Consultants Talk

In this episode, we talk with Jonathan Hughes, partner and practice leader for management consulting services at CitrinCooperman. He believes the future of consulting will be shaped less by AI replacing consultants than by firms' ability to help clients translate AI investments into meaningful business performance.  Rather than advocating a wholesale reinvention of consulting economics and a push to outcome-based pricing, we discuss pragmatic approaches that better align client and consultant interests: budget caps, transparent fee structures, regular performance reviews, and selective success bonuses. 

Is AI the end or the beginning for the consulting industry?

In our latest episode, we hosted a roundtable discussion at Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business. AI was a dominant theme. Our distinguished guests included: David Betts, Retired Principal, Deloitte; Paul Frank, Principal, PwC, and Balika Sonthalia, Senior Partner & Practice Leader, Kearney.

Speaking to more than 100 graduate students, these experienced pros discussed AI's real effects for the consulting industry and the skills tomorrow's consultants will need to succeed. It was an invigorating conversation and full of surprising takes on the future.

In this episode, we share a preview of our newest research -- the 2026 Consulting Navigator report. The Navigator is a detailed breakdown of the global consulting market, with market size and forecast data as well as ratings and assessments of consulting providers and their capability-building investments. My colleague and report author, Nathan Simon shares details on the rapidly changing consulting landscape.

Most consulting firms are still using AI to do fairly routine and basic tasks. But firms are experimenting and getting a lot closer to what a consulting partner would produce. But will AI replace that expertise? 

In this episode, we talk with Professor Joe O'Mahoney, the consultants' consultant. He's been advising firms for more than 20 years, with a particular emphasis on building equity and value for boutique firms. He explains what AI still doesn't do, which is understand the political environment of the client. So as firms narrow their pyramid, that expertise becomes even more important. 

Conventional wisdom says top-level partners are the "rainmakers" for consulting firms. David Ryan, founder of Gray Matters Group, tells us that real revenue generation comes from the other 90% of your consulting staff. David has spent the last 20+ years advising professional services firms on how to activate front-line consultants to be your most effective business development team. Host Tom Rodenhauser and David discuss the pragmatic skills, tools, and behaviors that can be immediately applied to provide an immediate revenue boost.

Consulting's mentorship model has long been the foundation of the industry. Does AI threaten to undermine this principle? Will bots be the teachers rather than the experienced partners?  In this episode, Tom talks with Tony Klimas, who has been a senior partner at EY as well as KPMG and Bearingpoint. His capstone was as President of Horvath USA. Reflecting on more than three decades of leadership and service in consulting, Tony believes AI will actually enable firms to be more responsive to teaching the skills necessary to succeed in the consulting industry.

Every consulting firm talks about values and principles. But do they live them? In this episode, Tom talks with Adam Boitnott, founder of fast-growing Hylaine Consulting, on what it's like to say "no" to clients. Adam's philosophy was formed early in his career, when, as a junior consultant at Accenture, he sent the CEO a list of suggestions for bettering the firm. Today he teaches staffers that doing right by client means more than the bottom line.

In this episode, Tom is joined by Brent Trimble, Vice President of Value Engineering at Kantata and host of the Professional Services Pursuit podcast, for a candid conversation on what it really takes to grow a consulting firm. Drawing on decades of experience in advertising, consulting, and SaaS, Brent unpacks why differentiation is more than a slogan, how firms can escape the “sea of sameness,” and why discipline matters at every stage of growth.

Jim O'Malley is a senior talent advisor who has quietly filled C-suites and deal teams for Private Equity houses, blue-chip professional-services partnerships, and financial-services giants for more than three decades.

In our conversation, Jim offers insights on why PE has become the dominant investor in consulting services over the last decade. We also talk about what traits separate a partner-track consultant from those who successfully take on an operating-partner role.

The consulting industry is undergoing massive disruption -- a period where we'll see breakups and breakouts. That's because the core consulting business model has stayed largely intact even as the world has shifted. The multi-billion-dollar partner-owned, practice-based organization with resource-based fees (time and materials or fixed fee) can't continue to scale. Those betting on GenAI’s salvation fail to recognize that GenAI’s greatest near-term transformative potential is in the consulting industry itself, which will hasten rather than postpone a break with the consulting industry's current decline phase.

AI is not Digitization 2.0. The consulting industry needs a new business model, not a new offering.