Nono Bokete, CEO, Data Sentinels, Empowering Businesses to Lead Digital Change—Beyond Just Technology.
Agentic AI, the buzzy term for autonomous systems that can plan, act and adapt with minimal human input, is being marketed as the holy grail of digital transformation. And don’t get me wrong: It’s powerful. Imagine AI agents that can schedule shipments, adjust pricing or generate reports on their own. The potential is incredible. But potential means nothing without the people and process infrastructure to sustain it.
According to Gartner, “Over 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the end of 2027, due to escalating costs, unclear business value or inadequate risk controls.” And honestly, that doesn’t surprise me. We’ve seen this movie before: a new technology arrives, executives scramble to adopt it, everyone promises transformation and then the project quietly disappears into the nice try folder. The hype cycle always forgets one thing: You can’t automate your way out of poor leadership and weak systems.
What Agentic AI Promises (And Why Everyone’s Hooked)
Agentic AI represents a leap beyond traditional automation. Instead of waiting for you to push a button, it decides when to push it. It’s not just about performing a task—it’s about reasoning, adapting and executing goals. Consulting firms and tech vendors are selling it as the next frontier for productivity, efficiency and innovation. And sure, some of that is true. Businesses can use agentic AI to speed up workflows. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: If your company already struggles with change management, communication or decision making, agentic AI will amplify those issues, not fix them.
The Common Pitfalls (Why 40% Will Fail)
My prediction is that agentic AI is about to suffer the same fate as many digital transformation projects before it. Here’s why:
1. The data is a mess. You can’t build autonomous systems on dirty, incomplete or siloed data. Without a strong data foundation, agents can’t reason effectively—they just guess faster.
2. Leaders confuse buying with transforming. Purchasing an AI system isn’t a transformation. Leaders love to tick the innovation box, but the hard work is aligning teams, training people and redesigning workflows. That’s the part most organizations skip.
3. There’s no governance. Who monitors what these AI agents decide to do? Without human-in-the-loop oversight and clear accountability, you’re not transforming; you’re gambling.
4. People aren’t ready. Many employees see AI as a threat, not a tool. Rolling out autonomous systems without psychological safety or upskilling plans breeds quiet resistance.
5. Hype replaces strategy. “Agent-washing” is real; companies slapping the word “agentic” on regular automation to sound innovative. If your implementation doesn’t have a clear business case, it’s marketing, not strategy.
Agentic AI Needs Leadership, Not Just Code
I’ve led transformation projects across Africa and abroad for over a decade, and the pattern is universal: Technology moves fast, but people adapt at the speed of a tortoise. The best projects succeed not because of superior tools, but because the leaders behind them have clarity, courage and communication skills.
Agentic AI is no different. It can plan, reason and act, but it still needs humans who can define purpose, boundaries and value. Without leadership readiness, agentic systems turn into what I call autonomous confusion, a tangle of disconnected pilots that never scale.
A People-First Framework For Getting Agentic AI Right
If you want to be part of the 60% that survive Gartner’s prediction, here’s where to start:
• Clarity from the top. Leadership must define what success looks like. If the goal is AI everywhere, you’ve already lost. Start with one process and one measurable outcome.
• Data hygiene is culture, not compliance. Treat data quality like safety in mining or hygiene in healthcare—it’s everyone’s job.
• Build trust before autonomy. Create an environment where teams understand why AI is being implemented and how it supports their work, rather than replacing it.
• Invest in capability. Leadership and employee training should evolve in tandem with technology. You can’t expect a workforce built for spreadsheets to suddenly thrive with self-directing agents.
• Governance is your seatbelt. Autonomy without oversight is chaos. Keep humans in the loop, even if it’s just for exception handling and ethics.
Why This Matters For Digital Transformation
For corporates, governments and even startups, agentic AI holds immense promise—especially in industries like logistics, mining or agriculture, where automation could unlock massive efficiency gains. But it won’t work without leadership infrastructure. At Data Sentinels, we’re seeing how leadership capacity, collaboration and continuous learning directly affect whether technology succeeds or stalls. Agentic AI could accelerate your organization’s transformation story, but only if leaders are prepared to integrate it with purpose, not panic.
The real takeaway is that agentic AI isn’t a magic wand. It’s a magnifying glass that exposes the strengths and weaknesses already inside your organization. If your leadership is aligned, your data is clean and your people are prepared, agentic AI will amplify your success. If not, it’ll just help you fail faster. So before you automate the kingdom, make sure you can lead it.
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