An AI Disruption Score with One, Probably Irrelevant, Omission
April 15, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I love consulting and services firms. An AI “disruption score” from AlixPartners caught the attention of Business Insider. “A New Scorecard Shows Which Software Companies Will Win or Lose in AI” explains how a savvy investor or AI hungry professional can choose which horse to ride in the smart software derby. The article points out that the SaaSpocalypse may be a bit of a problem and notes “one that could reshape private equity portfolios in painful ways.” Yep, SaaSpocalypse. I think this means bad news, but when consulting firms explain something there will be an upside and a downside. The girl scout bake sale will raise funds for a camping trip. The cookies could contain poison.
Yes, sir, we have an AI horse, an AI pony, and a sheep dressed up like AI. Which is the winner. The buyer needs help figuring out which of these animals can pull his delivery wagon. Thanks, Venice.ai. The weird colors are an innovation, right? Well, good enough.
So what is this “disruption score”?
The write up says that the “score” depends on “two main factors: data and vertical specialization.” How does one quantify “data” and “vertical specialization”? That’s the magic of many consulting firm explanations. General Eisenhower like the four square grid labeled with measurable data like men, supplies, and ammunition. The standard consulting grid uses icons like cows and stars. You get the idea. Abstractions sell explanations.
Alix scores companies on a spectrum. Risks are calculated. Those with high scores have moats, presumably capable of stopping invaders armed with bows and arrows. It is possible that an invader from China might have a laser weapon or information about a CEO’s off-site behavior, but that moat will definitely prevent a problem. Well, there is risk in human endeavor and technology.
The write up quotes someone from Alix as saying in a slide deck:
“Protection from AI disruption is far higher when companies own proprietary data, systems of context, ecosystem leverage, embedded workflows, and operate in regulated or critical domains,” the firm wrote in an exclusive presentation prepared for Business Insider.
Business Insider comments:
The results are stark. Only about 14% of companies analyzed had strong moats across both dimensions, while roughly a quarter had weak defenses on both fronts, leaving them highly vulnerable as AI-native competitors scale rapidly.
The Alix method makes something I thought was obvious “clear”; to wit:
The firm’s framework highlights that not all “systems of record” are equally safe. As the findings show, even enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, long considered defensible, are only rated as having medium-strength moats. AI agents may reduce the number of human users, and therefore software licenses, while stripping away higher-margin add-ons and interfaces, according to AlixPartners’ Milicevic.
“Safe” is an interesting word. Does a user of smart software know if the provider is learning from what’s in the customer’s moat? My answer is, “Whom do you trust with your data? I trust few people and I don’t trust vendors. Period.”
The Business Insider write up makes a bold statement:
The firm [Alix] ultimately groups companies into four categories: “fortress” businesses with strong moats; “survivors” that must quickly build or acquire AI capabilities; firms likely to be sold to AI-native buyers; and those facing potential wind-down. The findings drive home a tough message: The era of growth-at-any-price SaaS is ending, and AI is accelerating a divide between a small group of defensible platforms and a much larger pool of exposed assets.
I want to end by addressing the “one, probably irrelevant, omission”. Smart software using the large language model methods output hallucinations, made up data, and misstatements. In short, the LLM is about “good enough” information. The problem is that some consulting firm clients may not spot inaccuracies. Not every CEO and MBA is an A student in every technical and business issue. Add to this the reality that orchestrated smart software may just accept outputs from one source without validating the accuracy of the information.
One can talk about moats, proprietary data, and yada yada. One can have matrices and scores. But the one, probably irrelevant, omission is that today’s AI systems are just good enough. Everyone with skin in the game wants the one-trick ponies to be stallions. Upon inspection some of those ponies and stallions are mules dressed up for cosplay.
One can do an analysis. Just make certain that the beasties are not in disguise.
Stephen E Arnold, April 15, 2026
What Consumers Prefer: Irrelevant to Many Big Tech Outfits
March 30, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I love it when mid tier consulting firms come up with research projects that shock. A good example is the information in “50 Percent of Consumers Prefer Brands That Avoid GenAI Content.” The article reports:
According to Gartner, 50 percent of U.S. consumers say they would prefer to do business with brands that avoid using GenAI in consumer facing content like advertising, messaging, and marketing materials.
