How to Build Real Agency
The Change Signal with Cate Hall
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In this episode, I talk with Cate Hall about agency — what it is, why it matters, and why it’s more complicated than simply telling people to “take ownership.” Cate defines agency as the ability to see and act on degrees of freedom other people overlook, which is a powerful idea for anyone leading change, transformation, or large-scale organizational work.
We get into how leaders can become more agentic without becoming reckless, especially inside complex organizations where not everything can be an experiment. Cate offers the idea of “selective agency”: finding the places where iteration, risk, and movement are actually possible.
And then things get especially interesting. If you want more agency from your people, you have to tolerate them doing things imperfectly. And if you want more agency in the system, you also have to ask: agency in service of what?
Here are three questions this Change Signal conversation asks:
What freedom are you not seeing yet?
Where can you safely loosen control?
When does agency become dangerous?
ABOUT CATE:
Cate Hall is the author of You Can Just Do Things and writes about personal agency from the perspective of someone who learned it later in life. Her path has included law, professional poker, addiction recovery, biotech founding, and leading a multibillion-dollar private biotech foundation — which gives her a particularly sharp view on risk, action, failure, and what it takes to move.
Music Credits: Rest in the Garden - SackJo22 ft Duckett & The Stubble Field Break (Mana Mixed) - Mana Junkie ft Apoxode
