High Agency Human: Navigate Adversity and Live Big book review by Trevor Blondeel

| Vickie M. Lanthier, 2026

What This Book Means for Manufacturing Leaders

On any given day, operations managers and shift supervisors are dealing with labor shortages, skills gaps, and constant pressure to improve production efficiency and manufacturing productivity. While most leadership development in manufacturing focuses on lean manufacturing and process optimization, High Agency Human shifts the focus to ownership and resilience, helping leaders strengthen decision-making, lead through change, and take action when the easy move is to just go through the motions.

This is the kind of leadership content we share every month in the Manufacturing Greatness newsletter. Practical book recommendations, leadership tools, and insights built for the shop floor.

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What’s It All About?

Vickie M. Lanthier is a decorated Canadian military veteran with 26 years at National Defence, four deployments, and a career that later took her into nursing and entrepreneurship. I met Vickie through our shared author community, and I’ll be honest: she’s one of the most genuinely helpful people I’ve come across. She’s also a fellow Canadian, which I always appreciate.

This book isn’t a manufacturing book. It’s a book about you. It’s about building the kind of person who shows up prepared, takes ownership, and leads with intention. Not just at work, but in every area of life. If you lead people in manufacturing, I promise it will hit close to home.

The Big Idea

Vickie defines a high agency human as someone who, in the face of uncertainty and challenge, takes ownership over their actions and consequences. Low agency is life happening to you. High agency is you happening to life. And it’s not a fixed trait. You can be high agency at work and low agency at home, or vice versa. The good news is that we have agency to work on our agency.

The practical heart of the book is built around four protective buffers: Secure your financial foundation. Strengthen your health and well-being. Prepare your plans and paperwork. Practice your skills and knowledge. These are strategies to build resilience before adversity hits, not just react to it when it does. You practice in calm moments so that when a real hard time happens, your team operates on muscle memory, not panic.

Favorite Quote

“A glance down at my phone reveals the screensaver, a photograph of me and Jones in that cockpit. It’s a sobering reminder that even in the thick of it, adversity and well-being can coexist.”

That line stopped me. Because I think a lot of leaders, myself included, still operate under the assumption that if things are hard, something must be wrong. Vickie reframes it: adversity is normal. Being well inside of it is the goal.

Biggest Takeaway

The section that hit me hardest was Vickie’s take on the phrase “everything happens for a reason.” She writes that when someone says this, the urge to soothe has overcome the ability to be helpful. Things do not happen for a reason. However, we can add meaning to what’s happened and benefit from that.

For manufacturing leaders, this reframe matters. When a safety incident happens, when you lose a key team member, when production falls apart, the instinct is to ask why. The better question is: what meaning are we going to take from this, and what are we going to do differently because of it? That is the high agency response. Not waiting for a reason, but deciding on the meaning.

Bonus Information

The reason you’re not changing is because the cost of remaining the same isn’t yet higher than the cost of change. That’s a hard truth for leaders who know what needs to shift but haven’t moved yet. Ten pages of reading a day adds up to about 12 books a year. Ten minutes of daily meditation is roughly 60 hours annually. Small, consistent habits add up in ways we consistently underestimate. If you want to hear Vickie in action, check out Episode 165 of the Manufacturing Greatness podcast or find her episode on YouTube here.

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Reviewed by: Trevor Blondeel, March 2026

Whether you’re a plant manager, operations manager, or frontline supervisor, you’ll discover practical strategies for lean manufacturing, continuous improvement, and operational excellence. We cover critical topics like workforce development, employee retention, safety culture, and change management—helping you navigate challenges like labor shortages, skills gaps, and the evolving manufacturing landscape including Industry 4.0 and smart manufacturing.

Trevor Blondeel invites guests from the manufacturing industry (and beyond!) to have candid discussions about leadership and share stories from a place of experience, transparency, and authenticity. You’ll find new ways to manufacture greatness by leveraging resources you already have acheiving greater retention, productivity, and profits.

Welcome to Manufacturing Greatness with Trevor Blondeel, where we work with organizations to manufacture greatness by leveraging resources you already have to achieve greater retention, productivity, and profits. To learn more, visit www.manufacturinggreatness.com and click here to subscribe to Trevor’s monthly newsletter.

Now, let’s jump in!

If you’ve ever thought “I already explained this” but still are not getting the results you expect, the problem may not be effort, it may be alignment. In this episode, Trevor Blondeel explores how gaps in communication skills and unclear expectations impact production efficiency, manufacturing productivity, safety culture, and employee satisfaction across plant leadership and operations management.

Drawing on Manufacturing Greatness, lean manufacturing, six sigma, and continuous improvement practices like kaizen, value stream mapping, and 5S methodology, Trevor introduces a simple framework built on three key conversations. This approach supports process optimization, quality management, and stronger performance management while helping shift supervisors and frontline supervisors improve coaching skills, problem solving, and conflict resolution. It is a practical model for driving change management, workforce development, talent retention, and sustainable results in today’s Industry 4.0 and smart manufacturing environments.

01:05 — Introduction to the Manufacturing Greatness model as a practical approach within operations management to improve manufacturing productivity through clearer alignment and more effective communication 01:45 — The three critical gaps are introduced as key drivers of performance management, highlighting how they affect workforce development and execution across plant leadership and the shop floor 02:45 — Simple, repeatable conversations are positioned as a universal tool similar to lean manufacturing and kaizen, helping teams drive continuous improvement and strengthen process optimization 03:15 — The showing up gap explains how leadership behavior, tone, and intent shape perception, directly influencing engagement, safety culture, and the effectiveness of coaching skills 05:00 — The expectation gap focuses on clearly defining what success looks like, aligning on outcomes to improve quality management, production planning, and reduce errors and rework 07:00 — The accountability gap emphasizes setting clear commitments, timelines, and consequences to strengthen KPI management, build trust, and support talent retention and burnout prevention 08:30 — Consistent behaviors and strong communication skills help build a culture that supports change management, diversity and inclusion, and long-term workforce development 09:30 — A preview of upcoming insights into applying the model within smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0, along with broader connections to supply chain management challenges