As Arvin Haddad asks, “Can you spot the flaw? I will give you 10 seconds.” Give up? Think Coke or Pepsi. Real Florida orange juice or a chemist’s confection?
Thanks, Venice.ai. Cluttered and lame but good enough.
The “flaw” is that the question asks if a respondent can recognize “GenAI content.” Can you? Can your co-workers? Can another AI recognize the output of an AI? Can you determine if an illustration in one of my posts comes from the pen of a creator, a scan of an image from a book in the public domain, or from a smart software system? Is a college professor able to spot AI output in a student’s lab report, essay, or solution to a calculus problem? Can you recognize the “GenAI” content in your new vehicle’s on-board Sirius XM program you are streaming from its upgraded speakers?
My thought is that the answer to these questions is, “I have no clue. Sirius XM and AI. What?”
The cited article continues:
Sixty one percent of respondents said they frequently question whether the information they rely on for everyday decisions is reliable. Meanwhile, 68 percent said they often wonder whether the content and information they see is actually real. That kind of skepticism creates a tricky environment for companies that are pumping out AI generated marketing material. The technology might be capable of producing endless content at scale, but if consumers start questioning its authenticity, the strategy could easily backfire.
Microsoft is backtracking on its dive into the Copilot’s seat. Now the leadership wants to deplane and maybe grab a Coke Zero and think about the appellation Microslop.
The point of the shocking study and this article is not anchored in the preference of a “consumer.” The whole shebang has one goal: Sell consulting work. My reaction to the study was, “Hey, let’s put this information in front of our consumer product clients and suggest that we can create an AI density score. Once a high score emerges, we can assist that poor, confused, benighted company lower its detectable AI.”
Here’s a gem from the cited nerds.xyz write up:
Weiss also offered some practical advice for marketers trying to navigate the situation. “To reduce risk and build trust, marketers should make GenAI optional rather than mandatory, start with clearly assistive use cases that deliver immediate customer value, and label AI driven experiences, so people understand when and how AI is being used,” she said. “Marketers should also make verification easy by backing claims with clear proof points and governance, because consumers are increasingly skeptical about what they see and hear. When AI is transparent, helpful, and in the customer’s control, it can strengthen the experience instead of weakening trust.”
There you go. Trust. I have seen data in the last few years suggesting that consumer trust, voter trust, and business trust continue to decline across numerous demographic segments. Does that suggest that surveys supporting comments about trust are probably a little wobbly?
How confident am I that this mid tier consulting outfit can’t do much to either identify or help anyone else spot AI slop? Pretty confident. If Google cannot do it, can a lesser outfit? Nope. Don’t believe me? Read this.
Net net: How much AI was used by the consultants who generated the concept of the study, the questions, and the analysis? I would wager one thin dime that smart software’s clammy paws walked across a corner of this project. What if I am incorrect? Just check with AI. It works great. That is why Big AI Tech or the BAIT companies are fishing for clients, use cases, hooks, examples, and even consultants.
Stephen E Arnold, March 30, 2026
Blue Chip Consulting Firms: Some Storm-AI Waters Ahead
February 25, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I read “Consulting Firms Have Built Thousands of AI Agents. Now They’re Trying to Figure Out Their Worth.” Business Insider has been picking up the work of a long gone (I think) newsletter called Consultant News or Consulting News. That’s a topic area chock full of stories. The problem, of course, is that most of the really good ones are not public information. If one says the wrong thing about one of the big dogs in that rarified strata, legal eagles can appear. Lots of legal eagles.
This write up is a general write up about shoemakers’ children. The craftspeople are so busy making shoes for those with cold, hard cash, they have no time to knock out a pair of trendy kicks for their kids.
Thus, we have consulting firms creating software. The software seems to eliminate waste and inefficiencies. But those consulting firms don’t know how to price their software. Get the price too high, and the prospect will go to Fiverr.com or another gig work platform. Get the price too low, and the firm’s brutal health care and travel expenses will force the blue chip firms to get into another business, sell out, or shift to the Gerson Lehrman Group-model.
Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough, which is what some blue chip consulting firms clients will say when they get a proposal: “Yeah, we’ll just use AI.”
