Managing AI Agents Is Just Like Managing A New Employee | Kristie Jones - 2047

Kristie Jones treats her AI agent like a four year old. Not as an insult, as a management strategy. The same way she taught her son "no touch" before he understood why, she's learned that agents need boundaries, check-ins, and correction, just like any new hire.

Kristie, founder of Sales Acceleration Group and author of the upcoming book The Sales Leadership Gap: Leading Humans in an AI Augmented World, walked me through what it actually looks like to lead a sales team that's now part human, part automation, and part AI agent.

Why Most Sales Teams Are Only Talking About AI, Not Using It

Kristie's blunt read on the market: sales leaders are talking a good game on AI adoption, but very few are actually walking it.She calls the hesitation "freeze mode," people waiting for the technology to settle down before they commit to anything.Her pushback: the pace of AI isn't going to slow down, so waiting for the dust to settle just means a competitor gets the head start instead.

From Pilot to Control Tower: Managing a Hybrid Team

Kristie's analogy for what's changed: sales leaders used to be the pilot, flying the plane directly. Now the job is running the control tower.A modern sales team isn't just a group of humans anymore. It's humans, automation, and AI agents all working together, and leading that requires a 360-degree view no single seat inside the plane can give you.She hasn't seen a single sales leadership course that actually teaches this. Most leaders are being asked to figure it out on their own, in real time, while still being expected to hit quota.

Treat Your Agent Like a New Employee (or a Four-Year-Old)

Kristie's favorite framing, borrowed from someone else: manage your agent the way you'd manage a toddler, with simple, repeated boundaries, like teaching a child "no touch," some for safety and some just to prevent a mess.Building an agent isn't a "set it and forget it" project. Just like a new hire, it needs a handbook, but it also needs regular check-ins, since no handbook covers every exception.If your business is changing, and it always is, an agent that never gets revisited will quietly drift out of step with how your team actually works.

Trust But Verify

Kristie built an agent that reviews her AI notetaker every Friday at 4pm and delivers her to-do list by day. The first Friday it was supposed to run, it didn't.Her response mirrored exactly how she'd handle a new employee's mistake: no anger, just a direct conversation about what happened and how