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The organizational chart of the future could look very different from the one hanging on your company’s wall today. Instead of showing who reports to whom, an AI-native org chart could map which employees and AI agents have access to which systems, who can spend from which budgets, and who gets consulted on which projects.
That’s the vision MIT professor Paul Cheek is pitching to CHROs as companies rapidly integrate AI into their workforces. Cheek argues that HR leaders have an opportunity to take ownership of how humans and AI agents are organized across the enterprise—and to make AI literacy a core part of that transformation.
A new study from Cheek’s independent research organization, the AI-Driven Enterprise Institute, found that just over 30% of executives at S&P 500 companies are AI-literate. That group is achieving 78% stronger AI execution than their peers, according to the study.
Cheek says the first step for CHROs is investing in AI training and upskilling for executives and employees. The next is rethinking the org chart.
“The CHRO title itself needs to change from managing headcount to auditing whether a given role needs a human’s judgment or an AI agent’s uptime,” Cheek says.
In Cheek’s model, the org chart would become a dynamic, living document that changes as AI agents are added, retired, or even build their own agents. It would track access to everything from social media accounts to Salesforce, as well as spending authority and decision-making responsibilities.
Cheek acknowledges that he hasn’t yet found a company that has implemented this kind of technologically-advanced org chart. But he believes AI could help generate one—and he has created his own prototype using AI.
Cheek’s pitch to CHROs is three-fold: Learn how AI works, teach those skills across the company, and rethink which work should be done by people and which should be done by AI. The CHROs who take on that job, he says, are going to “emerge from the woodwork as the most influential and the most important strategic leader in the organization.”
Kristin Stoller
Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media
kristin.stoller@fortune.com
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
