Superagency in the Workplace: Empowering People to Unlock AI’s Full Potential

Meta Description

Discover how AI is transforming the workplace, empowering employees, and driving unprecedented productivity. Learn about the key challenges and opportunities for leaders in the age of AI. (155 characters)

Meta Keywords

AI, artificial intelligence, workplace, productivity, leadership, technology, employees, training, data security, innovation, business transformation, machine learning, generative AI

Tags

ai, artificial-intelligence, workplace-automation, productivity-tools, leadership-development, technology-trends, employee-empowerment, ai-training, data-security, business-transformation, machine-learning, generative-ai

Image Script

Image: A futuristic office scene with humans and AI working together seamlessly, showcasing collaboration and productivity.

Content

Superagency in the Workplace: Empowering People to Unlock AI’s Full Potential

Introduction

Artificial intelligence (AI) has arrived in the workplace and has the potential to be as transformative as the steam engine was to the 19th-century Industrial Revolution. With powerful and capable large language models (LLMs) developed by Anthropic, Cohere, Google, Meta, Mistral, OpenAI, and others, we have entered a new information technology era. McKinsey research sizes the long-term AI opportunity at $4.4 trillion in added productivity growth potential from corporate use cases.

Therein lies the challenge: the long-term potential of AI is great, but the short-term returns are unclear. Over the next three years, 92 percent of companies plan to increase their AI investments. But while nearly all companies are investing in AI, only 1 percent of leaders call their companies “mature” on the deployment spectrum, meaning that AI is fully integrated into workflows and drives substantial business outcomes. The big question is how business leaders can deploy capital and steer their organizations closer to AI maturity.

This research report, prompted by Reid Hoffman’s book Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future, asks a similar question: How can companies harness AI to amplify human agency and unlock new levels of creativity and productivity in the workplace? AI could drive enormous positive and disruptive change. This transformation will take some time, but leaders must not be dissuaded. Instead, they must advance boldly today to avoid becoming uncompetitive tomorrow. The history of major economic and technological shifts shows that such moments can define the rise and fall of companies. Over 40 years ago, the internet was born. Since then, companies including Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft have attained trillion-dollar market capitalizations. Even more profoundly, the internet changed the anatomy of work and access to information. AI now is like the internet many years ago: The risk for business leaders is not thinking too big, but rather too small.

Key Findings:

• Employees are ready for AI: They are more familiar with AI tools, want more support and training, and are more likely to believe AI will replace at least a third of their work in the near future.
• Leadership is the key barrier: Leaders need to step up, be bold, and capture the value of AI. They have more permission space than they realize.
• Speed and safety must be balanced: Leaders want to increase AI investments and accelerate development, but they wrestle with how to make AI safe in the workplace.
• Bigger ambitions are needed: Most organizations that have invested in AI are not getting the returns they had hoped. A lack of bold ambitions can be just as crippling as poorly designed strategies.
• Technology is not the barrier to scale: Capturing AI value entails corporate transformation, and businesses have a poor track record in this area.

Ch 1: An Innovation as Powerful as the Steam Engine

Imagine a world where machines not only perform physical labor but also think, learn, and make autonomous decisions. This world includes humans in the loop, bringing people and machines together in a state of superagency that increases personal productivity and creativity. This is the transformative potential of AI, a technology with a potential impact poised to surpass even the biggest innovations of the past, from the printing press to the automobile. AI does not just automate tasks but goes further by automating cognitive functions. Unlike any invention before, AI-powered software can adapt, plan, guide—and even make—decisions. That’s why AI can be a catalyst for unprecedented economic growth and societal change in virtually every aspect of life. It will reshape our interaction with technology and with one another.

Key Innovations Driving Impact

Overall, we see five big innovations for business that are driving the next wave of impact:

1. Enhanced intelligence and reasoning capabilities
2. Agentic AI
3. Multimodality
4. Improved hardware innovation and computational power
5. Increased transparency

AI Superagency

What impact will AI have on humanity? Reid Hoffman and Greg Beato’s book Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future explores this question. The book highlights how AI could enhance human agency and heighten our potential. It envisions a human-led, future-forward approach to AI. Superagency, a term coined by Hoffman, describes a state where individuals, empowered by AI, supercharge their creativity, productivity, and positive impact. Even those not directly engaging with AI can benefit from its broader effects on knowledge, efficiency, and innovation. AI is the latest in a series of transformative supertools, including the steam engine, internet, and smartphone, that have reshaped our world by amplifying human capabilities. Like its predecessors, AI can democratize access to knowledge and automate tasks, assuming humans can develop and deploy it safely and equitably.

Ch 2: Employees Are Ready for AI; Now Leaders Must Step Up

Employees will be the ones to make their organizations AI powerhouses. They are more ready to embrace AI in the workplace than business leaders imagine. They are more familiar with AI tools, they want more support and training, and they are more likely to believe AI will replace at least a third of their work in the near future. Now it’s imperative that leaders step up. They have more permission space than they realize, so it’s on them to be bold and capture the value of AI. Now.

Key Steps for Leaders:

• Invest more in their employees: Provide formal training, access to AI tools, and incentives to improve uptake.
• Help millennials lead the way: Tap into their enthusiasm and expertise to drive AI adoption.
• Be bolder: Listen to employees, provide training, and empower managers to scale AI use cases.

