---
id: "concept-agentic-ai-governance-gap"
type: "concept"
source_timestamps: ["¶1", "§ Flaw #1: It's too slow to be effective.", "§ Flaw #3: It's difficult to communicate."]
source_url: "https://hbr.org/2026/05/what-are-your-companys-ai-nightmares"
source_title: "What Are Your Company's AI Nightmares?"
tags: ["agentic-ai", "pace-of-innovation", "collaboration"]
related: ["concept-standard-rai-approach", "claim-standard-rai-too-slow"]
definition: "The failure of slow, centralized AI policies to keep pace with the rapid development and cross-functional requirements of agentic AI."
sources: ["governance"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-governance"
originDay: 7
articleStem: "hbr-cl-82-ai-nightmares"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2026/05/what-are-your-companys-ai-nightmares"
sourceTitle: "What Are Your Company’s AI Nightmares?"
---
# Agentic AI Governance Gap

The specific vulnerability exposed by the shift from **generative AI** to **agentic AI** — AI agents that can take autonomous *actions* across systems, not merely output text or images to a user.

Two mechanisms open the gap:

1. **Collaboration demand.** Agentic AI requires intense, rapid cross-functional collaboration: data scientists must work seamlessly with HR, marketing, and operations to build and oversee these agents. Standard Responsible AI policies — written in dense compliance jargon over the course of a year — act as a *tower of Babel* that stifles this necessary collaboration (see [[quote-tower-of-babel]] and [[concept-standard-rai-approach]]).
2. **Pace of change.** The technology evolves so fast (e.g., OpenAI [[entity-openai-d7]] introducing agentic AI just **months after** a policy is approved) that centralized, policy-first governance is rendered obsolete before it is even fully implemented — the quantified version of this is [[claim-standard-rai-too-slow]].

The ENC is Blackman's answer to this gap: decentralized, plain-language, fast (see [[concept-ethical-nightmare-challenge]]). Grasping the argument requires [[prereq-agentic-ai-understanding]].

**Enrichment note:** The exact label "Agentic AI Governance Gap" is an editorial synthesis — Blackman does not use that phrase verbatim in the public sources — but his writing is clearly focused on AI systems that *act within and across organizational processes*, which is consistent with agent-like behavior. Commentators broadly agree that static, infrequently updated policies are inadequate for planning, workflow-triggering, tool-using agents. A counter-perspective holds that agentic AI is not yet pervasive enough to make the standard model *wholly* obsolete, favoring hybrid governance instead.


## Related across articles
- [[concept-agentic-ai-d7]]
- [[concept-agentic-governance]]
- [[prereq-agentic-ai-concepts]]