The Agentic Operating Model

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Claim

The Agentic Operating Model is a podcast about how organizations get work done, and what changes when AI agents start doing part of it. Marc Walker, Affan Burki and Wout Helsmoortel bring three lenses (architecture, operations and experience) to the questions that decide whether AI sticks: decision rights, governance, accountability, and how work is divided between people and agents. Each episode starts with problems you'll recognize, then gets practical. No model launches, no hype. For transformation leads, COOs, architects and anyone asked to implement AI without a clear structure for it.

Your hosts

Marc Walker
Marc is an enterprise architect, ontologist and operating model specialist. He worked on his first operating model in 1998, back when it was still called a management system, and has since designed operating models and architectures for organizations such as AstraZeneca, Credit Suisse and Lloyds Bank, and for public bodies including NATO, NEOM and the UK Department for Work and Pensions. In recent years his focus has shifted to emerging technology: smart cities, autonomous vehicles and now the integration of generative AI and semantic knowledge systems into operating model design. He has also researched threat modeling and cybersecurity ontologies at Newcastle University, and co-created Orbit Method with Wout.

Affan Burki
Affan is a former British Army officer, commissioned at Sandhurst in 2005. He served in operational and doctrinal roles including the Army's Land Stabilisation and Counterinsurgency Centre and the Collective Training Group, and helped write Allied and multinational doctrine on capacity building in Afghanistan, Iraq and NATO nations. After leaving active service, he was part of the founding team behind NATO's digital transformation, and he continues to advise NATO and its partners on learning and development. His lens is operations: the execution side, where an operating model is lived rather than drawn.

Wout Helsmoortel
Wout is the founder of Studio Shaped, which designs how people and AI agents work together in regulated and high-stakes environments. He began his career designing safety-critical interfaces for Siemens and Eurocontrol, then worked as a design strategist and UX lead for clients such as Walmart, Cigna, Belfius and ENGIE. Today he works with organizations including Fluxys and NATO. Together with Marc, he created Orbit Method, a framework for AI transformation built on the experience, architecture and operations lenses. He is a certified ISO/IEC 27001 Lead Implementer.