Is DOGE reinventing Consulting?

What can we learn from DOGE's approach and what does it mean for the future of our industry?

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Apr 17, 2025

There’s been a lot of discussion online about Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the US. A lot of it inappropriate for this newsletter!

Some say it marks the end of consulting as we know it, demonstrating a new tech-driven model that delivers real impact faster than ever before. Others dismiss it as a chaotic, heavy-handed experiment that is doing major damage.

So, which is it? Is DOGE a glimpse into the future of consulting, or a crazy experiment we’d be mad to take anything from?

My invitation: Put a cold towel on your head, suspend your political or ideological views, and let’s see if there are things we can learn from this. If nothing else the DOGE experiment is certainly throwing off a lot of data and examples.

Why is this relevant to consulting?

DOGE is driving change as an outsider to the organisations it’s working with. Much like consultants do. The DOGE team are also using lots of familiar consulting methods - like zero-based budgeting, 80/20, and root cause analysis.

The differences come in the approach to execution. Where consulting firms use influence to navigate stakeholder consensus in complex environments, DOGE prioritises speed and steamrollers through. Where consultants present recommendations for others to make decisions, DOGE just implements. Where consultants are careful about the risks of things going wrong… DOGE appears not to be thinking too much about that.

Let’s dive in and see what’s going on…

[Side note: This is my outside-in view on this. I’m bound to miss stuff. I’m trying to be politically neutral. I may fail at that. Please do address my blind spots in the comments!]

How DOGE is using The Consulting Playbook

Despite its unique position, DOGE follows a familiar consulting script when it comes to cost-cutting. It is engaged in what we’d call a ‘cost-out’ project and there are several classic consulting methods at play:

1. Zero-Based Budgeting

Zero-based budgeting is the practice of starting with a clean sheet of paper and asking “what do we need to spend?” Often dismissed - by both clients and consultants - as too difficult to figure out. Instead we revert to benchmarking, where we compare our approach to what others are doing:

“How many people do we need in our HR team? Well, competitor A has 1 HR person for every 75 employees, competitor B has 1 per 120, competitor C has 1 per 90. We have 1 per 25 so maybe we need to reduce our HR headcount”

DOGE have effectively gone for zero-based budgeting instead. They are classifying all costs as either legitimate (“we want to spend this”), wastage, or fraud. The latter two categories are automatically stopped.

This way of applying ZBB is unquestionably radical and aggressive. It is not being done with much, if any, engagement with the organisations in question. They are simply being told their budgets are slashed, and certain categories of spend are no longer approved.

Radical and aggressive, but it forces change pretty effectively. With benchmarking that kind of fundamental shift rarely happens. It can’t. The entire approach starts from an assumption that your client should try and replicate what others are doing - not exactly the definition of creativity.

2. The 80/20 Rule (Pareto Principle)

The Pareto Principle broadly states that you’ll get 80% of the benefit from 20% of the action you take. The usual conclusion is to focus on the 20% most valuable stuff first. This is the principle that has kept many a consultant, including me, on the right side of burnout over the years.

DOGE’s stated goal is to reduce US government spending by $1 trillion a year.

That’s a huge number. I am reminded of a cost reduction programme I worked on once, at a bloated private equity fund. The Managing Partner famously said “you’ve got to fire a lot of secretaries to make up for one under-performing Partner” - his way of telling us to focus on the most expensive people first.

[In that example, things got awkward when he also later decided that one of the under-performing Partners was the guy he’d nominated to run the cost reduction programme a couple of weeks earlier…]

DOGE is applying the 80/20 rule to give themselves a chance of getting to their $1 trillion target. Many consultants would start by looking at the largest areas of spend. But the goal isn’t to find the largest areas of spend - it’s to find the biggest savings.

Musk has said they targeted USAID first because it had the highest rate of non-compliance with Donald Trump’s executive orders. Like a bloodhound sniffing out a rat, this made them suspicious that USAID was hiding something. They saw a potential opportunity to find significant wastage or fraud quickly.

In other words: they started with USAID, not because it’s the largest area of government spending, but because they had a hypothesis it could get them impact quickly and start to garner some momentum towards their goal.

As consultants, this is a reminder that you have to keep the goal of your project firmly in mind whenever you’re choosing what to focus on. How can you get to an early proof-of-value that your client cares about?

3. Root Cause Analysis

A hallmark of good consulting is the ability to dig beyond surface-level issues. Figure out what is really going on. In our ‘High Gain Questions’ methodology - Evaluate, Speculate, Feel, Peel - the peel stands for peeling the onion, to get down to the core of the issue.

A common method for this is the ‘Five Whys’, where - simply put - the consultant asks ‘Why?’ to each answer they get, to figure out the root causes of an issue.

DOGE is applying this by using their tech capability to get answers to ‘Why’ questions that haven’t been answered before. For example, when they spotted unusual patterns in the Social Security budget, they didn’t stop at the numbers but investigated further:

We spend $1.4 trillion p.a. on Social Security, who does this go to?
We’ve found over 10 million records in the database of people aged over 120, are these real?
Some of the deceased recipients are data artifacts relating to the COBOL programming language used, but how much money is actually going out?
We estimate just under $15 billion to deceased recipients, can these be stopped?

