McKinsey just cut up to 4,000 jobs. Deloitte erased its entire job title structure for 181,500 people. Neither happened because business is bad. Both happened because AI now does the work that used to take a team of analysts weeks.
Here’s the number that matters more than the layoffs: McKinsey’s AI tool Lilli cuts research and synthesis time by 30 percent on a typical engagement. BCG’s Deckster builds a full presentation deck in minutes. When a client gets their research back in thirty minutes, they stop paying you for research.
That’s the real story under these layoffs. The work that used to build a consulting career, data gathering, modeling, slide production, is the work AI now owns. That work was also how junior consultants learned. Take it away, and the old ladder from analyst to partner doesn’t just get shorter. It breaks.
I wrote about this exact shift in Experiential Intelligence: the accumulated judgment behind your work is the part AI can’t touch. This is that idea showing up in real time, industry-wide.
So what actually holds value now?
Three things, and none of them show up on a resume the way financial modeling does:
- First, master the room. The ability to walk into a meeting where people disagree about the problem, let alone the solution, and create clarity anyway, is built through practice, not automation.
- Second, lead the interpretation. AI can hand you the analysis. It can’t tell you what it means for this client, in this moment, or whether the assumptions underneath it are even right. That’s your job now.
- Third, build your network. Every engagement you get staffed on, every deal you help close, comes down to relationships. AI isn’t going to build those for you.
This Week
Before your next team or client meeting, name one judgment call you’ve been deferring to a more senior colleague. Consider your viewpoint and build that into your work product proactively. Then share that interpretation with the and see how it changes their perception of you, and what they ask you for next.
Where has this already shown up for you? Reply and tell me.
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