Guest: Glenn Russell (LinkedIn)
Company: Egen
Show Name: An Eye on AI
Topic: Agentic AI

As enterprises race to integrate AI into every corner of their operations, Glenn Russell, Global AI Practice Lead at Egen, offers a powerful reminder: don’t lose sight of human judgment. In this clip from An Eye on AI, Russell distills his advice for leaders in 2026 into one simple message — trust your gut, stay grounded, and remember that AI is a tool, not a magic solution.

“The fundamentals are the same as they’ve ever been,” he tells TFiR host Swapnil Bhartiya. “Understand the problem you’re trying to solve, and don’t get distracted by hype.” Russell’s warning comes at a time when AI promises everything from automated decision-making to full-scale workforce replacement. But he cautions leaders against such extremes, emphasizing that the technology still requires human experience and oversight to deliver reliable outcomes.

Even as AI coding assistants and agentic systems become more sophisticated, Russell says their effectiveness depends on people who understand the context of their work. “You’re never going to substitute human conversation for agents talking to each other over an HTTP port,” he notes. “Not now, and not anytime soon.”

His advice reflects a growing recognition across the enterprise AI community: technology alone cannot deliver transformation. Success depends on disciplined strategy — defining clear objectives, measuring outcomes, and fostering collaboration between teams and tools. Russell argues that the most successful companies will be those that resist the temptation to chase every shiny new model and instead invest in integrating AI where it adds real business value.

At Egen, this mindset underpins every client engagement. The company helps organizations adopt AI responsibly — focusing on practical applications that enhance productivity without compromising human oversight. By combining AI’s analytical power with human intuition, Egen enables enterprises to achieve sustainable transformation rather than short-lived wins.

Russell’s message is particularly relevant as the industry enters what he calls the “post-hype” phase of AI. The coming year will be less about proving AI’s potential and more about executing intelligently. For leaders, that means staying focused on the basics: identify problems worth solving, empower experienced teams, and ensure AI systems remain accountable to human judgment.

As he puts it, “AI is a tool like any other — it’s only as good as the people using it.” For executives guiding their organizations through the next wave of adoption, that mindset could be the difference between success and failure.