Field Agents Team's Open Experimentation Approach
by Howie Liu on August 31, 2025
Howie Liu believes in creating a culture of experimentation and autonomy, especially in the AI era where speed and adaptability are crucial competitive advantages.
At Airtable, Howie restructured the company into two distinct groups: a "fast thinking" team focused on rapid AI innovation and a "slow thinking" team handling more deliberate, infrastructure-focused work. This dual approach allows the company to both ship exciting new capabilities weekly while building the robust foundation needed for enterprise-scale deployments.
When leading teams in this new paradigm, Howie emphasizes giving people freedom to explore rather than prescriptive direction. He tells his Field Agents team: "There's an almost infinite number of superpowers you could give these field agents. I'm not going to tell you which specifically to do... you should go and just experiment and prototype a few different versions of different directions we could go." Instead of dictating exactly what to build, he encourages teams to identify opportunities themselves and quickly test multiple approaches.
This leadership approach requires relinquishing some control while maintaining strategic guidance. Howie provides context about the overall mission and values, then trusts teams to identify and pursue the most promising opportunities. He compares this to having "fruit trees with so many crazy low-hanging fruit" where teams should focus on finding "the biggest watermelons on the ground" rather than climbing tall trees for hard-to-reach coconuts.
For product teams, this means shifting from detailed roadmaps with fixed timelines to a more experimental, iterative approach. Rather than planning features months in advance, teams should rapidly prototype multiple ideas, get them in front of users, and let real usage data guide further development. This requires comfort with ambiguity and the confidence to make decisions without exhaustive planning.
The most successful teams in this environment are those who can balance autonomy with alignment - identifying opportunities that serve the broader mission while moving quickly enough to stay ahead of the rapidly evolving AI landscape.