As AI exposes big consulting’s productivity theater, advisory boards and AI will reshape governance. Future advisors must offer judgment and stewardship, not AI-generated charts and slides.
I lobbed a grenade at McKinsey yesterday. Not because I enjoy picking on consultants (though I’ll admit it has its charms), but because they’re the clearest example of a business model that’s entering its death rattle. A model built on vanity metrics, confidence theater, and the kind of intellectual cosplay that passes for strategy when executives can’t be bothered to think for themselves.
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Before the pitchforks come out, let me clarify: I’m not saying consulting is dead. I’m not claiming AI will replace human judgment. And I’m certainly not one of those tedious accelerationists who think disruption is inherently virtuous.
What I am saying is this: the specific flavor of consulting that sells scale, abstraction, and PowerPoint charts to leaders too busy (or too scared) to look under the hood is cooked. Done. Finished.
Bragging about “25,000 agents deployed” or “millions of charts produced” tells people nothing about value created, decisions improved, or organizations made more resilient. Any competent systems thinker could have told you this decades ago, but AI is now making the gap between appearance and reality too obvious to ignore.
“The specific flavor of consulting that sells scale, abstraction, and PowerPoint charts to leaders too busy (or too scared) to look under the hood is cooked. Done. Finished.”
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But the charade of productivity theater doesn’t spell the end of advisory work. In fact, it does the opposite. As AI takes over analysis, synthesis, and execution at inhuman speed, the weight of responsibility shifts the other way. Someone still has to ask the right questions. Someone still has to decide what actually matters. Someone still has to hold the long-term view when every dashboard is screaming for short-term optimization.
That role isn’t disappearing. It’s crystallizing.