The write up says:
Amid the rapid rollout, consultants are now asking themselves a tough question: Is it worth it? They are working to measure if AI is truly improving performance, boosting revenue, and freeing consultants to focus on higher-value work. “I think we are now in the age of confusion,” Mina Alaghband, a former McKinsey partner, now the chief customer officer at Writer, a full-stack enterprise AI platform built for agentic AI, told Business Insider.
Maybe the consulting firms cranking out agents are not shoemakers’ children? Could these outfits be falling victim to the Silicon Valley Syndrome? The ideas of FOMO (fear of missing out) and “if we build it, they will come” may be pushing out some of the old business precepts. Consulting firms are trend surfers. The blue chip outfits know how to listen to their customers who are typically senior professionals at outfits with enough cash to pay the blue chip firms’ invoices. These people are bundles of nerves, twitches, squints, and fear spasms. Many are struggling with imposter syndrome. Others gobble more antacid tablets than air traffic controllers at O’Hare Airport.
The problem underscores one of the flaws of blue chip consulting firms. Most of them are not collegial. The firms pit partner against partner, practice against practice, major city office against major city office. The goal is to get the Type A’s sufficiently wound up that they just try to become the big dog in the kennels to which they have access.
Deep thought is an add on, usually accomplished by lesser lights and consultants. My hunch is that some of the wild and crazy slide decks I have seen in the last six months are created with the help of AI.
On one hand, the consulting firm needs people, preferably people with the connections to make a personal visit to what would be an unreachable person; for instance, an elected official responsible for a really big Federal activity’s budget. Some firms may hire functional experts. I remember a fellow who in the 1970s spent his time thinking about satellite-based kinetics. Yep, the 1970s. But in general, the blue chip firm operates on stress and the fear of failure.
Now, if the information in the write up is accurate, software agents can do “work.” But consulting firms don’t typically sell “service contracts” or “subscriptions.” They sell humanoids who do what the client needs done. The official statement of work may use words like assess workflows. But, in some cases, the actual job is to nuke a threat to the person with the budget to hire a blue chip consulting firm. It looks like a workflow, but the objective is to take over a profit center. Ruthless, but most people smile and nod.
The wri8te up runs down a number of possible ways to bill for software created by the consulting firm. The ideas are straight out of the MBA playbook; for example:
- Number of human users an agent has so bill by usage tiers
- Measure “quality” and charge by quality level of the agent
- Measure the speed and “efficiency” (what’s that?) of the agent
The problem is that some organizations want to fire people. An agent is not needed. A blue chip consulting firm, shows up, gathers data, makes recommendations, executives deliberate, and then someone fires people. Another problem is that if a consulting firm which is generally what I call “faux technical” creates software, some prospects will come up with the idea, “Hey, let’s do that ourselves. I have a Claude account.”
Any high end service firm charges for its humanoids. If AI devalues the work of humanoids, how will the blue chip consulting firm make money? That’s easy to answer. Just hire another consulting firm to figure out the options.
My personal view is that some blue chip consulting firms will just go back to being old line blue chip consulting firms. Sure, there will be some AI, but it will be a utility service like the robot in the Indian restaurant that delivers mango chutney to a table.
Three quick observations:
First, knowledge value service firms are now being disrupted. The cited article demonstrates the anxiety the blue chip folks live with.
Second, blue chip firms have to find a way to replace current revenues being lost and the future revenues in the pipeline because AI is “good enough” and cheaper
Third, price pressure is coming for many firms’ bread-and-butter engagements. Who needs a blue chip company? There is the free Chinese open source LLMs ready to go. Sure, they may phone home. A bungled implementation may have other consequences, but we have these tech people, let them figure it out.
Net net: The “news” in this write up is that blue chip consulting firms may be singing the blues for a while.
Stephen E Arnold, February 25, 2026
Blue Chip Consulting: Homogenization Accelerates
February 23, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
At the blue chip consulting firm silly enough to hire me, there was a rule: If two officers were traveling to the same client meeting, each had to take a different flight. Why? If the airplane crashed, the firm could “snap in” another officer and the project knowledge would not be lost. In the “company” within the firm which oversaw my work, jokes were made that anyone with an MBA could be plugged in if a project team member fell ill or was in some way unable to participate in the project. Lego block thinking. Add to this management method the fact that most of the professional staff were processed by well known business schools. There were differences, but not too many.
