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Soon, every employee will have their own team: an ensemble of agents that can amplify impact and get work done on their behalf. Being an “agent boss”—someone who builds, manages, and delegates to agents—is set to become a key part of every job.
Jack Rowbotham, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Copilot Studio here at Microsoft, is at the center of this shift. He not only helps businesses understand how to use agents but he actively builds and directs his own. “The CV of the future isn’t just going to be about your human experiences and skills,” Rowbotham says. “It’s also going to be about your agent-building expertise and the agents that you’ve created, managed, and deployed to drive real business outcomes.” Empowering agent bosses like Rowbotham is part of the journey to becoming a Frontier Firm, an AI-first organization structured around on-demand intelligence and hybrid teams made up of humans and agents.
The best agent bosses build teams strategically, manage them with clear communications, and delegate wisely. Here’s how any employee—from new hires to seasoned leaders—can hone their leadership skills.
Build
Bring an agent onto the team...
Anyone can build prompt-and-response agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot by clicking the Create an Agent button and telling it what material to look at. Start by identifying a data source that overwhelms you—maybe a folder of research you frequently refer to. Ask your agent to review it and give you natural-language answers to questions like, “What material do we already have on customer preferences in this market, and what did it reveal?”
...And write a clear job description
“Ask yourself what business process you’re trying to improve,” Rowbotham says. Whether it’s speeding up legal review or automating content generation, agents should solve a specific problem. “Think about the why and the benefit.”
Delegate
Calibrate your human-agent ratio
If an agent is performing repetitive, rules-based tasks, a single human can manage dozens of them by just @-ing them in the Copilot chat window. Agents that connect to other business applications and take actions on your behalf require more oversight. In those cases—for work like operations, research synthesis, or project management—the human-agent ratio will likely be higher, with more humans overseeing agents. For work that relies more on human judgment and relationships, or that is more strategic or sensitive, it’s going to be higher still.
Let them challenge you
As you assign work to an agent, ask it open-ended questions, like “What are other things I need to take into consideration?” or “What are some other levers I could pull?” That will improve the quality of the work in addition to saving everyone time and effort.
Manage
Upskill underperforming agents
Agents might not work perfectly the first time you use them. One fix is to refine your instructions as you go, adjusting prompts and expectations based on how the agent performs. Another is to make sure they’re working with the most accurate, up-to-date materials. Agents are only as effective as the guidance and resources they’re given, so the clearer and more complete the input is, the better the output will be.
Set expectations and give feedback
“Using agents helps you build and refine your communication skills, as agents will take you literally,” Rowbotham says. To get the best results, provide a goal, give context, include a data source, and set the expectations you’re looking for.
Do performance reviews
In Copilot Studio you can see what an agent’s doing and whether it’s making an impact. Look for both productivity gains and business outcomes. Is the agent saving money? Is it generating new revenue or uncovering opportunities that move the business forward? These are the kinds of results that translate directly into ROI—and help you decide which agents to scale and which to refine.
Focus on outcomes
Did the agent deliver what you needed? Did it surface something new or save you time? Stay focused on the outcome and be open to the unexpected paths the agent might take to get there. Ultimately, it could solve problems in ways you wouldn’t have imagined. Once you understand the impact, look for opportunities to scale it, sharing what you’ve learned and applying those insights across other parts of the business.
