Most people wait to be told what to do next.
In school, someone gives you a syllabus. At an internship, someone gives you a project. At your first job, someone gives you a manager. The system is designed to tell you where to go and what to produce.
High agency people skip that step.
They see a problem and solve it without being asked. They find the information they need without waiting for someone to hand it over. When they hit a wall, they find another way in. Not because they are more talented, but because they decided not to wait.
Sam Altman wrote that the most important thing he looks for in people is whether they have “a very high sense of personal agency.” Tyler Cowen has said similar things. The idea keeps coming up in how successful people describe what separates the people who move fast from everyone else.
Here is what I think it actually means in practice.
You own the outcome, not just the task.
Most people do what they were asked to do. High agency people care whether the thing actually worked. There is a real difference. If you were asked to send an email and you sent the email, you did your job. If you were asked to get a response and you sent the email, you are still not done.
You treat obstacles as routing problems.
When something does not work, high agency people ask what else they can try. Not “who can I escalate this to” or “should I just wait and see.” The question is always: what is another way in? This sounds obvious. It is surprisingly rare.
You solve first, then communicate.
Learn to solve your problems and then learn to communicate them. In doing you realize what is important to you. Most people skip the first step. They talk about problems, strategize about problems, present decks about problems. High agency people solve the problem, then explain what they learned.
The act of solving tells you what actually matters. You cannot know that in advance.
The people I have seen move fastest in their careers are not the ones with the best credentials. They are the ones who stopped waiting for the conditions to be perfect and just started. In accounting, in technology, in building communities. The pattern is the same everywhere.
You do not need a title. You do not need a budget. You need to decide that the thing is worth doing and then do it.