208 Transition

Yesterday I met with a change and transformation colleague to discuss networking and job-hunting strategies. The conversation turned to the tension between what agencies say they want in a change manager and what experienced practitioners actually do.

This tension sits between engaging in transactional work — like preparing a change-impact assessment — and working as a strategic transformation advisor: someone with the knowledge and people skills to work closely with decision-makers and influence the direction of change itself.

This is no easy task. It asks for maturity, wisdom, trust, and ultimately agency — the learned and supported capacity to make purposeful choices, act with integrity, and influence outcomes in the world we inhabit.

I first encountered this concept as a second-year social-work student. In Social Work in Practice One, we studied case examples exploring the lives of older women and refugees — both instances of limited agency. Later, as a social worker, I saw this lack of agency first-hand through homelessness and unemployment.

The fact that agency is now part of the way we describe our work lives feels like a massive leap. Yet it’s a complicated one. Rising personal debt, low rental vacancy rates, and the growth of contract and temporary employment make acting with integrity increasingly difficult.

If how we show up at work is defined by our insecurity outside of it, we have a problem.

Seen this way, a decline in agency may be one of the biggest obstacles to truly human-centred change in organisations. This year, I’ve reflected deeply on leadership failures I’ve experienced. Many leaders I worked with did not act with good conscience.

I can focus on their shortcomings — or I can examine my own role in enabling those behaviours. Peter Block reminds us we are responsible for 50% of any relationship. I can’t control the other half, but I can take responsibility for mine.

Looking back, especially during organisational change, I can see moments when I failed to challenge or even be curious about the gap between stated intention and behaviour. Doing so takes trust — hard to build quickly — and courage. It takes agency.

Interestingly, as I became more financially independent, less ambitious about becoming an executive, and more comfortable in my skillset, I began to express greater agency. I questioned transactional change activities and the reflex to serve hierarchy without reflection. Possibly too much. In a temporary role, I was eventually let go — coincidentally after facilitating workshops with executives struggling to lead change congruently.

That, it seems, is sometimes the price you pay for acting with agency.

This can easily lead to cynicism about an organisation’s ability to change. When we are trapped in a vortex of transactional activity — from how we recruit to how we implement — we are unlikely to create workplaces, or societies, capable of deep change. We remain, as Ken Rickard and Jason Little describe, in the wash of the waves of change.

I empathise with those who don’t feel able to speak truth to power. We all carry responsibilities. But for those of us who can express agency, perhaps the call is to set an example — to gently shift the dial in our workplaces and move towards being trusted advisors.

I’m not suggesting we act without caution or respect. Rather, that we begin — quietly and consistently — to question the alignment between what our leaders say and what they do, especially when the pressure is on.

That’s where agency begins.
That’s where transformation takes root.

What would it look like for you — or your team — to reclaim your agency at work this week?