The magentIQ Show Ep. 5 | The Co-Thinking Era: How AI Is Changing How We Learn and Work

The magentIQ Show Ep. 5 | The Co-Thinking Era: How AI Is Changing How We Learn and Work

Ian Barkin and David Brain are joined by Tom Davenport, President's Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College and author of twenty-five books on AI, analytics, and the future of work. Tom, David, and Ian have co-authored numerous journal articles and a book on citizen development. Tom is a friend, collaborator, and expert with an unrivaled perspective on the agentic era. Welcome to Episode 5 of The magentIQ Show. In this episode, Ian, David, and Tom unpack: * Why process slop happens when everyone in a workflow uses AI to write and review the same documents * The 30x gap between AI rhetoric and capability: 60% of companies have cut jobs, but only 2% have the systems to absorb the work * Why the forward deployed engineer is just an AI-washed consultant, and why the next great job title might be the backward deployed engineer * The return of the blue book, the lost generation of graduates, and what David plans to tell a room full of schoolboys about using AI well * Whether humans can keep pace with agentic workflows, or whether they just become a dipping bird hitting the enter key * The Thoreau origin of brain rot, and why teaching the next generation to think with AI rather than around it may be the defining educational challenge of the decade Further reading and resources from the conversation Co-authored by Tom Davenport and Ian Barkin: * "All Hands on Tech: The AI-Powered Citizen Revolution" is the definitive guide to vibe coding in the agentic era. Drawing on years of joint research, Ian and Tom argue that the next wave of enterprise transformation will not come from a handful of technologists at the top, but from the millions of business users now equipped to build, automate, and innovate with AI tools. The book lays out how leaders can mobilize this citizen workforce, govern it responsibly, and turn it into a durable source of competitive advantage. Available at Amazon here [https://www.amazon.com/All-Hands-Tech-AI-Powered-Revolution-ebook/dp/B0DHJ7QPVV].  * "We're All Programmers Now", Harvard Business Review, 2023, HbrWe’re All Programmers Now [https://hbr.org/2023/09/were-all-programmers-now] * "Harnessing Grassroots Automation", MIT Sloan Management Review, Mitsloanreview.mit.edu/article/harnessing-grassroots-automation [https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/harnessing-grassroots-automation/] Co-authored by Tom Davenport and David Brain: * "Before Automating Your Company's Processes, Find Ways to Improve Them", Harvard Business Review, 2018, HbrBefore Automating Your Company’s Processes, Find Ways to Improve Them [https://hbr.org/2018/06/before-automating-your-companys-processes-find-ways-to-improve-them]

The magentIQ Show Ep. 4 | Token Maxxing and Org Hacking: Designing the Agentic Workforce That Actually Works

Ian Barkin and David Brain return for Episode 4 of The magentIQ Show, picking up where the headlines leave off. AI is everywhere at work right now, but the loudest signal is not better results. It is token maxing and layoffs justified by an AI story that often runs ahead of reality. Ian and David dig into what happens when leaders measure AI adoption by volume of usage instead of business value, and why that choice quietly rewires incentives across the entire organisation. The conversation moves through the latest wave of org hacking making the rounds: Coinbase's one-person product teams, Jack Dorsey's ambition to cut his company down to two layers, and the broader fantasy that agentic AI can absorb the messy human parts of building products and running teams. Ian and David name the constraints those models ignore. The pace of a single operator. The bias of a single perspective. The management work that does not disappear just because you can generate a status report. They also surface a risk more leaders need to say out loud, which is the use of AI to manage performance when the system will confidently fill in blanks, hallucinate context, and send signals that ripple through motivation and retention. From there the lens widens to enterprise AI implementation and the rising tide of AI consultancies, forward deployed engineers, and services arms trying to turn licences into outcomes. Ian and David tackle commoditisation, lock-in, the puzzle problem of orchestrating a thousand-piece agentic stack, and why buying into the inner circle of a model provider does not solve the hard part of deployment. In this episode, Ian and David unpack: * Why AI-driven layoffs are often a budget reshuffle dressed as transformation, and what is really being freed up * One-person product teams as org hacking, and the speed and bias limits the pitch leaves out * Flattening the org chart versus the real work of coaching, context, and care * The risks of letting AI manage people when the model is built to sound confident, not to be correct * Token maxing as a vanity metric that floods teams with low-trust output * The graduate backlash to a decade of "AI will take your job" messaging, and what it signals about the next workforce * Why enterprise AI implementation still needs governance, security, and services to land * The Sunday tinkering and Monday reality framework for building real AI fluency * A practical path for small and medium businesses: learn personally, prototype safely, then harden for production The takeaway is constructive. The agentic workforce is real, the opportunity is genuine, and the operators who win will be the ones who design for value rather than volume, who keep the human craft of management intact, and who treat citizen creativity as an input to disciplined deployment rather than a substitute for it. Listen now and tell us where you stand on the question shaping the agentic era: are you optimising for tokens, or for outcomes? Find us in your favourite streaming service: iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-magentiq-show/id1896570951 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-magentiq-show/id1896570951] Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033f2oKxnFr5fmcpdSHjSL [https://open.spotify.com/show/033f2oKxnFr5fmcpdSHjSL] iHeartRadio: https://iheart.com/podcast/333292440 [https://iheart.com/podcast/333292440] Got a perspective worth sharing? We are always looking for guests. Reach out at info@bemagentiq.com [info@bemagentiq.com].

