If AI can analyze information, crunch data and deliver a slick PowerPoint deck within seconds, how does the biggest name in consulting stay relevant?
And McKinsey is rapidly deploying thousands of AI agents. Those bots now assist consultants in building PowerPoint decks, taking notes and summing up interviews and research documents for clients. The most-used bot is one that helps employees write in a classic “McKinsey tone of voice”—language the firm describes as sharp, concise and clear. Another popular agent checks the logic of a consultant’s arguments, verifying the flow of reasoning makes sense.
Consulting is emerging as an early and high-profile test case for how dramatically an industry must shift to stay relevant in the AI era. McKinsey, like its rivals, grew by hiring professionals from top universities, throwing them at projects for clients—then billing companies based, in part, on the scope and duration of the project.
Given that McKinsy’s default recommendation is “reduce Prole headcount”, I’m surprised it took them this long. Does their AI reproduce the nonsensical blather that human consultants do?
Remember what I flagged in the Flowserve quarterly?
“Our strong second quarter results reflect the successful ongoing execution of our 3D strategy and the Flowserve Business System. We delivered another quarter of sales and earnings growth while also expanding margins, reflecting the resilience of our business model and progress on our operating initiatives. With the Flowserve Business System firmly established across the organization, we recently went live with our commercial excellence pillar to complement our 80/20 program and drive outsized growth, leveraging the optimized portfolio and delivering the best value to our customers,” said Scott Rowe, Flowserve’s President and Chief Executive Officer.
Is a flock of buzzwordy nonsense more credible, when produced by buzzwordy “AI”?
I have not worked with McKinsey. I have worked with at least a half dozen other consultants across my decades at Westinghouse, and if there is one thing to be said about that, it’s that they are expensive and useless.
That said, I also had several corporate godfathers who knew something about our business and found them quite helpful, but those with “the outside perspective”, bah.
I saw two things in the past two days which I will synthesize quickly for you: One, the (so-called) father of AI said that AI is not creative and doesn’t “imagine”, but someday perhaps it will. (I think that was on “60 Minutes” last night, not sure. Either there or C-SPAN.) The other was a post from Mungo on Shrewdm.com, in which he opined that what AI does is take all the “wisdom” of the internet and boil it down - which really makes it just a synthesizer of “conventional wisdom of the internet”.
That may make it useful for “facts” (*as the overlong cut-and-paste brigade here is fond of) but not necessarily for insight. Then again, most consultants don’t either - as one article says, “they hire smart kids straight out of the university and then charge clients big fees for them to write reports.” The amount that I didn’t know coming out of university could fill the space between Mars & Jupiter, but I can type fast so maybe I would have made a good consultant?
As my husband likes to describe them (usually brand new residents) " Minds unfettered by the constraints of knowledge, skill, and expertise"
What he also likes to opine (but not necessarily abide by himself)…that you don’t have to know much to be sure you know enough, but a heck of a lot to realise you don’t. So you’re manifestly on the right track.
Back in the Old TMF days, my quote on my profile was “The more I learn, the less I seem to know”.
As always - by sounding authoritative while putting their brand name behind saying what the hiring company’s senior management hired them for to say.
Then, senior management has leeway to execute on what they always wanted, errm, the consultants‘ recommendation.
If things go pearshaped, senior management can then point to the premium consultancy firm having recommended precisely that course of action („we paid for the very best!“).
In many ways, AI is exactly the force multiplier that is needed to scale up Mckinsey’s efficiency at extracting dollars.
With AI:
(Mc)Kinsey can ginn up clone presentations using standard “industry” data even faster, all while customizing the banner slide to show how great the company is.
Mc - can automate the production process of “insights” with quick anecdotes from glassdoor, thelayoff, gartner, linkedin, and all of the other sites showing data from the company.
Mc - can reference studies of prior studies which show meta strategy applicable to mega trends
Mc - can still deliver presentations with “senior” partners who bill out at $500/hr with even less underling support.
I think profits up, hiring down and service at par are absolutely a theme in this note.
← saw the criminally identical presentation from two different McKinsey teams while participating in management reviews at two separate companies in two separate industries. The only thing they changed was the client’s name on the title slide.
That is the foundation of success dealing with “JCs”: tell them what they want to hear. And now we see that mechanism operating at the highest levels of government.