AI—particularly agentic AI—is changing how organizations operate and how people create value. To capture the full promise of this technological wave, leaders will need to rewire workflows and reshape roles, skills, structures, and systems that hold the enterprise together.
Technology is moving fast—and leaders need to move faster. This post is the first in a People & Organization Blog series on establishing a co-intelligent workforce with speed and intentionality, where humans work together with agents as colleagues, not tools.
When transforming to an agentic organization, the following six shifts stand out as critical to address today.
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Workflows: End-to-end redesign, AI-first by design
Most organizations have treated AI as an add-on, layering copilots or chatbots on top of legacy processes. The result: modest productivity gains that rarely show up in the P&L.
To unlock step-changes in speed and productivity (i.e., value created per unit of effort), work should be reimagined as AI-first, domain by domain, beginning with desired outcomes. Humans should be brought in deliberately where they add unique value through judgment, empathy, and creativity.
Communication, collaboration, and knowledge management—all requiring holistic rewiring with technology—will then serve the additional purpose of eliminating silos and transaction costs, unlocking additional trapped value across domains.
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Talent: A new human-agent frontier
Once workflows change, roles cannot stay the same. New capabilities will be needed—some that can be performed by technology and others that cannot—while some existing capabilities will no longer be necessary.
This will require rethinking of roles. Our research shows that 75 percent of current roles will need reshaping and new or different skill mixes, including more technological skills and greater emphasis on socio, emotional, and higher cognitive skills.
Additionally, new profiles are emerging, such as agent orchestrators, who design and supervise agent workflows; hybrid managers, who lead blended human-agent teams; and AI coaches, who help employees integrate AI into daily work. Simultaneously, other roles will disappear—for example, interpretive roles historically required to “connect the dots” between silos.
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Structure: Dynamic organizations
Hierarchical pyramids built around knowledge silos will not survive the agentic era; scalable platforms will drive value. Organizations should take on leaner, flatter, and more fluid shapes, organized around autonomous “human + agent teams” that are steered toward outcomes.
Blended technology and human capabilities should become the new unit of value for a team, combining scalable productivity without human constraints and uniquely human abilities for accountability, oversight, and continuous progression. Teams should be dynamic, able to form and reform as priorities shift.
Governance should become a key design driver, defining where human oversight and judgment is required, determining how to embed agentic governance, and securing the balance between accountability and speed.
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Leadership: Orchestrators of hybrid intelligence
Leadership roles should evolve as well. In the near term, leaders should be central to designing and delivering AI transformation despite uncertainty. Leaders will need stronger technological capabilities to enable the reimagination of domains with AI, system thinking, and the ability to make ethical decisions.
Leaders should support enterprise-wide change, communicating a clear narrative, assuaging fear, and driving adoption. They will be expected to become greater strategic visionaries—shifting focus to more strategic leadership, prioritizing outcomes over ownership. They should focus on driving cultural and ethical change by encouraging continuous experimentation, adaptability, and a “test and learn” mindset.
Leaders should also role-model new ways of managing the co-intelligent workforce by orchestrating human + agent teams and workflows themselves.
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Culture and skills: Continuous reinvention as a competitive advantage
Organizations (and the humans within them) evolve linearly. However, technology is changing exponentially, and the gap between where organizations are and where they need to be continues to widen. Addressing this requires deliberate investment in continuous reinvention, bringing humans in the enterprise along and preventing organizational skill atrophy (i.e., when AI use hampers core skill development and practice).
Every employee should move beyond AI fluency—basic familiarity with tools—toward integrating AI in their daily roles. This will require reskilling and redeployment at scale, apprenticing new employees into co-intelligent workflows, and continuously upskilling current employees as agents take over foundational tasks.
At the same time, organizations should shift from an expertise culture to a learning culture. Starting at the top, leaders should wire continuous learning through the enterprise with new behaviors, mindsets, and incentives to build a dynamic system that can evolve as technology advances. Culture becomes the glue that ensures adoption sticks: Without trust and purpose, even the most advanced AI systems will stall. The result is a workforce that can adapt faster—and a culture of reinvention that becomes a competitive advantage.
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HR: Building a co-intelligent talent system
HR should become the engine of transformation, partnering with other business and technology leaders to reimagine jobs, redeploy talent, and embed trust into the system. Every HR product should be rethought, starting with strategic workforce planning to include both humans and agents, and decisions triggered should include both people and technology levers. HR should shape role redesign, reskilling at scale, hiring, apprenticeship and career journeys, performance management and incentives, as well as new organizational design.
This will require partnering with others to lead workforce shifts, and a reinvention of HR itself. This is already taking place, with the first examples of HR, IT/data/digital leadership, and transformation roles merging at companies in software, pharmaceuticals, insurance, and more.
A mandate for leaders
Each of these shifts is profound on its own. Together, they redefine the very foundations of the enterprise. Winners will not simply adopt AI tools—they will boldly rewire workflows to be AI-first, reinvent roles and structures, build new leadership muscles, and make culture and HR the engines of transformation.
AI is not just reshaping tasks. It is reshaping organizations. Leaders who proactively address these shifts will ensure that their organizations are more resilient, adaptive, and competitive in this next era of work.
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This blog post is part of a People & Organization Blog series that explores how organizations will be transformed by agentic AI. Follow us on LinkedIn and keep an eye on the blog for our latest insights and how these technologies will shape organizations today and tomorrow.