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Off the back of this article (The Consulting Crash Is Coming By Joe Nocera, 07.11.25 from The Free Press).
Since inception we have been extolling the virtues of pragmatic specialist consulting helping to deliver long-term operable outcomes for our clients.
Although our consulting approach is informed by established frameworks, methodologies, and research, we believe that the true value is in our uniquely human intellectual property, curiosity, applied knowledge, and extensive operational experience.
The AI revolution will not change this.
AI should transform the consulting industry for the better, BUT it is ultimately up to the clients themselves as to the extent this will actually happen or not, and we think some client behaviours may need to change before it does.
We have always been of the view that consultants should only be used when the client does not have (and is not expected to possess) the internal capability or capacity to determine and deliver the desired outcome on its own.
AI tools are becoming increasingly adept at addressing many of the internal capacity constraints that may have previously necessitated a client bringing in a ‘team’ of management consultants. These tools are great at pulling together frameworks, methodologies and pre-populating them. They can read inordinate amounts of information and present it back in a manner that can pass for global best practice. To date, this has been the stock and trade of the large consulting firms, with, of course, the incredibly high level of slide deck production quality, mostly.
There remains, however, no substitute for judgement and human experience – and at the moment at a minimum someone needs to be able to write the right AI prompts and sift through the hallucinations…
With the above context in mind, there are a few points to consider around whether demise of consulting is imminent as the article suggests. The need for insurance, the preference for some kind of qualified human component to the engagement and the appetite for outcomes-based engagements relative the conviction required to define their metrics.
Firstly insurance. When used well, consulting firms are engaged to chart the best course of action for clients looking to grow and prosper, particularly when clients lack internal capability or capacity to do this on their own. AI tools are able to support and accelerate this process and make it more efficient. However, sometimes, management will engage consultants (usually a ‘named’ firm) to provide ‘insurance policies’ for management, wanting to demonstrate action but not necessarily comfortable with the downside risk of accountability. There may also be a risk of misalignment of the sponsor's short-term incentives with long run business goals – think stripping operational cost/capability vs resolving tech debt. The conviction to call this out in the face of potential fee revenue loss can be beyond the appetite of many consulting firms. In any case, the comfort of having a large consulting firm's name support a given course of action is generally sufficient to insulate all concerned from any blowback, so the symbiotic insurance relationship will likely persist, even with the increased use of AI.
In addition, and perhaps perversely, where previous consulting advice has hollowed out the client’s internal capability (see restructure to strip operational cost and head count – a firm favourite with business and consulting) – then the only option may be to call the consultants back to devise and increasingly, execute change.
Secondly, AI can’t yet do the primate stuff. When wired correctly, we humans respond at a base level to three things: authenticity, reciprocity and empathy. We seek it out and we know it when we find it. We are also still fairly adept at identifying manufactured attempts at all three. I did a piece some time back around the concept of “targeted empathy” being advanced by a large bank as a component of their leadership approach – tells you all you need to know about the culture and was a glaring red light to those experiencing it, see staff retention and engagement.
People mostly still want to work with other people, and while AI will change how the consulting model operates, this desire is likely to remain. In addition, the output of the consulting process – the ‘so what’ – still requires judgement and EQ around how it is deployed and where. Successful change does not occur without keen attention to both scale and culture of the client, the nuance of which is still something best left to the judgement of seasoned operators - people with experience and ability to support clients to operate and make decisions in the ‘grey’.
Thirdly, while it would be our fondest hope that the increased use of AI tools in consulting would support the uptake of outcomes-based consulting engagements, it is likely to remain fraught. As a starting point, the client has to know and agree on what the outcome they want is, and then this needs to be converted into a set of agreed metrics to deliver against (with ‘value’ assigned). This requires a degree of conviction on the part of the client and genuine support from the consultant, two things not always abundant in our industry. The use of AI tools should improve information symmetry and support clients and consultants to more confidently transition to outcome-based consulting engagements, resulting in a greater alignment of interests between the client and consultant.
The full potential of AI to transform management consulting and the benefits clients get from it will only be realised if clients are able to embrace new behaviours – prioritising consulting capability over cache, well informed outcome-based engagements over time-based billing.
However, true consulting value delivered by a trusted advisor model will still be underpinned by the essentially human pillars of authenticity, reciprocity, and empathy, and enhanced by as yet uniquely human behaviours and IP – curiosity, applied knowledge, and extensive operational experience. This is something we have been emphasising since our inception in 2010, and this will not change – it will just be enhanced and accelerated by the AI revolution.
We will continue to fully leverage AI to enhance speed to solution. However, the differentiator is still what did you ask it in the first place, what do you do with the result and how do you engage with your client to deliver the outcome they actually need not just what is expedient or that you have convinced them to buy.
From a professional services perspective the above doesn’t touch on the issues of succession planning or how the latest intake to the workforce will get the experience to develop judgement and insights. That is considerably more concerning than the mediocre and eye wateringly expensive outcomes our industry often suffers as a result of leaning on names rather than on the right expertise and capability.
Author: Myles Allan – Founding Partner
