I’ve been experimenting with AI coding agents for a personal project of mine. One of the things I’ve picked up in the process is yet another technology principle that can apply well to our interpersonal relationships.
This time, that idea is the “autonomy ladder.” With Agentic AI, this is a framework for deciding and declaring how much work an AI agent can do on its own. What is it allowed to touch, what does it need to leave alone? What decisions can it make by itself, and when does it need to hand control back to a human in the loop.
Without a clear definition of where an agent sits on that autonomy ladder, you run the risk of a runaway agent that, at best, consumes expensive tokens without providing value or, at worst, deletes an entire production database along with all recent backups. Or, at the other extreme, you have agents that constantly ask for your permission to perform even the most mundane and routine of repetitious tasks.
As you develop your team members and give them greater responsibilities with wider scope and broader impact, it’s important to clarify where they sit on the “autonomy ladder” for that particular assignment. This is especially true when this assignment needs a different level of autonomy than they’re used to.
If you’re looking to offer your team members opportunities with greater autonomy and you’d like to avoid some of the risks that can naturally occur, let’s talk. Visit stevedwire.com/talk to start the conversation.
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