Time for consultancies to optimise for human judgement, not efficiency
AI is said by its proponents to be shaking up decades-old operating models across all industries. Niklas Mortensen, chief design officer at Designit, argues that this represents a growing strategic risk – and a new opportunity for consultancies.
As AI becomes embedded across organisations, optimisation is becoming the default operating principle of modern business. From automated decision systems to AI-driven analytics, companies are being optimised for speed, efficiency, and measurable outputs. For consultancies, this shift is a wake-up call.
The technology is weakening the infrastructure upon which many consultancies have built their business models: driving efficiency, analysing data, and improving performance. Suddenly, work that once took a team of analysts months to complete can now be done in hours. In fact, in some cases…minutes.
Work that would previously have been outsourced is now being pulled in-house. Not because it is less important, but because it is easier, faster and cheaper. When budgets are tight, external support is becoming a luxury that can easily be cut. So what can consultancies be doing to survive, and offer value that can’t be found elsewhere?
The rise of the optimisation economy
Consultancies are, of course, not putting their head in the sand when it comes to AI. Quite the opposite. 90% of consultants now use AI as part of their daily tasks. The uptake of AI tools is high partly due to pressure from above: Accenture is explicitly linking promotions to AI use by its staff.
Consultancy businesses are caught between a rock and a hard place. Firms are being asked to embrace the very technology that is undermining their traditional value. Become more efficient, while selling efficiency as a service. To deliver faster, while competing against tools that can work almost instantly, at a fraction of the cost.
The rock? Keep up with AI. The hard place? Don’t get overtaken by it. But perhaps trying to win this race is a mistake? Because optimisation, at its core, is about creating existing systems to operate better. It means improving speed, reducing costs, and increasing outputs. But it rarely questions whether the system is actually the right one.
And that’s where a different approach, and therefore opportunity, lies for consultancies.
The need for human judgement
While AI is exceptional at producing answers quickly, it remains far less capable of determining which questions actually matter. As organisations lean more heavily on AI-driven optimisation, the ability to exercise judgement becomes more valuable. That’s where consultancies can thrive.
Human judgement remains essential. Especially in an AI-driven landscape, human judgement is required to know what problem needs to be solved, to ensure the right metrics are being optimised, and that businesses are moving quickly, but in the right direction.
It’s what human-centered design has been practising since before most consultancies had an AI strategy. The methods exist: research, problem framing, synthesis, and prototyping assumptions before committing to them. The difference is that these skills were historically seen as the province of creative agencies, not serious strategy firms.
In today’s business environment, judgement is a capability that technology cannot offer, which allows organisations to tackle challenges that cannot be stripped down to metrics alone. It goes beyond the technical, beyond optimisation and into context, perspective, and accountability - all of which are increasingly becoming more important.
PwC’s approach provides the perfect blueprint for how to champion these values in practice. In its overhaul of its business in response to the disruption of AI in the industry, PwC has allowed access to AI across certain services - effectively acknowledging that part of its offer has become commoditised.
However, it is also repositioning human insight by ensuring it is no longer spent on processing, but on the high-stakes trade-offs that AI can’t weigh. The value is no longer about more analysis, but what can actually be done with it.
Stop trying to beat AI at its own game
To optimise for human judgement, consultancies must stop trying to outcompete AI on efficiency. Instead, they need to redesign their model around where they remain uniquely valuable: defining the problem, not just delivering the answer.
This means shifting talent away from pure analysis and towards domain expertise, critical thinking, and decision-making. It also means pricing and positioning work around outcomes and judgment, rather than hours and deliverables - even if many organisations are still grappling with how to make this measurable, sellable and contractable.
Firms that continue to focus solely on how they deliver on client briefs will be pulled into an inevitable race to the bottom on cost. Those who move upstream, into strategy, prioritisation, and decision-making, will see themselves become indispensable.
