McKinsey Says Agentic Enterprises Need "Automated Guardrails." Here's What That Means
TLDR/: McKinsey’s new research on AI transformation, published August 28, 2026, studied 20 companies that have created real economic value from AI and found that only a small number have reached “Stage 3: Agentic AI enterprise.” The capability that separates Stage 3 from Stage 2, per McKinsey’s own maturity framework, is orchestration layers and automated guardrails: the ability to govern agent actions automatically, in real time, rather than reviewing them after the fact.