Cutting the 'coordination tax': How agentic AI can reshape workflows (www.mckinsey.com)

Organizations have heavily invested in AI technologies, but while 80% of McKinsey's survey respondents report personal productivity improvements, only 37% see a positive impact on their bottom line. The crux of the problem lies not in the capabilities of AI itself, but in its deployment—most AI applications have focused on improving isolated workflow steps rather than addressing the critical interfaces where coordination occurs. These "coordination interface taxes" significantly consume work time, accounting for 35% to 60% of labor in certain organizations, and lead to considerable financial losses through latency and unmeasured opportunity costs. Agentic AI offers a transformative shift by automating the judgment-intensive tasks at these coordination interfaces, enabling organizations to reimagine their workflows. By handling verification, reconciliation, and routing with machine-level speed and efficiency, agentic AI systems can significantly reduce the hidden costs associated with delays and streamline end-to-end processes. Research indicates that workflows redesigned to leverage this approach generate 1.9 times more revenue, demonstrating a critical insight: to truly harness the potential of AI, organizations must focus on redesigning their workflows around these pivotal handoff points, rather than solely optimizing individual process steps.