Seven power skills business consultants need to work successfully alongside AI

Generative AI has prompted professionals from all walks of the business world to review how they will now operate alongside this hugely disruptive technology. And business consultancy is no exception: the arrival of ChatGPT is an inflection point in history and the implications are massive. If you are a management consultant, the ground is likely to be moving under your feet. 

Your edge over AI

Recognising that generative AI will be doing a lot of the heavy lifting around what were your core skills, it’s a time for honest self-appraisal and a reassessment of where you will be adding value in the future.

What will differentiate you is a deep understanding – an empathy with – what human beings need. It’s about what Isaiah Berlin referred to as “having that acute sense of what fits with what, what springs from what, and what leads to what”. Successfully operating in the new consultative space requires a strategic understanding of people and the ability to use this understanding to empathetically paint “future histories” for your clients. This is currently beyond the capabilities of generative AI.

It’s about understanding changing human behaviour and its consequences and making sure your positioning reflects this. Don’t get trapped into just a technical and/or tactical niche that is failing to see the changing structure of the consultancy world.