Aleksander Poniewierski, PhD, recently wrote an article on LinkedIn that triggered me to share my personal views on the consulting business. This discussion has been spreading wide in the context of AI transformation. My thinking is in sync with my views presented in Good Companies book.
I appreciate the importance and value of the relationship level. However, I would like to go further and look at the level of real corporate mechanics. The reasons for consulting's survival are completely different and far more pragmatic than just the "value of relationships."
🛡️ First: Consulting is an institutional insurance policy for the CEO. Boards of directors and shareholders rarely accept solo charges. Overhauling a strategy or entering a new market "on one's own" (or based on even the best AI advice) carries too much personal and professional risk for a CEO. Deep validation of a project by a reputable advisory brand gives the CEO the necessary political security and legitimacy before the board. This is classic, pragmatic risk management at the highest level.
🎓 Second: The Big Three and key players are not in the advisory business at all. They are in the business of incubating future decision-makers. It is a brilliantly designed, closed ecosystem. For decades, these companies have acted as talent forges, mass-releasing top-tier managers into the market. When these people later step into CEO roles themselves, their natural instinct is to turn to their "parent company" for support.
🔄 As long as this systemic feedback loop functions and the corporate power structure requires the transfer of responsibility, strategic consulting at the highest level remains unsinkable. AI will change the tools, but it will not change human nature and the mechanisms of self-preservation in business.
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