I recently came across a provocative post by Kevin Surace on LinkedIn that perfectly captures the seismic shift happening in the professional services world. His point was blunt: if you are still paying millions for a SWOT analysis that AI can generate in seconds, you are paying for the wrong thing.
As a former IBM Global Managing Partner who ran a consulting practice, I’ve lived inside the “billable hour” machine. I’ve seen how the sausage is made, the armies of bright junior analysts burning the midnight oil to aggregate data, format slides, and churn out the “deliverable.”
For decades, that model worked. But let’s be clear: The $5M SWOT analysis is dead.
However, unlike the doomsayers, I don’t believe this marks the end of consulting. Instead, it marks the end of lazy consulting. It is the extinction event for the “hourly rate” model, but the dawn of a new era where premium value is placed on judgment, not processing.
AI Won’t Take Your Job. AI Demands Better People
There is a pervasive fear that AI will replace the consultant. This is a misunderstanding of what valuable consulting actually is.
In my book Digitally Curious, I argue that technology doesn’t just automate tasks; it elevates expectations. My core thesis for the age of AI is simple: AI won’t take your job, but AI demands better people.
In the old world, a consultant could hide behind “the grind.” You could justify high fees by pointing to the sheer volume of hours spent gathering data, conducting interviews, and building models. Effort was a proxy for value.
In the new world, “effort” in data gathering is free. AI brings the cost of knowledge to near zero. When the “what” (the data, the SWOT, the market scan) is instant and commoditised, the value shifts entirely to the “so what?” and the “now what?”
AI raises the baseline of competence. It forces every consultant to move up the value chain. If you are just summarizing information, you are obsolete. But if you are using that information to exercise wisdom, ethical judgement, and strategic foresight, you have never been more valuable.
The Death of the Billable Hour
The most significant casualty of this revolution will be the business model itself. The hourly rate is a relic of an analogue age, and AI is breaking it.
Consider this: If I am a “Digitally Curious” consultant, I might use advanced AI agents to simulate a client’s supply chain crisis, stress-test three different strategies, and draft a mitigation plan, all in 4 hours.
A traditional consultant might take 4 weeks to do the same work manually.
Under the hourly model, the traditional consultant gets paid for a month of work, while I get paid for a morning. This penalises efficiency and innovation.
We are moving inevitably toward value-based pricing. Clients will stop paying for time and start paying for outcomes. They won’t care if it took you 5 minutes or 5 months; they will pay for the £50M in savings you identified, or the risk you avoided.
This shifts the incentive from “billing more hours” to “driving better decisions.”
From “Outsourced Processing” to “Outsourced Judgement”
So, what does the future consultant look like?
For years, large firms sold Capacity: “We have more smart people than you, so hire us to crunch the numbers.”
Now, AI provides infinite capacity. You don’t need to hire McKinsey for raw brainpower anymore.
The new currency is Capability and Courage.
Clients will hire consultants for “Outsourced Judgement.” They need partners who can look at the AI-generated strategy and say, “The data says X, but your company culture will reject that. We need to do Y.”
AI can give you the logical answer, but it cannot give you the political answer, the emotional answer, or the ethical answer. That is the domain of the human expert.
The Actionable Future
This shift is actually good news for the profession, but it requires a painful transition.
The Pyramid Will Invert: The traditional consulting pyramid (many juniors supporting a few partners) will flip. We won’t need armies of analysts for grunt work. We will need more experienced practitioners who can direct the AI, interpret the nuance, and manage the human side of change.
AI as a Sparring Partner: The best consultants will use AI not just to write reports, but to challenge them. They will use AI to hunt for their own biases, finding the blind spots in their logic before they ever walk into the boardroom.
The Rise of the “Digitally Curious”: The consultants who thrive will be those with high “DQ” (Digital Quotient). They won’t just tolerate AI; they will be endlessly curious about how to use it to get to the truth faster.
The slide deck is no longer the product. The decision is the product.
Consulting isn’t dying; it’s moulting. It is shedding the skin of administrative drudgery to reveal its true purpose: helping leaders make better decisions in an uncertain world.
If you are a consultant, stop selling your time. Start selling your curiosity.
