Falling like Dominoes
“Falling like Dominoes” – A cartoon that illustrates how AI agents are removing the purpose of many departments in the traditional company.
For most of economic history, companies did not have large HR or procurement departments because businesses were smaller and much of the work was handled by owners and generalists. As companies grew, specialization solved a real coordination problem and dedicated functions emerged to manage complexity.
It worked so well that specialization became institutionalized. In 1900, clerical workers represented 3% of US employment while managers and professionals accounted for 10%. By 1990, those figures had risen to 19% and 30%, showing how companies built permanent structures around work that once sat closer to the operating business.
AI agents may now push that model in the opposite direction because they can coordinate specialist tasks without requiring each capability to live inside its own silo. Bob Root of Southfield Private Equity gives the example of a field technician needing a heat pump. Today that request might move through purchasing and finance before a purchase order is issued, whereas an agentic company could handle supplier selection and approvals invisibly, leaving the work intact while removing the department as the place where it happens.
Microsoft found that 46% of leaders say their organizations are already using agents to automate complete workflows or business processes. Companies increasingly assemble people and agents around an outcome, then allow that structure to dissolve when the work is finished. Even HR may evolve into something closer to Agent Relations, focused on how people assign work to digital coworkers and set the boundaries within which those coworkers operate.
So, do we really need departments to organize when expertise can be summoned on demand and coordination can happen invisibly?
