Escape Routes for Experts in an AI-First World

Consulting has always faced commoditization pressures, but the rise of LLMs and specialized AI models has dramatically accelerated this trend. Over the next decade, AI will drive most routine research, diagnostics, and repeatable execution close to zero cost and bundle them into client platforms. As my Italian friends would say, "il tempo stringe" - time is running out. Much of the work solo consultants and boutiques relied on for revenue will vanish faster than anyone expects.

The real threat is a double squeeze. AI deflates the value of codifiable tasks, while execution platforms (Salesforce, AWS, HubSpot, and others) move “upstream” by bundling light advisory into their products.

Take a typical mid-market strategy boutique as an example. Their junior analysts used to spend weeks in spreadsheets, gathering market data and crafting competitor analyses. Now AI does it in minutes. And Salesforce's Einstein GPT casually tosses in automated market sizing and recommendations like free mints at a restaurant. The consultancy is getting squeezed like a lemon in a juice press. Their traditional work is automated into oblivion while platforms nibble away at their advisory role.

Let's be brutally honest: buyers couldn't care less about your effort anymore. They want speed, hard proof, and tools they can keep using long after your invoices are paid. For most consultancies, this isn't just another market shift - it's an existential issue. Standard execution is becoming as commoditized as table salt, price benchmarks are in free fall, and you're left trying to justify your existence purely through outcomes.

The firms that survive won’t be the ones resisting change, but the ones that own something defensible. In this article, I argue there are four ways to escape commoditization: by owning the rails (platforms), the lens (data or networks), the risk (outcomes), or the change (orchestration).

I've developed something I call the "Future Consulting Value Map." Before you roll your eyes at yet another consulting framework, hear me out. This one's different. It's built from conversations with dozens of boutiques trying to navigate these waters. The map consists of two simple 2×2s that show you:

• What playing field you’re really on (“Where-You-Play”); and
• How you actually win inside that field (“Why-You-Win”).

Think of it as your survival GPS. It helps you figure out where you really stand, spots the sharks circling your business model, and shows you which lifeboats actually float.

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Commoditization As Side-Effect For Being In The Market

In this and the other handbooks of “The Next Expert” series, we explore how technology and new trends will impact expertise-based businesses. It’s important to remind whoever is reading this that consulting has always had commoditization forces. They existed before AI and LLMs. Before social media platforms. Before the internet. Back when "digital transformation" meant getting a fax machine.

The reason why consulting always suffered from commoditization is simple. You can't lock expertise in a safe. It refuses to stay put. Every time you deliver work, you're essentially teaching others how to do what you do. Every presentation deck, every workshop, every strategic framework - they all leak expertise like a sieve. And as more people pick up these skills and information, the supply in the market comes up and the price for it goes down.

Some commoditization drivers hit everyone - they're just part of doing business in today's world. Take the elephant in the room: the global market.

Sure, not every consulting gig can be done from a beach in Bali, but most can. And that's both good and terrible news. If you're reading this from New York or London, you've got some built-in advantages. But guess what? There's a whole world of sharp minds out there who can live like kings on what you spend on coffee. They're not just willing to undercut your prices - they're eager to do it. And they're getting better at it every day.

But there's more. Beyond these universal pressures, expertise businesses face their own special brand of pain. Let me show you what I mean.

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Inviting Competition

Here's a fun fact that keeps boutique owners up at night: consulting is an unlicensed profession. Think about that for a second. Anyone with a LinkedIn profile and a taste for buzzwords can wake up tomorrow and call themselves a consultant. No license needed. No guild to maintain standards. No minimum bar to clear. It's a free-for-all that would make Economics 101 professors wince. The barriers to entry aren't just low - they're practically nonexistent. And we all know what happens next: a flood of competitors and a race to the bottom on pricing.

And something that’s (almost) unique to expertise-based businesses is the fact that they we're forced to use education as marketing. Every thought leadership piece, every LinkedIn post, every conference presentation becomes a masterclass in what we do. We're literally teaching our market how to replace us. The medium doesn't matter - blog, podcast, white paper - the end result is the same.

Now, you might say "Just stop giving away the secret sauce!" Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. Buyers aren't just shopping for solutions - they're shopping for understanding. They flock to experts who teach them something valuable. Invisibility equals irrelevance. Stay silent and the market will simply move on without you.

