Enterprise operating model / A future perspective # The next operating model: people, agents and systems working together ## What is an agentic operating model? An agentic operating model defines how people, agents and enterprise systems share responsibility for business outcomes. It connects ownership, permissions, workflow progression, human decisions and evidence so that work can be managed as a whole. A perspective for COOs, CIOs and business transformation leaders. In this perspective - Picture the complete outcome - Make the handoffs visible - Give human decisions a deliberate place - Design for the life of the work - Connect local expertise with enterprise standards - Lead with a service people can recognize - The outcome handoff map ## In this perspective - Picture the complete outcome - Make the handoffs visible - Give human decisions a deliberate place - Design for the life of the work - Connect local expertise with enterprise standards - Lead with a service people can recognize - The outcome handoff map ## The leadership perspective - Give the complete outcome a clear owner across departmental handoffs. - Treat human decisions, agent work and system events as one connected process. - Design recovery and learning into the operating model from the beginning. ## Picture the complete outcome Imagine a new business customer joining your organization. Sales understands the promise that was made. Finance prepares the commercial checks. Operations coordinates the setup. A specialist reviews an exception, and the customer receives a clear explanation of what happens next. People, agents and systems each contribute, while the outcome remains understandable from the first conversation to the first successful delivery. That is a useful picture of an agentic operating model. The business organizes around a complete outcome and gives every participant a clear place in achieving it. An agent may prepare information, a system may confirm an event and a person may resolve an important decision. Their contributions connect through a common understanding of purpose, responsibility and progress. For a COO or CIO, the opportunity is to redesign how work moves through the enterprise. A workflow can become a shared operational object: something leaders can understand, teams can improve and customers can experience as a coherent service. The starting question is which outcome deserves that level of shared attention. ## Make the handoffs visible A handoff contains more than a task. It carries an assumption about what the next person knows, what has already been agreed and who will act when something is unclear. Mapping those assumptions can reveal where an organization would benefit from better coordination. It also gives teams a practical language for designing how agents should participate in the work. Consider the moment when an account moves from sales into delivery. A useful handoff might include the customer's intended outcome, the commitments in scope, the people accountable and the conditions that require another decision. An agent could help assemble and check that context. Delivery leaders could then focus on whether the enterprise is ready to fulfill the promise. The value of this exercise is the clarity it creates across functions. Each team can explain what it needs and what it contributes. Leaders can see which dependencies deserve redesign. Agentic work becomes an opportunity to improve the relationships between functions and to give those relationships a more dependable operating structure. ## Give human decisions a deliberate place An enterprise workflow contains moments that deserve human judgment: accepting a commercial exception, balancing competing priorities, interpreting a sensitive situation or deciding what the organization should stand behind. Designing those moments into the process makes leadership intent concrete. People can see where they are expected to contribute and which decision they are being asked to make. A well-designed decision request arrives with the context needed to act. It explains the situation, the proposed course, the relevant boundaries and the consequences of the available choices. The reviewer can ask for more information or return the work for revision. Their judgment becomes part of the progression of the workflow and part of its understandable history. This gives the enterprise a richer idea of human involvement. The goal is to place attention where it changes the quality of the outcome. Leaders can examine whether a particular review protects a meaningful responsibility, develops expertise or helps navigate uncertainty. The resulting operating model respects the value of human judgment and the time required to exercise it. ## Design for the life of the work Important work has a life beyond a single interaction. It waits for information, resumes after a decision and sometimes changes course. A useful agentic operating model preserves the purpose and state of the work through those events. Teams need to understand what has happened, what is expected next and who can resolve an exception. Imagine a supplier onboarding case waiting for a commercial clarification. The case should retain its context while the supplier responds. When the response arrives, the responsible team should see why the question was asked and which conditions remain relevant. Agents can contribute to the preparation and coordination, while the enterprise maintains a consistent account of the case. Thinking this way encourages leaders to define recovery as part of the service. What should happen if a system is unavailable? Who owns a stalled decision? How can a person safely redirect the work? These questions make continuity a shared design responsibility. They also help the organization communicate clearly with the customer or employee depending on the result. ## Connect local expertise with enterprise standards The best understanding of a workflow often lives close to the people doing it. A regional service team knows its customers. A finance specialist understands the meaning of an exception. An enterprise architecture team understands system dependencies. The operating model should give those perspectives a way to influence the same process without losing clarity about ownership. Shared standards can define the essentials: how authority is expressed, how