Would You Rather Your AI Agent Said "I’m Not Sure" or Guessed At an Answer?
In a regulated business a confident wrong answer is far worse than no answer, which is why a good agent hands the hard case to a person.
Read on Substack →The Agentic Memo
Field notes on running a governed AI workforce.
What we are learning as we deploy agents into real companies, written by the people doing it. New posts land here automatically.
Thanks, you are on the list. We will be in touch.
No spam, unsubscribe any time.
Every post, newest first
Time Saved from AI Isn't Translating Into Growth
Most teams measure AI by the time it saves, while the organizations getting real returns measure what the work now delivers.
Read on Substack →Why JPMorgan and Citi Locked AI Agents Out and What They Get Right
The big banks are not saying no to AI agents, only to agents that sign in as you.
Read on Substack →More AI Training Will Not Fix an Organization Built for the Old Way of Working
Most of the value from AI agents depends on how the organization is set up, not on how skilled each employee is.
Read on Substack →You Would Never Hire One Person for Five Jobs, So Why Ask One AI?
Nobody would hire one person to run credit, treasury and social media, so why expect it of one AI?
Read on Substack →Your AI Agents Are Employees Your Security Team Has Never Met
Almost every company now runs AI agents, yet almost none of them manage those agents the way they manage people.
Read on Substack →AI Agents Should Promote Your People, Not Replace Them
The person who fears an agent the most is the person who knows how the work really gets done.
Read on Substack →Your AI Tool Will Find Every File You Thought Was Private
When an AI tool can open files your employees cannot, it will hand them to anyone who asks.
Read on Substack →AI Did Not Leak the Layoff List, Bad Permissions Did
Nobody hacked anything because it was only a search, yet what it exposed was a permissions problem.
Read on Substack →You Hired an AI Agent, Now Who Manages It?
Monitoring tells you the agent is running, while managing tells you the role is being done.
Read on Substack →Most Companies Scaled Chatbots and Called Them AI Agents
Chatbots are the most widely used AI tool at 47 percent, while agents that actually carry out the work reach roughly 20 percent.
Read on Substack →What Nobody Tells You About Onboarding an AI Agent
You do not install someone into a role, you onboard them, so an AI agent holding a seat is no different.
Read on Substack →Gartner Expects 40 Percent of Agentic AI Projects to Be Canceled for Reasons You Could Fix First
Escalating costs, unclear business value and inadequate risk controls, which is governance under another name.
Read on Substack →Your AI Role-Based Agent Should Be on Salary
This shouldn’t be measured on tokens, which are used to gauge what it costs to run the technology, when the question that matters is what the role is worth to you.
Read on Substack →Nobody Counts an Employee’s Keystrokes
You did not hire the keystrokes, so stop pricing your AI agent as though you did.
Read on Substack →No, Your Generative AI Is Not an AI Agent
One of them needs you to explain the situation every single time you use it, while the other one already knows what its job is.
Read on Substack →Anyone Can Build an Agent. That Is Exactly the Problem.
The difference between the agent you built yourself and a governed one is the difference between a helper and a hire.
Read on Substack →Your First AI Agent Should Be Boring
The instinct is to point an agent at your hardest problem. That is exactly where pilots stall. Start with the work that quietly drains your best people
Read on Substack →You Are Not Using an AI Agent, You Are Using Generative AI
Here is the difference between the two and why it actually matters and changes what you should expect from the technology
Read on Substack →Gartner Says 75% of Work Will Be Done With AI, Not By It
Gartner says the future of work is augmentation and that cutting heads does not pay. Here is what that means for how you deploy AI agents
Read on Substack →Every post is published on Substack. This page updates on its own as new ones go out.