Kick-off: Using AI Agents to Accelerate Organizational Transformation

The first session of Working Group 2 distinguished genuine transformation from mere augmentation and examined why most transformation efforts fall short: limited experience with organizational design, constrained change capacity, and the leadership capital at stake. Drawing on a decade of field work, Frode presented a model-based approach that maps an organization’s value streams, structure, information, and culture, and explored how AI agents can expand change capacity in diagnosis, current-state mapping, communication, and future-state design.

The discussion that followed asked whether placing agents alongside people in org charts erodes morale, cautioned that AI amplifies existing dysfunctions rather than resolving them, and examined how to pace change when employees feel threatened. Participants agreed that a unified view of the organization, and a common language for describing it, is a precondition for change that people actually embrace.