a decision is recorded, how evidence connects to the case and how a workflow version is reviewed. Domain teams can then shape the business content and practical steps within that foundation. The enterprise gains a common language while preserving the knowledge that makes each workflow useful. This is the direction behind CoA's enterprise workflow vision. Governance, coordination and evidence form a common foundation across people, agents and systems. Business teams bring the purpose and context. Execution environments contribute their capabilities. Together, those responsibilities create a way to design work that can remain coherent as the organization grows and changes. ## Lead with a service people can recognize A useful place to begin the conversation is a service that crosses functions and matters to somebody outside them. Choose customer onboarding, an employee's first month, a product introduction or another recognizable outcome. Ask the leaders involved to describe what an excellent experience would feel like. Then work backward through the decisions, information and responsibilities required to deliver it. This approach gives agentic transformation a human scale. A board can understand the purpose. Employees can recognize their contribution. Technology leaders can identify the connections that matter. Finance can examine the economics of the changed workflow. The organization can explore a future operating model through a concrete experience it wants to create. Follow one customer case through its handoffs. Name the information, accountable person and next decision at each stage. Invite every function to improve the journey, giving leadership a shared view of the coordination required. The ambition is an enterprise in which good intent can travel all the way to a dependable outcome. People bring judgment, agents bring useful capacity and systems connect the work to the business. Leadership gives that combination direction. The next operating model begins when those contributions are designed together, around something the enterprise wants to accomplish well. ## The outcome handoff map A leadership tool from Center of Agentic | Moment | Context that travels | Accountable decision | | --- | --- | --- | | Sales to delivery | Customer promise and agreed scope | Delivery owner accepts readiness | | Exception to review | Options, consequences and unresolved questions | Specialist chooses the next course | | Completion to learning | Outcome and remaining commitments | Service owner accepts the result | ### An illustrative future scenario Imagine onboarding moving from sales to delivery. An agreed scope and a named receiving owner travel with the case. If delivery questions a promise, the commercial owner resolves it before the next commitment. The handoff is complete when the receiving team accepts the context and next decision, giving the customer continuity across departments. ### The decision to take forward Treat a handoff as complete when the receiving owner accepts the next decision; an unresolved promise stays with its accountable owner. ### Sources behind the thinking CoA’s interpretation, informed by these primary references. Clear responsibilities and communication inform the receiving-owner test. NIST AI RMF, GOVERN 2.1 Cooperation across AI actors supports a shared account of connected work. OECD AI Principle 1.5 Continue the thinking ## Questions leaders ask ## What is an agentic operating model? An agentic operating model defines how people, agents and enterprise systems share responsibility for business outcomes. It connects ownership, permissions, workflow progression, human decisions and evidence so that work can be managed as a whole. ## What makes an agentic workflow useful to a COO? A useful workflow makes ownership, progress, exceptions and outcomes visible across functions. It gives the COO a way to improve the complete service or process while preserving the specialist judgment of the teams involved. Center of Agentic develops the enterprise vision connecting governance, coordinated work and evidence. Explore our platform perspective and editorial approach. A conversation worth having ## What future are you building? Which cross-functional workflow would you redesign if people, agents and systems could coordinate around one shared outcome? Bring your perspective. Let’s explore what agentic work could mean for your organization, its people and the outcomes you want to create. ## Keep exploring. ### Who should own the agentic enterprise? Explore how CEOs, CIOs, COOs and domain leaders can share ownership of agentic work through a common operating model and accountable local decisions. ### Many AI platforms, one coherent enterprise Imagine an enterprise that keeps freedom of choice across AI platforms while sharing clear authority, business ownership and evidence of agentic work. Source: https://centerofagentic.com/inspiration/people-agents-systems-operating-model ## Related pages - [Home](https://centerofagentic.com/) - [Inspiration](https://centerofagentic.com/inspiration) - [Center of Agentic](https://centerofagentic.com/inspiration#editorial-method) - [NIST AI RMF, GOVERN 2.1](https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ai/NIST.AI.100-1.pdf#page=28) - [OECD AI Principle 1.5](https://oecd.ai/en/dashboards/ai-principles/P9) - [platform perspective](https://centerofagentic.com/platform) - [editorial approach](https://centerofagentic.com/inspiration#editorial-method) - [Start a conversation](https://centerofagentic.com/contact?intent=demo) - [All perspectives](https://centerofagentic.com/inspiration) - [03Leadership and ownershipWho should own the agentic enterprise?Explore how CEOs, CIOs, COOs and domain leaders can share ownership of agentic work through a common operating model and accountable local decisions.8 min readRead perspective](https://centerofagentic.com/inspiration/who-owns-the-agentic-enterprise) - [07Enterprise architectureMany AI platforms, one coherent enterpriseImagine an enterprise that keeps freedom of choice across AI platforms while sharing clear authority, business ownership and evidence of agentic work.8 min readRead perspective](https://centerofagentic.com/inspiration/many-ai-platforms-one-coherent-enterprise) - [Explore opportunities across business domains](https://centerofagentic.com/use-cases)