The trailblazer orgs are investing heavily into agentic AI – for autonomous ai agents to become a ‘native’ part of the business.
However, the more AI-centric / AI-native an org becomes, the more agile and dynamic the team needs to be… but not in typical ‘shifting dev priorities’ sense, but rather within their own roles, functions, skillsets. Which many teams might not be happy to hear.
This is going to be a huge shift.
As AI takes on more execution and decision-making, leaders need to rethink responsibilities, handovers and accountability.
Leaders already recognise this shift.
Remember when we saw in a recent Xpertise Tech Conference I attended, a poll of approximately 80 tech leaders, 44% selected redesigning roles and teams as their biggest AI talent and capability concern.
Now we know why.
Leaders expect substantial increases over three years in
- AI systems working independently from humans (14% → 39%),
- holding decision-making authority (10% → 35%) and
- handling ambiguous inputs (37% → 57%).
On the one hand the repetitive work is gladly delegated to AI, but it also means the higher level ‘human’ work needs to be found, and someone still needs to check the AI’s work.
Team Liftoffs research provides the human starting point. Across 399 problem statements, people wanted relief from repetitive work and more capacity for valuable activity. Higher-value work and time savings each represented 16% of desired outcomes.
Morgan McKinley found 24% of employees spending more time reviewing AI outputs. Teams need to account for this effort when assessing the benefits of automation.
What are the key things that ‘trailblazer’ orgs are doing to prepare themselves for the huge transformational shifts that will hit us square between the eyes?
- Making AI and agentic AI a top priority (CEOs are still investing even if they cannot yet see a measurable return – which we also saw at the conference: Only 15% of Leaders reported clear, Finance-validated returns.
- Deepen AI literacy – spending more than 6 hours a week
- Invest in captial at scale
- Upskilling the organisation
- Tracking the measurable ROI (again, the problem here is getting good data! Xpertise conference showed poor data quality being the big blocker!)
Liftoff can help connect leadership ambition with everyday work. Start with a painful workflow, define the desired outcome, redesign human and AI responsibilities, test the approach and measure its effect on team capacity and performance.