If your Big Four consulting firm has not delivered a working AI strategy, and your company is losing ground to competitors on AI, that firm has already failed at the job it was hired for. Thomas Anglero has advised executives on why traditional consulting partners are struggling to keep pace with AI, and the reason is structural, not personal.
Why do traditional consulting firms struggle with AI specifically?
Traditional consulting firms sell time and hours, and AI now delivers a version of the same analysis in minutes. A business model built around billable hours is a poor fit for a technology that compresses the work those hours used to cover, so the incentive to move fast is weaker than it looks from the outside. That strain is now visible even inside the largest firms: McKinsey now earns roughly 25% of its global fees from outcome-based pricing rather than billable hours, as its internal AI tools compress the analytical work consultants used to bill by the hour, according to its UK managing partner, reported by Business Insider in November 2025.
Why do companies keep paying anyway?
Switching feels riskier than staying, especially when the relationship is old and the firm is well known. That risk calculation is usually wrong: if a strategy has not already been delivered, the cost of staying is a continued absence of one, which is a bigger risk than switching to someone new. Only 12% of CEOs report that AI has delivered both cost savings and revenue benefits, according to PwC’s 29th Global CEO Survey. Most of that 88% are being advised by somebody.
What should replace the relationship?
Not necessarily another large firm with the same incentive structure. An advisor whose engagement is defined and finite, with no multi-year framework to protect, has a different incentive: deliver the strategy, then step back.
| Big Four consulting firm | Strategic AI advisor | |
|---|---|---|
| What they are structured to protect | An existing multi-year engagement and billing relationship. | Nothing internal to protect. |
| What the incentive rewards | Billable hours, whether or not a strategy actually ships. | A finished, working strategy. |
| Best used for | Execution and implementation, once a strategy is set. | The first honest diagnosis. |
Read the full argument in Your Traditional Partners Are Failing You in the Age of AI, or return to the Strategic AI Advisor guide.
Thomas Anglero is a Strategic AI Advisor, keynote speaker and author of Intro to Artificial Intelligence. He advises boards on AI while running a company whose engineering team is AI agents rather than people. He has delivered over 450 keynotes across 30 countries for organizations including IBM, the WHO, the World Governments Summit and the European Commission.