The power DOGE is bringing to this type of analysis is their ability to use tech and AI to analyse vast quantities of data at pace, and find answers to questions like these quickly.

Of course, speed comes with risks. As was drilled into me in my early days at Bain, consulting outputs must be “zero defect”. DOGE seems less concerned with this.

DOGE vs. Consulting: The Key Differences

At its core, the biggest difference between DOGE and traditional consulting is decision-making power. Typically, consultants advise and influence, but they don’t make the final call. Even the most senior MBB and Big 4 partners remain advisors; a voice in the ear of the CEO. They sit next to decision-makers, not in their seats.

DOGE, however, operates differently. Musk and his team don’t just advise, they execute. This alone makes it difficult to align DOGE with traditional consulting, but there are three more key differences worth noting:

1. A Brutal Approach to Change Management

Consultants are trained to excel in stakeholder management. We ensure buy-in, carefully influence, build consensus, and mitigate risks. This smooths decision debates and helps us stay present with clients, but it can also slow down execution to a crawl.

DOGE, on the other hand, prioritises speed over consensus. They are not seeking approval. They assume people will adjust because they have to. More than that - the speed of change is a tool they use to drive change itself. People either adapt to the new world or leave.

This is the same playbook Musk used when he bought Twitter, cutting 80% of the workforce overnight. Many argue that proved effective - the product kept working, and the pace of innovation and execution has accelerated. That is an owner mindset, where the risks sit with the decision maker.

For most consultants, taking those kinds of risks would result in you getting fired. But, are we too risk averse? Are consultants spending too much time on buy-in at the expense of real action? When is it better to rip off the plaster quickly?

2. The ‘Two-Way Door’ Mindset

Jeff Bezos popularised the concept of one-way vs. two-way door decisions - those that are irreversible versus those that can be undone. DOGE operates under the assumption that most decisions are reversible. They’re cutting deep, believing they can restore funding later if needed. There are already examples of this e.g., DOGE stopped funding for fighting Ebola and had to add it back.

In fact, Musk has said that if they don’t add anything back this is evidence that they haven’t cut deep enough. They are deliberately using a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel. Prioritising speed over precision.

Traditional consulting tends towards the cautious, one-way door approach, requiring exhaustive analysis and consensus before making a move. It is the opposite of the tech world's “move fast and break things'“ philosophy.

The inevitable consequence is that the more radical possibilities will be kept in a theoretical realm and never tested in real-world situations. Big ideas get diluted down to a middle ground that is more risk averse than rocket ship.

What might you never learn if you are too cautious to go through what is, in fact, a two-way door? How can you encourage your clients to move faster, even when the outcomes are uncertain?

3. AI and Automation as Decision-Making Tools

Many consulting firms are toying with tech and AI. The pyramid is becoming a column, but only slowly. Most firms are still people first, tech second when it comes to finding solutions.

DOGE is different. They are tech through and through, using cutting-edge AI to process vast amounts of data in real time. The numbers are spat out and decisions are made. Speed over precision; impact over risk management.

This enables DOGE to spot savings opportunities, at scale, in a way no traditional consulting team would manage in a multiple of the time it is taking DOGE.

From my conversations with consulting firm leaders many would like to use these new tools to move faster, but again the cautious approach takes over. AI without human checking is too risky. Checking “live” - the DOGE approach of just doing it and seeing who complains - is incompatible with normal consulting engagements.

For consulting firms, what’s the middle ground? How can we use these technologies without crippling ourselves with red tape and risk management?

Lessons for consultants from DOGE

DOGE may not be a traditional consulting engagement but it’s having an undeniable impact through its propensity to action. We define consulting as ‘solving difficult problems so people can take action with confidence’. In that context, DOGE provides us some thought-provoking lessons:

‘Tech-enabled’ isn’t optional: DOGE’s use of AI and automation demonstrates how consultancies will have to develop to provide deeper, faster insights, and reduce their reliance on legacy benchmarking techniques.
The need for speed: DOGE’s focus on making quick, data-driven decisions - without endless stakeholder debates - avoids analysis paralysis and leads to action.
Leave an impact: DOGE isn’t just producing recommendations; it’s implementing them. We consultants always need to consider whether we’re delivering real impact or just producing well-crafted PowerPoint decks.
Pareto mindset: Consultants can learn from DOGE’s use of the 80/20 rule - stay focused on the purpose of your project, and prove value fast.

Of course, there is one other big difference. DOGE doesn't care about reputation. Musk isn't worrying about rolling the project, or getting a client testimonial.

DOGE may not be a blueprint for consulting, but it challenges us to consider if there are ways we can do things differently to be more effective - particularly by taking more risks. In this modern world, value is rarely found by treading the safe middle ground. Someone else will move faster, think bigger, and have more impact. When the game is to out-execute, the middle ground isn’t as safe as it seems.

Perhaps the biggest lesson consultants can take from DOGE may be this: if you want to be truly valuable to your clients, you need to help them move faster, take risks, and sometimes break things.

Is DOGE reinventing Consulting?

What can we learn from DOGE's approach and what does it mean for the future of our industry?

How DOGE is using The Consulting Playbook

DOGE vs. Consulting: The Key Differences

Lessons for consultants from DOGE

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