The problem is that we end up giving ammunition to our competition (and now AI) and accelerating their learning as we publicly share our ideas. It’s a negative but inevitable side-effect. And with LLMs hungrily digesting every piece of content we publish, this knowledge transfer is happening at warp speed. The better we get at teaching, the faster we make ourselves obsolete.

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The Double Squeeze

Let’s talk about the new commodification drivers that will directly impact expertise businesses, since the goal of this piece is to help us be better prepared in the future. How do new technologies change the dynamics of consulting and advisory? There are several of them, but there are two big ones.

Commoditization will mostly happen as a result of (1) AI turning expensive work into pocket change, and (2) execution platforms gobbling up the value chain. And before you ask - yes, these forces feed off each other like a toxic feedback loop.

AI makes tasks cheaper, so platforms bundle them into their offerings. This makes those tasks even cheaper, which motivates platforms to grab even more territory. Round and round we go, creating a flywheel of pressure that's squeezing consultants from both sides. It's not death by a thousand cuts - it's death by two very big, very sharp blades.

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AI, The Big Cost Deflator

Anyone in the market can see that AI is taking huge bites out of our core services, and the marginal cost of knowledge is dropping like a rock. I've been hunting for hard data on how this affects early-stage consulting businesses (if you've seen any good studies, please shoot them my way), but the direction is clear.

Let me stick my neck out and make some predictions. By 2035, here's what I think the consulting landscape will look like:

• For low-complexity implementation (research, documentation, reporting): Only 10-20% will remain human-led.
• For typical messy implementation (ERP, product development): 33% human.
• For standard strategy work (benchmarking, scenario planning): 20-30% human
• For complex transformations (M&A, culture change): 50% stays human

These aren't wild guesses. They're based on patterns I'm already seeing across different consulting practices. For this piece, I spoke with three founders that lead very different practices - a training firm, a cybersecurity boutique, and an M&A advisory shop. The details varied, but zoom out and you’ll see a similar pattern repeat - just at different speeds and in different flavors.

The things that get eaten are the codifiable, low-complexity, repeatable tasks - diagnostics, reporting, benchmarking, generic training, compliance. What survives are the messy human bits - the politics, the trust-building, the delicate art of herding cats through major change. You know, the stuff that makes you reach for aspirin at the end of a long day.

The timeline is also consistent: the simple stuff crumbles in the next 1-3 years, the middle-weight knowledge work follows in 3-6 years, and by year 9, we're left with just two things computers can't fake: orchestration (we'll dig into that bit later) and trust.

Even McKinsey - and yes, take their research with a healthy pinch of salt - says 30% of work hours across all industries will be automated by 2030, climbing to 50-70% as the tech grows up. And let's be honest: consulting has an even bigger target on its back. Why? Because so much of what we do is exactly what AI loves to eat: analysis, pattern matching, and expertise you can write down in a playbook.

I'm not pretending to be Nostradamus here. I'd have better luck picking winning lottery numbers than nailing these percentages exactly. But that's not the point. I ran these numbers and talked to these founders for one reason: to get a sense of just how big this tsunami is going to be.

I’ve found what I was looking for, and I feel confident to assume that 50% to 80% of the tasks in a typical consulting engagement will cost virtually zero.

Now, this does NOT mean that the fees or the perceived value will drop 50 to 80%. What we can say for sure is that buyers will: (1) stop paying expensive consultants for low complexity tasks, and (2) won’t give a damn about the time and effort you invest in the engagement. What really matters (and what is most visible to them) is the outcomes you deliver and the experience of engaging with you.

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Platforms Eating Your Lunch

The second new commoditization driver (and the other half of the double squeeze) is execution platforms “owning the rails.” These lock clients into AI/software ecosystems that blur the line between product and advisory. Let me clarify what I mean by both “platforms” and “owning the rails.”

An execution platform is a system where day-to-day work actually happens. It standardizes data and workflows, connects multiple participants, and creates switching costs because important work, records, and routines live there.

To make this clear: Your email list or private community are not execution platforms. They are valuable, but people and organizations don’t rely on them to do work, don’t keep records there, don’t connect them with other tools and platforms, there are no metrics/KPIs visible, no switching costs.

