Agentic AI: Do we choose the spreadsheet or the soul?

The, sometimes justified, fear about agentic AI is that it costs jobs and makes organizations more efficient but also killer. Technology is taking over work, companies are cutting costs, profits are rising. The classic automation story. And to be honest: that reflex is understandable. In times of economic uncertainty, cost reduction is a quick, measurable button to turn on. But maybe we're looking the wrong way.

Leaders who see AI primarily as a cost saving machine reduce their role to spreadsheet management. They optimize margins, restructure FTEs and present a tight quarterly result. In my view, that is not leadership with ambition, but management without a soul. A true leader doesn't start with the question: “Where can we delete?” but when asked: “Where do we want to grow? What more do we want to mean? What ambition do we finally dare to achieve?” Agentic AI is not a refined cost; it is a capacity multiplier. It increases thinking and execution power. So the question is not how many people you can replace, but how much value you can add. Profits that come from contraction are finite. Profit that comes from value creation is scalable.

Yes, you can bring a support team from ten to two. This is drastic and sometimes unavoidable. But suppose those other eight people retrain and get closer to the customer, the innovation or the mission. Suppose they will proactively identify customer needs, build communities, test new propositions. Then the conversation shifts from “saving costs” to “increasing impact”. Companies that are strongly committed to customer experience understand this. IKEA decides not to put fewer but more people into the store, precisely to enhance the experience. Sales organizations are consciously choosing to let teams engage with customers more often and more deeply. Technology takes over repetitive work so that people can focus on relationships, creativity, and trust. Rearranging work then does not lead to narrowing down, but to deepening.

That is a fundamentally different view of productivity. Productivity is not only about fewer hours per output, but also about more meaning per interaction.

The same goes for the government. When agentic AI carefully takes over processes - with an emphasis on careful, ethical, safe and sovereign - space is created. Space for customization. Space for human contact. Space for the conversation that goes beyond a form. Over the past decades, we have continued to protocol and digitize public services. Counter logic, standard answers, redirects. Agentic AI can make just the opposite possible: less administrative pressure, more time for real services. No fewer officials, but officials who are allowed to be civil servants again. No less contact, but better contact. You could say: agentic AI can once again focus on physical and human interaction, because it reduces bureaucratic ballast. So the key question is: where do you position people? At the edges, as a cost? Or at the heart of your strategy, as a carrier of significance?

My prediction is that governments and companies that use agentic AI to pursue greater ambitions — to solve real social and customer questions — will get the longest end. Organizations that say, “We're using AI to learn faster, understand better, serve more personally.” Not: “We're using AI to get cheaper. And the interesting thing is: many progressive organizations are already choosing that path. They see AI as a strategic lever, not a financial planer. Of course, all of this must be done ethically, safely and responsibly. This is not an afterthought, but a precondition. Transparency, human control, data security, and digital sovereignty are essential. But let's not narrow the debate down to risks and control measures alone.

So let's have a conversation about ambition. About how agentic AI can help us become more human instead of killer. How it can make organizations not only more efficient, but also braver. How it can create space to be closer to customers, citizens and employees. Perhaps the real contradiction is not man versus machine, but shrinking versus growth thinking.

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