Every consulting firm knows AI is changing the industry. Far fewer can say what the firms getting it right are doing differently, or where the rest are going wrong.
Honeycomb’s Colin Mann is joined here by Adrien Foucault, founder of Spaik and a former McKinsey consultant. He advises consulting, private equity, and investment banking firms on AI, and teaches at HEC Paris and Sciences Po.
What’s covered:
The “scissor effect”: how AI is hitting consultancies on two fronts at once, opening new revenue from AI and tech work while reshaping the economics of delivery.
Top-down versus bottom-up AI deployment, the trade-offs of each, and the hybrid “AI council” model that brings every level of the firm into the decision.
What the global firms have actually built, from McKinsey’s Lilli to BCG’s slide and brainstorming assistants, Bain’s due-diligence bot, and EY’s payroll chatbot.
The new business models AI is opening up: outcome-based fees, consulting as a service, asset-based consulting, and premium “handmade” human judgement.
How the consultant’s role is changing, from the classic pyramid towards a flatter shape, the rise of the subject-matter expert and the agent “architect”, and the shift to prompt, validate, and write up.
The biggest risks to manage: hallucinations and the real fallout when they reach clients (Deloitte Australia refunded work over incorrect quotes, names, and legal text), data confidentiality, and the temptation to cut the validate step, so output speeds up while judgement erodes.
The session closed with a wide-ranging audience Q&A, including:
– What happens to consulting demand as clients build their own AI capability?
– How do you set an AI strategy when the tooling changes every week?
– Where do the tools really stand on Excel and PowerPoint modelling today?
– How do firms keep the pace sustainable and protect space for reflection and creativity?
One to watch if you lead a consulting firm and want a practical, clear-eyed view of what good AI adoption looks like in practice.
The Skilled Consultant is written by Deri Hughes and Colin Mann, Managing Directors of Honeycomb Consulting Skills Training. We help consulting leaders develop exceptional teams with world-class training to support every career transition.
If this discussion raised a question about your own team, do drop a comment below or book a 30-minute call with Deri or with Colin to discuss how we could help you.
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