Managing AI Agents
The Same Principles as Managing People
As I’ve transitioned from a developer to more of a managerial role, a realization struck me. My professional life as a software developer, where I spend increasing amounts of time leveraging AI to generate code, began to overlap with my managerial responsibilities. This led me to one clear insight: the tools and techniques I’ve developed for managing human employees are directly applicable to managing AI agents. It wasn’t a sudden epiphany, but rather the dovetailing of my life’s natural progression in both technology and management that brought me to this conclusion.
The Core Idea: Both People and AI Agents Need Guidance
For years, businesses have relied on documents—vision statements, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and governance documents—to onboard and guide employees. These same documents can be used to manage AI agents, who, much like human employees, need a clear understanding of what they’re supposed to do. In fact, the first step to integrating AI agents into your business is to use these existing documents as context for the AI to work from.
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Take the documents you would normally provide to a new employee or a governance document for running your business and upload them to your AI system. The AI will use these to better understand how to perform the tasks you assign it.
Trust is Built Over Time
Just as with any human employee, trust in AI agents comes from repeated engagements and seeing consistent results. As you work with the AI, adjust and tweak its outputs, and over time you’ll begin to see patterns. With each task, the AI will deliver results that align with your expectations, and you’ll gain confidence that the next time it’s given a similar task, the outcome will be predictable.
Trust isn’t immediate—it’s earned through consistency and familiarity, whether it’s with a new employee or an AI agent.
Practical First Steps
How do you start using AI effectively in your business?
Leverage Existing Documents: The first thing you should do is upload your existing documents—the ones you would use to guide new employees or define your business processes. These documents provide context for the AI agent to understand the tasks you assign.
Engage with the AI: Once the context is in place, begin assigning tasks to the AI as you would a human employee. AI agents today can handle most text-based tasks, such as generating code, writing copy, or performing other document-related tasks.
Review the Work Product: Have the AI provide a work product back to you, just as you would expect a deliverable from a human employee. Review it, provide feedback, and continue to iterate.
Mindset Shift: AI is Assistive, Not Autonomous
One key mindset shift is to view AI agents as assistive tools rather than autonomous entities. While they’re intelligent, they’re not willful. This means you must direct them, just as you would an employee, and not expect them to act on their own initiative.
The value of AI lies in how it can assist you in your endeavors, acting as a lever to extend your reach and help you achieve your goals. We’re not at the stage where AI replaces human will and decision-making, but we are at a stage where AI is a powerful tool for executing tasks on your behalf.
Conclusion
If you’re ready to start incorporating AI agents into your business, you can see an example of how I’m doing this myself. I’m currently building out a set of documents—both for my human employees and for my AI digital assistants. You can explore these documents in my GitHub repository and follow along as I refine them in real-time, applying the same principles for both humans and AI.
Whether you’re a developer looking to leverage AI for generating code, or a manager wanting to streamline tasks, you’ll find that the same best practices for managing people work just as well for managing AI agents. Trust comes from repeated, consistent results, and with today’s tools, you’re already well-equipped to start.