Outcome
Name the north star before asking an agent to move. What result would make the work useful?
Field guide for agentic leadership
Learn to lead agentics.
A practical field guide for people learning how to manage agentic workers: outcomes, boundaries, evidence, cadence, attention, escalation, and human judgement.
The shift
AI changes work from doing to directing.
When people use AI well, they are not only producing output. They are setting intent, shaping tasks, judging quality, checking evidence, protecting attention, and staying responsible for what goes out into the world.
That is management. Not management as hierarchy, but management as a human literacy: knowing what good looks like and keeping yourself in the loop.
Field guide
The seven moves of an agentic leader.
Use these as a practical check before giving an agentic worker more autonomy, more context, or more trust.
Role
Say what the agentic is doing, what the human owns, and who is accountable for the final decision.
Boundary
Define what it can read, change, publish, spend, remember, or escalate before autonomy gets wider.
Evidence
Ask what changed, which sources matter, what is uncertain, and what would make you reject the answer.
Cadence
Create a rhythm for review, exceptions, drift, lessons, and decisions that need human judgement.
Attention
Protect the scarce thing. Decide where attention belongs instead of letting tools and feeds spend it for you.
Escalation
Pause when stakes rise, signals conflict, the pattern is novel, or the decision is not yours to make.
Attention and agency
The work has to contain you.
If all a person does is click the button and accept what comes back, they are not in the loop. The value is in the judgement: what they asked, what they rejected, what evidence changed their mind, and where they chose to put attention.
First steps
Start small, but manage the work properly.
This is not about banning AI or pretending it is magic. It is about showing people how to use it well enough that their own thinking becomes more visible.
Define good
Write three signs of a good answer before the agent produces one.
Brief the work
Give context, audience, constraints, source expectations, and a clear stopping point.
Reject generic
Mark down work that could have come from anyone. Add judgement, taste, evidence, and yourself.
Record judgement
Keep a small trail: what you asked, what you accepted, what you rejected, and why.
Protect attention
Batch interruptions, review exceptions, and ask whether this signal deserves time.
Curated starter resources
Useful places to begin in your country, school, team, or language.
This is a starter directory, not a giant database. The point is to help educators, leaders, parents, students, and operators find credible first routes into AI literacy and management literacy.
England
DfE: Understanding AI in education
School and college staff
Open resource GlobalUNESCO AI Competency Framework for Students
Curriculum designers and educators
Open resource GlobalTeachAI Guidance for Schools Toolkit
Education leaders
Open resource OECDOECD PISA 2029 Media and AI Literacy
Policy and assessment teams
Open resource EuropeEU AI literacy and Article 4
Organisations using AI systems
Open resource GlobalNancy Hey OBE: But is it right? Leading for what matters in the digital age
Leaders working with technology, facts, values, and ethics
Open resource UK and global partnersRaspberry Pi Experience AI
Teachers and young people
Open resource US and globalCommon Sense AI literacy lessons
Grades 6 to 12 educators
Open resource US-origin, globally usefulAI4K12 Five Big Ideas
K-12 standards and curriculum teams
Open resource MultilingualElements of AI
Adults and general learners
Open resourceFollow-on essay
Management is the missing literacy.
The canonical essay lives on Tonywood.org and makes the deeper argument: we should teach people how to manage themselves, tools, tasks, attention, risk, evidence, and outcomes.
Tony's writing
Four pieces behind the field guide.
Tonywood.org
Management Is The Missing Literacy
The follow-on essay: why AI makes management a general literacy, not a specialist title.
Tonywood.orgWe Need To Teach Children How To Manage Agentic Workers
The classroom argument for teaching attention, delegation, judgement, and interruption management.
Tonywood.orgWhat I Would Do If I Were at University in 2026
How students can look for human debt, learn what good looks like, and use AI without outsourcing judgement.
Tonywood.orgGetting Things Done With Agentic Workers
A practical note on roles, boundaries, success tests, escalation routes, and evidence trails.