Owning Your Role

Hello again my friend,

Today, I’m diving deep into the concept of owning your role. In other words, we’re talking about personal agency.

In the world of AI, doing just what’s on your job description feels like a big risk. I’ve said it before and I’m saying it again now: we’re all one genius kid’s new AI app away from losing our jobs.

And while the fear can be highly motivating, it’s not just about working from such a place. It’s about striving for more. For better. We all want to earn more and live a better life. It’s why you’re probably reading a business-focused newsletter like this in the first place.

In that sense, ‘owning your role’ is not a new concept. It’s how everyone from the owners of the world’s biggest businesses, movie stars, world leaders, and yes, even employees, seize opportunities and level up. It’s been happening since the start of the modern industrial era, and still applies today.

Let’s get into it.

Agency

In life, we have people who are high-agency and low-agency.

High agency is about creating change, low agency is about accepting what’s given to you. High agency is about making a decision and following through. Low agency is outsourcing your decision making. High agency is about accepting responsibility. Low agency is about covering your ass and saying “someone else told me to do that,” to avoid taking blame (and not getting credit if successful).

Jeff Bezos has one simple question to determine who is the highest agency person in your life.

If you were trapped in a third-world prison and had to call one person to try and bust you out of there, who would you call?

Have I struck any chords yet? Here are a few specific examples.

Arnold Schwarzenegger:

• Gets famous for lifting weights,

• Becomes a movie star (even though no one can understand him),

• Marries into an American royal family,

• Becomes governor of a state he can barely pronounce.

Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia (founders of Airbnb):

• Sold cereal called “Obama O’s” and “Captain McCains” during the 2008 election.

• Raised $40,000 in this way to start Air Bed and Breakfast

• Did $3.73B (that’s billion) in revenue in 2023.

• Market cap of $89B now.

Lifting weights to governor. Selling cereal to one of the world’s biggest companies. This is high agency.

In many ways, how it relates to an individual doing a job feels small, but it’s not. While the mindsets are universal, there are immediate behaviours that, if changed, can have a massive impact on your career.

Low Agency, the career-crushing mistake:

If you ever feel like you can’t do something at work until someone else tells you that you can, you’re in a low-agency environment. For example, if you know that doing one thing will immediately solve problems across the business, not doing it is a mistake.

“But I can’t do that, it’s not part of my job description.”

That may be true, but that’s the point. Remember, being unable to go above or beyond the job is one of the biggest risks employees face today.

If you ever feel like making mistakes will cost you your job, that’s normal. But again, there’s a way of being a bit more strategic about how we approach them. Smaller risks, smaller tasks, and then growing into bigger things can solve for this.

Should you randomly email the company’s biggest client a list of 10 ideas without talking to anybody who manages that relationship? Probably not. Can you build something internally that:

• Hurts no one if you get it wrong.

• Helps everyone if you get it right.

Absolutely you can and should!

It doesn’t stop there. These are all examples of low-agency expressions worth addressing:

• “We need to consult 20 people before doing something.” Why? Do you really?

• “So-and-so should do that, not me.” Why not lead by example?

• “If I do this, my boss will give me an ear-full for not doing what’s on my job description.” What you do with a spare hour (when the work is done) is your business.

• “The workload I already have is so insane there’s no time for any of this.” It’s actually the first sign to take ownership and finish the bigger initiatives that save you time in the long-run.

Will this piss off some of your coworkers? Possibly. Will it be the reason you make more money? Probably. In every role I’ve ever been in, the leaders of the company have always appreciated people who do things, make the business better, and want more (just like they do).

One manager holding you back is their issue. In a world where everyone wants to make more, the manager who holds their team back is the issue.

The mistake is not to go against your manager in most cases. Most of the time, the mistake for you, in your life is spending years letting your manager call the shots until you hate your job.

It’s true, even at a fast growing startup like beehiiv.

Examples of High Agency across a business

I talk about beehiiv often because I work there, and it just fits the newsletter. The way we work is extremely different than 99% of companies out there. Every employee has freedom and opportunity to do great work, and really own their role.

For context, this is a message from Co-Founder/CEO Tyler Denk last Monday, note the numbers:

It’s not a surprise that every employee operates on high-agency in every role. Our team is such a key part of how we’re in the top 1% (of 1%), and I feel fortunate to be a small part of what we’ve done so far (and for the insane things coming over the next few months).

A few examples of what’s happening:

• The Growth team builds apps using AI to streamline our website updates.

• Support uses ChatGPT and Claude to analyze hundreds of tickets and help us prioritize exactly what to fix and when.

• Solutions Engineers are coding new features for Enterprise users late nights on weekends.

• Engineers are simultaneously coding 5+ major initiatives faster and better than entire companies who build entire businesses around just 1 of these.

If someone told me that I’d go from working with agencies in Vancouver to building product at a company like this, I wouldn’t have believed it. A cold email and some extremely hard work brought me here. Nobody asked me to work nights/ weekends, or to collect and organize feedback to reduce churn, or to ‘own’ our enterprise roadmap. But I did, and here we are. Every employee taking on this mindset across a company is a big part of what generates incredible success.

What can we do today?

Let’s reverse the reasons why we can’t do something. For the record, I’d done all of these myself.

Do you feel like you need to consult 20 people before doing something?

• Do the thing, and share it with the team.

• Even if nobody else uses it, use it yourself, and show how much faster/better it is.

• If they don’t want to use your solution, continue using it yourself (and get your time back).

Do you feel like you need your bosses approval to do something?

• Take an hour to start it yourself, and share your progress with your team.

• Confirm the gains if successful, how it hurts nobody if you fail, and that you’ll do it after your work is done.

• If they say no, politely ask why not?

• For whatever reason they give you, propose the solution (showing examples are best).

Is your workload so insane you don’t have time for more impactful initiatives?

• Consult ChatGPT or Claude for the most efficient solution.

• Do a smaller version of the solution that makes even a slight improvement.

• Show the benefits, and talk to your team about doing the same (now, many of you work through the issue, together).

• This is how we started using ChatGPT to analyze hundreds of support tickets and report on the most frequent issues to fix. I literally gave ChatGPT one screenshot of all the tickets and asked it to reported back in a few minutes. This report used to take hours.

Final Thoughts

If it feels difficult, potentially painful, or terrifying, that’s probably a good sign. I’ve talked about doing well in one role, but remember, there’s a lot of opportunity out there. But we can’t capture any of it if a bad job or a bad boss keep us trapped.

It sounds so cliche, but I really believe if I can switch careers after 30, anybody can do the same.

The work itself practically is about prioritizing the right things, and working hard.

The mindset behind it is to take control, develop ownership, and do things. Never outsourcing decision making. Agency baby.

Thanks again for reading. As always, here’s a word from today’s sponsor (clicks on this ad are paid).