In my previous article, I explored the concept of agency — the capacity and freedom of individuals to act independently, make choices, and meaningfully influence their circumstances. But what does it look like when agency is entirely absent? I learned the hard way when I tried to rebook a cancelled flight.
The perfect trip cancelled by an algorithm
My wife and I were about to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. To mark the occasion, we booked a dream trip to the Faroe Islands with SAS, utilizing our accumulated bonus points. Hotels, rental cars, ferry tickets, and a special anniversary dinner—everything was locked in.
Then, just a month before departure, came the blow: SAS cancelled our return flight.
The alternative they offered? A flight home two days later. The catch? Two days later was Midsummer’s Eve. In Sweden, Midsummer is a sacred holiday, in my case a time when our families gather. Not only that, but we were the ones hosting the big celebration for our entire extended family this year. Accepting their offer meant sitting on an airplane instead of dancing around the maypole with our loved ones.
After doing some digging, I discovered there was a SAS flight leaving the day before the offered return date. It had plenty of empty seats. But when I asked to be moved to that flight, I hit a brick wall. The reason? There were no seats allocated for bonus travelers on that specific flight.
The fact that the airline itself had cancelled our original flight didn’t matter. The routine dictated that we be treated as if we were asking for a luxury upgrade, rather than customers suffering from their logistical failure.
“Computer Says No” in real life
It was impossible not to think of the British comedy show Little Britain and their painfully accurate sketches featuring the character Carol Beer. No matter how reasonable or desperate the customer’s request, she inputs it into her computer, stares blankly at the screen, and mechanically delivers her catchphrase:
“The computer says no.”
This is the very essence of zero agency. The customer service representative I spoke with was undoubtedly capable of seeing the logical, easy solution: Put them on the flight the day before, make the customer happy, and solve the problem. But the employee was completely hogtied by rigid processes and stubborn corporate principles.
When the process becomes more important than the purpose, an organization loses its humanity.
What is it like to work in a Zero-Agency Culture?
It is easy to spiral into consumer rage in a situation like this. We were forced to choose between canceling our entire 25th-anniversary celebration or letting down our family on Midsummer. But the more interesting angle and the one I want to highlight here, is organizational: What does it actually feel like to work in such a culture?
Denying employees agency typically breeds three distinct cultural ailments:
- Professional Apathy: When employees realize that initiative and empathy are either blocked by the system or actively penalized, they stop trying. They transform into human robots reading from a script.
- Moral Distress: It is psychologically exhausting to sit on the front lines, face-to-face with disappointed people, knowing exactly how to help them, but being forced to say no because “the corporate policy requires it.”
- A Lack of Ownership: If you lack the mandate to solve a problem, you feel zero responsibility for the outcome. The corporate culture becomes sterile, defensive, and risk-averse.
I have actually met SAS employees who, during a flight, spent 15 minutes raging about the very company they were representing. When a system strips its workers of agency, loyalty is the first thing to evaporate. If the company doesn’t back its staff, the staff stops backing the company.
The massive financial cost of “No”
When corporate systems strip employees of their agency, it isn’t just a human tragedy—it’s bad business. Because when frontline staff are forced to defend a broken process, the financial consequences can be catastrophic.
Look no further than the iconic story of Canadian musician Dave Carroll, famously detailed by Jonah Berger in his book Contagious. In 2008, baggage handlers at United Airlines severely damaged Carroll’s 3,500 dollar Taylor guitar. For nine agonizing months, Carroll was bounced through a customer service labyrinth. Every single employee he spoke to hid behind corporate red tape, policy loopholes, and rigid timelines. No one had the agency to step outside the rulebook, use their common sense, and simply pay for the repair.
Exasperated, Carroll did what any artist would do: he wrote a song called “United Breaks Guitars” and posted the music video to YouTube.
The video exploded globally. Within days of its release, United Airlines’ stock price plummeted by roughly 10%, wiping out an estimated 180 million dollars in shareholder value. All because a multi-billion-dollar corporation refused to empower a single customer service agent to make a logical, empathetic, 3,500 dollar call.
Conclusion: Trust people, not just principles
Whether it’s a ruined 25th-anniversary trip to the Faroe Islands or a smashed $3,500 Taylor guitar, the root cause remains identical: a total bankruptcy of organizational agency.
When companies build impenetrable fortresses of rules and refuse to let their employees think, they actively choose to alienate the very people who keep them alive. For my wife and me, it meant a high-stakes emotional choice between family tradition and our wedding anniversary even though a simple, creative, and cost-free solution existed (utilizing empty seats on the previous day’s flight) — a dilemma created entirely by a checklist. For United Airlines, it meant a $180 million lesson in why a policy should never replace a human conversation.
Ultimately, agency is about trust. It is about trusting your front-line staff enough to give them the tools, the authority, and the mandate to be creative problem solvers. It is about remembering that customers are not just bonus points or ticket numbers, but real people with real lives, anniversaries, and family dinners.
If businesses want to survive in an era where everyone has a voice and a platform, they need to realize one simple truth: the next time a rigid process forces an employee to say “the computer says no,” the customer might just reply with a song that changes everything.
More about how to cultivate agency in the next post. (It will come in a few weeks.)
