Why Consulting Failed (Without Failing)¶
McKinsey did not fail. BCG did not fail. Boutique firms did not fail.
The environment outgrew their operating model.
The Eight Structural Failure Modes¶
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1. The Velocity Deficit¶
Human-paced delivery cannot match machine-paced markets.
2. Cognitive Fragility¶
Fatigue, bias, memory loss, and interpretation errors scale poorly.
3. The Mathematics Problem¶
Strategy is math. Humans approximate. LLMs hallucinate. Neither validates deterministically.
4. The Pyramid Problem¶
Junior labor is now computable. The leverage model collapses.
5. The Narrative Problem¶
Stories replace truth when validation is slow.
6. The Hallucination Mirror¶
Consultants fill gaps subconsciously. LLMs fill them fluently. Both are unsafe.
7. The Scalability Trap¶
Human teams scale linearly. Enterprise demand scales exponentially.
8. The Capability Reversal¶
Enterprises no longer want rented intelligence. They want owned capability.
The Verdict¶
This is not a critique of people. It is a recognition of physics.
There is consulting before Consulting-as-Code™
and consulting after Consulting-as-Code™.
Only one survives the next decade.