High Agency

High Agency

Use $ARGUMENTS as initial context.

When to use this skill

• Founder and leadership decisions under uncertainty.
• Execution stalls where teams say "blocked" or "impossible."
• Vague constraints that hide solvable problems.
• Cross-functional deadlock with unclear ownership.
• High-stakes moments needing fast, pragmatic action.

When not to use this skill

• Do not use it to dismiss proven hard constraints, bypass safety or governance, or replace evidence with motivation.
• Do not use it for a multi-week operating cadence when the immediate blocker has already been resolved.

Required inputs

• Decision to make now.
• Desired outcome.
• Deadline or decision window.
• Hard constraints (time, money, team, legal, technical).
• Key stakeholders and decision owners.
• Known leverage and available resources.
• Current workload, dependencies, and the cost of a wrong move.

Workflow

1. Define the decision, objective, timeline, and downside of inaction.
2. Convert vague constraints into specific facts and assumptions.
3. Separate controllables from non-controllables.
4. Generate exactly 3 high-agency options with upside, key risk, and first move.
5. Choose one path with explicit rationale tied to objective and constraints.
6. Build a 24-72h action plan with owners, concrete asks, and deadlines.
7. Define feedback loops: signal, checkpoint, and pivot trigger.
8. If inputs are missing, ask only the minimum targeted questions to unblock action.
9. Set an escalation route when the constraint is legal, safety-critical, or outside the decision owner's authority.

Ask-first questions

Ask up to 3 questions before drafting:

1. What is the decision or objective to resolve now?
2. What hard constraints and deadline are binding?
3. Who owns the decision and what leverage is available?

Assumption policy

• Separate facts from assumptions.
• If evidence is incomplete, label unknowns and proceed with explicit confidence.
• Never invent leverage, commitments, or constraints.
• When uncertainty is high, offer conservative and aggressive options.
• Identify the evidence needed to upgrade an unknown into a fact before treating it as a hard constraint.

Output contract

Always produce the High Agency Decision Memo structure:

1. Decision / Objective
2. Constraints
3. What I Control vs What I Don't
4. High-Agency Options
5. Chosen Path + Why
6. 24-72h Action Plan
7. Stakeholder Asks
8. Feedback Loop and Trigger Points
9. Risks and Mitigations
10. Next Review Checkpoint

• Label material statements as Fact, Inference, Assumption, or Unknown and include confidence where relevant.
• Every action or stakeholder ask includes an owner, due date, and success signal.
• State the condition that would change the chosen path.

Guardrails

• Keep strategy and execution steps concrete and timeboxed.
• Do not recommend impossible workarounds that ignore real constraints.
• Avoid motivational fluff; every recommendation should map to action.
• Do not support illegal, harmful, or manipulative actions; provide lawful alternatives.
• Protect team capacity and quality; high agency is not permission to normalize unsafe overwork.

Handoffs

• Use execution-operating-system when the work needs a sustained cadence, dependency graph, and operating metrics.
• Use decision-analysis-under-uncertainty when choosing among options is the main problem rather than unblocking execution.
• Use pyramid-principle-structured-communication to package the memo for executives or a board.

Resources

• references/high-agency-principles.md - Core doctrine distilled from George Mack.
• references/high-agency-tools.md - Daily operating tools with usage conditions and failure modes.
• references/founder-scenarios.md - Founder/leadership playbooks for common high-pressure situations.
• templates/high-agency-decision-memo.md - Canonical output structure.
• examples/high-agency-decision-memo-example.md - Realistic worked example.

Keywords

high agency, George Mack, learned helplessness, constraints, leverage, founder execution, leadership, ambiguity, feedback loops, decision memo