Which consulting delivery formats will AI make redundant – and which ones will it never touch?
In my previous post (https://lnkd.in/d7nUYHEj mapped out eight typical consulting service delivery formats and asked which ones you should bet long on as AI reshapes the industry. Here’s my take.
AI can replicate expertise. It cannot replicate trust. That distinction is the whole story.
At the top of the pyramid: advisory and strategy, executive coaching, fractional executive roles, and peer advisory groups. These engagements run on relationship.
A CEO making a bet-the-company call is not looking for a framework. She is looking for someone she trusts – someone who knows her organisation, her blind spots, her board dynamics, and has skin in the outcome. AI can help you prepare for that conversation. It cannot be the person in it.
In the middle: workshops, training, and project implementation. Human expertise still drives the outcome here. The caveat is real though — execution-heavy project work is getting squeezed. Judgment-heavy transformation work is not. Know which one you’re selling.
At the base: digital products and IP licensing in their generic forms. Courses, toolkits, packaged frameworks. AI produces comparable outputs freely and fast. The one nuance worth noting – genuinely proprietary, battle-tested IP is a different animal. That belongs at the top of this pyramid, not the base.
The question is whether your delivery model puts you in the room when decisions get made – or only after the hard thinking is already done.
Bet long on trust. It’s the only differentiator AI cannot commoditise.
✍ Where does most of your consulting revenue sit on this pyramid right now – top, middle, or base?
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