The Harsh Truth for Consulting with AI

The harsh truth is this tech multiplies the output of a good consultant by 10x over the next three to five years while enabling most firms to have their own AI-generated consultant team for 80% of what they have been paying consultants.

The math on that is a 50x reduction in the net demand for human consultants.

In the meantime, there is an actual net increased demand to help companies transition to the new world.

In the meantime, companies that play defense and use the tools to improve the existing paradigm just slow down their own demise. Which might be the best they can do.

Organizations are made of humans. Humans are not good at change. Humans are really good at creating complexity. This will dilute the demise of consulting math above, but if it diffuses the change by 33% that’s still north of 90% of the consulting jobs gone in five years.

I think helping companies transform, in a partially cannibalistic way, to leverage modern tech and primarily to be more intelligent and agile than the enemy is the next-gen consulting sweet spot. But that’s a story for another day.

If you doubt this level of change, go look at what happened to the thriving shipbuilding industry that was in Glasgow, or the 400 vibrant car companies in the U.S. in 1911, or the Yorkshire textile industry.

Companies that get this model right early can just eat other companies and automagically improve their cost structure, customer outcomes, and competitiveness. It won’t matter what they actually do.