A lot of plans look solid on paper and still fail in the real world because they confuse two different goals: preserving agency and achieving outcomes.

This episode defines the tension cleanly:

• Agency: people and organizations keep autonomy, choice, and control over how they operate
• Outcome: the mission gets the result, regardless of who prefers what

In cross boundary environments, you rarely get maximum agency and maximum outcome at the same time. The mistake is pretending you can. That is how you end up with soft mandates, confused authority, and coordination theater.

You will hear how this shows up in preventive vs contingent design. Prevention often tries to preserve agency through guidelines, best practices, and voluntary standards. Contingency often requires outcome-first moves: hard constraints, temporary integration, role clarity, and pre-decided triggers that override preference when the cost of delay is high.

The practical takeaway is not “outcomes always win” or “agency always wins.” It is to name the tradeoff explicitly and design the decision pathway before you are in the moment.

Reflection: In the situation you are facing right now, are you optimizing for agency, or for outcome, and have you told everyone which one it is?

https://anthonyveltri.com/guide/doctrine-11-companion-agency-vs-outcome/