SerpApi.Org
AI automated the execution layer of consulting. The consultants who will thrive know the future value equation.
Consulting firms that built their business models on junior knowledge work are now replacing that work with AI that does it faster and at a fraction of the cost. I am seeing the career ladder that once took consultants from analyst to partner through years of progressive, structured work has been restructured from the bottom up. The question for every consultant is now specific and urgent: Which parts of your value will be disrupted by AI, and which parts are your unique value?
What’s Automated
Data gathering, financial modeling, competitive analysis, and slide production are the work that once defined the first two years of a consulting career. AI creates client-ready deliverables in an afternoon.
McKinsey says its internal AI tool, Lilli, reduces research and synthesis time by 30 percent on typical client engagements. Deloitte meanwhile says its agentic platform, Zora AI, handles the complex information processing that junior staff previously managed over weeks.
When AI finishes the research in 30 minutes, the client isn’t paying you for research anymore. Or PowerPoints. Or your SWOT analysis.
Career Ladder Gaps
For decades, consulting experience developed when junior analysts did structured work: data gathering, model building, deliverable production. They shared their work with their peers and managers. Then it got refined and shipped to the client. That iterative feedback loop is how entry-level consultants learned and developed into partners.
AI has now automated the junior work and removed that learning mechanism along with it. The consultants who will thrive in the AI era are the ones who will find a way to more quickly develop direct client experience and judgment. The partners who retain their clients year after year possess experience that’s irreplaceable, and their clients know AI isn’t going to replace it.
Senior partners face a different version of the same challenge. The old leverage model gave every partner a multiplier: one senior judgment, amplified across a pyramid of analysts doing structured work. That pyramid is compressing, and partners who can’t supervise, validate, and contextualize AI outputs in front of clients are discovering their value is less clear than their titles assume. They need to command a room using judgment with even higher expectations.
Increasing Personal Value
The consultants who will build booming careers through this transition will share a specific approach. They’ll proactively develop their soft skills and judgment. Here are three practical places to start:
Master the Room. The ability to navigate a room where peers and clients don’t agree on the problem or solution is one of the highest-value capabilities in consulting. It develops only through observation and practice. Even if you’re a junior consultant, every team interaction is an opportunity to decipher group dynamics and take the lead to cut through the noise and create clarity.
Lead AI Interpretation. AI delivers analysis. What your team and clients need is interpretation of that output. They need to validate that results aren’t built on faulty assumptions. They need to understand the strategic implications for the client engagement or the client organization. It’s a higher-order level of strategic analysis that falls outside of AI and ties to your ability to verbalize your thinking in a compelling way.
Build Your Network. Getting staffed on client engagements or selling clients new engagements is about both deepening and broadening relationships. AI isn’t going to do that for you. Those are the soft skills that are most strategic when it comes to consulting success.
Underneath the consulting layoffs is a story about a business model that waited too long to adapt to what its own tools were already making possible. The consultants who see that clearly, and move deliberately toward the work AI can’t do, will define what the industry looks like next.
This Week
Before your next team or client meeting, name one judgment call you’ve been deferring to a more senior colleague. Consider your viewpoint and build that into your work product proactively. Then share that interpretation with the team and see how it changes their perception of you, and what they ask you for next.
I wrote my last book, Experiential Intelligence, around exactly this premise: Your accumulated experience is the part of your work that AI can’t replace. Grow that, and make it more visible to build the consulting career that survives AI disruption.
Soren Kaplan helps leaders leapfrog to what’s next by cutting through noise, aligning faster, and making smarter decisions. He speaks at corporate events and conferences worldwide. Learn more at sorenkaplan.com. Go even deeper on this topic with Soren’s podcast on Apple, YouTube, or Spotify.
This post originally appeared at inc.com.
“Click here to subscribe to the Inc. newsletter: inc.com/newsletters"
