AI will not kill McKinsey
A lot of people don't understand what elite management consultancies actually do
TL;DR: this is a short post about how people misunderstand what McKinsey, and its competitors, Bain and Boston Consulting Group (BCG), do, and how advanced AI will entrench, not eliminate, their presence in corporate America’s boardrooms. Further, the same reasons why advanced AI will entrench elite management consultancies is also why elite law firms will also survive advanced AI.
There’s a widespread misunderstanding of McKinsey, Bain, and BCG (the “MBB” firms), and it mirrors the misunderstanding of elite law firms. Many people assume that once advanced AI arrives, the thinking work of strategy consulting will be automated away, leading to the collapse of MBB. In reality, these firms will almost certainly become more entrenched, not less.
What follows explains why the misunderstanding exists, and why it is wrong.
People confuse content with context
Misunderstanding: Many assume that because AI can generate analyses, models, and presentations, it will replace consultants. After all, if GPT-10 can spit out a flawless five-forces analysis, why pay McKinsey $10M?
Reality: MBB doesn’t really sell content; it sells context. It sells the ability to insert analysis into the decision-making guts of the world’s most powerful organizations.
AI can write a strategy deck; it can’t get the CEO of a Fortune 50 company, the board, and a sovereign wealth fund to actually act on it. The value is not the PowerPoint slide. It’s the credibility and access that makes that slide consequential.
People misunderstand what MBB does at a meta-level
MBB is not about doing strategy. Instead, they legitimize decisions, arbitrage trust, and impose discipline.
Legitimizing decisions: Boards and CEOs hire them to bless moves already being contemplated, creating political cover.
Arbitraging trust: They are trusted intermediaries between C-suites, boards, regulators, and investors.
Imposing discipline: When a CEO needs an org to execute a difficult pivot (layoffs, restructuring, culture change), McKinsey provides the scaffolding and neutral muscle.
None of these functions go away with AI. They become more necessary when AI accelerates decision velocity and raises the stakes.
People assume power hierarchies flatten with AI
Misunderstanding: “AI democratizes knowledge, so everyone will have McKinsey-tier insights.”
Reality: Yes, insights will be democratized. But decision rights won’t be. Boards will still want someone to blame if things go wrong. And “we followed ChatGPT” won’t cut it. CEOs will still want an external voice to arbitrate disputes and validate directions.
AI makes companies more dependent on these kinds of meta-service providers, not less, because the flow of information will be faster, more chaotic, and harder to adjudicate internally.
People misunderstand how institutions react to uncertainty
When technology dislocates industries, the demand for trusted advisors spikes. In the 1980s/90s, globalization and financial deregulation massively expanded MBB’s footprint. In the 2000s, post-Enron/SOX and then the 2008 global financial crisis did the same for elite law firms and consultancies.
AI is another dislocation. Boards will not say: “Great, we can fire McKinsey now.” They will say: “We need McKinsey to tell us how to survive this.”
People misunderstand MBB’s self-preservation instinct
These firms don’t passively “do strategy”. They actively shape markets for their own relevance. McKinsey helped create the market for modern corporate strategy. BCG literally invented the growth-share matrix that reshaped how conglomerates thought about capital allocation.
When AI matures, MBB will be the ones writing the white papers, defiining the “AI maturity index,” and selling the frameworks for AI transformation. That narrative power is almost impossible to dislodge.
The analogy to elite law firms is exact
People thought e-discovery software would destroy BigLaw. It didn’t. It increased the reliance on elite law firms for interpreting the results; arbitrating what counts as relevant; and providing the last mile of trusted judgment.
Expect the same arc with MBB: AI will hollow out the commodity tier of consulting (Tier 2 firms, regional players, freelance slide jockeys), but the apex predators will grow stronger, because they are selling judgment, not labor.
AI creates new layers of advisory complexity
Boards will want to know which AI vendors to trust, how to restructure labor forces ethically and legally, and how to present AI-driven cost savings to regulators, unions, and the media.
These are not things you prompt for. They require trusted intermediaries who can navigate politics, PR, regulation, and cross-border complexity. MBB is perfectly positioned for this.
Summary
Casual observers see: “McKinsey makes slides —> AI can make slides —> McKinsey dies.”
What’s actually happening: McKinsey provides socially-validated judgment —> AI increases decision stress and noise —> McKinsey becomes even more valuable.
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i mean…..you are unfortunately probably correct, but this is all still pretty dumb stuff for status monkeys.
the entire management consulting racket has been purely a political CYA tax—mostly independent of any “business transformation” or “strategy” value—for at least 15 years.
reading “that tax will be even higher going forward” when Robo is more than capable of generating the actual strategic/implementation blueprints makes me want to bang my head into a desk.
Sounds like it's CYA all the way down.