What I Learned From Clients About the Future of Consulting

The Quiet Shift No One Could Ignore

Every few years, the consulting world feels a tremor. A new technology, a new methodology, or a new kind of client expectation comes along and tests the foundations of how the business works. But this time, the tremor feels different.

It began quietly for me in August 2023. I had just started StratOffice, a strategy and innovation advisory built on a simple question: What if consulting could evolve to serve clients the way modern businesses actually operate?

To find the answer, I went back to where every good consultant should begin — with the client.

Over the past two years, I have spoken to Chief Strategy Officers, Chief Innovation Officers, and business leaders across industries. From large corporates to mid-sized companies, from startups to venture studios, from VC funds to family offices, the diversity of these conversations was remarkable. They took me across the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Singapore, South Korea, and Australia. Yet despite their differences, they all echoed one common frustration: the way consulting is delivered no longer fits the world in which they now operate.

What Clients Really Said

When I began these discussions, I was expecting to hear the usual list of concerns such as cost, timelines, and deliverables. Instead, what I heard was more nuanced. It was not dissatisfaction with consulting as a craft, but with consulting as an industry.

The comments were candid and consistent.

“We need partner-level judgment without a six-month engagement.”

“I love structured thinking, but the fees are out of proportion to the size of our problem.”

“I do not need a 10-person team running analysis. I need one person who understands my business and can think with me.”

“Now that we have tools like ChatGPT and other AI platforms, the cost of problem-solving should come down, not go up.”

Each of these voices reflected a subtle but powerful shift in how clients view value. Consulting was once defined by access — access to frameworks, expertise, and structured thinking. Today, those are no longer scarce. The real scarcity is time, judgment, and the ability to translate complexity into clarity.

Many clients still admire consultants for their discipline and analytical rigor. But they are less willing to pay for layers of overhead or for the learning curves of junior teams. They want more wisdom, not more PowerPoint. They want a conversation, not a production.

Listening More, Selling Less

When I started StratOff, I spent most of the early months doing something few founders enjoy: not pitching. Instead, I listened.

I sat across from leaders in conference rooms, on video calls, and sometimes over phone calls. I asked them what they wished consulting could do better. The answers came slowly at first, but once the conversation deepened, the honesty flowed.

They told me that consulting firms often work to a rhythm that no longer matches the pace of modern decision-making. They said the traditional eight-week or twelve-week project model feels artificial. Some problems need two days of thinking, others need six months of support. Few fit neatly into a predefined engagement structure.

Several also pointed out that they are not looking for a consulting project at all. What they want is a thinking partner who can help them test ideas, explore options, and build conviction before taking big bets.

One client put it simply: “I do not want to outsource my strategy. I want to sharpen my own.”

Those words stayed with me. They captured what many others were hinting at. Clients are no longer looking for consultants who do the work for them. They are looking for collaborators who think the work with them.

What Alt-Consulting Really Represents

Out of these conversations, a pattern started to emerge. Clients were not rejecting consulting. They were calling for its reinvention.

That realization became the foundation for my upcoming book, Alt-Consulting: What Comes After the End of Strategy Consulting as We Knew It.

Alt-Consulting stands for “alternative consulting.” It reflects a new category of service providers that are rewriting the rules of how strategic support is delivered. These are small, senior-led teams or independent practitioners who blend the best of consulting craft with the speed and tools of modern technology. They use AI not as a substitute for thinking, but as an amplifier of it.

Their goal is simple: reduce the cost to solve a problem without reducing the quality of the solution.

But Alt-Consulting is not just a business model shift. It is a mindset shift. It challenges long-held assumptions about what makes consulting valuable — scale, prestige, and process — and replaces them with new measures of worth: adaptability, transparency, and judgment.

In this new model, the client is not just the buyer of a deliverable but the co-creator of insight. The consultant is not an external expert but a partner embedded in the rhythm of decision-making. And technology is not a threat but a multiplier.

The Unspoken Challenge: Changing Habits

However, there is another side to this story that is often overlooked. Even when new models of consulting emerge, adoption is never automatic.

The way consulting is bought and consumed is shaped by decades of habit. Procurement teams still evaluate consulting value in terms of headcount and hours. Senior executives often feel reassured by the presence of large teams and glossy decks. Many still associate “premium” with “scale.”

That inertia is powerful. It is one reason why even when clients recognize the promise of alternative consulting models, they hesitate to change how they engage. The challenge, therefore, is not only structural but behavioral.

This is where the next evolution of consulting must focus — on helping both sides, clients and consultants, unlearn old ways of working.

Consulting has always been a human business. It thrives on trust, judgment, and shared conviction. To evolve, it must now bring that same human understanding to its own transformation.

A Closing Reflection

When I look back at the hundreds of conversations that shaped this journey, I see more than frustration with old models. I see hope. I see leaders who still believe that outside perspective matters, that deep thinking can change the course of a business, and that the craft of consulting still has a future if it can adapt.

The real question is not whether consulting will survive disruption. It is whether it will learn to serve differently.

Alt-Consulting is not the end of consulting. It is the return of consulting to what it was always meant to be — a disciplined act of helping people think clearly in times of change.