AI agents prompt a rethink of the business plan

The CIO.com article’s central argument is that deploying AI agents alone will not distinguish an organization as adoption spreads.[1] Kawasaki urged leaders to ask what their organizations could pursue if employees had more time.[1] He identified possibilities including giving customers more attention, developing promising ideas and offering services that do not currently make economic sense.[1] The proposed shift is from treating agents as a technology rollout to reconsidering business operations, customer needs the organization can address and potential new sources of value.[1]

Creatio published the report using responses from 608 IT and business decision-makers.[1] Seventy percent of respondents said their organizations had moved beyond AI experimentation.[1] Another 78% said their organizations were scaling AI agents across departments or use cases, or expected to do so within a year.[1] These figures describe respondents’ reported progress and expectations; they do not establish that every organization has already scaled agents.

Kawasaki said 89% of respondents expected AI agents to augment teams, expand capacity or create new roles, while 9% anticipated significant headcount reductions.[1] He cautioned that these workforce expectations do not establish what will ultimately happen to employment.[1] His recommendation is to consider how to use capacity leaders expect agents to free up.[1] Examples include giving service teams more time for complex customer problems, helping sales teams support accounts that previously received little engagement, and allowing operations teams to address persistent backlogs while keeping up with new requests.[1]

McKinsey reported that 80% of respondents said AI improved individual productivity, while 37% reported a positive EBIT impact.[2] It also found that nearly three-quarters of AI high performers said they had substantially redesigned workflows, compared with one-quarter of other organizations.[2] McKinsey said 11% of organizations had reached its “reinvention” horizon, defined as rethinking how work gets done and how value is created.[2] Its report lists agent tasks including research, drafting, coding, analysis, monitoring, summarization, routing and coordination.[2] The figures provide context, not proof that agents alone produce business results.