Why I'm Still Disrupting Myself (Part Two)
What AI is really changing in boutique consulting, and what it isn't
A couple months ago, I published an article titled Why I'm Disrupting Myself. It was a reflection on thirty years of consulting work across 35 countries, and an admission that the way many of us have practiced consulting no longer matches the moment we're in.
Since then, I've been pressure-testing that thinking in new ways.
Most recently, I participated in a webinar hosted by Consulting Magazine with a title that caught my attention immediately:
AI Isn't Killing Consulting. It's Crowning New Champions.
That framing matters.
Because if you strip away the hype, what's happening right now isn't the death of consulting. It's a reshuffling of advantage. And boutique firms, if they're honest with themselves, are better positioned than they might think.
What's Actually Changing
The most interesting insights from the conversation had very little to do with flashy AI tools.
The real shifts are happening inside firms, in how work is scoped, priced, staffed, and learned from.
Several boutique leaders described using AI to analyze past projects and uncover uncomfortable truths. Where did scope creep start. Which clients quietly drained margins. Which service lines looked healthy on the surface but were subsidized by others.
I've done this with my own portfolio. Looking back at engagements from the past five years, I found a couple of client relationships that felt productive but consistently ran over scope. The pattern wasn't obvious in the moment. It was obvious in the aggregate.
This isn't about blaming teams. It's about seeing patterns that were previously buried in spreadsheets, emails, and memory.
The same applies to staffing. Instead of defaulting to the same external contractors or the loudest internal voices, firms are mapping actual skills and experience across their teams. Not just availability, but fit.
When you can see who has done what, where, and with what results, staffing decisions get better fast.
It's not glamorous work, but it changes how firms like mine operate.
The Quiet Advantage of Boutiques
One point that kept resurfacing was governance.
Large firms are struggling with it. Too many people, too many tools, too little consistency. AI gets used anyway, often quietly, with uneven quality and unclear accountability.
Boutique firms don't have that excuse.
With fewer people and tighter cultures, it's possible to set clear expectations. Which tools are approved. How data is handled. When human review is required. What 'human in the loop' actually means in practice.
Done well, governance becomes a client trust signal. Not 'we use AI,' but 'we use AI responsibly, transparently, and with judgment.'
That difference matters, especially for nonprofit and public-interest clients who already operate in high-risk environments.
Pricing Is the Fault Line
AI is exposing the limits of time-and-materials pricing.
If efficiency gains simply lead to lower fees, firms will feel pressure to run faster just to stay in place. That's not sustainable.
The boutiques that are pulling ahead are moving toward fractional, outcome-based, and fixed-fee models. AI helps them do the hard work upfront, understanding the problem faster, modeling value more clearly, and pricing with confidence.
This isn't about selling snake oil. It's about aligning incentives.
When pricing reflects outcomes, not hours, AI becomes a lever for better delivery and healthier margins at the same time.
What Hasn't Changed, and Won't
Here's the part that matters most to me.
Despite all the talk of disruption, the fundamentals of consulting are still stubbornly human.
AI cannot read a room. It cannot sense when resistance is forming behind polite language. It cannot take responsibility for a recommendation when the stakes are high.
It can surface patterns. It can accelerate analysis. It can widen the evidence base.
But it cannot replace judgment, discernment, or trust.
That's the same conclusion I reached when I revisited our past work in Albania, Uganda, the Caribbean, and elsewhere for Why I'm Disrupting Myself. The technology would have helped us see more, sooner. It would not have done the work of relationship-building, legitimacy-building, or shared ownership.
In fact, one of the strongest warnings from the discussion was about 'AI mediocrity.'
If consultants accept plausible but generic outputs, stop challenging assumptions, or confuse speed with insight, the work gets worse, not better.
The consultant's role as filter, interpreter, and the person who says 'wait, let's think about this' becomes more important, not less.
So What's the Real Disruption?
The disruption isn't AI.
It's whether we're willing to rethink the operating model around it.
Most firms are still scoping work the same way they did ten years ago. Still staffing based on convenience instead of fit. Still pricing based on effort instead of outcomes.
The real question is whether we're willing to use new tools to make the hard parts of consulting sharper, faster, and more honest.
For me, this reinforces why I started disrupting myself in the first place.
The future of consulting doesn't belong to firms that adopt new technology.
It belongs to firms that adapt most deliberately.
When I think about the work that mattered most over thirty years, it was never the analysis alone. It was the analysis delivered by someone the client trusted, in a room where the stakes were real. AI makes the analysis faster. It doesn't change what trust requires. That's still on us.