I thought about a concept from the dairy industry when I read “OpenAI Lands Multiyear Deals with Consulting Giants in Enterprise Push.” The write up reports:
The artificial intelligence startup [OpenAI] said it has formed “Frontier Alliances” with Accenture, Boston Consulting Group, Capgemini and McKinsey & Co., according to a release. The company declined to share the financial details of the partnerships.
What is “homogenization”? For a dairy farmer, this is the process by which the fat droplets from milk are emulsified and the cream does not separate. For a business or MBA program, this is the process of making things uniform or similar.
A busy shopper trying to figure out what the difference is among the types of homogenized milk. He seems stressed. Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.
State-of–the-art AI relies on similar methods; for example, Google’s transformer idea. Then there are the mathy parts like those in books similar to Peter Norvig’s Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. There are some modern spins like Chinese systems’ push to efficiency and the far-out approaches possible because of Google’s DeepMind excursions. But outputs from the Big Tech models uses the same content and similar methods. The result is an increasing similarity in text outputs. Even the charts and graphs look similar.
Does it seem possible that clients of these firms will look at what a blue chip firm outputs and conclude, “Hey, most of these ideas and recommendations are what our employees produce. Why should we pay blue chip consulting firms to do what we can do in house? Let’s put pressure on these blue chip fees?”
That means that the cream gets molecularly mashed up with the milk stuff. Voilà, the consulting firms are like milk at the grocery store. Aside from variations like low fat or chocolate, who shops for a brand. Grab and go, speed, efficiency, and essentially products a discerning 10 year old cannot differentiate.
Here;s an interesting quote from the cited news story. It comes from a person at Capgemini:
Fernando Alvarez, Capgemini’s chief strategy and development officer, said OpenAI is counting on its Frontier Alliances to help roll out its technology at scale. “It’s not an easy task,” Alvarez told CNBC in an interview. “If it was a walk in the park, OpenAI would have done it by themselves, so it’s recognition that it takes a village.”
Dairy farmers said the same thing in Wisconsin if I recall the explanations once attached to the Wisconsin Milk Market Board. How has that worked out? Consolidation is the future.
Will the blue chip consulting industry become smaller with a couple of firms relying on third-party smart software to do the analysis, report writing, and presentation work? Will blue chip clients keep paying blue chip prices if these firms have access to the same smart software?
My hunch is that the blue chips signing up for AI are thinking about closing engagements now and reducing staff costs now. The future is for those surviving MBAs who assume the yoke of leadership. But those pesky clients asking, “Can’t we do this study ourselves?” may not be today’s problem. What milk did you buy at the grocery?
Stephen E Arnold, February 23, 2026
Blue Chip Consulting Management Method: Threats and Money
February 19, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
Not only are blue chip consulting firms struggling to figure out how to price their services and license their AI agents, the firms have some recalcitrant staff. These are Type A people who know how to do a couple of things. As those experts get more job experience, the tried-and-true methods become the unwritten and sometimes written rules of what’s acceptable in a blue chip consulting firm. The bluer the blue chip, the more these “we do things this way” pressures increase. After all, if McKinsey hacked out executive memos like a person fresh out of a junior college trying to be an efficiency expert, the work product would be different in my opinion. Experience is often a positive. Experience makes ruts in professional practices like those two-wheeled carts cut ruts in the streets of Pompei. “In a rut” has a real meaning. How do you enforce change? Money and implicit threats. That’s a sure-fire approach to winning engagements and building a loyal staff.
Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.
I read “Accenture Links Staff Promotions to Use of AI Tools.” The operative idea here is incentives. Pay goes up if you do what leadership tells you. The write up says:
Accenture has reportedly started tracking staff use of its AI tools and will take this into consideration when deciding on top promotions, as the consulting company tries to increase uptake of the technology by its workforce. The company told senior managers and associate directors that being promoted to leadership roles would require “regular adoption” of artificial intelligence…
I noted this passage:
Accenture has previously said it has trained 550,000 of its 780,000-strong workforce in generative AI, up from only 30 people in 2022, and has announced it is rolling out training to all of its employees as part of its annual $1bn (£740m) annual spend on learning.