We're talking about the big names here - Salesforce and Hubspot, AWS, Microsoft Office and GSuite, ClickUp and Asana, Miro. And the hundreds of established platforms that run the modern business world.

These vendors already have their hooks deep into their clients' operations. They control the data, the workflows, the whole nine yards. What happens when AI makes codifiable, low-complexity tasks near free? They're not just selling software anymore - they're becoming consultants by stealth:

1. They reel you in with the basics - "Hey, need a CRM?"
2. Then they sprinkle in some AI magic - "Look at these automated insights!"
3. Next thing you know, they're your advisor - "Here's your success playbook"
4. And finally, they're playing strategy consultant - "Let us guide your digital transformation"

Want to see this in action? Just look around:

• Salesforce isn't just selling you software anymore. They're mapping out your entire business strategy.
• AWS doesn't just rent you servers. They're architecting your entire cloud future.
• Hubspot isn't content with just being your CRM. They're becoming your full-service marketing consultant.

This is happening (or will happen) in most practice areas. Every platform is eyeing their piece of the consulting pie. HR platforms are getting ready to be your recruitment advisor. Design platforms want to be your brand strategist. I'm seeing this pattern everywhere I look, and every boutique owner I talk to is watching the same movie play out in their niche.

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“It’s the Client, Stupid!”

I’m saying it anyway in case someone forgets it: The platforms aren't forcing this change. Our own clients are demanding it.

No one is paying only for “pure strategy” or advice anymore. They expect something concrete left behind: a tool, a platform, a dialed-in process, something they can use the day after consultants leave the building. And they’re right to do so, since we know that most of the impact consultancies create doesn’t come from the expert’s inputs, but from helping clients build capabilities and permanently improve operations. So it’s only natural that firms started to rush and close that gap by productizing insight, packaging knowledge into assets that scale.

Now, before you start updating your LinkedIn profile to "Former Consultancy Founder," take a breath. Not everyone's getting squeezed out. You might be safe if

• You're the Switzerland of tech platforms - the neutral party helping big clients with a multi-platform complexity problem (i.e. juggling Salesforce, AWS, and Databricks) without getting locked into any one vendor's ecosystem;
• You're the corporate therapist - handling the messy, political stuff that no algorithm can navigate (i.e. non-exec director, board advisor);
• You're working in those highly regulated industries where the law still demands a human in the loop.

Clients want results they can see, measure, and keep using. They want speed, repeatability, and ROI baked into every engagement. This is what determines how we can and need to deliver value.

It’s fair to say that most low-complexity implementation and “lite” strategy will be eaten up by execution platforms. And it’s wise to admit they'll do it faster and cheaper than any boutique consultancy ever could.

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What Gets Commoditized

So, let’s summarize. Two massive forces are accelerating the commodification of expertise businesses: AI making everything cheaper than cheap, and platforms claiming territory like medieval lords. They're coming for any work that:

1. Are codifiable, low-complexity, and repeatable (the stuff you could write a manual for); and/or
2. Can be embedded in an execution platform (if it can live in a platform, it will).

Let’s add some rigor and clarity to this: What do I mean by codifiable tasks?

Think of codifiable work as anything that follows a clear playbook. It's the "if this, then that" stuff. Data prep, research summaries, benchmarking tables, scenario modeling - all those tasks where there's a clear right answer. AI loves this work because it's like following a recipe: clear steps, clear patterns, clear outcomes. No judgment calls needed. If you can write a checklist for it, chances are AI can do it.

Human nuance enters when outcomes depend on politics, tacit knowledge, and context that isn’t written down. Think about getting rival VPs to play nice, helping a CEO sell a tough decision to the board, or making judgment calls when the data's unclear. This is the messy, human stuff where there's no "right" answer - just better or worse ways to thread the needle. Here's where clients still need a trusted advisor who can read between the lines, build consensus, and put their reputation on the line. This is our turf, and it's not going anywhere soon.

With that said, do platforms really want to move into “advisory”? Or will they always stop short of the messy politics of change? I’m convinced we must be pragmatic here and leave all false hope behind.

Platforms will happily move into “lite advisory” - onboarding, success roadmaps, adoption playbooks - because it reduces churn and increases customer lifetime value. But they will avoid the messy politics of multi-stakeholder transformation, because it’s low-margin, relationship-intensive, and doesn’t scale well with software economics. That’s where human consultants keep their edge.

