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Welcome executives and professionals. Decision agents move AI from the margins to the very heart of decision making, where the most consequential choices are made.

Since the previous edition, we have reviewed hundreds of the latest insights in agentic and generative AI, spanning best practices, case studies, market dynamics, and innovations.

This briefing outlines what is driving material value — and why it’s important.

In today’s briefing:

• Decision agents in the boardroom.

• The operating model advantage.

• Scaling strategy for CTOs and CIOs.

• State of Professional Services 2026.

• Transformation and technology in the news.

• Insights for Executive+ members.

• Career opportunities & events.

Read time: 4 minutes.

BEST PRACTICE INSIGHT

Decision agents in the boardroom

Brief: BCG shared insight on perhaps the most underappreciated, yet most valuable, use of decision agents: supporting executive committees as they navigate the complex, high-stakes decisions in the boardroom.

Breakdown:

• Customized decision agents help senior, cross-functional committees navigate the complex, high-stakes decisions they face daily.

• Integrated business planning requires decision agents to align volume, capacity, and budget decisions across functions.

• Portfolio investment allocation: agents help synthesize capital commitments that require strategy, finance, and operations input.

• Market-entry decisions: agents help assess risk, feasibility, and timing together for faster, better-informed strategic choices.

Why it’s important: A custom-built decision agent acts as another team member in the boardroom: an omniscient chief of staff with supercomputing power that gathers and synthesizes inputs, tests scenarios, and then formulates concrete recommendations and follow-up actions.

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH RESOLVE

Give your IT team back time for what actually matters

Brief: Resolve clears routine tickets and constant alerts, handling repetitive incidents autonomously and surfacing only what genuinely needs a person. Your team spends its time on strategic work that moves the business forward.

The Resolve Platform edge:

• Routine incidents resolved autonomously before they reach a person

• Real signal pulled from the constant stream of alerts

• Engineering hours returned to strategic, high-value work

Take a product tour → Resolve Platform Experience.

BEST PRACTICE INSIGHT & CASE STUDIES

The operating model advantage

Brief: McKinsey explored the operating model advantage, and how the real AI advantage comes not from "bolt-on AI" but fundamentally redesigning how work is done and how decisions get made across the enterprise.

Breakdown:

• Most companies today use AI to accelerate existing activities while leaving governance, teams, and capabilities largely unchanged.

• Productivity gains from AI matter, but history shows they rarely create durable advantage alone as efficiency becomes table stakes.

• The larger opportunity lies in rewiring operating models built for AI to accelerate innovation and capture emerging profit pools.

• Leaders can frame transformation around three sequential questions: where to differentiate, redesign workflows, and how to rewire.

Why it’s important: Unlike software, operating models cannot be purchased or replicated overnight; they develop through accumulated organizational choices about workflows, governance, talent, and decisions, making them a critical source of advantage as AI becomes universal.

BEST PRACTICE INSIGHT

Scaling strategy for CTOs and CIOs

Brief: BCG published an agentic AI scaling Q&A with senior partners, Mark Abraham and Neveen Awad, who've helped shape and implement agentic AI strategy at some of the world's largest companies.

Breakdown:

• Agentic AI is splitting companies into two groups: a small set of agent-first leaders and everyone else stuck below 30% adoption.

• Sixty percent of tech stack and agentic deployment decisions now sit with the CIO or CTO, a real shift from the previous AI cycle.

• Enterprises leading in agentic AI are cutting costs by 15-20% across functions, prioritizing speed first, growth second, cost third.

• Success with agentic AI is 70% people and change management, not algorithms; firms training over half their workforce lead the pack.

Why it’s important: At one end you have the “agents are going to do everything, let’s go” camp; at the other are clients who've stopped treating this as a technology play at all. Leaders don't ask how to deploy agents, they ask how to work differently, accepting perfectionism as a liability.

