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Rajal C. is the Founder & CEO: GRAVITAS, HBR Advisory Council member, Business Technologist & Strategist for human Leadership in an AI World AI is taking a sensational jump forward with agentic AI. While earlier AI aides were rules-based with limited ability to act independently, agentic AI systems proactively and autonomously make decisions to accomplish specific goals with minimal human supervision or guidance. It’s changing the enterprise workspace at breakneck speed. Recent developments in agentic AI are moving from thought to action. Hence, agentic AI is reshaping business and customer relationships by connecting customers, employees, AI agents and operations in a completely new way, powering decisions and driving actions. Agentic AI does not depend on human prompts but instead sets out to optimize specific goals or objectives, such as maximizing smarter selling or enhancing customer experience scores and supply-chain process efficiency. What Is Game-Changing About Agentic AI? As a business technologist, strategist and coach for human leadership in an AI world, here are some reasons why, in my view, adopting agentic AI is game-changing for enterprise excellence. First, agentic AI systems can reason, memorize and act on data. That means they can be used for making decisions rather than creating content. They harness the creative abilities of generative AI models and can carry out complex sequences of activities like automating the daily workflow and autonomously searching databases. They have meaningfully greater ability to scrutinize and categorize information sources for quality and reliability, increasing the degree of trust in their decisions. What I find most significant is the progression in context and conversation. Agentic AI understands what the goal or vision of the user is and uses this intelligent context, as well as the data, to navigate the problem it is trying to solve. Agentic AI systems with enhanced judgement and power of execution promise a new trend of experimentation, productivity and innovation. AI agents are shifting from knowledge-based tools to more action-based, becoming smart systems that think, act and anticipate like a team member. Agentic AI systems can be thought of as hyper-efficient virtual co-workers that can complete complex workflows: A user gives the agent system a task by giving instructions; the agent system plans, allocates and executes the work; the agent system iteratively improves output. This level of AI promises the possibility of automating complex business processes and collaborating with humans to promote new levels of productivity and efficiency. While many applications of agentic AI are still experimental in nature or at a pilot stage, there is a broad range of potential use cases already being explored for implementing agentic AI in the following areas across different industries and functions: customer service, manufacturing, sales support, health and social care, software engineering, legal, supply chain procurement, HR, corporate strategy, customer service and support, IT and cyber security, data analytics/business intelligence, finance and accounting, marketing and sales, and retail. How Can Business Leaders Take Charge Of Agentic AI To Drive Growth? Leaders need to rewrite the enterprise playbook with agentic AI, addressing the following questions: • How can AI technology, sustainability and personalization be integrated into the enterprise’s strategy while protecting data? (This is a major issue for leaders when it comes to deploying AI agents.) • How well-equipped is the enterprise with data architecture for an agentic platform? • Is the enterprise ready for a governance structure to drive actionability with agentic AI? • How prepared is the workforce for agentic AI use? (The way the workforce interacts and collaborates with AI is taking a crucial leap forward with agentic AI.) • How will the leadership team manage the organizational paradigm shift of humans working together with virtual and physical AI agents to create value? • How can we move the needle for delivering smarter and faster service with connected agents? Enterprises will need to invest seriously in agent development, just like we do for employee development. Agents should be given clear job descriptions, onboarded and given continual feedback so they become more effective and improve regularly. To further capitalize on the benefits of agentic AI, set SMART goals, carefully do team selection and support the decision process while mitigating the risks. Your enterprise’s ethical decision-making process must be rooted in the unique values that place humans at the center of the AI ecosystem. And lead with trust, as the enterprises that derive the most value from AI will be those that establish trust with their customers, employees and stakeholders. People must trust AI enough to hand over tasks. Building trust is a big barrier to adopting AI agent technology. To address this, leaders should create incentives that help teams learn how to use—and trust—the new AI tools. Carefully build agents that work to pull in the right data, as agents need to balance both creativity and control. Uncontrollable agents deliver unreliable results. Hence, you must deeply control agent behavior with scripts that feature hardcoded logic to ensure predictability every single time. Finally, ensure that every role at the organization plays a part in building reliable agents by learning conversation design so agents can learn based on their rich experiences. With these challenges in mind, will you lead the charge and become an agentic organization or risk getting left behind?