The danger is that “lite advisory” cannibalizes a huge part of the consulting market, especially small firms that once thrived on implementation + strategy-lite engagements. Over time, platforms will chip away at everything that can be standardized. But the messier and more political the change, the safer you are. No platform wants to get dragged into mediating ego fights between a COO and CMO.

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The Four Antidotes to Commoditization

So where does all this leave us? You'll only survive if you own something that AI can't copy and platforms can't package. I've spent countless hours studying firms that are actually pulling this off, and I've spotted four lifeboats: You can own the rails (platform), the lens (data or network), the risk (economics), or the change (orchestration).

The more of these you control, the less price-comparable you become. These aren't theoretical positions - they're practical responses to the specific ways AI and platforms are reshaping consulting. Each position directly counters a different aspect of the double squeeze.

First, I will share each one of those antidotes and their pros and cons. Then, we’ll look at how feasible they are for boutique consultancies and niche advisory practices. Finally, we will conclude with the implications and visualize how a profitable expertise-based business might look like in the future.

Own the rails (Platform-first): This is the big play - building yourself into the client's operational backbone. You become their OS, their data backbone, their governance system. The most obvious business advantages are the high switching costs (which “locks” clients in) and recurring revenue. The con is that following this path is capital and product-intensive- you're playing the SaaS game now. It takes serious capital, serious tech chops, and most consulting firms who try this end up face-down in the mud. It's like trying to turn your corner bistro into McDonald's - possible, but probably not for you.

Own the lens (Authority-first): You do that by cultivating assets of authority that clients can’t easily substitute. Maybe it's information - unique data sets, proprietary benchmarks, frameworks that actually work. Or maybe it's relationships - exclusive networks, peer groups, the kind of high-trust communities money can't buy. The advantage is defensibility - clients pay for access to insights or to a circle of people they can’t access elsewhere. The challenge is keeping it valuable. Data goes stale faster than bread, and communities need constant tending like a high-maintenance garden.

Own the risk (Outcome-tied): This is where you put your money where your mouth is. Instead of charging by the hour, you tie your fees to actual business results. Sounds great in theory - perfect alignment, shared success. But it is trickier than it seems to sustainably pull it off. You need real control over the outcomes, bulletproof contracts, and a way to keep clients from treating you like a contractor on commission.

Own the change (Orchestration): Here's where you become the conductor of the orchestra - the trusted hand that keeps everyone playing in harmony. You're the Switzerland of the corporate world, the one who can get stakeholders aligned, make new habits stick, and keep multiple platforms playing nice together. In a world where complexity keeps multiplying, this might be your safest bet - AI can't fake trust, and platforms can't package relationships. The main challenge is that it’s relationship-intensive and difficult (if not impossible) to quantify value delivered.

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What Can You Afford?

When I first started sharing this framework, one question kept coming up. Actually, it was Joao Landeiro who put it most directly:

Where to start? Which of the four defenses (rails, lens, risk, change) is the most accessible for a solo consultant? For a small boutique?

It's the million-dollar question, isn't it? When we think about the future, it’s easy to drift into crazy theories, guesses, and predictions. Time to put some practical meat on these theoretical bones. Here’s my best answer.

For solo consultants, the most accessible defense is owning change. It plays to your (or most consultant’s) natural strengths - relationships, trust, and those hard-to-define skills that come from experience. This is where solo advisors shine: as the board whisperers, transformation coaches, political navigators, sparring partners. You can also lean on owning risk (outcome-based bonuses) if you’re confident in your leverage, but without scale it can become a dangerous bet.

For small boutiques, the path is usually owning lens (information or relational assets) or change. Build yourself a killer proprietary dataset that nobody else has - like detailed airline benchmarks or hospital pricing data that becomes the industry standard. Or create a high-value network - imagine being the person who runs the most influential community of CMOs in the food and beverage space. The beauty is that this is actually doable for a small shop. And if you're a bigger boutique with some tech muscle you might also dip your toes into the platform game with lightweight tools, although full platform play is beyond reach (more on this in a bit).

