Robert TaFounder & CEO, Clarity · Building Hyper-Personalized Agents

Stop betting your AI rollout on high-agency people

28 Jul 2026 · 2 min

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1:30

In this segment of a conversation between Robert Ta and a co‑speaker, Ta cites a survey showing that nearly 44% of Gen Z employees actively sabotage or ignore corporate AI initiatives because they fear job loss and the devaluation of human labor. He frames this resistance as a critical warning sign for organizations attempting AI rollouts. The discussion then shifts to the concept of "agency"—the ability of individuals to independently learn and apply new technology. The co‑speaker argues that enterprises should not rely on a small group of high‑agency employees to drive adoption. Instead, they should design AI tools and workflows inclusively so that the broader workforce, including lower‑agency “foot soldiers,” can integrate AI without being forced to be on the front line of learning. The speaker suggests that inclusive product design and organizational practices will yield higher ROI and more sustainable adoption than trying to restructure the organization around a minority of high‑agency individuals.

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Nearly 44% of Gen Z workers admit to actively sabotaging or ignoring corporate AI strategies due to fears of job displacement and a devaluation of human labor. And that's just the Gen Zs. I mean, there's different numbers for overall, but that tells you there's a non-zero percentage of your population of employees that are just like digging in their feet and their toes and they're like, we're not changing. They're actively resisting it. So this period is sort of make or break, I think. The thing I would recommend everybody look for is agency. Everybody can do anything now. It's very clear if you're high agency, you'll go figure it out. What are your thoughts on agency?
I think in the world that we live in, you know, where you're an entrepreneur and you have to have agency and you have to be on the front of the adoption curve. I think for technology adoption in general, I'd steelman the case that you really don't want to have to require agency of somebody to adopt technology. There's going to be an innovation curve no matter what. And I think it's about making the products more inclusive. And so that means like, how do you make your internal harnesses something where you don't have to be a high agency, like always on the front line learning the new things, but you can still integrate this into your workflow. I think that's the reality of like how the adoption curve will hit knowledge workers is that is inclusive design and inclusively bringing the power and the return on investment across the organization. So I think that's the higher leverage for enterprise owner than say trying to like refactor their organization to find only high agency people. You want the foot soldiers, you want to empower them. And if you just look at like personality characteristics across the population, I think there's a reason that only a small amount of population is meant to be high agency. If 100% of us were all high agency all the time, it would just be chaos.