Yep, training. This means that the “old” methods are going to be AI-ized when the Type As, leadership with imposter syndrome, and senior consultants like it or not.
A good question is, “Why?”
My hunch is that leadership at this estimable firm figures that AI is cheaper than young MBAs and CPAs, financial engineers, and developers. Therefore, if the firm can get everyone using AI, then the old up and out method of employee performance review can cut staff, reduce costs for stupid things like health care and retirement, and produce more bonuses and higher salaries for leadership.
The big “if” looms over this approach. What if this grand plan backfires and clients want to use AI to replace the blue chip consulting firms or to negotiate for lower fees? What if the AI screws up a big time audit and leadership gets to spend quality time with lots of lawyers? What if the staff think this surveillance methods sucks when the professional surveilled went to a top school to operate more or less like an actual human knowledge worker and less like a cyborg?
My view is that leadership in some blue chip consulting firms knows that some type of meaningful action must be taken. However, the AI road is an uncertain one. AI seems to work when applied to killing the enemy in a kill zone. Will it work when sophisticated tax management and analysis are required? Will it work when a client shows up and says, “We need help turning this drug into a consumer product. Can you help us?”
Why? Clients like to do things for themselves. Blue chip consultancies work hard to keep secrets and prevent leakage of client information to other clients. Can AI systems deliver this? What about agents?
Several observations:
- We will know how successful the strategy is because RIFed employees will post on social media, give speeches, or write essays on Medium
- The leadership is back in the crap game held in a dark alley. This surveillance and enforced AI are big bets. Really big bets
- The employees at blue chip consulting firms are not particularly easy to manage. Some have money already. Some have families with clout. Some are working side gigs so they can run their own company. Some will tell a client, “Hey, let me join your firm. We can do what the blue chip firm does for less money. I can set this up and run it for you.”
Why aren’t the consultants jumping at AI? Explaining errors to clients is embarrassing. Who wants to look stupid? No, I won’t answer that. Just ask an AI system.
Stephen E Arnold, February 19, 2026
AI for Smart Type A People. Others? Yeah, Good Luck
February 18, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
A number of people has sent me links to this Harvard Business Review article: “AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It.” The write up looks at a hot topic from a different angle. The idea is that most people thinking and working with AI don’t take the time or have the “vision” to see AI for what it really is. The title makes it clear. AI is neither good nor bad. It is not making a person smarter or dumber. Nope. Whatever you the reader are, your life will become more intense.
Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.
Translating this title works out to:
- Work hard all the time. When you want to quit working, keep working. If you are stupid, memorize.
- Your work is your definition of your self worth. When you don’t work hard, you are losing self worth. Do this enough and you will reveal your inner loser.
- AI is a tool like the spatula in your grandmother’s kitchen. If you did not work, your Gran may have hit you in the back of the head with that spatula. Tools have many uses.
Stated briefly: 996, You work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.
With AI you work more “intensely.” That means working to an extreme degree. If you are smart and have the right stuff, you can be better with AI but zero slacking. Remember Gran’s propensity to hit you in the back of your head when you day dream instead of doing your calculus homework.
Let’s look at the cited article.
It states:
In our in-progress research, we discovered that AI tools didn’t reduce work, they consistently intensified it…. we found that employees worked at a faster pace, took on a broader scope of tasks, and extended work into more hours of the day, often without being asked to do so. Importantly, the company did not mandate AI use (though it did offer enterprise subscriptions to commercially available AI tools). On their own initiative workers did more because AI made “doing more” feel possible, accessible, and in many cases intrinsically rewarding.
What the sentence causes me to think is, “Yeah, but only if you are really smart and driven by the 996 and need to demonstrate your worth to yourself via work.
The article offers this:
Instead of responding passively to how AI tools reshape workplaces, both individuals and companies should adopt an “AI practice”: a set of intentional norms and routines that structure how AI is used, when it is appropriate to stop, and how work should and should not expand in response to newfound capability. Without such practices, the natural tendency of AI-assisted work is not contraction but intensification, with implications for burnout, decision quality, and long-term sustainability.
Translation: Hire a consultant to help you plan, deploy, and evaluate the AI practice in your organization. Plus, the consultant can help put in place to get the 996 workers your firm needs to survive and thrive. (Is this a consulting sales pitch disguised as an HBR article?)
