For this month's column, I've decided to discuss how to maintain agency in a corporate environment. "Agency" is the capacity to act intentionally, make meaningful choices, and influence outcomes. Personal agency has been under assault for over a century as independent, small farm and business people have transitioned to working for "the man" - where they are told what to do, how to do it, punished for not doing it as prescribed, and subjected to systemic removal of human effort through automation and AI - that could even leave you in the cold. People continue to make that transition for the benefit of steady paychecks, benefits, and possibly a career growth path. All predictable and safe. Until it's not.

We're all susceptible to Digital Dementia. Even NASA couldn't remember how they got to the moon on 4 kilobytes of RAM. At least that's what I heard. For the Boomers, GenX, and Millennials...remember when we all used to maintain a physical address/phone book decades ago? We still do, in a sense, maintain those databases of contacts, but we're digital now. It's just as important to do so now as then, however, it so much easier.

In the 90's there was a vision for what business called the "paperless office." The advent and adoption of computers, email, cheap printers, database recordkeeping, etc. was supposed to drive office paper usage into the dustbin of history. What did we actually experience? US office paper consumption rose 14.7% between 1995 and 2000. Despite the digital tool kit, people in the office environment printed more drafts, emails, and files than ever before. This effect, or some would call it a paradox, has a name...Jevons Paradox.

Hopefully some of you reading this piece have capitalized on this whole artificial intelligence (AI) arc that we have been witness to the last few years. Let's take a short trip down memory lane to see how this arc began...

There's a critical skill in both business and in life that involves seeing into the future...accurately. It involves the ability to "read the tea leaves" as some people say. The idiom originates from the ancient practice of tasseography, a form of early fortune-telling that involved interpretation of loose tea leaf formation at the bottom of your empty cup. Sounds ridiculous to me, but hey, some people put their belief behind such parlor games. However, in the ensuing centuries, better leading indicators were developed to shine some light on what both the short-term and long-term future look like. In other words, how you should play the game to win.