much faster. The blocker is company systems that are mostly designed to prevent things from happening. The power is centralized and all the team members are treated like a risk vector. Exhausting approval cycles, super tight boundaries on roles, unbreakable title-based hierarchies, and a whole tier of middle managers whose main job is to keep everyone in line.
All of this pretty much screams at employees, ‘We don’t trust you, stay in your lane.’
And it should be obvious : Rapid innovation cannot happen in that kind of environment. Super high-impact individuals and high-velocity teams will shrivel up and die.
Everyone’s talking about AI agents, but what you really need is employees with agency. And if you don’t figure out how to give them the access and autonomy to make decisions on behalf of your organization, all of your AI innovation efforts are screwed.
Protecting’ employees by limiting access and autonomy
Most modern companies are pretty much built around a command-and-control, power-at-the-top model. Each employee is treated like an assembly-line worker with one specific function. ‘Do your job, don’t ask questions, we’ll do the thinking for you.’ The goal is to bring order to the chaos of big, broad organizations with lots of moving parts. If everyone thinks for themselves… who knows what could happen !
One of the big reasons everyone is striving for bigger titles and team management positions is… that’s where you’ll be heard. That’s where you can actually get the required information. That’s where you get invited to the right meetings and channels.
Companies say they want high-impact ICs, then hide the information required to have impact behind manager titles.
Literally. When you get a manager promotion, you’re in a separate Slack channel where information is being shared with you that you had no access to, before.
To conclude, if we want to use AI efficiently in our companies, we should permit our colaborators to have the autonomy , the trust, and the context to actually use them.
