# The flow of agency.

2026-08-22 · Joakim Jardenberg. English translation by AI. Original wording preserved. Titles and image descriptions added by AI.

My team and I have been philosophising again. Perhaps we’re pushing it a little. But surely it’s a hypothesis worth developing? (And someone will of course object that this is what leadership has always been about, but in practice “management” in organisations most certainly has NOT done this.)
...

Old manager:
assign work → coordinate people → review deliverables → decide

Human-agent leader:
define outcome → design roles and authority → orchestrate capacity → observe evidence → intervene in exceptions → improve the system

The key conceptual shift is subtle but important: the thing being managed is no longer primarily people or agents. It is the flow of agency through the organization.

That makes leadership less about controlling execution and more about designing the conditions under which execution can safely happen without you.

[Original LinkedIn post](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7496812852566069249/)

## Original wording

Jag och mitt team har filosoferat lite igen. Lite hårt draget kanske. Men visst är det en hypotes att jobba vidare med? (Och någon kommer så klart invända att det där är vad ledarskap alltid handlat om, men i praktiken har "managment" i organisationer garanterat INTE gjort det) 
... 

Old manager:
assign work → coordinate people → review deliverables → decide

Human-agent leader:
define outcome → design roles and authority → orchestrate capacity → observe evidence → intervene in exceptions → improve the system

The key conceptual shift is subtle but important: the thing being managed is no longer primarily people or agents. It is the flow of agency through the organization.

That makes leadership less about controlling execution and more about designing the conditions under which execution can safely happen without you.

Source: https://jardenberg.com/notes/the-flow-of-agency

Joakim Jardenberg. English translation by AI. Original wording preserved. Titles and image descriptions added by AI.

Joakim Jardenberg’s own writing: CC BY 4.0. Credit Joakim Jardenberg and preserve AI + JJ / AI translation attribution. Third-party quotations, recommendations, photographs, screenshots, logos and media retain their own rights and are excluded.
Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/