Strategy consulting in an era of AI

What to hold on to, what to let go of, and what to build, when AI comes for the head work but struggles with the human alignment.

Ed MehmedAdvisor, Quallie.Ai

Ed Mehmed · May 2025 · 6 min

A few years ago, reviewing what the World Economic Forum had published as the top future skills in demand, I was feeling a little smug. So many of those skillsets I had witnessed firsthand as a consultant: analytical thinking and innovation, complex problem-solving, critical thinking, leadership and social influence, creativity and initiative, reasoning and ideation, active learning.

At the time it made me reflect that perhaps our clients were going through a major re-skilling, and that in five years or so they would have identified, valued, recruited for and grown these skills in-house. In short, our clients would end up looking a bit more like us consultants, seeking value from new and different places and responding better to the disruption and volatility that seems to be the norm.

Jump forward a couple of years, and with the acceleration of and interest in AI tools, agents and capabilities, it is in fact consultants, and professional services more broadly, who are asking what it means to be a consultant in an era of AI.

A working definition

Having spent 15 years at ?What If!, my answer is coloured by my own experience. To me a consultant is simply a trusted external partner who guides clients through a critical question or decision point, and helps make something positive happen, hopefully faster. As well as leading with a well-informed point of view for others to react to, build on, or throw rocks at. There’s nothing worse than a consultant without a point of view.

The consulting skillset

A consultant listens hard for the language clients use to describe problems before jumping to solutions. They bring inspiration, stimulus and ambition to open people up to possibility, and challenge orthodoxies where necessary, building diversity of thought and outside-in thinking into the room: customers, experts, new joiners, under-served groups, contrarians, futures visionaries.

Synthesis is a core consulting skill, taking broad data sets, insights and foresights to spot opportunity and drive commitment for new thinking. Storytelling and design are just as critical in making that thinking leap off the page. And new thinking needs de-risking, with a pragmatic plan to chunk strategy into actionable steps, ideally with optionality built in.

Which of these does AI touch?

So which of these are enabled by AI, which are commoditised or democratised by it, and which remain largely unchallenged? Like Brian Chesky said nearly ten years ago, quoting Tom Friedman on the three types of jobs affected by tech disruption at different rates: hands, head and hearts. Automation impacts manual work first, then it goes after the brain work, but it struggles to displace emotional work.

By the same logic, AI is going to struggle with the human alignment part of a consulting journey. Or put another way: strategy is a contact sport, and the things that get in the way of success are often messy human elements, like conflicting priorities, people not being fully committed, or being unclear on what good looks like.

I am excited about AI wading in to lighten the burden of the tedious tasks in customer research, or taking a fresh, objective look at all of a client’s past research so we break new ground. I am also comfortable with AI democratising design, provided it is good enough to elicit an honest reaction from customers and stakeholders.

So what parts of the job are left for me to hold on to, to fetishise, or defend? This is the wrong question.

AI is a great enabler. It’s freeing me up to focus on the bits of the job that make the most difference to a strategy landing with my client, and moving from PowerPoint to market impact.Ed Mehmed

I am not in the business of PowerPoint. I want to make my clients famous for bold new thinking that drives commercial success in-market, the type that makes it onto their CV and becomes a talking point on their career highlights.

So rather than asking what we are giving up, we should ask how we can learn and have more impact with AI tooling, and identify the messy human parts we are going to spend more time getting right. With that in mind, I’ve enrolled in Let’s Go practitioner training, to learn the model developed by Rich Watkins and his team and understand the human dynamics of how people get things done in groups.