As someone who’s done time at MBB, boutique firms, big consulting, and consulting entrepreneurship, I feel uniquely qualified to say:
lol, nah.
Every time I see these “writing on the wall” posts, I think of the usual suspects:
🤷♂️ Folks who don’t understand how decisions *actually* get made inside large enterprises
🚀 People who’ve never worked with a good consultant (i.e. have had their fair share of bad experiences)
🤑 And my personal favorite: people so deep in the VC echo chamber that they think every enterprise problem can be solved by a SaaS (sorry, “agentic”) startup and a Notion doc
But here’s the reality:
Consulting isn’t dying. It’s evolving. And AI isn’t replacing consultants; it’s upgrading them.
If anything, AI will supercharge good consultants. Faster insights. Better execution. Greater value being passed on to the client.
But the core "why" behind hiring consultants? That’s not going anywhere:
🎯 Specialized expertise – Many internal teams don’t have the resources or time to lead enterprise-scale AI initiatives
⏩ Acceleration – AI doesn’t fix broken data, misaligned orgs, or outdated processes
🤝 Trust – When everything’s changing fast, businesses pay for trusted guides to help them separate signal from noise
Yes, there are firms churning out cookie-cutter decks, overpromising delivery, and recycling frameworks. But let’s not forget: consulting isn’t about slides. It’s about helping leaders make decisions when the stakes are high and the path isn’t obvious.
Because even in the LLM era…
Data informs decisions. But humans still make them.
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