JAMES' BLOG

Most leadership teams now accept that Agentic AI is here to stay. You can rent high-quality models from the cloud, plug them into your CX and SOC stack, and prototype in days.  Yet production value still stalls.  Executives hear the same complaints from every direction:  CX teams see agents hallucinate or make inconsistent refund decisions.  SOC teams drown in noisy alerts because agents can’t see the right context.  Data teams say they spend most of their time hunting and c

Shift from helpdesk metrics to a Value Desk Scorecard for 2026—track self-resolution, MTTC, audit-ready automation, and unit cost to prove resilience, control, and ROI.

Regulators are finished with “innovation theater.” If you operate in a regulated market and you’re deploying agents that act—issuing refunds, moving money, approving claims, routing incidents—you need a control system that stands up to supervisory scrutiny. This article translates that requirement into a concrete approach: align the EU AI Act’s obligations with ISO/IEC 27001 and run your program through policy-as-code , full-lifecycle documentation, and operational evidence

AI now sits at the intersection of strategy, risk, and capital allocation. Directors aren’t looking for a tour of models; they want a clear, defensible line from investment to outcomes—and certainty that the organization can move fast and stay inside the guardrails. At Working Excellence (WEX) , we translate agentic AI—the kind that can actually take actions across ERP, CRM, and SOC tools—into a narrative boards can govern: identity-aware agents, policy-as-code at runtime,

If your AI roadmap still advances on charisma and cool demos, you’re playing portfolio roulette. Boards and executives don’t fund vibes; they fund feasible initiatives with a clear path to value and control. Here’s a concrete, auditable scoring method you can put on a single slide—and defend under tough questioning. We’ll score every initiative on three dimensions—Technical Feasibility, Internal Readiness, and External Readiness—using a simple 1–5 scale where the lowest score

Every boardroom I visit is wrestling with the same paradox: AI is simultaneously the biggest value driver of the decade and the fuzziest line item on the roadmap. Directors are bombarded with headlines, pilots, and vendor pitches—but what they want is simple: a clear view of how AI advances the company’s competitive position, how much it will cost, how you’ll govern it, and what results to expect when. You do not win that discussion with a scatterplot of use cases or a tour o

Most AI programs stumble not on what to build, but when to build it. Teams try to ship dazzling product features while the data layer is still wobbly, or they get trapped polishing back-office automations and never make the leap to differentiated offerings. The fix isn’t a bigger roadmap—it’s sequencing: orchestrating everyday AI (cash-generating, low-risk, repeatable wins) to fund and de-risk the game-changing bets (moat-expanding capabilities and products).  Below is a prac

Mid-market CIOs and COOs are caught between rising ticket volumes, tightening risk obligations, and constant pressure to “do more with AI.” You’ve run pilots. You’ve deployed copilots. Teams can talk  to AI—but you still hesitate to let agents actually touch production systems: issue refunds, adjust entitlements, quarantine endpoints, or close tickets end-to-end. That’s the autonomy gap. The technology is ready to act, but the operating model, controls, and confidence are not

A board-ready roadmap to turn Managed IT into a growth lever with Agentic AI—architecture, controls, ROI, and 90-day actions aligned to NIST CSF 2.0, ISO 27001, and the EU AI Act.

Boards are done buying AI slideware. They want hard efficiency gains in CX and security without  tripping regulators or opening new attack surfaces. At the same time, CX leaders are under pressure to lift first-contact resolution, CISOs have to prove control maturity in language auditors respect, and COOs are expected to automate workflows that can survive a subpoena—not just a demo. The downside of getting this wrong is brutal: breaches now routinely run into millions once y

Turn Managed IT into a growth engine by evolving the vCIO role into an agent orchestrator—with identity, policy-as-code, and observability mapped to NIST CSF 2.0 and ISO 27001.

Mid-market team s are piloting “agents” to resolve tickets, issue refunds, and triage alerts—but most stumble when agents hit messy, stale, or siloed data. The result: hallucinations, failed automations, and risk. The fix isn’t “more data”—it’s  Minimum Operable Data (MOD) : the smallest, governed slice of trustworthy data required for safe autonomy in Customer Experience (CX)  and Security Operations (SOC) .    Executive brief (what leaders must know now)  MOD > big data.  I