Polymaths Over Specialists: How to Stay Valuable in an AI Agent Workplace
AI agents are replacing narrow specialists. Business leaders say 'versatilists' who work across the tech stack will be most in demand. Here's what that looks like.
Writing in August 2026, executives from Workday, A+E Global Media, Harvey Nash, and UK charity Young Lives vs. Cancer all converge on the same conclusion: the era of the narrow specialist is ending. As AI agents absorb repetitive, domain-specific tasks, companies are actively redesigning job functions around people who can move fluidly across disciplines. The new label gaining traction is "versatilist," a middle ground between the overly broad generalist and the increasingly redundant single-domain specialist.
What happened
Published on August 12, 2026, a ZDNet piece gathered perspectives from senior business leaders on how AI agents are reshaping what companies actually need from their people. The short answer: breadth is back, but with a specific twist.
Gerrit Kazmaier, president of product and technology at Workday, said earlier this year that agentic AI amplifies workers’ strengths and allows them to function as polymaths. The term, rooted in Ancient Greek, describes someone who excels across multiple fields rather than one.
Workday principal strategist Julie Colwell put it plainly in a recent blog post: labor demand is shifting away from people who know everything about a single domain toward professionals with knowledge across multiple disciplines.
Why the specialist model is breaking down
Kathy Pham, Workday’s VP of AI, told ZDNet that professionals who can work with agents across several areas at once will be the ones filling critical gaps. Her argument is that automation handles the lower-value repetitive work, freeing people to redirect energy toward higher-value decisions.
Chris Kairinos, senior director of global modern workplace technology at A+E Global Media, used a piano analogy to describe why mastery of a single skill set no longer makes sense. His point: if the instrument keeps changing, adding new keys and pedals on what feels like a constant basis, you cannot master it. You can only stay adaptable enough to keep playing it.
“I don’t think you need to master technology, because I don’t think there is a way to master it now,” he told ZDNet.
What is a ‘versatilist’ exactly?
David Minahan, director of digital, data, and technology at Young Lives vs. Cancer, has gone the furthest in formalising this shift. He has built a deliberate internal strategy around what he calls “versatilists,” a term that sits between generalist and specialist.
“Generalists aren’t necessary, but versatility is. Specialists aren’t required in most businesses anymore because AI leverages knowledge differently.”
David Minahan, Young Lives vs. Cancer
In practice, his team members are expected to work across the full technology stack and move between areas such as stakeholder discussions, digital transformation projects, and technical delivery. Minahan says this also solves a long-standing IT career problem: people getting pigeonholed. His framework gives motivated, talented staff a visible pathway to move across functions.
| Profile | What it means | Status in AI agent era |
|---|---|---|
| Specialist | Deep expertise in one domain | Declining demand as agents cover repetitive domain work |
| Generalist | Broad but shallow across many areas | Too broad, lacks the depth to add value |
| Versatilist / Polymath | Deep in one or more areas, able to move across functions | High demand, seen as the target profile by multiple business leaders |
Why it matters
For anyone running a small or mid-sized team, this is a hiring and training signal worth taking seriously. If you are structured around narrow job titles, you may find those roles either automated or hollowed out within a short window. If you are thinking about integrating AI into your operations, the human side of that equation matters as much as the tooling: who on your team can actually work alongside agents, interpret their outputs, and make calls in areas the agents cannot reach?
Minahan’s two core characteristics are worth pinning up: adaptability to AI-enabled change, and the confidence to make valuable decisions that agents cannot make. Neither of those is a technical skill. Both can be developed deliberately.
The shift also has implications for how agentic workflows are being structured across software and services teams more broadly. The companies moving fastest are not just buying AI tools; they are redesigning roles around them.
Our take
The word “polymath” gets thrown around a lot, but Minahan’s “versatilist” framing is actually more useful for most businesses. It gives people a concrete identity and a pathway, rather than a vague aspiration to know everything. That matters for retention as much as for productivity.
What we see in our own work: clients who get the most out of workflow automation are rarely the ones with the most technical specialists on staff. They are the ones with people who can translate between business problems and technical solutions, who understand the data well enough to spot when an agent is wrong, and who are willing to pick up new tools quickly. That is the versatilist profile in action, even if nobody calls it that.
If you are thinking about how to structure your team around AI agents, the honest starting point is an audit of what your people actually spend their time on today, and whether an agent could handle any of it. The answer is usually yes, for more of it than you expect. The follow-up question is what you want those freed-up hours to go toward. That is where the versatilist skill set becomes the competitive advantage.
What to do about it
- Audit your current roles for tasks that are repetitive and domain-specific. These are the first candidates for agent automation.
- Identify one or two people on your team who already move between functions comfortably. Give them a formal role in your AI adoption process.
- Build learning and development time into team schedules explicitly. Kairinos and Minahan both treat adaptability as a skill that needs active cultivation, not a trait you either have or do not.
- Rewrite job descriptions to reflect cross-functional expectations rather than narrow specialisms, starting with new hires.
- Talk to your team about what the shift means for their careers. Minahan’s point about pigeonholing is real. People who see a pathway forward will stay and grow; people who feel threatened will leave.
The businesses that come out ahead will be the ones that treat the human side of AI adoption as seriously as the tooling side.
Frequently asked questions
What is a versatilist in the context of AI and work?
A versatilist is a professional who sits between a narrow specialist and a broad generalist. The term was coined by David Minahan at Young Lives vs. Cancer to describe staff who can apply their skills across multiple areas of the tech stack, rather than being confined to one domain.
Are specialists becoming obsolete because of AI agents?
According to business leaders quoted in ZDNet in August 2026, tightly defined specialists are in declining demand as AI agents handle repetitive, domain-specific tasks. However, people with deep knowledge who can also move across functions remain highly valuable.
What skills will be most valuable in an AI agent workplace?
Business leaders point to two core traits: adaptability to AI-enabled change, and the confidence to make high-value decisions that agents cannot make. Technical mastery of any single tool is seen as less important than the ability to learn and adapt quickly.
How should companies restructure teams around AI agents?
Experts recommend building learning and development strategies that explicitly cultivate cross-functional versatility, rewriting job descriptions to reflect broader scope, and identifying which repetitive tasks can be handed to agents so human effort shifts to higher-value work.
