I have been implementing causal workflows for several years, but agents make them more feasible than ever. The wave of discontent with bolt-on AI’s ROI has the C-suite looking for alternatives that generate more value. I talked about a technology driver in the first sentence, then explained it in terms of business value in the second. That’s a critical skill if you want to be successful with agents, and in this article, I will explain how to do it.
The goal is to transform the operating model, but the work starts at a much earlier maturity phase: transforming the workflow. Technology enables the transformation. It makes it feasible. However, the business is the thing that’s transforming, so technology-enabled transformation must be driven by them and their needs.
This is the SaaS conundrum with AI and agents. Neither produces enough value to justify their costs without reorchestrating the workflow. However, SaaS vendors don’t control their customers’ workflows, so they have to build solutions that support the current workflows, or customers won’t keep signing contracts.
SaaS vendors are hoping that FDEs are the solution, but few have built an FDE force that fully understands the assignment. It’s not enough to get buy-in for point solutions and pilots. The ROI just isn’t high enough to hold the C-suite’s interest. FDEs must get multiple business units to buy in on workflow reorchestration, and that is a very different skill set.
The purpose of a workflow is what it does or produces, not what people think it should do or produce. The workflow’s true function is defined by its actual observed outcomes. Stated intentions, goals, and mission statements are meaningless. Meet the business and its customers where they are, not where you think they should be or even where they claim to be.
But that doesn’t mean you must settle for workflows to stay the way they are. The power and value of strategists is our ability to transform workflows or reorchestrate them to produce more value and even new types of value. But we don’t own the process, which means we must lead without authority and wield influence to deliver results.
I have taken this approach across a wide range of internal and customer-facing workflows. In this article, I will use an internal workflow (recruiting) as the example, but just keep in mind that the approach generalizes broadly. I have applied it to supply chain, accounting, recruiting, marketing, sales, customer service, research, strategy, engineering, and many more workflow domains.
It works because it starts with systems thinking and supports itself with systems theory. Building agents to support workflows reliably begins with treating the workflow like a complex, dynamical system. The operating model is deterministic. Show me a stochastic workflow, and I’ll show you people doing work with incomplete information. We have yet to implement truly stochastic workflows, but that’s a topic for a different article.
The approach I’ll explain in this article overcomes two of the largest barriers to getting started with reliable agents. First, getting buy-in for everything required to deliver agents, not just the technical pieces. Second, delivering value quickly even when data, information, infrastructure, and capabilities are in early maturity phases.
The mistake I see many businesses make is trying to push this through as a technology-driven change. It must be value-centric and must be driven by the business itself, not the technology team or product management. Here’s how to make that work.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.