Three ways to use consultants productively, and why AI can’t replace them

I stumbled across Martin Gallardo’s post and decided that it would be worthwhile to rewrite my comment into a full post.

The consulting business has never been so good, but with the advent of AI, people were predicting that it would soon go out of business. I believe that these comments are made by people who either had a very negative experience hiring consultants (I had that experience, too) or have no idea what they are talking about.

I’ve seen three very different ways in which top-tier consultants like McKinsey, BCG or Roland Berger are used inside large corporations, and AI can’t replace any of them.

First: the “cover-your-ass” document

Hiring McKinsey can serve as management’s indulgence—if the strategy fails, the blame is safely outsourced to a glossy consultant report.

Second: the battering ram

When I once developed a new strategy, my boss said: *“Let’s hire McKinsey first. The board won’t believe it if it comes from us—but they’ll approve it if McKinsey puts their logo on it.”* Sometimes, you need that external stamp of authority.

Third: genuine value creation.

I worked with Roland Berger for a couple of years, and they exceeded my and everyone else's expectations. They didn’t just deliver a report (they did, and it was great in itself). They embedded themselves into our business, became part of the team, established a project management and reporting mechanism for a $1B project that didn’t require our teams to fill out endless time-sheets or status reports, and at the same time provided clear visibility of the project status to the C-suite.

I’ve written more about that experience here.

Now, the top-tier consultants cost a fortune. McKinsey rarely bills less than $2M for any kind of work. The cheapest offers I saw from other top-tire firms were never less than $300K. If you’re a startup or scale-up, you don’t need to spend millions to get this kind of insight. I work with founders and investors to bridge the gap between technology and large-scale deployment—without the overhead of Big Three pricing.

If that sounds relevant, reach out—I’d be glad to help!