5 Unique ways to spot High Agency People (and hire them)

“Aut inveniam viam aut faciam - I shall either find a way or make one” - Hannibal

“Building a company is an infinite set of problems being thrown at you. You can’t look at every problem let alone solve them. You want people who identify and solve without being asked. These are high agency people'' - Naval.

What if there was a universal skill?

A particular mental construct, a default behavioral factory setting that allows a person to seemingly navigate the labyrinth with a degree of ease and aplomb that is simultaneously impressive and honestly a tad annoying for the rest of us.

You know those people for whom the world seems to be set on a slightly easier mode. They always ‘know a guy’ or see windows and doors where the rest of us see only walls and ramparts.?

Naval is right - business is a seemingly infinite set of problems that need to be solved. But life is no different - at least at work the playing field is somewhat defined. If you work in construction you’re next expecting a problem to surface that requires you to be a neurosurgeon.

But life is an infinite game played on infinite fields. Any given day you need to be a psychologist, athlete nutritionist, mathematician, artist and hostage negotiator. And if you’re a parent that’s all probably before you leave home in the morning.?

There was a time when the most desired skill was strength. Hunt, feed, defend.

Then we moved to more intellectual pursuits and IQ was the metric. Then EQ and Myers Briggs and all manner of colourful charts that apparently defined the totality of our emotional and psychological capacity.?

But now where do we look? In a complex work of imperfect information what’s the yardstick for measuring new hires that allows us to determine if we’ve landed on a self-starting problem solver or simply another capable but replaceable cog in the machine?

The skill you’re looking for is ‘High Agency’.

“When you’re told that something can’t be done, is that the end of the conversation? Or does that start a second dialogue in your mind, on how to get around whoever it is that just told you that you can’t do something?” - Eric Weinstein

Why it matters.

To understand the sheer value of having high agency people in your corner, consider what the alternative looks like.?

Low Agency is death by a thousand cuts. We can all see the problems and identify the problems, but no one is throwing solutions at the wall and seeing what sticks. No one is crossing the floor, knocking on the doors of other silos and asking questions, looking for help, spitballing seemingly obtuse or oblique ideas. The pace is measured if not down right slow. It feels safe - until the whole thing falls over. There’s a reason you need to keep pedaling your bike - because if you don’t you eventually stop and fall over.?

Flip that picture - the problems haven’t gone away, you’re still living in the same world as everyone else but the team seems to operate on a higher frequency. Connections are created and leveraged where before there were none. Momentum is self sustaining - even when an inevitable proportion of ideas fall flat or get discarded, the momentum remains. You solve and move forward, over and over and over. It is incredibly hard to defeat a team that simply will not quit.

For the visual learners amongst us let’s map it out. Let’s talk talent versus agency

The above chart was first produced by Shreyas Doshi - here’s the cliff notes.

Cogs - don’t misinterpret that sector. These are not necessarily ‘low value’. It’s contextual. If you are early in your career, learning a complex new skill, earning your stripes - there are a host of reasons that you might be in that quadrant. Businesses need a degree of horsepower in that corner. What you don’t want is everyone there.

Frustrated Geniuses - Tread carefully here. If the only thing holding back your incomprehensible and stellar degree of talent is ‘everyone else’ then perhaps you’re not as talented as you think, or maybe this just isn't the place for you. Or perhaps the issue is a matter of training and opportunity that we can provide. Know how to spot the difference.?

Go Getters - these are our people. Self starters, problem solvers, ladder climbers, dot connectors and surprising thinkers. They may sit lower on the talent/skill axis but we can teach skills - it’s far harder to teach agency. You can move the go getters along the axis of skill and land us in game changer territory.

Game Changers - these are the high agency high skill people that energise the entire team, that doesn’t mean that they are flashier or brash. They can be quiet and reserved, but beneath that they are still connecting people, dots, departments, asking questions, asking what’s behind that door? Why can’t we go in that room? What if? How come? Why not? What would it look like if??

Nice infographic but it doesn’t help us actually know what we are looking for. So let’s deal with that.

How to find it.?

There is a degree of the intangible to high agency - some people just have it and you know it. It oozes out of them.

“Sam Altman has it. You could parachute him onto an island of cannibals and come back in five years to find that he is now the king” - Paul Graham.

But we need something more concrete than that? - and it’s not going to be found in an IQ score, or the behavioural trait assessment du jour

Where you will find it is in enquiry - traits, hobbies, histories - all these will leave clues that an intentioned interview can elicit.?

Here’s a dry and semi-useful list of 8 indicator traits of High Agency People.

And then 5 actually useful, actionable and Unique ways to spot them in an interview.

Indicators of High Agency?

1. Initiative and Proactiveness
2. Problem Solving mindset
3. Seek progress over perfection
4. Embrace discomfort and uncertainty
5. Long Term thinking
6. Learn to adapt quickly
7. Self aware/ critical reflection
8. Collaborative and communicative

So that’s a very neat and professional sounding list - very paid consultant of us. Plenty of interview candidates are going to be well skilled in the art of the interview and know how to provide the ‘right’ answer on many of those traits. So how do we spot high agency people in the wild.

The best summary I have seen was from George Mack - here’s his five flags for spotting high agency people.?

1. Weird Teenage hobbies - being a teenager is hard enough. If you can juggle that as well as having a hobby that probably went against the grain or the norms, then you have some agency.
2. Energy Distortion Field - high agency people leave you feeling energised, low agency people drain you.?
3. Never Guess their Opinions - if I know your opinion on one thing I can usually guess what it will be on another. High Agency people don’t fit that stereotype - they tend to have opinions that seem at odds with each other across a range of matters. That’s healthy, independant and not captured by societal norms or pressure
4. Immigrant Mentality - there is a reason a majority of Fortune 500 companies were started by either first or second generation immigrants. The agency it takes to move your entire life across the world, to start again, to work anything to make ends meet. Look for people who have moved town, country, taken big leaps of faith
5. Niche Content - their interests are often niche, they don’t wait for it to be popular or validated. They find something interesting and dive down the rabbit hole, way before it’s been vetted and declared cool or otherwise by the rest of us.??

Summary

Much of business, and life, is unpredictable.

In a complex system there is only imperfect information which leaves us with imperfect decisions.

In the end the best laid plans and strategies matter far less than their inherent execution by highly capable individuals - and the traits of high agency can be the key to unlock and leverage perpetual progress in a dynamic world.?

Find your high agency go-getters and game-changers and reap the whirlwind.?

“Aut inveniam viam aut faciam - I shall either find a way or make one” - Hannibal