Human Agency Architecture Sprint

Your pilots worked well enough. People use the tools and a few teams have real wins. But when you ask a simple question, such as who decides what now, the answers don’t agree. Some decisions have drifted to AI without anyone choosing that. Others still sit with people who no longer have the context to make them well. Accountability is blurry, and nobody can say whether the function is getting stronger or just faster.

That’s the point where most transformations stall. It isn’t that the technology failed. It’s that no one redesigned the structure around it.

The HAA Sprint fixes that for one function in two weeks. It maps which decisions AI should handle, which people must keep, and who is accountable for each, and it sets a baseline so you can show progress in 90 days.

This is a fit if you have:

• One function where AI is changing the work, such as operations, marketing, customer support, finance or product

• An executive sponsor who owns the outcome and can open doors

• Three leaders in that function who can give 45 minutes each, plus two hours together for a working session

• Pressure to move from pilots to a model you can defend to your board, your leadership team or your workforce

• A need to measure what AI is doing to your people’s capability and judgment, not just to output

Why work with me. The sprint applies Human Agency Architecture, my framework for deciding where AI acts and where human judgment has to stay in charge. I developed it alongside the senior operators in the AI Operators Exchange, who are working through these same decisions inside large organizations.

Not quite right?

• If you’re focused on a single role or function, see the Role Redesign Package.

• If you first need to understand why your rollout is stalling, start with the AI Adoption Diagnostic.

• For organization-wide transformation, get in touch about a full Candor Partners engagement.

You leave with a decision structure for one function and a baseline to measure progress against.

• A decision-rights map: the function’s key decisions sorted from Delegated to Retained, showing what AI handles, what people keep deciding and where accountability sits.

• A Transformation Scorecard baseline across cognitive capacity, psychological safety and agency, developmental health, and organizational conditions.

• The function’s placement on the Productivity × Agency grid, with its top risk named.

• A 90-day plan setting out what to measure, when to escalate and who is accountable.

• A 30-60-minute readout with your leadership team.

1. Request a scoping call. We spend 30 minutes confirming fit, the function and timing, and I send a short proposal. Confirm and schedule the kickoff.

2. Kickoff (30 min). We confirm the function, the sponsor, and the three leaders I’ll interview.

3. Week 1: Interviews and baseline. I hold three 45-minute leader interviews, and the function completes a short Transformation Scorecard survey.

4. Week 2: Working session (2 hours). I lead the function’s leaders through sorting its key decisions from Delegated to Retained.

5. Readout (30-60 min). I present the decision-rights map, the Scorecard baseline, the grid placement with the top risk, and the 90-day plan.

6. Receive the written deliverables within [3] business days of the readout.

I’ve spent my career where a new technology meets the people expected to absorb it.

In 2005 I co-founded BlogHer, when blogging was still new and social media norms untrusted and untested. We built frameworks for trustworthy engagement, which I've done with emerging tech ever since. I’ve led global marketing teams at AWS and ConsenSys (blockchain), and in 2024 I co-founded Optionality, a community for experienced professionals exploring new models for work and meaningful careers. I started my career in traditional media (Time Inc, The New York Times Syndicate, Penguin), writing for national publications such as Fast Company and Inc.

Today, through my advisory practice Candor Partners, I work with leaders on a problem I call structural lag: Organizations deploy AI faster than their people and institutions are ready to absorb it. Human Agency Architecture (HAA) is the framework I built to close that gap. It gives leaders a practical way to decide what AI should handle, what people must keep deciding, and how to protect the judgment and development their organizations depend on.

I also convene the AI Operators Exchange, a private working group of senior enterprise operators, and I advise AI organizations on Narrative Positioning and GTM.

Read and connect

• Substack: The Architecture of Work

• Optionality

• LinkedIn