Is Human in the Loop the real goal with AI?

It's a starting point, but I think the goal is to shift to Human in the Double Loop​

Maybe its even bigger than that. Maybe Agentic AI is the path to unlocking Human Agency​

A leader I talked to yesterday wasn't sure what their work will look like a year from now. We were finishing an AI coaching sprint in which they shifted from chatting with AI and using Claude Code for very specific tasks to unleashing agentic AI on several complex problems, scaling their context, and integrating an AI second brain.

All great, but the reality of the AI doing more brings almost philosophical questions about "what's remaining for me as a leader to do?"

We talked about elevating to more strategic loops and interactions.

Shaping the work, the workflow, the agents, the guardrails, and the next decision.

Orchestrating and curating rules, values, and skills across their team and across the company.

Having the time and opportunity to ascend to a higher level of mastery of their field.

As I reflected on this conversation, Dan Pink’s autonomy/mastery/​purpose model came to mind.
But I’d probably swap autonomy for agency.
And mastery starts to look like this weird new craft: getting good at creating AI agents that make your old work disappear.

Not so you become irrelevant. So you can take on bigger problems and opportunities.

An exercise I created way, way, way back feels relevant again - the Autonomy Mastery Purpose retrospective.
One interesting way you can leverage it as you're thinking about AI adoption in your organization is to ask -

• How is what we're doing with AI contributing to human agency? How are we in the way of it?
• What are we doing to create the conditions for people to pursue mastery? Where are we keeping people fixed to where they are or even regressing in their skills and expertise?
• Are we creating a high-purpose environment, or are we growing people like mushrooms? (feeding them crap and keeping them in the dark)

And for the fun of it, you can also run this exercise to explore what level of Agency, pursuit of Mastery, and connection to Purpose you are giving your Agents.

Let me know what the exercise surfaces for you...