The Team of the Artificial Resources Department
But after all, who are the ideal people for the ARD team?
How to structure this team?
The answer, as in several points in this book, is: it depends.
But attention, one thing I can already tell you: your IT team is NOT the team that will do this alone.
Yes, technology is an essential part of the ARD, and having people with technical knowledge is fundamental.
But as we understand, we need much more than just technical skills, as I will detail below.
There is no single structure for the ARD. Each company will find the model that makes the most sense according to its size, moment, maturity, and available resources.
Think of the example of the popcorn vendor who needed to hire a new employee for his second popcorn cart.
This popcorn vendor performed the entire role of HR, from the recruitment and training of this new employee, to the monitoring and continuous improvement of this employee.
Everything is being performed by this single popcorn vendor.
Similarly, consider a freelancer who, in his personal marketing agency, began building AI agents.
He is, alone, performing the entire role of an Artificial Resources Department.
Of course, the more people in the company, the more resources the company can allocate to AR, the better the results.
But regardless of structure, what really matters is results.
The question of structure is a decision that depends on each company’s moment. What does not change are the essential functions that the ARD must perform.
The ARD must deliver effective knowledge management and prepare the company to be AI First.
And for this, these 5 functions are essential. Let us explore them one by one.
1) Technology: The technology team is fundamental to the ARD. They will be responsible for choosing the framework where agents will be implemented, working with the basic code for creating agents, and leaving them prepared so that the management person can participate in creating the agent’s curriculum, assigning the agent’s task, testing, and continuous improvement. It is essential to have someone with coding knowledge to do the basic work of structuring the agent.
Additionally, the technical team will be responsible for integrating agents with the company’s existing systems, ensuring security and privacy of data, and optimizing agent performance. They will be the architects and engineers of the AI infrastructure.
2) People Management / Human Resources: The ARD will introduce significant change in the way people work and in the company’s culture. It is crucial to have someone with People Management or Human Resources skills on the ARD team, acting on two main fronts.
On the question of agent management, they will be responsible for understanding what type of agent needs to be created, how tasks need to be broken down, and how the multiagent team will interact with each other and with humans. They will ensure that agents are designed and implemented in a way that optimizes human-AI collaboration.
On the part of communication and cultural change, they will be responsible for internal communication with the company, for internal education of people about AI, and for promoting the use of AI within the company. This involves demystifying AI, explaining its potential, creating engaging narratives, sharing success case studies, addressing employee concerns, and celebrating achievements.
In essence, they will be the architects of human-AI collaboration and the agents of cultural change of the ARD.
3) Leadership: For the ARD to be effective, it is essential to have support and involvement from the company’s senior leadership. This means having someone at the director level or a senior manager with a blank check directly involved in the ARD team.
Without this top-level support, it will be difficult for the ARD to make necessary changes. The company’s leadership must give the ARD the authority and resources to operate, and must be willing to defend the ARD and its mission to the rest of the organization.
Even if leadership is not involved in the day-to-day of the ARD, their public support and willingness to remove obstacles will be critical to the department’s success. The transformation to an AI First enterprise is a company-wide effort, and must be led from top to bottom.
4) Responsibility for Results: Although AI involves innovation and experimentation, it must also generate real and measurable value for the company. The team responsible for results in the ARD will be tasked with identifying the most promising opportunities for AI, defining the metrics to measure success, monitoring progress, and communicating results to the rest of the company.
They will be the links between technology and business, ensuring that AI investments are aligned with the company’s strategic priorities.
5) Innovation: The innovation person in the ARD must be someone with startup skills and knowledge, capable of promoting speed in implementations, testing, and prototype creation.
They must be able to apply agile methodologies and design thinking to quickly test ideas, gather feedback, iterate, and scale the most promising solutions within the company.
Their focus will not be so much on researching new tools, but rather on ensuring that ideas are tested quickly and efficiently, following the “fail fast, learn fast” mindset common in startups.
So how to start assembling this team?
One path is to start with an experimental team.
Focus on something that will bring short-term profitability to the company.
Assemble a lean, multidisciplinary team, and give them a strategic project to work on.
The goal here is to make change happen and transform that project into a success story.
With this case in hand, it becomes much easier to get buy-in to expand the ARD throughout the entire company.
Remember, the ARD is an agent of transformation.
Your team needs to be adaptable, focused on results, and capable of navigating the complexity of organizational change.