AI is Disrupting - And that's a Good Thing

The Wall Street Journal just ran a piece on McKinsey’s AI strategy (link to article). The big takeaway: consulting as we know it is facing an existential crisis. As a Big 4 consultant, and current consulting business owner - what does this mean when AI disrupts me?

McKinsey is deploying bots to write reports, summarize interviews, and build decks. They’ve cut more than 10% of their workforce in the last two years and 40% of their revenue is AI and related technology. And they’re not alone—every big firm is feeling the same pressure.

As someone who spent a decade at Deloitte and now co-owns a consulting firm, here’s my take: AI is reshaping the very foundation of our industry.
Five years ago, if a client wanted to know where to build a new IT help desk, or some market sentiment research that might have been a multi-week, $30K consulting project. Today, a well-crafted prompt can get you 70–80% of the answer in minutes. That’s the work junior consultants and offshore teams used to do—and AI is doing it faster, cheaper, and often better.

Those 25-person change management projects? They can be much leaner now with AI drafting comms, analyzing survey data, and recommending actions. The longer duration project can be done at a faster pace and doesn't require as many 40+ hour per week consultants that hurts billable hours for the Big 4. At Workfast, we’ve stayed lean by design based on client demand and where we see the market is heading.

The WSJ article says clients are moving away from the “suit with a PowerPoint.” I agree. In the Age of AI, being a great idea person is invaluable—but what clients are continually asking Workfast Consulting is someone to walk beside them through the change. AI can generate a thick report with high-level advice. That’s not the hard part. The hard part is helping organizations push through messy, human change when technology moves faster than they can absorb it.

That’s where we’ve built our focus at Workfast. Just in the past three days, we’ve started a new AI project with a client yesterday and put in requested proposals for two other clients on AI transformation and support. They’re not asking us for a slide deck—they’re asking us to help them navigate uncharted territory and make AI real in their business. Help them accelerate their usage and adoption of AI to not be left behind in this moment of rapid change.

I believe the consulting firms that thrive in the next decade will be those that combine AI leverage with deep, hands-on partnership. Less “here’s your binder—good luck” and more “let’s build this together.”

If you’ve worked in or used consulting, what’s your take? Is this disruption overdue, or do you see risks for the profession?

Also we always welcome your referrals or having introductory conversations with organizations who are looking to accelerate their transformation and adoption of AI.