The magentIQ Show Ep. 3 | Horizon Compression: Why the Future Now Arrives in Ninety Minutes

Ian Barkin and Joe Boggio have been comparing notes on innovation since their Capgemini days. They were at one of the first OpenAI hackathons in San Francisco three years ago. The room they sat in turned out to be ground zero for everything that followed. Welcome to Episode 3 of The magentIQ Show. For four decades, the McKinsey Three Horizons model gave leaders a comfortable distance from the future. Horizon One was the current business. Horizon Two was the set of capabilities worth watching. Horizon Three was the long bet that might mature in a decade. The model worked when the future moved at the speed of strategy. It does not work now. Joe's thesis is that Horizon Three now compresses into Horizon One in roughly ninety minutes, and the executive playbook for navigating change has to be rewritten from scratch. In this episode, Ian and Joe unpack: * Why the single variable that decides whether a company transforms is the psychology of the CEO, and why no budget, no model, and no hotline to Jensen will save you if that variable is off * The Total Soccer theory of the AI-native organization, borrowed from 1970s Dutch football, and why every role in your company now plays offense and defense * What it actually felt like inside one of the first OpenAI hackathons, where a Harvard graduate called it an existential crisis and a distinguished Meta engineer reacted like Picasso had just been handed color for the first time * Practical advice every CEO can act on Monday morning: find your top three token users and take them to dinner, hire a reverse mentor in their twenties, and run the red pill exercise of imagining the AI-native competitor designed to put you out of business Listen now and tell us where you land on the leadership question of the agentic era. Find us in your favorite streaming service:  iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-magentiq-show/id1896570951 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-magentiq-show/id1896570951]  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033f2oKxnFr5fmcpdSHjSL [https://open.spotify.com/show/033f2oKxnFr5fmcpdSHjSL]  iHeartRadio: https://iheart.com/podcast/333292440 [https://iheart.com/podcast/333292440] Got a perspective worth sharing? We are always looking for guests. Reach out at info@bemagentiq.com [info@bemagentiq.com].

The magentIQ Show Ep. 2 | The Operator's Edge: Why Foundation Models Need Frontline Wisdom

Co-founders Ian Barkin and David Brain have been having these conversations for fifteen years. This time, the recording light is on. Welcome to Episode 2 of The magentIQ Show, and the first installment of our founder discussions. Wall Street just placed a very loud bet on a quiet truth: enterprise AI is hard. Anthropic has teamed with Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Hellman and Friedman, and General Atlantic to stand up an AI services firm aimed at private equity portfolio companies. OpenAI is making the same move with even more capital behind it. The takeaway is unmistakable. Powerful models like Claude and ChatGPT are no longer the bottleneck. Deployment is. Messy workflows, missing process documentation, and the reality that ninety five percent of proofs of concept never reach production. In this episode, Ian and David unpack: * Why Anthropic and OpenAI are buying their way into the enterprise and what their new consultancies will inherit * The bookends dilemma: most companies lack the process foundation to automate and the imagination to deploy AI ambitiously * AI coding as a two to three times accelerator for senior developers and a liability when treated as a replacement * Service as software and outcome-based pricing as the commercial shift the industry has needed for a decade * How input-based pricing in BPO and managed services actively punishes innovation * The boardroom hype problem and the cost of swapping "gen AI" for "agentic" without a plan to back it up It is the kind of honest, peer-level conversation The magentIQ Show was built for. No hype, no fluff, just two co-founders who have been doing this work since before it had a buzzword. Listen now and tell us where you land on the great enterprise AI deployment debate. Find us in your favorite streaming service:  iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-magentiq-show/id1896570951 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-magentiq-show/id1896570951]  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033f2oKxnFr5fmcpdSHjSL [https://open.spotify.com/show/033f2oKxnFr5fmcpdSHjSL]  iHeartRadio: https://iheart.com/podcast/333292440 [https://iheart.com/podcast/333292440] Got a perspective worth sharing? We are always looking for guests. Reach out at info@bemagentiq.com [info@bemagentiq.com].

The magentIQ Show Ep. 1 | From RPA to Agentic AI: Hype, Hope, and the Heraldic Test

Episode 1 of The magentIQ Show is here! Ian Barkin sits down with Pat Geary, the man who gave Robotic Process Automation its name. Over lunch, no less. The term that built an industry started as a metaphor on a napkin, and Pat has had a front row seat for every wave since.  In this episode, Pat and Ian trade stories from the early days of enterprise AI, revisit the now legendary "Welcome to Robotistan" paper, and turn a sharp eye on today's agentic AI gold rush. Expect strong opinions on autonomy, auditability, and why most of what is being sold as agentic today would not pass a five minute conversation with a chief risk officer. It is the kind of honest, peer-level conversation The magentIQ Show was built for. Listen now and tell us where you land on the great agentic debate. Find us in your favorite streaming service: iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-magentiq-show/id1896570951 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-magentiq-show/id1896570951] Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033f2oKxnFr5fmcpdSHjSL [https://open.spotify.com/show/033f2oKxnFr5fmcpdSHjSL] iHeartRadio: https://iheart.com/podcast/333292440 [https://iheart.com/podcast/333292440] Got a perspective worth sharing? We are always looking for guests. Reach out at info@bemagentiq.com.