We are currently standing on the precipice of a shift in working practices as significant as the Industrial Revolution. For the last two years, the conversation around Artificial Intelligence has been dominated by two opposing narratives: the fear of displacement ("Will AI take my job?") and the promise of efficiency ("AI will write my emails").
However, a recent and seminal report from McKinsey & Company, Superagency in the Workplace, suggests we are missing the bigger picture. The true potential of AI isn’t about automating tasks; it is about amplifying human intent. It is about creating a state of "Superagency"—a future where individuals and teams, empowered by AI, possess the capabilities to execute work at a speed, quality, and scale that was previously impossible.
At Solas Technologies, we believe this shift from "doing" to "directing" is the key to the next decade of organisational growth. But unlocking it requires more than just buying a ChatGPT subscription. It requires a fundamental rewiring of how we manage performance, communication, and culture.
What is Superagency?
Coined by Reid Hoffman and expanded upon in the McKinsey report, "Superagency" describes a state where technology moves beyond being a passive tool and becomes an active partner.
Think of the difference between a craftsman using a hammer and a conductor leading an orchestra. In the traditional working world, we are the craftsmen, hammering away at individual tasks—writing code, drafting reports, scheduling meetings. In a world of Superagency, employees become conductors. They direct AI agents to handle the execution while they focus on the strategy, the nuance, and the creative direction.
The McKinsey data reveals a startling truth: employees are ready, but leaders are lagging. While 92% of companies plan to increase AI investment, only 1% consider their adoption "mature." Crucially, employees are using AI in their daily lives three times more than their leaders realise.
The workforce is ready to be "super." The barrier isn't technology; it is the management structures we have in place.
The Leadership Blind Spot: Why "Super" Workers Need Better Systems
If you give a Formula 1 car to a driver but force them to drive on a cobbled street with a 20mph speed limit, you don't get high performance; you get frustration.
Similarly, if you equip your teams with "Superagent" AI tools but manage them with 1990s bureaucracy—annual performance reviews, rigid command-and-control structures, and poor data visibility—you will create organizational friction.
To truly unlock Superagency, organizations must evolve from being "Systems of Record" (storing data) to "Systems of Intelligence" (using data). Here is how leaders can bridge the gap between AI potential and operational reality.
The danger of Superagency is speed without direction. If an employee can now produce a week’s worth of output in a morning, it is doubly important that their output is aligned with the company’s strategic goals. If they are running in the wrong direction, they are now running there much faster.
This is where the traditional annual review fails. Waiting 12 months to correct an employee’s trajectory is suicidal in an AI-accelerated world.
The Fix: Move to Continuous Performance Management (CPM). To support Superagency, performance management must be agile. Goals should be set quarterly or even monthly, using frameworks like OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). Feedback must be real-time and developmental, not retrospective and judgmental.
Actionable Advice: Audit your current goal-setting process. If your team’s goals are locked in a PDF from January, they are already obsolete. Transition to a dynamic system where goals are visible, cascading, and frequently updated. Tools that automate this alignment—like SolasPerform—ensure that every "super" action taken by an employee contributes directly to the company’s bottom line.
As we offload cognitive tasks to AI (data analysis, drafting, summarising), the premium on human skills increases. Specifically, Emotional Intelligence (EI) becomes the defining competitive advantage.
In a Superagency environment, the ability to negotiate, persuade, empathise, and lead becomes the primary driver of value. However, the speed of digital communication often degrades these human connections. We fire off emails faster, leading to misinterpretation and conflict.
The Fix: Use AI to safeguard culture, not just speed up typing. We should use AI to check our "blind spots." Before sending a critical communication to a client or a direct report, technology can now analyse the sentiment and tone of our message, predicting how it will land.
Actionable Advice: Encourage a "pause and reflect" culture in your internal communications. Are you being clear? Is your tone constructive? For individuals, lightweight tools such as SolasLite offer features like a "Comms Checker," acting as a digital coach that ensures your high-speed communication doesn't come at the cost of high-quality relationships.
The McKinsey report highlights that 51% of employees cite cybersecurity and privacy as their top AI concerns. You cannot expect employees to embrace Superagency if they feel their data is being siphoned off to train a public model, or if they fear that AI is being used to spy on them.
True Superagency requires psychological safety. Employees need to know that their workspace is secure and that the analytics being used to manage them are fair, unbiased, and private.
The Fix: Adopt "Privacy-First" Intelligence. organisations need to understand how work gets done—who is collaborating, who is overloaded, where the silos are—without invading privacy. This requires Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) that looks at metadata and patterns, not content.
Actionable Advice: Review your data governance. If you are using AI tools, do you know where the data goes? Ensure you are using enterprise-grade platforms that offer "Bring Your Own LLM" options or in-network processing to keep sensitive data within your perimeter. Platforms like SolasOS are built specifically for regulated industries (like Financial Services), ensuring that you get the intelligence you need without compromising on the security your employees demand.
5 Steps to Activate Superagency in Your Team
If you want to move your organisation into the top 1% of AI-mature companies, start with these five steps:
Democratise the Tools: Don't restrict AI to the IT department. Give your marketing, HR, and ops teams access to safe, approved tools.
Kill the Annual Review: Replace it with a rhythm of continuous feedback and coaching. Super-empowered employees crave development, not judgement.
Measure Outcomes, Not Hours: In an age of AI, "hours worked" is a meaningless metric. Shift your management focus to deliverables and impact.
Map Your Network: Use data to identify your "hidden influencers"—the people who naturally connect teams. These are your Superagency champions. Empower them.
Train for "Management of AI": distinct from "using" AI. Train your people on how to brief, critique, and refine AI outputs.
The Future is Human + Machine
The concept of Superagency ultimately teaches us that the future of work isn't about machines replacing humans. It is about humans becoming more human.
By offloading the drudgery to our digital counterparts, we free up capacity for what we do best: creative problem solving, strategic thinking, and building deep, meaningful relationships.
At Solas, we are building the operating system for this new reality. Whether it is through the enterprise intelligence of SolasOS, the strategic alignment of SolasPerform, or the individual empowerment of SolasLite, our mission is to provide the guardrails and the fuel for this high-performance future.
The tools are ready. The employees are ready. The question is: are you ready to lead them?