Agentic Strategy Canvas
The Agentic Strategy Canvas is a hands-on framework for business leaders, strategists, and transformation teams to explore how AI agents can create measurable impact and unlock new sources of value. It’s designed to anchor strategic conversations, guide cross-functional planning, and inform real investment decisions, helping you shape your transformation roadmap with clarity.
Unlike traditional automation or one-off AI integrations, agentic systems represent a shift in how work is orchestrated— enabling software to observe, decide, and act toward business outcomes. This guide helps teams map that shift: identifying fading sources of advantage, uncovering new capabilities, and aligning agent-powered solutions with core business strategy.
By the end of this workshop, you’ll walk away with a shared, strategic view of where agentic capabilities can create the most value for your organization, and a prioritized path to get there rooted in adaptability and ambition.
The Canvas is a structured sequence of eight interconnected activities. Each one captures a critical lens for navigating transformation in the age of AI agents, from recognizing where existing strengths are weakening, to defining new and defensible advantages, through building a clear roadmap to act. While each section can be used independently, together they form a strategic arc: sensing shifts, surfacing possibilities, and shaping executable bets.
These eight lenses are your guideposts for designing intelligent, adaptive, and agent-powered strategies:
Advantage Erosion – Identify which of today’s differentiators are being commoditized by agent-native competitors.
Strategic Shifts – Identify the business model and operating model changes agentic systems now make possible.
Critical Uncertainties – Select two external factors that could reshape your market and stress-test your future.
North Star Advantage – Articulate a resilient advantage that holds across all plausible futures.
Opportunity Clusters – Strategic opportunities that move the organization towards realizing the North Star.
Enabling Capabilities – Define the cross-cutting technical and organizational foundations needed to support your bets.
Timing & Triggers – Sequence initiatives based on readiness and signals.
Value Thesis – Translate strategy into a compelling business case.
Each section builds on the last, taking you from strategic sensing to structured action.
The Canvas is flexible by design— you can run individual activities as standalone sessions, or guide a team through the full strategic arc over multiple days. It works best with 4-16 participants. Here are three ways to approach it:
Full Workshop (In-Depth Version): For teams seeking a comprehensive, end-to-end strategy, the full canvas runs ~12–16 hours of working time. This is best delivered across two full business days, four half-days, or a flexible mix that allows for deep thinking, iteration, and alignment.
Core Workshop (Light Version): A faster, focused exploration of the canvas can be completed in ~8 hours, ideal for 1 full day or 2 half-day sessions. We recommend two half-day sessions to maintain energy, support reflection between sessions, and improve the quality of strategic thinking.
Standalone Activities: Each activity is self-contained and can be run independently (e.g., just Activity #2: Strategic Shifts) as part of broader planning sessions, team offsites, or decision checkpoints. Expect ~90 mins per activity.
However you approach it, it's designed to be self-serve, so you and your team can work through it entirely without support. And in the end, you should come away with the strategic plan for how you'll succeed in the new area of agentic AI.
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