Agency and Optimistic Vision: Leading Creative Work In the Age of AI

AI is now embedded in the daily workflow of nearly every creative team, and with it has come a quiet crisis. The pressure from the top is for speed and scale, but the question your most talented people are silently asking is far more personal: Does my judgment still matter here? When a creative pro starts to feel like a prompt operator instead of a creator, you rarely get a dramatic exit. You get safe work, quiet disengagement, and tigers who stop hunting.

In this episode, Todd opens with the story of the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike — 148 days that shut down Hollywood — and the AI provisions the writers won in their contract. Their fight was never about banning the technology. It was about agency: who gets to decide how the work gets made. That same fight, in quieter form, is happening on your team right now.

In this episode

Speed is not the same as progress. AI removes friction, but friction is where thinking happens. Leaders must protect the difference between faster output and better work — and decide explicitly where recovered time goes, rather than letting every velocity gain become a higher quota.

Brave teams need an Optimistic Vision. Drawing on the framework from Todd's book The Brave Habit, the first ingredient of brave decisions is a believable picture of a better possible future. In a world flooded with generic output, taste, judgment, and point of view become more valuable — not less. Your team needs to hear you paint that future specifically.

Brave teams need Perceived Agency. The second ingredient is the belief that what you do actually matters. Give your team genuine authority over how AI shows up in their work — where it's a welcome tool, and where human judgment is non-negotiable. Agency granted on paper but overridden in practice breeds cynicism faster than no agency at all.

When optimistic vision and perceived agency are both present, people make brave choices: they take creative risks, push back on weak ideas, and put their fingerprints on the work.

Try this week

1. Hold a "tool, not author" conversation with your team. Draw the lines together: where AI helps, and where the human hand is sacred.
2. Change what you celebrate. Praise judgment, taste, and bold calls — not just volume shipped.
3. Ask each person privately: "Where do you feel least in control of your work right now?" Then act on what you hear.

Mentioned in this episode

• The 2023 Writers Guild of America strike and the AI provisions of the resulting Minimum Basic Agreement
• The Brave Habit by Todd Henry — the two factors that lead to brave decisions: Optimistic Vision and Perceived Agency
• Herding Tigers by Todd Henry

Your team doesn't need you to predict the future of AI. They need you to protect the conditions that make brave work possible.