A new Deloitte survey published yesterday makes one thing very clear: most businesses are charging toward AI agents without any idea how to land the plane.

The report, titled “AI Agents are Only the Beginning,” surveyed 501 senior managers and C-suite executives across five US industries between April and June 2026. Every organization in the sample was at least piloting agentic AI. And yet only 5% said their business processes are “highly prepared” to work with autonomous AI agents.

That gap between ambition and readiness is the defining tension in enterprise AI right now.

What Executives Actually Expect

The survey data shows how fast leadership expectations are moving. Within four years, 74% of respondents expect nearly half of all business processes to be redesigned or rebuilt around AI agents. Another 61% believe most of the AI agents their company deploys will be operating autonomously.

That is an extraordinary projection. It means the majority of surveyed executives are betting that within a single business planning cycle, autonomous AI agents will be running large chunks of their operations.

Nearly two-thirds of executives said they are actively reevaluating their business models in response to agentic AI. This is not incremental software adoption. Leaders are rethinking how their companies create and deliver value.

The Readiness Gap Is Severe

Here is where the numbers get uncomfortable. Despite these ambitious timelines, the operational foundations are not in place:

• 84% of organizations have not redesigned roles to accommodate agentic AI systems
• Only 21% have a mature governance model for autonomous agents
• Only 5% say their business processes are “highly prepared” for AI agents
• 73% cite data privacy and security as their top AI risk

There is a specific pattern the report calls out: 42% of leaders say their overall AI strategy is prepared, while simultaneously admitting they are underprepared on infrastructure and talent. They believe they have a plan, but the building blocks are not there.

Deloitte describes it as bolting “a jet engine to a bicycle.” The technology is ready to go fast. The organization is not built to handle the speed.

Human Collaboration Is Not Optional

The survey pushes back on pure automation narratives. A strong 75% of respondents agree that human collaboration with AI agents creates more value than agent-powered automation alone.

This matters for how businesses actually structure deployment. The companies that will see real returns from AI agents are not the ones replacing humans wholesale. They are the ones figuring out what decisions should stay with humans, what oversight mechanisms need to exist, and how workflows change when an AI can take action independently.

That design problem is much harder than picking a vendor.

What This Means for Business

The Deloitte findings confirm what we have been seeing with clients across industries. The conversation has shifted from “should we adopt AI agents” to “how do we actually run them at scale without things going sideways.”

Four practical implications stand out:

Governance cannot be an afterthought. Only 1 in 5 organizations has a mature model for governing autonomous agents. Companies that skip this step are exposing themselves to real risk as agents take on consequential actions across their operations.

Process redesign is the hard part. Most AI agent pilots fail not because the AI underperforms, but because the surrounding business processes were built for human workers. Before deploying agents at scale, you need to audit which processes are genuinely agent-ready.

The readiness gap compounds over time. Organizations that get their data, governance, and process foundations in place now will be in a structurally better position in two years. The 95% that are not ready today will be playing catch-up against competitors who are.

Human-AI collaboration is the operating model, not a transition phase. The data is clear that leaders see more value from humans and agents working together than from agents operating alone. Building for that hybrid model requires different thinking than pure automation.

The Deloitte research was fielded across five industries to respondents who were already actively involved in agentic AI strategy. This is not a survey of companies dabbling with AI. These are the leaders who are furthest along, and the majority of them still cannot say their operations are ready.

For businesses earlier in the process, the gap is almost certainly wider.

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Enterprise DNA perspective: The readiness problem is solvable, but it requires a structured approach to strategy, data infrastructure, and governance before you scale. Our Omni Advisory service works directly with business leaders on exactly this — turning AI ambitions into deployments that actually run safely and deliver measurable results.