Remember The Internship?
Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn are in a video interview for a job at Google.
Suddenly, curveball question: “You’re shrunken down to the size of a nickel and dropped into a blender. What do you do?”
No prep. No rules. Just chaos.
And they riff.
“The blender only runs 10 hours—we’re getting out.”
Then they pivot: fixing sunglasses. Then tiny submarines. Then saving lives.
It’s ridiculous.
It’s also the perfect case study for agency.
They don’t freeze. They move.
In today’s marketing world, that’s the killer trait: The instinct to figure it out when everything goes sideways.
Because right now…
TikTok bans entire categories overnight.
Google rewrites its algorithm weekly.
AI makes last quarter’s playbook look like a history textbook.
So here’s the only question that matters: When the blender turns on—do your marketers wait for instructions, or start building submarines?
What High Agency Actually Means
George Mack broke it down into a trifecta in his post High Agency:
Clear Thinking: They don’t confuse motion for progress.
Bias to Action: They’d rather test than talk.
Productive Disagreeability: They’ll challenge bad ideas, not just nod along.
Remove one, and the system collapses.
These are the people Naval bets on.
The ones who “happen to life.”
How to Interview for Agency
The Blender Test
Prompt: “TikTok just banned our category—what now?”
Watch: Do they stall… or sketch out a test?
Learning Velocity
Ask: “What tool did you teach yourself last quarter?”
Look for: Autodidacts. Self-guided killers.
Cross-Lane Ownership
Ask: “What problem did you solve that wasn’t your job?”
Why: Because high-agency players don’t wait for permission.
Curiosity Signals
Scan for: Niche papers. Weird subreddits. Substack deep dives.
Red flag: If it’s all LinkedIn fluff, they’re downstream thinkers.
Disagree & Commit
Ask: “How do you handle decisions you don’t agree with?”
Look for: Debate without drama. Pushback without paralysis.
Red Flags of a Low-Agency Agency
“We’re waiting on assets.”
“Nobody’s done this in our industry.”
Beautiful decks. Zero experiments.
Process over outcomes.
If that sounds familiar—you didn’t hire a team.
You hired traffic control.
How to Hire (or Fire) for Agency
Case the Unknown: Drop a messy dataset. Ask for a test plan. No guidance.
Better Reference Checks: “Tell me when this person solved something they weren’t assigned.”
Celebrate Launches: Weekly meetings should spotlight shipped experiments, not slide decks.
Tighten Feedback Loops: Give juniors real budget + AI copilots. Let them feel consequences fast.
Cull Passive Vendors: If they can’t challenge the brief, they’re temps with a retainer.
How to Measure It
Time-to-First-Test: Days from idea to live test.
Self-Initiated Experiment Ratio: % of experiments that came bottom-up.
Debate Depth Index: Comments before big spend. Too few = groupthink. Too many = chaos.
Iterative Velocity: Number of iterations per campaign.
Track these for 90 days.
If it’s flat—you’ve got passengers. Not pilots.
Why It Matters
Henrik Karlsson said it best: “If the value you want to create requires stepping outside your role… that’s your job now.”
High-agency marketers don’t just follow briefs.
They write them.
Then they rewrite the process that made the brief.
And when the blender kicks on—they’re not waiting around.
They’re already halfway up the glass.
So next time you’re hiring, skip the resumes.
Queue up The Internship. Mute it.
And watch who starts climbing first.
That’s who you bet on.