With that being said, we’re left with few viable, defensible positions for expertise businesses in the future. It’s helpful to have a simple way to visualize the dynamic in the short, medium, and long term. Since I can’t resist a good framework, I created not one but two complementary 2x2s matrices to map it all out:

1. Where-You-Play map (Rails × Change) that defines the type of firm you are; and
2. Why-You-Win map (Lens × Risk) shows the edge you bring inside that type.

This is about to become fun.

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Where You Play

Let's start with the first matrix - the Where-You-Play map. This answers the basic question: "What game are you actually in?" Picture a 2x2 grid. On one axis, we've got how much you own the rails (the execution platforms). On the other, how much you own the change (the transformation and orchestration). This gives us four very different types of players in the market.

Platform Providers are exactly what the name describes: a platform or vendor. They control the execution environment, benefit from high switching costs, etc. But they do not do consulting at all - they sell and run a scalable product. These businesses are not the focus of our analysis here.

Commodity Executors are the folks playing in the danger zone - no platform advantage, no real ownership of change. They're the ones doing the narrow, codifiable tasks that are prime targets for automation. Think of the freelancer setting up yet another CRM system, the consultant doing basic data cleanup, or the boutique churning out standard reports and dashboards. If this is you, I hate to break it to you, but you're sitting in the automation crosshairs.

The dynamic here is simple. If the commoditization drivers we identified are correct, most of those tasks and services will become near-free. And as platforms start baking consulting services into their offerings, they'll basically carpet-bomb the commodity executor market. So you've got two choices: level up to become a real change agent, or find a different business entirely.

Trusted Orchestrators are the grown-ups in the room - the ones who tackle the really thorny problems and drive meaningful change, even without owning any platforms. These are typically advisors who manage complexity across multiple vendors/tools, and whose expertise lies in politics, tacit knowledge, and aligning stakeholders. You'll find them working as high-level board advisors or running specialized boutiques that work across platforms - like the pricing guru who knows the airline industry inside and out.

This is where I see most solo consultants and boutiques heading - and it's not a bad place to be. You become the trusted advisor, the Switzerland of the corporate world, helping clients navigate both the strategic vision and the messy reality of getting things done. We’ll come back to this in a bit!

Change System Owners are businesses with both rails and ownership of change. They combine platform control with orchestration and political influence. They can own proprietary tools and manage multi-stakeholder change. Think McKinsey with McKinsey Solutions, BCG X, or possibly Bain with its PE toolkit in private equity transformations.

This is where the largest professional service firms are moving towards. But it requires an enormous amount of capital and talent, so it’s not where solo and small consultancies will move to. Sure, we might see some tech-savvy boutiques create micro-platforms in specific niches (think specialized SaaS tools with a consulting wrapper). But those will be the exceptions, not the norm.

An important note: While I'm betting my money on most independents evolving into orchestrators, timing is the wild card. Could AI adoption crawl instead of sprint? Might some sharp consultancies make bank by moving faster than the market, squeezing out profits from implementation work before the platforms catch up? Absolutely.

I often come back to one of my favorite quotes by Morgan Housel: “Unsustainable things can last years or decades longer than people think.” This market dynamic can take 15 years instead of 5. But still, it’s wise to look ahead and position your business to avoid commoditization risks, especially if you’re currently launching or pivoting your practice. You have nothing to lose.

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Why You Win

The Why-You-Win map tries to answer the question, “given I can’t own the rails, how do I differentiate inside the orchestration quadrant?” Time for another 2x2. On one side, we've got how much risk you're willing to own. On the other, how much unique assets (the lens) you bring to the table. This gives us four distinct ways to win in the market.

Trusted Guides are the relationship people. They don't have fancy proprietary data or skin in the game - they win purely on trust and facilitation skills. Picture the executive coach who's brilliant at getting leadership teams aligned, or those boutique organizational development firms running culture workshops. They're good at what they do, but they're playing a dangerous game - they're relying entirely on soft skills in a world that's getting harder and harder.

This is where most solo consultants start - and it makes sense. You build trust, nurture relationships, master the art of facilitation. It's the easiest path in, but here's the brutal truth: it's also the most vulnerable. Give it 3-5 years, and AI will be doing basic facilitation while platforms offer cookie-cutter frameworks. If you're stuck here, you've got two escape routes: either build some proprietary insights that nobody else has, or start putting skin in the game with results-based fees. Staying here means competing on brand or charisma alone - not ideal. Indeed, I believe very few survive when technology matures. The ones who do are celebrity-level coaches or well-connected insiders whose brand is the moat. For everyone else, it’s a dead-end.

