Agentic organisation
Working definition
A company where people set the intent and answer for the outcomes, and agents do a growing share of the work in between: holding real jobs within written authority, sharing the company's memory, and coordinating among themselves.
Origin. McKinsey (2025) uses "the agentic organization" for "a new paradigm of humans working together with virtual and physical AI agents to create value". (Alexander Sukharevsky, Alexis Krivkovich, Arne Gast, Arsen Storozhev, Dana Maor, Deepak Mahadevan, Lari Hämäläinen, Sandra Durth (McKinsey & Company) (2025))
How I use it. Mine is narrower. Agents must hold jobs within written authority, and people keep the accountability.
Not to be confused with
- A company that uses AI tools: people do the jobs and use AI along the way.
Example. Handing every employee a chatbot does not make a company agentic. Moving the accounting tasks to an agent, with written limits, is a step towards it.