(Part 1) Becoming AI-Native: A New Operating Model for Modern Enterprises
- Dr. Lisa Palmer
- Jul 26
- 7 min read
Updated: Aug 14
A 3-part executive guide to rebuilding how your company thinks, decides, and runs.
Part 1: Architecture – Why AI-native thinking starts with how your enterprise is built
Part 2: Decision Flow – How leadership decisions change when intelligence is embedded
Part 3: Workforce – What changes when agents do the work, and people guide it
Part 1: Why AI-Native Thinking Is the Leadership Imperative of the Decade
The most effective leaders aren’t just adopting AI. They’re redesigning how their companies think.
Executives keep asking me the same question: What does it actually look like to run an AI-powered business?
Not a proof-of-concept. Not a chatbot tucked inside marketing. A business that operates with intelligence as part of the system.
Most organizations are still stuck in digital transformation mode. Static dashboards. Manual reporting. Data has to be pulled, cleaned, and stitched before it’s useful. AI, if it exists at all, is bolted onto systems that were never built to support it.
That’s not how leading companies are approaching AI.
What’s Shifting: From Projects to Operating Models
The companies moving fastest aren’t just layering in AI. They’re embedding it. Reshaping workflows, communication, and decision velocity. In these organizations, AI isn’t just a tool. It’s a lever that creates completely new business operating models.
And that shift doesn’t happen all at once.
Note: Most organizations require 12-24 months to move from initial implementation to meaningful scale. Success depends on a methodical, phased approach.
The Rise of Transitory Agents
Most enterprises are entering a transition phase. I call it the transitory agent stage.
These lightweight agents are task-specific, modular, and temporary. They spin up to automate a process, bridge a system gap, or handle an edge case. When they’re done, they spin down.
Think of them as digital scaffolding. Reusable. Composable. Fast to deploy. They let you flex with change without you needing to rebuild everything from scratch.
Some wrap legacy systems. Others run independently. Over time, a few become core. The key isn’t replacement. It’s orchestration.
These transitory agents aren't going away. In fact, they’re becoming a permanent part of how modern enterprises flex with change.
Strong governance is essential as organizations begin this AI agent phase. Nearly half of enterprise leaders say lack of governance is one of the biggest barriers to adoption. Without the right structure, agents can create risk, inconsistency, and unexpected behavior. To stay in control, companies need clear rules for how agents operate, visibility into what they’re doing, and consistent handling of data. As one expert put it, "AI agents are exciting, but they can also be unpredictable." The key is to put guardrails in place that reflect your company’s standards, so that agents act with intention and not in isolation.
An emerging challenge is "agent sprawl". A growing tangle of disconnected or overlapping agents that operate with limited oversight. Without coordination, they can introduce security risks, fragmented access, and unpredictable behavior. Managing this complexity is critical as enterprises begin to scale AI across teams and functions.
How It Works in Practice
The below diagram shows how a modern enterprise becomes a responsive system. If you’re not interested in the technical details, think of it like this: Your business develops reflexes. Instead of waiting for commands, it senses, decides, and acts in real time.
Legacy systems, embedded intelligence, and transitory agents all work together—coordinated by an orchestration layer.
The Orchestration Layer Acts as a real-time command center. It syncs systems and agents to ensure the right action happens at the right time.
Example: A logistics company uses orchestration to reroute deliveries in real time based on traffic, weather, and customer cancellations.
Embedded Intelligence Brings machine learning, analytics, and automation directly into your core systems and workflows.
Example: A financial services firm embeds fraud detection into transaction flows, so suspicious activity is flagged and halted instantly.
Transitory Agents Act as digital scaffolding. They fill gaps, automate tasks, and handle exceptions; without needing a full system rebuild.
Example: A retail chain spins up agents to monitor local social trends and adjust in-store promotions, without changing their core point-of-sale system.
This is how companies move from static operations to intelligent, adaptive performance.
Visualize It
Before we go further, it helps to see the shift. I’m a huge believer in the power of visualization to capture hearts and minds when change is needed. To that end, I crafted this AI-native stack flow chart for you. I realize that this is a lot to take in at a glance, so I've pulled out the key takeaways:
People, systems, and AI are now teammates. Work is shared across humans, automation, and software agents, each doing what they do best.
