The 3 Essential Roles for Deploying AI Agents Successfully

The next wave of AI is here, promising an unprecedented workplace transformation. Proactive AI agents are poised to see widespread enterprise adoption and drive dramatic impact—but only if deployed effectively and securely. Why? Unlike digital AI assistants, which react to user prompts and handle predefined tasks, AI agents engage in continuous, iterative workflows that require reasoning and the ability to act autonomously. Strong leadership is essential for deploying AI agents successfully.

Deploying AI agents comes with higher expectations, risks

AI agents are well-suited for transactional workflows in most departments, such as sales, customer service, and IT. Wherever AI agents are deployed, there will be high expectations regarding increased departmental productivity and ROI. In addition to these high expectations are high risks, such as employees who refuse to adopt the technology, the selection of the wrong technology, or the discovery that AI agents aren’t mature enough to handle the tasks being delegated to them.

The 3 leaders crucial to an effective AI agent rollout

As we tease apart the risks and rewards of AI agents, it becomes clear that three leaders are crucial to rolling out agents successfully. 

1. The Instigator: Line of Business leader

• Why they're essential to success: They own the business case for change.

• What happens without them: Lack of adoption and project derailment.

The first to deploy a new agent is most often a Line of Business leader looking to solve a specific business problem (for example, “How do I scale my team to offer a more consistent and quality customer experience without a linear increase in FTE hiring?”). Ultimately, this person owns the decision for change, the business case for change, and most importantly, the accountability for the change. When agents are deployed without this business case and ownership, the most common outcome is a lack of adoption and a scuttled project.

2. The Sponsors: CHRO & HR leaders

• Why they're essential to success: They facilitate change management and workforce alignment.

• What happens without them: Resistance to change, employee uncertainty, and workforce disruption.

An AI agent rollout doesn’t just impact workflows—it impacts people. The LoB leader needs the sponsorship of the CHRO and an HR leader as a partner to facilitate change and ensure its success. Without their involvement, employees may resist adoption, fear job displacement, or misunderstand how AI fits into their work. If the LoB leader has promised a reduction in staffing, they’ll need HR’s help to manage it. If that LoB leader has promised no reduction in staffing, they’ll need HR’s help with workforce planning, organizational design, career journey planning, and landing impacted employees in new roles. 

3. The Supporters: CIO & IT

• Why they're essential to success: They provide technical expertise, governance, and system integration.

• What happens without them: Poor implementation, security risks, and operational bottlenecks.

Even the most promising AI agent won’t deliver value if it’s poorly implemented or disconnected from existing business systems. The CIO and IT team identify the right agentic solution, deploy it, and monitor and iterate on AI agents post-deployment. These systems are not "set it and forget it"—they need continuous fine-tuning, user feedback loops, and adaptation to business process changes (e.g., enabling seamless handoffs from AI agents to seasoned employees if the agent falters). 

Without the CIO's ongoing support, what starts as an AI-driven efficiency boost can quickly degrade into inefficiency, frustration, and clumsy workarounds.

With this trio of HR, IT, and the Line of Business leader, the organization is much more likely to achieve and sustain its planned outcome.

3 ways CIOs can lead the workforce transformation

Agentic AI comes at a time when business leaders need it most. Productivity, engagement, and talent retention are all facing decline, while stakeholders demand unprecedented levels of efficiency and growth from both public and private organizations.

CIOs will elevate their role and department by helping the business gain a competitive advantage with the right agentic workflows. Here is how they can help organizations get ahead:

1. Work with trusted partners.

AI Agents will connect to core transactional systems, access proprietary organizational data, and frequently interact with customers. CIOs do not want their initial projects undermined by data breaches or public scandals resulting from unproven agentic tech from immature offerings. Given the likely bias for action of Line of Business leaders, CIOs will play a crucial role in ensuring the company works with trusted vendors so that teams can advance agentic AI using secure and compliant data platforms.

2. Plan for systemic changes.

Agentic AI empowers teams to push limits, driving bold experimentation and innovation that surpasses mere incremental improvements. In this transformative environment, the CIO plays a pivotal role in helping teams redefine what is possible in terms of using AI to make informed decisions about labor (both human and automated), how the existing ecosystem of applications and infrastructure interacts with the AI agents, and how to keep humans in the loop for higher-risk deployments. 

3. Ensure the business outcome.

In a democratized AI development environment, every business leader will demand the deployment and enhancement of AI agents. This is not one project; it is likely many AI agent projects for each LoB leader. This means CIOs will need to work with HR leaders and finance to agree upon business case templates, the relative priority of initiatives, and holding all teams accountable. Failed projects need a quick post-mortem, and successful projects need to be held up as examples of other departments to aspire to. 

As executives pursue new paths to productivity with AI, CIOs can act as catalysts by helping the business gain a competitive advantage with the right skills and workflows.

To learn more about how Workforce AI solutions power productivity, check out: Maximizing Workforce Productivity & Performance: The Role of AI