The questions
The core questions are public. What The River Group sells is the outsider no team can be for itself.
Getting from the same work done faster to different work takes decisions that are not primarily technology decisions. Here they are, in the order they get asked.
Where can agents already take on the work? Before you decide how far to go, decide where to look. Take one operation you run and are measured on, or one you are about to stand up, and ask four things about the work inside it. Is the volume high, and not going down? Do the steps repeat? Is the information needed scattered across several systems? Is most of the day spent reading things, looking things up and applying rules, with judgment saved for the exceptions? One test sits under all four: could a well-briefed new hire do most of this by reading documents, searching systems and following rules, with a supervisor handling the hard cases? The more often that is yes, the more of this work agents can already take on.
That tells you where to look. It does not tell you how far to go, and reading it that way is the most common mistake made with it. Work agents can already take on, plus a limit that sits in the steps themselves, is a legitimate and aggressive retrofit.
Does this operation need the same operating logic faster, or a different operating logic at a different shape? This is the diagnostic, and it's asked about one operation at a time, never about the company. Same logic faster is a retrofit. A different shape is a reimagine. The answer is allowed to differ from one function to the next, and it usually does.
Which operations are you willing to retrofit, and which to reimagine? Not what could be automated; that list is long and getting longer. Which operations you would let be rebuilt around what humans and agents can do together, with the roles inside them redrawn, and which you would leave as they are, and why.
How far do you take it over the next 12 months? A position on the spectrum, from not yet through retrofit to reimagine, for this operation, rather than a target for the whole company. No rule sets it, and no point on it is safe: retrofit cedes ground quietly, reimagine can collapse under its own ambition, and not yet holds only as long as what it waits on. Not yet is a decision only when it names what would reopen it and the date to look again; without those, it's a no. A position is settled with the people who own the outcome, where they differ, and it's defensible once the strongest case against it has been heard and answered.
Who owns the outcome when you do? One person, with a number on it. An agent cannot own an outcome, and a program office cannot either. If the answer is a committee, the position is still open.
How will you know when the position you took has gone stale? Every position goes stale, because agentic capability keeps advancing and the right position moves with it. The question is what mechanism you have for noticing, and for moving when it has. That is the watch, and it is the part most companies skip.
What the questions leave to you. The position itself. Two of them have only a defensible answer, never a right one. There are functions and industries where retrofitting is the correct answer, full stop, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. What the questions do is make the disagreement visible early, between the people who own the outcome, instead of late, in the numbers.
Once you have answered them, what tells you when an answer has gone stale? That is the watch.