Summary: AI is reshaping the consulting profession, but not the reason clients hire consultants. The tasks may change. The trust won’t.
The Signal Beneath the Noise
Most partners I speak to sense the same thing: AI is changing the work, not the worth.
Andrew Binns’ recent Forbes pieces on Reinventing Management Consulting for the Age of AI argue the same point — and it’s one that many inside the industry quietly agree with.
AI will disrupt the tasks of consulting, not the trust it’s built on.
Data crunching, slide-building, and market analysis can all be automated.
But those were never the reasons clients picked up the phone.
Why Clients Still Hire Consultants
The truth is that consulting engagements are rarely about finding the “right” answer.
As Binns puts it, the presenting problem is often technical, but the real challenge is human.
A consultant’s job isn’t to hand over a solution — it’s to help a leadership team apply that solution, overcoming inertia, politics, and fear.
That’s where consulting earns its keep: in alignment, persuasion, and execution.
When I speak with partners about why they’re really brought in, the same themes repeat:
→ The executive sponsor doesn’t know what to do – but knows hiring consultants means shared credit or blame.
→ The executive knows the answer – but needs external validation to push it through.
→ They want an outsider to cut through the politics and make things move.
Consulting remains, at its core, a business of judgment, cover, and courage.
Case Study: NYC & Navigating the Human System
A good example is New York City’s “rat reduction” project (New York Times: In New York City, trash has no dedicated space all its own.).
McKinsey was mocked on X and Reddit for being paid millions to tell the city to use bins instead of bags (full report here).
But the real work wasn’t about the bins. It was about getting multiple departments, unions, and borough administrations to align, fund, and execute a citywide change that had failed for decades.
The consultants provided analytical backing, political cover, and structure to push through resistance. At that scale, the challenge wasn’t technical – it was organisational and political.
The result? Depending on how you measure success, New York’s approach now appears to be a model other major cities are studying (I can already hear the kick-back on this).
The Future Consultant: Three Core Roles
Binns argues that the consulting model of the future will depend less on tools, and more on counsellors who can balance three things:
→ Think like experts – grounding advice in analytical rigour.
→ Deliver like implementors – making change real, not theoretical.
→ Guide like process consultants – navigating the human system that decides whether change sticks.
It’s not about abandoning technology. It’s about integrating judgment with capability.
AI will make consultants faster, sharper, and better informed — but it won’t make them trusted.
Six Principles for Reinvention
Binns’ six principles offer a framework for how the profession might evolve:
1. See the whole system – approach problems from the CEO’s vantage point.
2. Tackle adaptive problems – the ones analysis alone can’t solve.
3. Co-create solutions – don’t prescribe from a deck.
4. Build capability – not client dependency.
5. Measure impact – not hours or slides.
6. Use language that builds trust – because words shape relationships.
These principles aren’t new. They’re a return to consulting’s original purpose: to advise and enable leaders.
In that sense, “reinvention” is really rediscovery.
The Human Edge
The heart of consulting is still human.
As Binns notes, AI lacks relationships, prestige, and persuasion.
Those are earned through experience, humility, and candour — not code.
Machines can model a decision.
Consultants still help people make one.
And that’s what executives really buy: clarity under pressure.
Not the PowerPoint, not the framework — the confidence to move forward when the data and the politics collide.
Closing Thought
AI will keep changing how consultants work, but not why clients need them.
The hardest problems in business aren’t analytical. They’re human.
This post comments on:
Forbes: ‘6 Principles For Reinvention: Management Consulting In The Age Of AI
Author: Andrew Binns
🔗 Read further reporting via Forbes
13 October 2025
Ben Appleton is the founder of Strat-Bridge, a specialist executive search partner to the strategy consulting industry. He works with global consulting firms and senior leaders across the UK, Germany, Switzerland, and beyond — helping them build capability at the Partner and Director level.
