As a November 2019 article in The Economist suggests, strategy consulting is under significant pressure.  Whereas it used to be one of the main pillars of the large consulting firms—McKinsey & Company, the Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company and so on—it has become a marginal activity now, accounting for about just a tenth of their revenues.  As the article explains, clients no longer want legions of consultants to provide them with advice.  Instead they want them to put products and technologies in place that keep them ahead.

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The observations in The Economist article may suggest two things: that strategy consulting is no longer relevant or that it isn’t done the right way.  While some may argue for the first, it is clearly the second which is going on.  In its critical attitude towards strategy consulting and management consulting more generally, the recent article in The Economist doesn’t stand in isolation.  In fact, there is a continuous stream of critiques on which it stands.  Illustrative are books about consulting, baring titles such as The Witch Doctors (Micklethwait & Wooldridge, 1996), Dangerous Company (O'Shea & Madigan, 1998) and Consulting Demons (Pinault, 2009).  As you may infer from these titles, these books are not exactly positive about consulting.