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When “Who Made It?” Stops Mattering: A New Lens on Value in the Age of Agentic AI

Tony Wood |

During a recent boardroom demo, I showed a colleague a market report crafted by a multi-agent AI team—each agent assigned tasks, overseen by a domain expert, the process tracked from ideation to risk analysis. Instead of interest, he recoiled: “I don’t want to see that. It wasn’t written by a person.”

He’s not alone. Scanning executive LinkedIn feeds, you’ll quickly find variations on this theme—if AI was involved, is it “real” work? Can it hold the same weight as something made by a solo human?

In 2025, this question is cropping up across boardrooms and corridors, usually with worry lines: “If everyone can do it with AI, does it still have value?” It’s time for a reset. Executives must stop framing this as “AI versus human” and start looking at value through the lens of orchestration: who designed the workflow, who set the goals, and how was domain expertise leveraged to generate outcomes neither party could deliver alone.

Why The Value Debate Is Missing the Real Shift

  • Traditional mindset: output made by AI is “factory work”, output made by humans is “artistry or expertise”.
  • New reality: strategic value shifts to those who design, prompt, QA, and curate agentic outcomes, not those who write every line by hand.
  • Pioneers in enterprise are realising the competitive edge lies in how you assemble and govern these new multi-agent crews—not just “who pressed the button.”

As recent McKinsey and Microsoft research highlights, companies winning in this new environment:

  • Identify where orchestration delivers unique results—e.g., rapid regulatory analysis or market mapping.
  • Combine domain specialists and agentic tools into self-improving workflows.
  • Establish standards for auditability, so every output is transparent, repeatable, and explainable (McKinsey, 2025).

The Reality of AI Pushback—and How to Navigate It

It’s not just about content—it’s about culture, trust, and perceived authenticity.

  • Employees and leaders report “AI surveillance and deskilling” as major anxieties (The Guardian, 2024).
  • Many undervalue AI-created outputs, assuming speed or ease means “less substance”.
  • Others view agentic workflows as opaque or unearned.

How to counter this?

  • Embed transparency: Show how multi-agent systems retain audit trails and involve human review at every step (Swarms framework).
  • Highlight the new creative process: The value is in setting strategy, assigning agents, and validating outcomes—not rote typing.
  • Share wins: Results where orchestration enabled breakthroughs impossible or impractical by manual effort.

The Orchestration Advantage: Case Example and Boardroom Playbook

Case: Regulatory Compliance at Scale

A FTSE 250 firm faced a rewrite of risk frameworks after new ESG mandates. Rather than throw dozens of analysts at the data, the Chief Risk Officer:

  • Defined the strategic aim (“Map all supply-chain compliance gaps within six weeks”).
  • Orchestrated a team: one agent scanning legislation, another mapping supply relationships, a third running scenario analysis—all cross-checked by internal experts.
  • Delivered a report vetted by domain leads, packed with insight clusters, not generic summaries.

Result: Delivery 10x faster, with full traceability for every recommendation.

Ready to Lead? Here’s How You Move Fast and Win Credibility

  • Acknowledge the Skepticism, But Frame the Debate: “Where in our operation does orchestration create more strategic visibility than solo authorship?”
  • Invest in Agentic Tools: Deploy frameworks like Microsoft Semantic Kernel and Swarms to enable multi-agent workflows.
  • Upskill for Curation, QA, and Design: Value comes from those who can design agentic teams, prompt with clarity, and enforce standards.
  • Build Trust with Process, Not Just Output: Keep audit logs, maintain versioning, run frequent human reviews—all now standard practice per McKinsey’s latest advice.
  • Celebrate “Human in the Loop” Wins: Share stories where orchestrated agentic work enabled something not feasible by hand, and be explicit about your hybrid process.

What’s Next? The Director Is the New Author

The winners will be those who own the process—designing teams of digital workers, setting boundaries, and defining what “good” looks like for their context.

Being able to spot opportunities, architect workflows, and validate outputs is itself a new, in-demand skill.

For leaders: don’t let “I didn’t make it myself” creep become an innovation blocker. Instead, ask: “Was this process fit for purpose? Are we using agentic teams to produce results no single human (or single model) could on their own?”

Want to see practical agentic orchestration live? Book a hands-on session with our enterprise AI advisors and see where you can multiply value—without sacrificing standards, transparency, or strategic control.

Sources & Further Reading

All cited sources were open and validated as of 28 April 2025.

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