AI-NATIVE PROFESSIONAL

How to create interactive PDF forms with Claude

Brief: In this guide, you'll learn how to use Claude to turn forms from static documents into professional, interactive forms that people fill out right in their PDF reader.

Step-by-step:

1. Tell Claude what kind of form you need to create, describing the information to gather, who fills it out, and which fields it needs.

2. Provide reference files so Claude can match your style or design preferences, keeping the PDF cohesive with other event materials.

3. Claude creates an interactive PDF with your fields, ready to distribute. Recipients open it in any reader to fill in and return it.

4. Adapt the form to your needs: translate for global audiences, customize for different user groups, or modify for specific events.

Best practice: Download and test before distributing. Click fields, try dropdowns, check tab order to ensure all works correctly before sharing.

For the full guide, including prompts, upgrade to Executive+ or The Boardroom.

MARKET INSIGHT

State of Professional Services 2026

Brief: Salesforce surveyed 456 professional services leaders across 37 countries, finding rising client expectations and complexity are pressuring firms to deliver higher-value support. AI is emerging as a practical response.

Breakdown:

• Client expectations keep rising as cases grow more complex: 81% of service professionals say expectations are higher than before.

• AI is unlocking new service capacity today: 30% of inquiries are currently resolved by AI, expected to reach 50% within two years.

• AI is creating new value for professionals: 85% say they have developed valuable new skills directly through working with AI tools.

• Firms are adopting AI in line with the market to scale service delivery while redirecting expert time toward strategic client work.

Why it’s important: Professional services is fundamentally a relationship-driven industry, so the best AI use cases protect trust, lighten administrative load, and free experts to focus on client context and judgment. Proof that AI and human expertise must go hand-in-hand.

Bain shared findings that 74% of executives say losing their primary AI vendor would disrupt operations, urging resilient design.

Futurum detailed how bloated AI coding bills stem from weak context, and found most enterprises still stuck in AI experimentation.

Box shared an interview with McKinsey's Kitti Lakner on Lilli, the internal AI tool that frees consultants for deeper, strategic work.

Deloitte released an 11-page report warning agentic AI will expose whether enterprises have converted AI activity into real gains.

IntuitionLabs published a ChatGPT vs Claude Enterprise comparison and profiled Eli Lilly's NVIDIA supercomputer for drug discovery.

MIT Sloan featured Adobe's AI governance lead arguing most oversight programs lack real shutdown authority.

OpenAI revealed its coming GPT-5.6 'Ultra' variant will be available in Codex, with the model family expected to release this week.

Anthropic said Fable 5 will stay available on subscription plans through July 12, delaying its planned shift to usage-based credits.

Microsoft is reportedly running Excel and Outlook prompts on in-house MAI models, aiming to eliminate its Anthropic bill.

Anthropic announced Claude Cowork is expanding to mobile and web in beta, letting users move between devices mid-task seamlessly.

Beijing is weighing curbs on overseas access to its top AI models, potentially pulling Alibaba and ByteDance under state control.

Anthropic published research showing Claude thinks in a small workspace resembling human conscious access that "emerged on its own."

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

OpenAI - Head of Competitive Intelligence

Citi - Head of AI Strategy

State Street - Global Head of AI & Data

EVENTS

UC Berkeley - Agentic AI Summit - August 1-2, 2026

OpenAI - Managing Daily Work - August 11, 2026

MIT - Leading in an AI world - October 05, 2026

Reach enterprise AI decision-makers:

• 66% of readers are C-level executives or VP and Director-level leaders.

• 63.2% of the audience is based in the U.S., EU, UK, ANZ, and Singapore.

• Read by leaders at Microsoft, Deloitte, the Fortune 500, and more.

Guaranteed impression and custom sponsorship packages available, with post-send performance reporting.

Conceived as a practical communication for executives Lewis Walker has worked with, this briefing has become a trusted resource for thousands of senior decision-makers shaping the future of enterprise AI.

We welcome your feedback.