When Every Employee Becomes an Agent Boss

Apr 28, 2025 / AI

If every employee starts managing agents, how does a company change?

First, “83% of global leaders say AI will let employees take on more complex, strategic work earlier in their careers.”

One executive recently framed this transition of teams evolving to three areas of work : operational, tactical, & strategic. Operational work can be mostly fully automated today. Agents are chomping away at tactical work - better accuracy will improve their share. Humans will focus on strategy work, but likely assisted by AI.

“When asked why they turned to AI instead of a colleague, employees cited 24/7 availability (42%), machine speed and quality (30%), and unlimited ideas on demand (28%) as the top reasons—all things humans cannot provide.”

Advanced AI users use AI as a thought partner. With some studies demonstrating AI’s creativity as superior to humans, combined with infinite patience, profound memories, & a little bit of obsequiousness, we should expect AI as a strategic work sidekick.

The impact on org charts is likely to be profound.

Manu Cornet’s interpretation of org charts will need an additional box. What will it look like?

“But with expertise on demand, the traditional org chart may be replaced by a Work Chart—a dynamic, outcome-driven model where teams form around goals, not functions…”

Microsoft’s Work Trend Index argues most businesses will resemble movie production : teams of specialists who descend upon a project, achieve a goal & move on.

And the impact is mostly on customer-facing teams : “In our survey, global leaders listed customer service, marketing, and product development as the top three areas for accelerated AI investment in the next 12–18 months.”

The Cornet image of the future will undoubtedly have more agents than humans - by 10x or 100x is hard to say. The leverage from AI is hard to overstate & expectations for speed, depth of thought, creativity, & effectiveness will surge as a result - a huge opportunity for those who understand how to use these new tools effectively.