Booster Analytics

Agentic AI is here – not in theory, not in beta, but in production. As a CTO and educator, I see the greatest challenge ahead isn’t in the tech stack – it’s in the org chart.

We’re no longer talking about AI as just a tool. We’re talking about autonomous agents that can reason, plan, and act in pursuit of defined goals. And when these agents start collaborating with human directors and managers – or worse, reporting to them – the rules of management need to change.

I plan to manage the integration of agentic AI alongside human leadership in the following way.

1. Define Authority Boundaries Upfront

The priority is crystal-clear governance: who decides what, and when.

Agentic AI can make tactical decisions – respond to emails, generate reports, optimize workflows – but should it have the authority to allocate budget, terminate contracts, or initiate strategic shifts? Not without human sign-off.

I’ve outlined three tiers of authority:

1. Autonomous (Execute): Routine, low-risk tasks agents can execute without oversight.

2. Assisted (Recommend): Agents provide analysis and action proposals; humans decide.

3. Advised (Flag): High-stakes areas where agents only raise alerts, never propose.

This mapping is not just technical; it’s ethical and legal. I’ve made it a joint responsibility between engineering and compliance.

2. Redesign Workflows as Hybrid Interactions

I keep telling my teams and my students that we’re not replacing managers – we’re reconfiguring them.

Traditional top-down workflows are too linear for hybrid human-agent collaboration. Instead, I’m designing adaptive workflows where agents proactively push information, recommend decisions, and request clarification. Managers become orchestrators of hybrid teams, not micromanagers of machines.

For example, the marketing AI can suggest campaign segmentation strategies and flag anomalies in real time. Instead of requesting reports, the marketing director now reviews and decides with agent input. This sequence shifts the manager’s value from task execution to judgment.

3. Train Directors to “Manage Machines”

Most managers are trained to manage people, not agentic systems. So I’ve embedded a new training module into our leadership development: Managing with and through AI agents.

This management includes:

– Understanding agent reasoning models (e.g., goal-setting, memory, reinforcement)

– Learning how to delegate to and supervise agents

– Diagnosing AI hallucination or decision errors

– Maintaining agent alignment with departmental OKRs

This isn’t optional – it’s mandatory. If you manage a team with even one agentic AI, you’re a hybrid leader now.

4. Treat Agentic AI as Interns, Not Employees

This might sound counterintuitive, but I tell my team and students to think of AI agents as interns – super useful, fast learners, but easily confused without supervision.

Interns can do great work, but no sane director lets them close a deal solo. Likewise, we don’t let agents run unchecked. Every agent has a human fallback, and every output gets a confidence score and traceable audit trail.

Trust, but verify. When in doubt, turn to human judgment.

5. Build for Escalation and Transparency

Lastly, when we are building escalation pipelines between agents and human managers. If an agent encounters an uncertain boundary or conflicting instructions, it knows how to escalate – not just stall.

I also require all agents to log decisions and reasoning paths. This requirement provides visibility to directors and helps de-risk regulatory audits or project reviews.

We’re also piloting a “Team Dashboard” where directors can see agent outputs, alerts, recent tasks, and even emotional sentiment scores from NLP-based sentiment tracking across conversations.

Last Thoughts

Agentic AI isn’t just another productivity boost – it’s a structural shift in how we think about work. As a CTO, my job is to keep us efficient, aligned, and ethical while navigating this shift. As an educator, my job is to prepare my students on what is coming.

I don’t want AI agents working under directors – I want them working with directors, in a clearly managed, strategically aligned way.

If we get this wrong, we won’t just have rogue AI. We’ll have confused humans, misaligned departments, and missed opportunities. But if we get it right, agentic AI won’t replace managers – it will make them smarter, faster, and more focused on what truly matters: judgment, creativity, and leadership.