1/ AI adoption inside companies is still treated too much like software deployment.
Give people access.
Connect a few systems.
Expect productivity to appear.
That is not how organizations work. Work moves through roles, handoffs, approvals, context and communication.
5/ AI should be onboarded more like a remote employee than a plug in.
It needs a role, a reporting line, a defined scope, approved tools, written rules, expected outputs and a clear boundary between routine execution and human judgment.
6/ Good remote work practices have already solved part of this.
GitLab’s remote operating model emphasizes asynchronous communication, written documentation, public context and clear transfer of ownership.
Those are the conditions under which AI can coordinate work reliably.
AI productivity unlock is not the all-purpose agent. It is the role-based agent: narrow enough to be reliable, structured enough to follow the org’s rules, and smart enough to reason within a specific job architecture.
A lot from Whartons Blueprint for AI Agent adoption speaks to our thesis. We believe agents mirroring organizational design principles is key to unlocking AI agent productivity in the corporate setting.
The mistake is treating AI as a feature inside existing systems. Work inside SMEs is not defined by tools, it is defined by roles. If AI does not own a workflow end to end, it does not solve the coordination problem.
Most companies are integrating AI into tools, that improves fragments of the work. The real shift is treating AI as an employee that owns a role. A system helps you do tasks faster. An employee takes responsibility for an outcome. SMEs need the latter.
The assumption that AI replaces white collar work misses how SMEs actually operate. These businesses are already running below required staffing levels. AI fills coordination and execution gaps that were never hired in the first place and improves overall output.
Reinventing remote workers as AI employees is a game changer, SMEs are overworked and underfunded - these are the resources people need - not jobs taken.
The reason we separate remote AI employees with different skillsets, is that we find this to be the most efficient way for more accurate output. Less decay in quality, clear guardrails and stronger learning within its domain.