And here’s the wrap up:
The promise of generative AI lies not only in what it can do for work, but in how thoughtfully it is integrated into the daily rhythm. Our findings suggest that without intention, AI makes it easier to do more—but harder to stop. An AI practice offers a counterbalance: a way to preserve moments for recovery and reflection even as work accelerates. The question facing organizations is not whether AI will change work, but whether they will actively shape that change—or let it quietly shape them.
Only the driven need can transform an organization. Also, I have a bridge for sale in Harrod’s Creek. Great price.
Stephen E Arnold, February 18, 2026
Consultants and AI: Missing the Entire Point of Smart Software in a Blue Chip Firm
February 13, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I got a chuckle out of “McKinsey Says It Has 25,000 Agents. Its Rivals Say That’s Not a Metric of Success.” My hunch is that neither Business Insider or its writer have substantial experience working for a blue chip consulting firm. Before I reveal what makes these multi-billion dollar money machines work is not what is spelled out in the write up.
The image shows a typical lunch at Traveler restaurant in Manhattan near Park Avenue and 45th. Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.
I want to point to this passage:
Newman [Ernst & Young’s global engineering chief] said EY is more focused on measuring efficiency. He said EY tracks agent value through key performance indicators for productivity, quality, and cost.
Okay, that is one push back for McKinsey touting it agent count.
Here’s a second snip from the article:
AI has rapidly reshaped the consulting industry in recent years. McKinsey, EY, PwC, and other consulting firms are all racing to both adopt AI internally and position themselves as the go-to for other companies seeking advice on how to do the same.
Okay, that a generalization, and for the blue chip outfits with which I am familiar, it is 100 percent incorrect.
What is the write up missing? A focus on the marketing value of AI.
My view is that blue chip consulting firms care about profitable engagements. The metric that carries weight at a blue chip consulting firm is billable hours. AI is a means to engagements. The more hype and razzle dazzle and fear-uncertainty-doubt that one can engender about a disruptive or potentially catastrophic meteor strike, the more firms with sufficient cash will hire the blue chip outfits to help assuage leaderships’ fears.
If AI allows a blue chip firm to reduce headcount and the engagements generate bounteous revenue, AI is a winner. If AI increases competitive advantage, it is a winner. If AI reduces costs and steps up the amount of knowledge work a consultant can do, it is a winner.
The number 25,000 is a sale hook. A potential client or an existing client will ask, “Hey, what are some of those agents?” Bingo. Proposal opportunity or better yet, a scope change to an existing engagement’s contract.
What about the Ernst & Young rejoinder. It is marketing. McKinsey is missing the point. The EY position is that it has the right measure. I think the reality at accounting firms that rebranded themselves as blue chip consultants is wrong. First, EY does not want to get hauled into court and get the Enron treatment. Remember, Arthur Andersen. EY’s leadership does. Second, EY has to use AI in order to reduce its fees for bean counters who often do things pecking away in Excel. I acknowledge that McKinsey has to dodge legal bullets for some of its pharma related insights. But accounting firms are on the radar of tax authorities 24×7 if the gossip I hear is accurate.
The true blue chip firms are about one thing: Money. Partners want to get rich. Staff cut into the bonus pool. Accounting firms have to avoid legal problems and generate profits. Keep in mind that I am a dinobaby. Accounting firms that are also consulting firms are different from blue chip consulting firms that hire accounting firms.
AI is a marketing tool. The outputs are marketing collateral and essentially valueless but for causing the phone to ring.
Stephen E Arnold, February 13, 2026
AI Not Doing It? The Answer Is Simple, Dead Simple
February 4, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
Is AI failure easy to avoid? With hallucinations, incorrect output, and outright inability to follow a prompt, I think some of the AI outfits have a bit of work to do. Others see AI as the greatest thing since sliced bread.
“AI Projects Worldwide Are Failing in Businesses Because of This Simple Reason” suggests that a solution is close to hand and simple. People, especially those responsible for failing projects, like simple. Complex takes time, and a person piloting an airplane with no fuel does not have a great deal of time.
Solving AI related management and deployment issues is dead easy. Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.
