What Goes Unused

By Ryan McMillian

I've been contemplating the concept of the espoused theory: what we claim we value versus what our actions tell us we value. In the age of speed and the machine, it seems organizations and companies are leaning into the signaling of people-oriented leadership. They espouse values that put the human above the tech, above the newest innovative tool, the newest agentic AI. But I wonder if they are seeing through the fog, or if they are believing it to be true while hoping it will come to pass, even though every action is running in the opposite direction.

I've been in the rooms where the technology is making the decisions. Algorithmic scheduling. Dynamic pricing. Algorithms that tell you how much to make, store, order, and sell. If that is people-oriented, I am not sure what definitions we are using.

It's the old reality, made contemporary. The espoused theory and the theory in use are on opposite ends. What we say is almost always more virtuous, more courteous, more impressive than what we do. What we reward, promote, and build around is what gets set in stone. That becomes the cornerstone by which the rest of the house is built.

Despite that irony, what I find myself asking is a related question: if we are always increasing our automation away from friction, what then happens to human capacity?

Convenience isn't neutral. It doesn't just replace a task. It often shapes what tasks are supposed to feel like. Two-hour delivery saves a trip to the grocery store, yet it also reclassifies the normal shopping trip as an imposition. The baseline moves. What was once a reasonable expectation is slowly becoming an unreasonable demand. The tolerance for inconvenience narrows. This phenomenon has a name. Preferences aren't fixed; they form in response to what's available, and once they form around convenience, they defend it.

There's an atrophy that follows, almost like an unspoken trade-off: skills that don't get exercised don't pause; they diminish. Think about how many decisions now get made because a system flagged them, not because anyone read the room and noticed something. This doesn't mean the system is wrong; however, the capacity to read the room without the system- that's the thing that quietly goes unused. The result is that what goes unused long enough stops being available when you need it most.

This brings us to the question for leadership:

Because leadership at its most essential is a friction-tolerating activity. Staying present when the moment is uncomfortable. Holding the standard when disengagement would be easier. Noticing the person behind the output rather than only the output itself. It's uncomfortable. But it is necessary.

Technology doesn't eliminate that requirement. It reveals whether you were meeting it before the technology arrived. The leaders whose value disappears when the automation comes were never doing the more important thing in the first place. They were occupying the role that humans had to fill before the machine made it optional. The leaders whose presence compounds when the technology arrives are the ones doing what no system can replicate: genuinely reading what's happening in a room. Carrying the weight of responsibility rather than routing around it. Remaining in the friction rather than optimizing it away.

Our people-oriented aspirations are reasonable. But aspiration doesn't survive contact with incentive structures that reward speed, cost reduction, and scalability above presence. The real question isn't whether technology will lead. It's whether human leadership capacity will atrophy while we automate the very mechanisms that keep it intact. The pressure will come. The question is whether we will be capable of carrying responsibility under pressure without collapse.

Tools of the Trade — Written by Ryan McMillian. Published in conversation with Claude (Anthropic).

The OATHBORN Audit Field Manual — 19 pages. Seven rules. Three layers each: the Standard, the Distortion, and the Audit question that forces you to see which one is operating right now. Built for those who carry weight and want to carry it well. Get the Manual — $27.