Employees most skilled with current tools (e.g., creating complex reports) have the ideal mindset for orchestrating AI. However, their self-worth is often tied to producing that specific output. The biggest challenge is helping them transition their identity from "maker" to "orchestrator."
AI's biggest risk is not incompetence, but its tendency to fill context gaps with general industry knowledge. This can seem insightful but leads to hallucinations. AI Stewards must provide specific business data and knowledge to constrain the AI and ensure relevant, accurate output.
Tasks that were once the domain of skilled analysts, like generating a complex Excel report, can now be completed in seconds with a simple AI prompt. This rapid commoditization reduces the economic value of the output itself to nearly zero, shifting all value to defining the outcome the output serves.
Future roles won't involve performing transactional tasks, but managing AI agents. This "AI Steward" provides context, defines constraints for the AI, and measures results against business goals. The human's job is to drive outcomes, while the AI handles the commoditized output.
The transition to an AI-driven Agentic Experience (AX) is happening now. A competitor who masters this will operate at such an accelerated speed—winning business while others are still scheduling meetings—that late adopters will be permanently left behind. The window to begin this transformation is roughly 18 months.
For years, tech roles became hyper-specialized (e.g., front-end vs. back-end developer). AI compresses these functions, enabling one person to manage multiple parts of the process. This shift favors the "generalist" who can architect and engineer outcomes using AI tools, similar to early in-house IT roles.