It’s coordinated, not cobbled together. Instead of systems passing data one-by-one, everything is orchestrated to respond in real time.
Data isn’t stuck in silos. It flows continuously. Raw when needed, enriched when useful, always ready to inform action.
You don’t throw out your existing systems. AI agents plug into them, helping you move faster without needing a full rebuild. (You still need SaaS).
Insight happens at the edge. Decisions don’t wait for reports. Intelligence shows up where and when the work is happening. (Your datawarehouse role shifts.)
AI-Native Enterprise in Motion. When Intelligence flows as part of the system design. Humans, systems, and AI agents work together across the stack. Orchestration takes the place of point-to-point integration. Data moves in real time and flows both directions—raw, enriched, and usable. The application layer doesn’t go away. Agents work with it, not around it. And the data warehouse is no longer the command center. Intelligence happens closer to the source.
What Leading Companies Are Doing Differently
Here’s what this looks like in the real world:
Moderna built more than 750 internal GPTs in a matter of weeks. Forty percent of active users created their own agents, with an average of 120 AI interactions per user, per week.
BMW and Accenture partnered on multi-agent orchestration that boosted productivity 30 to 40 percent.
Block (Square) designed intelligent data pipelines that power personalization, forecasting, and risk detection in real time.
None of these companies waited for the perfect use case. They restructured the way capability is developed across their businesses. This is the epitome of AI-first mindset leadership.
It’s Not a Toolset. It’s a Mindset.
When AI lives in a department, it’s a project. When it lives in your architecture, it becomes a business model. That’s what separates experimentation from transformation.
This change doesn’t start in IT. It starts in the way leaders think. Not just about technology, but about:
How decisions get made
How teams are empowered
How knowledge flows across the company.
This mindset shift, moving from implementing tools to designing intelligence into the way your business runs, defines AI-native leadership.
What This Means for CIOs and Executive Teams
If you're aiming to become AI-native, remember that this is a significant leadership shift and keep these takeaways in mind:
This is a new operating model. Embedding AI changes how your business works. It affects workflows, decision-making, and outcomes. This requires rethinking how your architecture supports the business, not just adding more tools.
Orchestration must supplement traditional integration. Point-to-point connections are no longer enough. Today’s enterprises need real-time coordination across people, systems, and AI agents to respond quickly and effectively.
Transitory agents give you speed and flexibility. You do not have to rebuild from scratch. Lightweight agents can automate tasks, fill system gaps, and scale with demand. They offer quick wins while limiting long-term complexity. Make sure that you define the difference between transitory agents and embedded agents.
Data warehouses are still essential, but their role is changing. They’re no longer the only place intelligence happens. Today’s leading companies are combining data lakes and warehouses into unified platforms that support both analytics and AI. This shift allows intelligence to operate in two places—centrally, for deep analysis, and at the edge, where speed matters most. You won't be replacing or eliminating your data warehouse, but you will need to expand where and how intelligence shows up across the business.
This shift begins with leadership, not IT. Becoming AI-native is a business mindset. It requires a new way of thinking about how your company makes decisions, shares knowledge, and empowers teams to act.
The leaders are already moving. Companies like Moderna, BMW, and Block have restructured how they build and scale AI to drive business impact. They didn't wait for perfect conditions. They got started.
Key Takeaway
AI can expand your advantage, but only if you're willing to work differently. That means real-time data. Agents connected directly to it. And decisions happening where the action is, not weeks later based on outdated information from static reports.
What’s Coming Next
This post is Part 1 of a 3-part series for executive teams wrangling AI transformation:
Part 2: Decision Flow – How executive decisions change when intelligence is built into the system
Part 3: Workforce – Why your org chart won’t survive, but your people will thrive
Each post is built for practical use, anchored by a clear visual, and written for leaders who are ready to reshape how work gets done by partnering with AI.
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Want to Go Deeper?
This series builds on ideas from my upcoming book, Show AI—Don’t Tell It, which is now available for pre-order. If you’re a leader facing AI transformation, you’ll find practical frameworks, case studies, and tools designed to help you build what’s next.
Pre-order the book here and get early access to bonus content and an Ask Me Anything session.
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