Venture Builders are the gamblers at the table. They're all-in on risk-sharing but don't have any unique data or insights to stack the odds in their favor. These are the folks who help clients build new ventures or business lines, tying their pay to growth outcomes, equity stakes, or revenue-sharing models. When it works, it's beautiful - big paydays, deep partnerships, and serious street cred as operators who get stuff done. But the downside is ugly: high failure rates, capital intensity, and difficulty scaling.

Without proprietary data, networks, or IP to tilt the odds, most Venture Builders look more like gamblers than architects. The only way I think this could work is if you play it like a VC: make lots of bets, knowing most will fail, and pray the winners pay for the losers. But this path is outside the realm of consulting. A more realistic path for boutiques is to rely on process playbooks, entrepreneurial credibility, or convening power to assemble resources. But those are soft moats, easily eroded as markets evolve. Unless they evolve into Outcome Partners by layering proprietary authority on top of risk-taking, Venture Builders remain shaky as a business model: attractive in upside, but structurally volatile.

Authority Platforms own the lens without taking on outcome risk. These are the folks who've built themselves a real moat - they own something valuable that clients can't get anywhere else. These come in two main forms: information platforms and relational platforms. Clients pay for privileged access - either to insights they can’t replicate or to networks they can’t otherwise enter. The model scales better than pure advisory, as authority can be monetized through reports, memberships, or recurring subscriptions, without linear increases in headcount.

Information Platforms are the data kings and queens. They've built treasure troves of proprietary knowledge - unique datasets, industry benchmarks, battle-tested frameworks - and turned them into products clients will pay for again and again. Think subscription dashboards, annual reports that become industry bibles, licensing deals that print money. The defensibility lies in years of systematic data collection and real-world validation that AI can’t easily replicate. The challenge is operational: sustaining data pipelines, continually refreshing frameworks, and keeping analysis genuinely ahead of commodity knowledge.

Relational Platforms are the ultimate matchmakers and community builders. They don't just sell knowledge - they sell access to the right room. Think exclusive peer networks, high-level councils, the kind of groups where CEOs actually show up and share real war stories. YPO and Chief nail this model - their members stick around not just for the content, but for the conversations they can't have anywhere else. Once you're in, you're hooked - the network becomes part of your professional DNA. The challenge is in design: building these communities is like hosting the perfect dinner party, every single night. Let the energy drop, and your exclusive club becomes just another LinkedIn group.

Market dynamics suggest that both forms of Authority Platforms will grow in importance as AI commoditizes generic knowledge. Information platforms gain leverage by structuring, filtering, and codifying messy data into actionable signals; relational platforms thrive by curating conversations AI cannot replicate. Over time, the line between them may blur: communities generate proprietary data (benchmarks, surveys), while data-driven platforms layer community engagement to retain clients. For boutiques, authority plays are a promising middle ground: less fragile than pure Trusted Guides, less volatile than Venture Builders, and often the stepping stone toward becoming Outcome Partners.

Here's where things get interesting: as AI turns generic knowledge into a commodity, both flavors of Authority Platforms are poised to become more valuable, not less. Information platforms will thrive by turning messy reality into clear insights that actually mean something. Relational platforms will win by creating the kind of human connections that no AI can fake. The smart ones will blend both approaches: communities that generate unique data, data platforms that build sticky communities around their insights. For boutiques, this is the sweet spot - more stable than being just a trusted face, less risky than betting the farm on venture outcomes, and potentially a stepping stone to the holy grail: becoming a true Outcome Partner.

Outcome Partners is the apex quadrant. They've got the secret sauce (proprietary assets) AND they're willing to bet on themselves. Picture a hedge-fund-style consultancy using their unique data to guide investment decisions, or Palantir combining their platform with performance-based contracts. When this works, it's beautiful: perfectly aligned incentives, rock-solid differentiation, and a moat that gets wider every year. But don't kid yourself - this is the major leagues. You need both the special knowledge that sets you apart and the operational muscle to manage serious risk.

