01 / THE RESEARCH
Source summary
An original summary by Higher Measure Partners
As agentic AI becomes capable of executing substantial portions of complete workflows, the traditional choice between “automation” and “augmentation” becomes too narrow. Kellogg and Ramakrishnan argue that leaders should redesign workflows around combinations of people, agents, systems and business strategy, while pursuing growth as deliberately as efficiency. They recommend concentrating on a limited number of high-value workflows and evaluating strategic importance, technical fit, operational readiness, risk, ROI, reuse potential, growth potential and the risk that future foundation models make custom development unnecessary.
02 / THE EXECUTIVE IMPLICATION
Higher Measure
Perspective
For executive teams, the important shift is from task-level automation to operating-model design. The question is no longer simply which activities AI can perform faster or cheaper. It is how the business would organize work, decisions, accountability and human expertise if agentic capabilities were available from the outset. That matters directly to both Finance and People leadership: Finance must connect investment to measurable enterprise value, controls and capital allocation, while People leaders must redesign roles, responsibilities, workforce transitions and capability development alongside the workflow itself. The strongest AI programs therefore treat business strategy, operating-model redesign and workforce strategy as one connected management problem—not three separate initiatives.
03 / BRING IT TO THE TABLE
Questions for executives
- Are we automating individual tasks while leaving an outdated end-to-end workflow untouched?
- Which two or three workflows are strategically important enough to justify serious AI-enabled redesign?
- Where must human judgment, accountability or relationship ownership remain explicit?
- Could a capability we are considering building ourselves soon become a standard feature of a foundation model or enterprise platform?
- If AI releases meaningful capacity, are we using it only to reduce cost or also to create new revenue, service levels or organizational capabilities?
CONTINUE WITH THE SOURCE
Read the full research.
Katherine C. Kellogg and Rama Ramakrishnan — MIT Sloan School of Management, Ideas Made to Matter —