AI Strategy - From Generative to Agentic; Building the Workforce That Makes AI Work
- William Beresford
- Oct 17
- 2 min read
The hype is moving faster than the people
Generative AI was the headline of 2024. Now the conversation’s shifting to agentic AI: systems that don’t just generate content but make decisions, act, and learn as they go.
It’s impressive stuff. But there’s a problem: the people using it often don’t have the skills - or the guardrails, to use it properly.
We’ve all seen it. Tools are getting smarter, but the workforce hasn’t caught up.That’s not a tech gap. It’s a capability gap.
The half-life of skills
Learning platform TalentLMS describes it well: skills now have a half-life of about five years. In other words, half of what your team knows today will be outdated before the decade’s up.
They also identified 13 skills every organisation needs to stay relevant in an AI world — and most of them aren’t technical. 13 AI Skills to Equip Your Work
Here’s the gist:
Data literacy – understanding what AI is telling you.
Prompt engineering – knowing how to ask it the right questions.
AI ethics – spotting bias and protecting data.
Critical thinking and creativity – using judgement and imagination.
Communication and emotional intelligence – working with humans while the machines do their bit.
Change management – helping everyone else adapt without the drama.
These aren’t “future” skills. They’re what people need now. Your AI Strategy needs to account for this.
The quiet erosion of capability
Gartner predicts that by 2030, half of enterprises will face irreversible skill shortages if they don’t start serious upskilling now. That’s because automation can make people lose skills they used to have. This is what Gartner calls “experience starvation.”
Think about it. The more AI writes, predicts, and analyses for us, the fewer opportunities people get to practise those skills themselves.Over time, the workforce becomes dependent on the tools, not confident using them.
Building a workforce that learns faster than the tech
Fixing that starts with culture, not training budgets.It means:
Giving people space to experiment without fear of “breaking” something.
Encouraging questions over compliance.
Making learning visible — leaders learning out loud, not behind closed doors.
It’s also about transparency. Tell people what AI is being used for, what it’s not, and where it’s heading. Anxiety drops when people understand the plan.
Why this matters now for your AI Strategy
If we don’t get this right, agentic AI will become the next wave of digital noise, another system nobody quite trusts.
AI maturity isn’t about how advanced your models are.It’s about how capable your people are.
At Beyond, we’ve always said technology doesn’t transform businesses, people do. The same applies here. The tools are ready. The question is whether the workforce is.
Agentic AI won’t replace people. But it will expose who invested in their people, and who didn’t.
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