The "Return on Agency" barrier in large organization teams
When tech/product orgs scale beyond a certain size, below a certain level in the pyramid, it starts becoming pointless to be a "high agency" individual
Recently read an interesting tweet that triggered me to write this
https://twitter.com/deedydas/status/1761598142284435640
My observation - as teams grow and "middle management" starts to exist, there also forms something I call the "return-on-agency barrier"
I don't want to elaborate too much what "High Agency" means, because Shreyas as written a lot about it
But whether showing high agency actually is beneficial to your relationship with the organisation or not is determined by how high up the org pyramid you are. And below a certain point in the pyramid, being high agency can often be detrimental instead of beneficial.
The reason is that "ideological" changes like what Debarghya talks about - for eg, shipping velocity, release note messaging, user feedback collection funnel etc - all of these need people with "executive" power to actually want to change. In big orgs that means VP and above.
The "return-on-agency barrier" lies exactly at the point upto which VPs have direct day-to-day visibility.
Below that point, your 'agency' is not visible to executive stakeholders. Instead it is visible to only those who can do little with your highly energetic and persistent voice. They would much rather have you be a docile factory hand that does exactly as told without rocking the boat too much.
Being high agency is great only if executive stakeholders can appreciate your high agency behaviour. Otherwise, as Deedy says - why take up ideological battles with your big employer when you can just stay quiet and take home $$$
At a place like Google, I'll guess that the real stakeholders who can bring change are the SVPs. (and those L9,L10 ICs who do whatever they want)
Which means the return on agency barrier itself lies at VP level (L7)
So if you report to someone L6 or below, which is like 99% of the company, then from org survival perspective, being low agency is better than being high agency. 🤷♂️