Work Without Permission: When Agency Outruns Authority

Hello!

It’s Thursday, 5^th June 2025. Welcome to Bold Efforts. Every Thursday we spotlight ideas that redraw the line between work and life. Today we focus on agentic systems, human and machine, that act before anyone asks.

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Key Idea: Agentic work

We began the decade dazzled by generative AI, a tireless mimic that spins code, prose, or images once you prompt it. Gen AI is reactive. It waits, then answers. Impressive, yet still a call and response.

Now step forward. Meet the AI agent. It does not just create. It executes. It scans data, judges what matters, chooses a move, and acts. It books freight slots, sends invoices, emails suppliers, patches code. Each act loops back into its model. Wins sharpen the next decision, errors rewrite the rules. Minutes replace quarters.

Place that engine inside a company that already trusts its people. Roles turn into problems to solve. Information is open. Small accountable teams fire quick shots while bots sweep the routine and flag the risky. Strategy lives as a document that refreshes the instant the market twitches.

McKinsey calls this state an agentic workplace. Firms on that path grow twice as fast and lose far fewer people. Execution sits next to insight, so lag disappears. Customers feel the speed first and the features later.

Look at Amazon’s supply chain optimizer. Fifteen years ago purchase orders crawled through layers of planners. Today an agent reads live demand, bids for warehouse slots, and launches trucks before daylight. Human oversight remains, but as a final audit and not as a bottleneck. The same pattern appears at Nubank where an agent flags fraud in under two seconds, and at Canva where a design‑assist bot ships brand kits in hours rather than quarters. In each case agency is the multiplier, not the head‑count.

Culture shifts as well. Initiative turns into currency, curiosity into passport. Meetings shrink because agents stream live metrics. Approval chains collapse because the safest choice is often the one made now with current data. Middle managers pivot into context amplifiers and guardians of ethics.

The skills map rewrites itself. Prompt whisperers give way to orchestrators who choreograph networks of agents. Data fluency moves from specialist niche to table stakes. Systems thinking outranks role mastery because impacts ripple faster and wider. Recruitment shifts toward learning rate over résumé depth.

Governance must keep pace. Clarity around guardrails, audit logs, and fallback plans protects agency from becoming an accident factory. Tesla’s Autopilot recalls show what happens when guidance lags ambition. The fix is not less agency but sharper boundaries and richer telemetry.

Some fear agency breeds chaos. History argues otherwise. Open source software, commodity markets, real time sports analytics. Wherever authority spreads and transparency rises, weak ideas surface early and strong ones spread fast.

The real question is whether legacy firms will loosen their grip on control before the market loosens it for them. A decade ago mobile first looked optional. Today it spells survival. Agentic first is next.

If you build, flood every screen with real‑time truth. Strip friction, share context, and trust talent to turn insight into action. Audit in daylight, correct in public, move again. That rhythm will break any rival still chained to permission slips.

If you lead, measure your value by how few decisions need your signature tomorrow compared with today. Reverse the ratio and you are no longer a leader. You are a delay.

If you contribute, remember that prompts fill chat windows, but initiative rewires systems. The door to agency is already open. Walk through and pull others in.

Agency is not a trend. It is the price of staying in the game. Pay it or watch the doors close.

Thank you for reading. See you next Thursday with something that can change job search forever.

Best,
Kartik

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Who am I?
I’m Kartik, founder of Polynomial Studio, a holding company and product studio building AI-driven businesses for the future of work. The way we work and live is being rewritten. AI, remote work, and shifting economic forces are reshaping careers, businesses, and entire industries. The big question is where it’s all heading.

For the past eight years, I’ve been at the forefront of these shifts, working across real estate, technology, startups, and corporate strategy. I’ve helped businesses navigate change and stay ahead of what’s next, always focused on understanding the forces shaping our future and how we can use them to build something better. Click here to know more about me.

Why Bold Efforts?
I started Bold Efforts because I believe work should fit into life, not the other way around. Too many people are stuck in outdated systems that don’t serve them. This newsletter is about challenging the status quo and making the effort to design work around life. It brings together bold ideas and actionable insights to help you build a healthier, more balanced relationship with work, leading to greater purpose and fulfillment. If you’re looking for fresh perspectives on how to work and live better, you’re in the right place.

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