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A Seismic Shift in Consulting Firm Structure is Upon Us
For decades, the consulting industry has been built on a simple architectural principle: the pyramid. This structure traditionally consisted of three tiers. A broad base of junior consultants performing analysis and research, a narrowing middle tier of managers synthesizing insights, and a slim apex of senior partners stewarding client relationships. This structure has defined the economics, career progression, and delivery model of every major consulting firm from McKinsey to Deloitte.
But artificial intelligence is reshaping this century-old blueprint. What's emerging in its place is something fundamentally different, not just an optimized pyramid, but an entirely new structure that Harvard Business Review has aptly termed the "consulting obelisk."
The Birth of the Obelisk Model in Consulting
The traditional pyramid depended on volume. Junior consultants spent weeks building PowerPoint decks, analyzing spreadsheets, conducting literature reviews, and synthesizing market research. This work was necessary, billable, and, most importantly, it justified the pyramid's wide base. Partners could sell large engagements knowing they had dozens of juniors to deploy.
AI tools have rapidly reduced the need for traditional manual analysis.
Natural language processing can summarize hundreds of documents in minutes. Machine learning algorithms can identify patterns across datasets that would take analysts weeks to uncover. Generative AI can draft initial strategy frameworks, create presentation materials, and even conduct preliminary competitive analysis.
The result? The wide base of the pyramid is narrowing. According to the Harvard Business Review, the new firm structure is far leaner and taller. Firms simply don't need as many junior consultants performing routine analytical tasks at the base. What's left is the obelisk: tall, narrow, and built around three distinctly human roles that AI cannot replicate.
The Three Pillars of the Consulting Obelisk
The consulting obelisk isn't just a smaller version of the pyramid. It's a fundamentally different structure organized around what humans uniquely provide:
AI Facilitators occupy the base, but it's a much smaller base now. These early-career consultants are fluent in data pipelines, prompt engineering, and AI workflow orchestration. They don't spend weeks in Excel; they design the queries that AI tools execute. They don't manually research competitors; they configure AI systems to monitor competitive landscapes continuously. Their value lies not in their willingness to do grunt work, but in their technical fluency with AI systems.
Engagement Architects form the middle layer. These experienced consultants frame strategic problems, interpret AI-generated outputs, quality-check insights, and orchestrate delivery. They translate messy business challenges into structured problems that AI can help solve, then translate AI outputs back into actionable business recommendations. They're part strategist, part editor, part orchestra conductor. Their symphony is ensuring that AI-generated insights land with clarity and relevance.
Client Leaders remain at the apex. Senior partners still cultivate trust, guide long-term strategic decisions, and stay close to C-suite sponsors. In many ways, their role hasn't changed. What has changed is their leverage: instead of managing armies of junior consultants, they guide smaller, AI-augmented teams that deliver faster and more efficiently.
The Knowledge Bottleneck: Where AI Meets Reality
Yet even as AI automates analysis, a critical bottleneck remains: finding and accessing internal knowledge. Consulting firms accumulate vast repositories of past work, case studies, frameworks, industry insights, and client deliverables, but this knowledge remains trapped in siloed systems, email threads, and individual consultants' heads.
Before any AI can generate insights, human consultants still waste hours searching for relevant precedents, tracking down subject matter experts, or recreating analysis that already exists somewhere within the firm. This slows down strategic work–inefficiencies the obelisk model is designed to eliminate.
This is where platforms like Starmind become essential infrastructure for the consulting obelisk. Rather than replacing consultants, Starmind acts as an intelligent knowledge layer that eliminates the grunt work of finding internal expertise and relevant past work. It maps the collective knowledge within a firm, connecting consultants instantly to the people, projects, and insights most relevant to their current challenge.
For AI Facilitators, this means less time searching SharePoint and more time configuring AI workflows. For Engagement Architects, it means instant access to how similar problems were framed and solved across the firm. For Client Leaders, it means confidence that their team is building on the firm's collective intelligence rather than reinventing solutions.
In the obelisk model, every person must deliver maximum leverage. Knowledge management tools like Starmind ensure that leverage isn't undermined by invisible inefficiencies.
Why Consulting Isn't Disappearing
The debate around AI in consulting often swings between two extremes: either consultants will become obsolete, or AI changes nothing at a fundamental level. Both arguments miss what's actually happening.
Consulting firms aren't hired primarily for analysis. They're hired for confidence. Executives facing high-stakes decisions need external validation, informed perspectives on competitive dynamics, and political air cover to drive change through resistant organizations. AI can accelerate the analytical foundation, but it cannot replace the trust, judgment, and executive presence that consultants provide.
While some believe that AI threatens the old delivery model, it also creates opportunities. It creates space for consultants to focus on what they've always done best: helping executives make better decisions faster.
The Strategic Fork in the Road
Most consulting firms today are bolting AI onto their existing pyramid structure. They're using AI to make junior consultants more productive, to help managers synthesize faster, and to allow partners to oversee more projects simultaneously. This approach preserves the familiar structure and protects existing margins.
But it's an incremental step. And it opens the door for smaller, AI-native firms to innovate with new models. These firms don't carry the overhead of traditional pyramids. They operate as lean, senior-heavy teams augmented by AI and connected through intelligent knowledge platforms. They can deliver comparable, or even superior, insights at lower cost and higher speed.
The firms that will dominate the next decade aren't those optimizing the old pyramid. They're those rebuilding from first principles around the obelisk model: fewer people, more leverage per person, AI-augmented delivery, and seamless access to collective intelligence.
What This Means for Consultants
Career paths are shifting. The traditional apprenticeship ladder, analyst to associate to manager to partner, is compressing. Junior roles focused on "analysis for analysis's sake" will shrink. But new roles are emerging for those who can bridge human judgment and AI capability.
The consultants who will thrive are those doubling down on skills AI cannot replicate: strategic framing, stakeholder persuasion, executive presence, creative problem-solving, and long-term relationship cultivation. These capabilities have always mattered in consulting. Now they're becoming the only capabilities that matter.
The Future Is Already Here
The consulting obelisk isn't a distant vision. It's being built right now by firms willing to rethink structure, redefine roles, and invest in the infrastructure, both AI tools and knowledge platforms, that make leaner delivery possible.
The future looks less like global pyramids deploying hundreds of consultants per engagement. It looks more like agile pods of senior consultants, working closely with proprietary AI systems and connected through intelligent knowledge networks, delivering high-speed strategy support.
The transformation won't be comfortable. Structures that have defined the profession for generations are being reimagined. But for the firms and consultants who adapt, who embrace the obelisk model and equip themselves with the tools to make it work, the opportunity is extraordinary.
Consulting isn't dissolving. It's being rebuilt. And the shape of that rebuild is becoming clear: leaner, faster, smarter, and anchored in the irreplaceable human capabilities of judgment and trust.