The CEO who is still standing in 2027, respected and in control of their company, will very likely be the one who ended their relationship with the advisers they have trusted for years. Not out of disloyalty. Out of survival.
The tell in the transcripts
Listen to how the largest technology leaders now talk about AI on their earnings calls, quarter after quarter. The striking thing is not the enthusiasm. It is the absence of the traditional big consultancies from the story. The companies actually building the future are relying on their own people and their own conviction, not outsourcing their thinking to a firm that sells the same deck to every client in the industry. What used to be the safe choice has quietly gone missing from the conversations that matter.
Why the old model breaks in the AI era
Here is the mechanism, and it is not a personal attack on anyone’s competence. The traditional consulting model sells time and headcount. You pay for months of discovery, a large team and a slide deck at the end. That model was tolerable when change was slow. In the AI era it is a structural mismatch, for one blunt reason: by the time a lengthy engagement delivers, the technology it was scoped around has already moved. You paid for an answer to a question that has changed. This is the failure I set out in Your Traditional Partners Are Failing You in the Age of AI, and it is why buying hours is no longer the same as buying understanding.
There is a fair counter-argument, and I will make it honestly. The best consultancies are not standing still; they are building AI capability, buying firms and retraining people, and some are genuinely good at it. So the honest version of my claim is not that every consultancy is doomed. It is narrower and harder to dodge: the old engagement model, long timelines, big teams, generic playbooks, is the thing that breaks, whoever is selling it. A firm that has truly changed how it works can be valuable. A firm selling the pace of 2015 in 2027 cannot.
What replaces it
The pattern that works now is smaller, faster and closer. A trusted adviser who understands the business and can move at the speed the technology demands, working alongside internal people who own the outcome, rather than a large team that arrives, extracts fees and leaves. The direction of travel is towards conviction and capability held inside the company, supported by a few sharp external voices, not rented wholesale from outside. It is the same reason the right leader for this is usually already inside the building, which I argued in The Sleeper Has Awoken, and the reason concentration on one big external provider is its own risk, as in The Proud Leader Who Handed Off His Own Future.
How fast the ground can move is not theoretical. When a strong, cheaper open model appears seemingly overnight and resets what everyone assumed about cost and capability, the lesson is not about one model. It is that anyone whose advice was built on last year’s assumptions is already behind, and a slow engagement cannot catch up.
The CEO still standing in 2027 will not be the one who spent the most on the most famous firm. It will be the one who had the nerve to stop, and to build the understanding inside their own walls.
If you are leading your organisation through this, I work with a limited number of senior leaders each quarter. Get in touch at Anglero.com.
Thomas Anglero is a Strategic AI Advisor, keynote speaker and author of Intro to Artificial Intelligence. He has delivered over 450 keynotes across 30 countries for organisations including IBM, the WHO, the World Government Summit and the European Commission. He founded the IBM Watson AI Lab for Cancer at the Oslo Cancer Cluster and closed over $500 million in enterprise transformation deals as CTO and Chief Innovation Officer at Cognizant.
Frequently asked questions
Why would a CEO end long-standing consulting relationships because of AI?
Because the traditional model of long timelines and large teams is too slow for how fast AI moves. By the time a lengthy engagement delivers, the technology it was scoped around has already changed, so the CEO who moves to something faster tends to stay in control.
Are all management consultancies failing in the AI era?
No. The honest claim is narrower: the old engagement model of long timelines, big teams and generic playbooks is what breaks, whoever sells it. A firm that has genuinely changed how it works can still be valuable.
What replaces the traditional consulting model?
Something smaller, faster and closer: a trusted adviser who understands the business and moves at the speed of the technology, working alongside internal people who own the outcome, rather than a large team that arrives, charges and leaves.
Why does the pace of AI make slow consulting risky?
Because the ground moves suddenly. When a strong, cheaper model appears almost overnight and resets assumptions about cost and capability, advice built on last year’s assumptions is already behind, and a slow engagement cannot catch up.