The write up says that when it comes to AI:
CEOs often focus on ambition and opportunity, while IT leaders focus on practicality and feasibility.
One key to bridging the gap between leadership and workers is having a shared language. The AI is that employees know what the boss means when he / she says, “AI.” (To be frank, I am not sure what AI means. I have a hunch consultants shape “AI” into whatever it takes to sell an engagement.
There are a couple of other “simple” things to do. Are you ready?
Simple thing A: Whip up a practical AI road map. The bean counter knows where AI is heading: Cost reduction efficiencies. Other employees may have different thoughts.
Simple thing B: Align cultures. The idea makes sense in a high tech outfit where the profile of employees is similar to the differences among Oreo cookies in a shrink wrapped package. For humans is a company trying to pay staff and the bills, I am not sure about the alignment idea.
What’s the wrap up to this “AI is simple” analysis? Here you go:
Bridging the divide requires commitment, communication and clarity. It requires executives to appreciate technical realities and IT leaders to think strategically about business impact.
Like most consulting type output, the idea is to sound informed yet stick with ideas that encourage head nodding.
Several observations:
- With data that suggest AI is not the home run some said it would be, the fancy talk has to find a way to navigate to success. But will fancy talk result in a winning AI application?
- Will consulting speak, analytics to figure out what went wrong and why, and alignment deliver a competitive advantage? How is that working out for underwater outfits like OpenAI and its tether to the USS Microsoft?
- Have truisms that make the complex simple resolved the numerous problems AI seems to produce: Staff resistance, CEO belief, and mid level employee confusion?
Net net: AI has moved from its hype phase into its “how do we make this work?” There is, in my opinion, no simple solution.
Stephen E Arnold, February 4, 2026
Consulting at Deloitte, AI, Ls, and Sub Families like 3
January 23, 2026
It seems that artificial intelligence is forcing some vocabulary change in the blue chip world of big buck consulting services. “Deloitte to Scrap Traditional Job Titles As AI Ushers in a ‘Modernization’ of the Big Four” reports the inside skivvy:
… the firm is shifting away from a workforce structure that was originally designed for “traditional consulting profiles,” a model the firm now deems outdated.
When a client, maybe at a Japanese outfit, asks, “What does this mean?” the consultant can explain the nuances of a job family and a sub family; for instance, a software engineer 3 or a project management senior consultant, functional transformation. I like the idea of “functional transformation” instead of “consultant.”
However, the big news in the write up in my opinion is:
A new leadership class simply titled “Leaders” will join the senior ranks of partners, principals, and managing directors. And internally, employees will also be assigned alphanumeric levels, such as L45 for what is currently a senior consultant and L55 for managers. However, the presentation stressed that the day-to-day work, leadership, and the firm’s “compensation philosophy” will all remain the same.
The “news” is in the phrase “the firm’s compensation philosophy will all remain the same.”
All. AI means jobs will be off loaded to good enough AI agents, services, and systems. If these systems do not lead to the loss of engagements, then AI adepts will get paid more and the consultants who burn hours that could be completed in minutes or hours by software means, in my opinion:
- Unproductive workers will be moved down and out
- AI adepts will be moved up and given an “L” deslignation
- New hires will be at a baseline until their value as a sales person, AI adept, or magician who can convert AI output into a scope change, a repeatable high value work products, or do work that allows no revenue loss.
Yep, all.
The write up notes:
Last September [2025], Deloitte committed $3 billion in generative AI development through fiscal year 2030. The company has also launched Zora AI, an agentic AI model powered by Nvidia to “to automate complex business processes, eliminate data siloes and boost productivity for the human workforce.”
My conclusion: Fewer staff, higher pay for AI adepts, client fees increase. Profits, if any, go to the big number “L’s”. Is this an innovation? Nope, adaptation. Get that new job lingo in a LinkedIn profile.
Stephen E Arnold, January 23, 2026
Consultants, the Sky Is Falling. The Sky Is Falling But Billing Continues
December 30, 2025
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
Have you ever heard of a person with minimal social media footprints named Veronika Kapustina? I sure hadn’t. She popped up as a chief executive officer of an instant mashed potato-type of company named TON Strategy Company. I was listening to her Russian-accented presentation at a crypto conference via YouTube. My mobile buzzed and I saw a link from one of my team to this story: “Why the McKinsey Layoffs Are a Warning Signal for Consulting in the AI Age.”
