Leading the Agentic Enterprise

Apply the Agentic Fit Test across six dimensions to evaluate whether agency is justified.

Distinguish human-led, AI-assisted, automated, and agent-operated work.

Identify when the right decision is to narrow, redesign, or reject an agentic use case.

Map the workflow around decisions, not just tasks.

Assign decision rights across humans, agents, and systems.

Design escalation conditions for exceptions, uncertainty, and higher-risk actions.

Define the context, tools, permissions, and controls the agent needs to operate safely.

Identify the evaluation, monitoring, and observability needed to detect failure.

Classify failure modes, including silent failures that may go unnoticed over time.

Identify where value comes from across revenue, cost, capacity, speed, quality, and risk.

Compare expected value against build, run, and ongoing operating costs.

Decide whether to proceed, narrow the scope, redesign the workflow, or stop.

Estimate build, run, and carry costs for the proposed agentic system.

Quantify value across revenue, cost, capacity, speed, quality, and risk.

Test the assumptions that determine whether the investment is worth making.

Sequence the work by risk, dependency, and evidence required.

Define gates, owners, and the person with authority to stop or advance the initiative.

Prepare the executive ask needed to secure approval and move into execution.