Originally published on Psychology Today
Key Points
- AI tools paradoxically reduce autonomy by exposing competence gaps, making teams more dependent on leaders.
- Push intelligence to edges: Give teams AI tools, data, and boundaries, and let good judgment expand authority.
- Leaders must evolve from decision-makers to coordinators who enable distributed intelligence.
- Create continuous coordination through shared information streams, unified metrics, and peer learning loops.
Why does giving your team AI tools make them less autonomous, not more?
Here’s the trap destroying AI initiatives: You give your team powerful AI tools to enhance their decision-making. Within weeks, you’re drowning in messages asking for approval on decisions they used to make themselves. AI that was supposed to empower them has made everyone more dependent on you.
This isn’t a technology problem. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how human autonomy works when artificial intelligence enters the picture.
The Autonomy Paradox
When people get powerful new tools, they often discover they’re not as competent as they thought. AI reveals incompetence.
Like switching from a bicycle to a motorcycle, suddenly you realize you weren’t good at transportation; you were good at pedaling. The motorcycle’s power reveals that you’re unprepared to navigate at speed or handle momentum.
Research on self-determination theory shows that autonomy requires three psychological conditions: competence (I can do this), autonomy (I’m allowed to do this), and relatedness (this matters to others). AI disrupts all three simultaneously, but it’s the competence disruption that paralyzes teams.
The solution isn’t training people on AI tools; it’s restructuring how decisions flow through your organization, enabling people to rebuild competence at this new level of capability.
The Eight Arms Framework
Think of how an octopus operates. Each arm has its own neural clusters—essentially mini-brains—that make independent decisions. The neural necklace connects these clusters, enabling the arms to coordinate through shared electrical signals.
That’s how your team should work with AI: distributed intelligence with unconscious coordination. As organizational researchers have noted, the most adaptive systems mirror biological networks where intelligence lives at the edges, not just at the center.
Push Intelligence to the Edge
Traditional delegation says, “Here’s your authority.” The AI-era delegation says, “Here’s your intelligence, and here’s how we all win.”
Every team member needs:
- AI tools configured for their specific decisions
- Real-time data relevant to their scope
- Visibility into how their choices affect others
- Clear boundaries that expand with demonstrated judgment
Start with micro-budgets or whatever amount you’re comfortable losing. A customer service rep might begin with $100 in resolution authority. But here’s the key: Use AI to track decision quality, not just outcomes. Did their solution prevent future problems? Create positive word-of-mouth? Inspire process improvements?
Good judgment expands authority automatically. Poor judgment triggers coaching, not punishment. The AI identifies exactly which patterns need work.
This addresses the competence uncertainty directly. People know they’re getting smarter because the system shows them.
Transform Yourself into a Nerve Ring
Stop making operational decisions. Start setting standards and resolving conflicts.
Instead of “Ask me before offering that discount,” create: “Protect margins above X%, respect brand positioning, and optimize for lifetime value.” Your AI will flag edge cases.
When conflicts arise between teams, such as sales requesting customization while operations requesting standardization, AI can help by making visible to both parties the impacts and monitoring patterns through a dashboard. Each resolution becomes precedent for similar future conflicts.
This isn’t abdication. It’s an evolution from controller to coordinator.
Create Continuous Resynchronization
Autonomous doesn’t mean isolated. Teams need three types of connections:
- Information Streams: Every team broadcasts what they’re doing and subscribes to relevant signals from others. Think of each department having a radio station constantly transmitting plans, needs, and observations. Your AI assistant simply knows what’s happening across the organization.
- Shared Metrics: Stop optimizing for departmental KPIs. Everyone should contribute to customer lifetime value, adaptation speed, and knowledge sharing. When everyone wins or loses together, coordination happens naturally.
- Peer Learning: Randomly assign decisions for peer review—not approval, just feedback. “I tried something similar, here’s what happened.” AI tracks whose feedback proves valuable, creating a reputation based on judgment quality, not hierarchy.
The Psychology of Letting Go
The hardest part isn’t technological—it’s psychological. You’ve been promoted because you make good decisions. Now you need to stop making them.
Research on managerial transitions shows that the shift from doing to enabling is the most difficult career passage. With AI amplifying this challenge, you face a choice: Become a bottleneck with perfect information or become a catalyst for distributed intelligence.
Here’s what changes:
- Identity: From “the person with answers” to “the person who enables answers”
- Value: From decision quality to system quality
- Your Day: From reviewing requests to reviewing patterns
- Growth: From personal capability to organizational capability
Implementation: The First 30 Days
Week 1: Baseline Reality
List every decision you made last week. Mark which ones truly needed your unique perspective. Calculate the delay cost of your involvement.
Week 2: Create Standards
Convert your best decisions into principles. Define what “good” looks like for each decision type. Build these into AI prompts and guardrails.
Week 3: Pilot Autonomy
Choose your strongest performer. Give them full authority within bounds. Track their decisions daily, intervene never.
Week 4: Scale Gradually
Add one person per day to the autonomous zone. Share learnings publicly. Celebrate good decisions and interesting failures equally.
When People Resist
Resistance to autonomy seems paradoxical, but it’s psychologically predictable. Autonomy means accountability. Many prefer the safety of following orders to the vulnerability of owning outcomes.
Address this by making failure safe within bounds. If someone makes a decision within guidelines that doesn’t work out, the system fails, not them. This psychological safety (knowing you can fail without being punished) is a prerequisite to genuine autonomy.
The Competitive Truth
Organizations that utilize AI for control will achieve perfect industrial-era management standards. Every decision will be optimized, every variance eliminated, every human a perfectly monitored cog.
Organizations that utilize AI for autonomy will create something new. Every edge will be intelligent, every person growing, every decision a learning opportunity.
The market rewards speed and adaptation.
The octopus doesn’t dominate because it has one big brain. It dominates because its many brains work together.
Use AI to become something that couldn’t exist before—a genuinely intelligent network where every node thinks for itself while staying perfectly coordinated.