Ch 3: Delivering Speed and Safety

AI technology is advancing at record speed. ChatGPT was released about two years ago; OpenAI reports that usage now exceeds 300 million weekly users and that over 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies employ its technology. The internet did not reach this level of usage until the early 2000s, nearly a decade after its inception.

Balancing Speed and Safety:

• Address top concerns: Cybersecurity, privacy, and accuracy.
• Leverage employee trust: Employees trust their own employers to deploy AI safely and ethically.
• Implement robust risk management: Launch a comprehensive assessment to identify potential vulnerabilities and establish a strong governance structure.

About the survey

To create our report, we surveyed 3,613 employees (managers and independent contributors) and 238 C-level executives in October and November 2024. Of these, 81 percent came from the United States, and the rest came from five other countries: Australia, India, New Zealand, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. The employees spanned many roles, including business development, finance, marketing, product management, sales, and technology.

All the survey findings discussed in the report, aside from two sidebars presenting international nuances, pertain solely to US workplaces. The findings are organized in this way because the responses from US employees and C-suite executives provide statistically significant conclusions about the US workplace. Analyzing global findings separately allows a comparison of differences between US responses and those from other regions.

Ch 4: Embracing Bigger Ambitions

Most organizations that have invested in AI are not getting the returns they had hoped. They are not winning the full economic potential of AI. About half of C-suite leaders at companies that have deployed AI describe their initiatives as still developing or expanding. They have had the time to move further. Our research shows that more than two-thirds of leaders launched their first gen AI use cases over a year ago.

Strategies for driving revenue growth and ROI:

• Commit to transformative AI possibilities: Shift from incremental value to transformative change.
• Focus on practical applications: Create competitive moats that generate measurable ROI.
• Challenge themselves: Implement more breakthrough initiatives.

Ch 5: Technology Is Not the Barrier to Scale

There is no question: AI offers a rare and phenomenal opportunity. Almost 90 percent of leaders anticipate that deploying AI will drive revenue growth in the next three years. But securing that growth entails corporate transformation, and businesses have a poor track record in this area. Nearly 70 percent of transformations fail.

Overcoming AI Headwinds

• Align leadership, address cost uncertainty, workforce planning, managing supply chain dependencies, and meeting the demand for explainability.

Rewiring Companies for AI Success

*Adaptability. Federated governance models. Budget agility. AI benchmarks. AI-specific skill gaps. Human centricity.

Conclusion: Meeting the AI Future

The pace at which AI has advanced over the last two years is stunning. Some react to that pace by seeing AI as a challenge to humanity. But what if we take the advice of Reid Hoffman and imagine what could possibly go right with AI? Leaders might realize that all the pieces are in place for AI superagency in the workplace.

Call to Action

As leaders and employees work together to reimagine their businesses from the bottom up, AI can evolve from a productivity enhancer into a transformative superpower—an effective partner that increases human agency. Leaders who can replace fear of uncertainty with imagination of possibility will discover new applications for AI, not only as a tool to optimize existing workflows but also as a catalyst to solve bigger business and human challenges. Early stages of AI experimentation focused on proving technical feasibility through narrow use cases, such as automating routine tasks. Now the horizon has shifted: AI is poised to unlock unprecedented innovation and drive systemic change that delivers real value.

Enhance Google Workspace with Gemini AI

The better way to work just got an upgrade with Google AI

Google Workspace plans now include access to the Gemini app, NotebookLM and Gemini in Gmail, Docs, Meet and more.

What's included

Do your best work faster with AI built into our popular apps like Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Meet, Chat, Vids and more. Build a team of AI experts to tackle your most complex projects – including coding, deep research and data analysis – with Gemini Advanced. Upload sources to get instant insights and podcast-like Audio Overviews to help accelerate team knowledge sharing with NotebookLM Plus. Learn more

Gemini is your always-on AI assistant where you need it most

Gemini is your research analyst that helps you spot trends, synthesise information and identify business opportunities. Gemini is your sales associate that helps you craft custom proposals for new clients. Gemini is your productivity partner that can help draft, reply and summarise your emails to save you time at your desk or on the go. Gemini is your creative assistant for stunning presentations – generating images and designs at your fingertips. Gemini is your meeting note taker, helping you capture the details so that you can focus on the conversation.

Enterprise-grade security and privacy

Your data is your data, and it's not used to train Gemini models or for ads targeting. You can delete your content or export it. Gemini only retrieves relevant content in Workspace that the user has access to. You can restrict access to sensitive data with built-in DLP controls. Gemini attained a comprehensive set of privacy and security certifications, such as ISO 42001 and SOC 1/2/3, and can help meet HIPAA compliance.

Try Workspace at no cost for 14 days

Want to experience Gemini with your personal Google Account? Get started

Put AI to work for you

Sales. Gemini helps create pitch materials to progress sales opportunities and accelerate revenue. Learn more Marketing. Gemini helps generate campaign briefs, project plans and presentations. Learn more Customer service. Gemini helps draft personalised email replies to customer enquiries. Learn more Human resources. Gemini helps create job descriptions and employee training to attract and retain top talent. Learn more Project management. Gemini helps to draft personalised email replies to customer enquiries. Learn more

Dive into our latest AI resources

Get our eBook to learn about Workspace and AI-powered collaboration for organisations Download our eBook to learn about AI-powered research and learning with NotebookLM. Download our Gemini Advanced ebook to learn more about our chatbot Join us for Gen AI at Work events Use generative AI for sales