Ok – I agree. Consultants are in trouble.
Given a choice between giving work to a person or AI – I’m going to pick AI first.
Have a question about a market, technology, location? Start with deep research.
Pre-AI, the bottleneck was hours spent doing research, looking up sources, and drafting decks.
Junior consultants did research and drafting. Senior ones did a review and Partners managed socialisation and communication.
Research and first drafts can be done with AI, moving the bottleneck downstream to the review process.
That’s the next pinch point – how can we tell if the information is good, or correct?
AI will come for that in time. For example, we can use multiple AIs on the same problem and get them to check each other’s work. The industry is going to solve the citation problem.
The bit that still needs people is for the human sense making and decision processes involved in socialisation and group consensus.
What are the implications?
- Smaller teams able to do more.
- AI-first firms raising the bar.
- A focus on outcomes rather than outputs.
This is not going away.
Handcrafted insight 