The operating problem
Why important work becomes hard to see when its intent and boundaries remain implicit.
Work can become implicit over time. A decision, a workaround, an App or a document solves an immediate problem. The reason for it, the person accountable for it and the condition that makes it complete may remain scattered across systems and people's memory.
That creates a practical design problem. A business may have an org chart, a document library, project boards and Apps, while still lacking a joined-up description of the recurring work it intends to run.
Why Agents make the gap more visible
The gap is older than AI. It becomes more obvious when an Agent is asked to act with less supervision. An Agent needs clear purpose, boundaries, ownership and completion conditions. If those remain implicit, the Agent must infer them, stop for clarification or follow an unexamined workaround.
Agents are a present pressure case, not the category that defines the model. The same ambiguity also affects people taking over work, Automations that need guardrails and leaders trying to change how work is organised.
Work design is the response
Work design makes the operating model discussable. It gives the business a way to state what work belongs where, who or what may perform it, what result it should produce and what evidence informs changes to that design.
The aim is not to flatten every local difference into one rigid template. It is to make the important relationships clear enough to inspect, assign and improve deliberately.