Can boutiques play this game? It's rare, but not impossible. Think of a specialized firm that knows industrial supply chains better than anyone else and has the guts to take a cut of the cost savings they generate. This is the most bulletproof position in our new AI world - but it's also the hardest to build. It takes time, conviction, and a stomach for risk.

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On Becoming An Orchestrator

So we've mapped out five ways to survive in this brave new world: Trusted Guides, Venture Builders, Information Platforms, Relational Platforms, and Outcome Partners. Think of it as a ladder of defensibility - from barely hanging on to virtually untouchable.

But before you start plotting your path up this ladder, here's the thing everyone misses: All these models share one critical feature - they're all about owning change. Whether you're building communities or betting on outcomes, you're first and foremost an orchestrator. That's your foundation. Everything else builds on top of that.

So how do you become this orchestrator?

First, you need to swallow a bitter pill: pure strategy or implementation won't cut it anymore. Strategy without execution is just expensive daydreaming. Implementation without orchestration is just expensive labor. The money - and the value - is in the middle. You need to become that neutral integrator who keeps all the pieces moving in harmony: the vendors, the internal teams, the competing agendas, all aligned toward one clear outcome.

This means completely rethinking how you position and deliver your work. Stop selling yourself as the doer or the planner. Start selling yourself as the conductor who keeps the orchestra in tune. You're not just another vendor - you're the one making sure the marketing agency actually talks to the product team, the IT folks don't go rogue, and the executive sponsor stays engaged. Your real deliverables? They're not PowerPoint decks or status reports - they're the governance rhythms, decision frameworks, and accountability systems that keep everything humming.

To start moving toward this role, three practical levers matter most:

1. Review Your Contracts and Service Offers: Don't just hint at your orchestrator role - spell it out in black and white. Your mandate isn't advice or execution - it's integration.
2. Build Your Command Center: Create the tools that show you're running the show - scorecards that matter, roadmaps people actually use, stakeholder maps that reveal the real power dynamics, meeting rhythms that drive decisions.
3. Own the Room: Step up as the conductor everyone trusts. Jump on conflicts before they explode. Bridge the gap between big-picture strategy and ground-level execution. Be the glue that holds everything together.

The transition doesn’t have to be radical. A pure implementation boutique can begin by layering orchestration on top of delivery: taking ownership of reporting, cross-team check-ins, or governance structures. A pure strategy shop can do the opposite: staying engaged post-strategy, not to execute tasks but to run alignment rituals and keep the client team on track. Over time, this orchestrator posture becomes the foundation you need before climbing into any of the more defensible archetypes.

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Conclusion

Commoditization in consulting isn't new - it's as old as the profession itself. What's new is the speed. AI and execution platforms aren't just nibbling at the edges anymore - they're taking huge bites out of traditional consulting work, and they're doing it faster than most boutiques can pivot. The winners won't be the ones fighting this tide - they'll be the ones who ride it. Success means doubling down on what you actually own - your platform, your unique insights, your skin in the game, or your ability to drive change.

If you're running a solo practice or small boutique, here's your playbook: Don't try to be McKinsey. Pick the defensive position that matches your strengths and scale. For most, that means starting with orchestration and trust - being that indispensable conductor. Then, systematically build your moat: maybe it's proprietary data that becomes industry-standard, or a community that everyone wants to join, or frameworks that actually work. Got more ambition (and resources)? Maybe you can graduate to sharing risk with clients or building lightweight tools they can't live without.

None of this requires you to abandon what you’re doing today. But you do need to take a hard look at where you'll be in three, five, or ten years. If you’re spending most of your time on tasks that are repeatable and codifiable, those fees are already melting away. If you’re embedding yourself as the neutral orchestrator, building assets of authority, or sharing in client risk, you’re moving toward safer ground. These are practical choices, not abstract theories. The earlier you start building your moat, the less painful the transition will be.

Pull out that framework and place yourself on it. Be honest - where are you really? Where do you need to be? What's your first move to get there?

The firms that survive won't be the ones with the most expertise or the biggest client lists. They'll be the ones that own something defendable - whether that's rails, lens, risk, or change. And the sooner you choose your defensive position, the more time you have to build it.

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This handbook is still under construction. If you have a question or counterargument for my thesis, please shoot me an email :) The Future of Expertise publication will continue to explore these shifts and pressure-test other ideas.