A.I. Agents and Programmable Organisations
A.I.'s Ascendance From Oracle To Operator
I've just finished writing my talk on AI Agents and Programmable Organisations (hat tip to Lee Bryant for that perfect framing). It's forced me to distill what I've been seeing across industries into something coherent for next week's leadership retreat with some of the UK's most prominent brand and business leaders.
What's becoming painfully clear is the gap between those genuinely experimenting with these systems and those still treating AI as a theoretical exercise. The former are discovering entirely new organisational possibilities; the latter are having increasingly anxious boardroom conversations.
For strategists, this isn't just another tech trend to monitor from a safe distance. It requires getting your hands dirty - running pilots, studying implementation patterns, mapping new competitive dynamics, and fundamentally rethinking organisational design principles. The learning curve is steep and unforgiving.
The most valuable strategic skill now isn't predicting the future - it's developing the literacy to engage with this technology meaningfully today. That means building knowledge across domains traditionally considered separate: technical capabilities, organisational behaviour, competitive strategy, and cultural change.
My talk (details here) will dive deeper into this reality. I'll be sharing what separates organisations effectively navigating this transition from those still struggling to frame the right questions.
The best time to start was yesterday. The second best time is today. And judging by how quickly this landscape is shifting, waiting until tomorrow might already be too late.
This is masterful, mind bending and urgent, thank you so much for sharing like you do, Zoe. My brain’s fizzing with thoughts on where to take this provocation - how it impacts my work, who to talk to about it, and how to begin to apply it.