Yep, the sky is falling, the sky is falling. As an 81 year old dinobaby, I recall my mother reading me a book in which a cartoon character was saying, “The sky is falling.” News flash: The sky is still there, and I would wager a devalued US$1.00 that the sky will be “there” tomorrow.
This sort of strange write up asserts:
While the digital age reduced information asymmetry, the AI age goes further. It increasingly equalizes analytical and recommendation capabilities.
The author is allegedly a former blue chip consultant. Therefore, this person knows about that which he opines. The main point is that consulting firms may not need to hire freshly credentialed MBAs. The grunt work can be performed by an AI system. True, most AI systems make up information with estimates running between 10 and 33 percent of the outputs. I suppose that’s about par for an MBA whose father is a United States senator or the CEO of a client of the blue chip firm. Maybe the progeny of the powerful are just smarter than an AI. I don’t know. I am a dinobaby, and it has been decades since I worked at a blue chip outfit.
What pulled me from my looking for information about the glib Russian, Veronika K? That’s an easy question. I think the write up misses the entire point of a blue chip consulting firm and for some quite specialized consulting firms like the nuclear outfit employing me before I jumped to the blue chip’s carpetland.
The cited write up states as actual factual:
As the center of gravity shifts toward execution depth and the ability to drive continuous change, success will depend on how effectively firms rewire their DNA—building the operating model and talent engine required to implement and scale tech-led transformation.
Yep, this sounds wise. Success depends on clients “rewiring their DNA.” Okay, but what do consulting firms have to do? Those outfits have to rewire as well and that spells T-R-O-U-B-L-E for big outfits whether they do big think stuff like business strategy or financial engineering or for outfits that do semi-strategy and plumbing.
The hybrid teams from a blue chip consultant are poised to start work immediately. Rates are the same, but fewer humans means more profits. It helps that the intern’s father is the owner of the business devasted by a natural disaster. Thanks, Qwen, good enough.
Let me provide a different view of the sky is falling notion.
- As stated, the sky is not falling. Change happens. Some outfits adapt; others don’t. Hasta, la vista Arthur Andersen.
- Blue chip consulting firms (strategy or financial engineering) are like comfort food. The vast majority of engagements are follow on or repeat business. There is are tactics that are in place to make this happen. Clients like to eat burgers and pizza. Consultants sell the knowledge processed goodies.
- New hires don’t always do “real” work. New hires provide (hopefully) connections, knowledge not readily available to the firm, and the equivalent of Russia’s meat assaults. Hey, someone has to work on that study of world economic change due in 14 days.
- Clients hire consultants for many reasons; for example, to help get a colleague fired or sent to the office in Nome, Alaska; to have the prestige halo at the country club; to add respectability to what is a criminal enterprise (hello, Arthur Andersen. Remember Enron’s special purpose vehicles? No just graduated MBA thinks those up at a fraternity party do they?)
Translating this to real world consulting impact means:
- Old line dinobaby consultants like me will grouse that AI is wrong and must be checked by someone who knows when the AI system is in hallucination mode and can fix the error before something bad like fentanyl happens
- Good enough AI will diffuse because AI is cheaper than humans who have to be managed (who wants to do that?), given health care, and provided with undeserved and unpredictable vacation requests, and a retirement account (who really wants to retire after 30 years at a blue chip consultant? I sure didn’t. Get the experience and get out of Dodge).
- Consulting is like love, truth (really popular these days), justice, and the American way. These reference points means that as more actual hands on work becomes a service, consulting, not software, consumes every revenue generating function. If some big firms disappear, that’s life.
Consulting is forever and someone will show up to buy up a number of firms in a niche and become the new big winner. The dinobaby blue chips will just coalesce into one big firm. At the outfit which employed me, we joked about how similar our counterparts were at other firms. We weren’t individuals. We were people who could snap in, learn quickly, and output words that made clients believe they had just learned something like e=mc^2. Others were happy to have that idiot in the Pittsburgh office sent to learn the many names of snow in Nome.
The sky is not falling. The sun is rising. A billable day arrives for the foreseeable future.
Stephen E Arnold, December 30, 2025
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
