Best of LinkedIn: Strategy & Consulting CW 22/ 23

00:00:00: provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frennus, based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about strategy in consulting from CW-twenty two and twenty three.

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00:00:33: Yeah, so welcome to today's deep dive.

00:00:35: If you're operating anywhere near M&A private equity venture capital or consulting You already know the market is incredibly noisy right

00:00:43: now.

00:00:43: Oh totally it's deafening out there Right?

00:00:45: So our mission Today Is To Really Just Cut Through That Noise For You.

00:00:48: We're Bringing You The Absolute Top Strategy And Consulting Trends Curated Directly From Most Impactful Professional Conversations Happening Across LinkedIn During Calendar Weeks Twenty Two and Twenty

00:00:59: Three.

00:00:59: We're looking at what the top minds in the industry are actually saying when they talk to each other, not just the marketing fluff.

00:01:04: Okay so let's unpack this because the landscape is shifting rapidly from pure sky high ambition right into the brutal reality of execution.

00:01:15: we're going to explore how the consulting model itself Governance is suddenly this existential imperative and how massive macro volatility Is reshaping everything from global supply chains to private equity?

00:01:30: It is a lot to cover but what is truly fascinating here the absolute loudest signal across all our sources,is What we're calling The Execution Gap.

00:01:40: Yeah!

00:01:41: The conversation in the strategy space has completely moved away.

00:01:44: From what can This new technology do To How Do We actually scale it responsibly without you know, breaking our company.

00:01:51: Ashish Chandra pointed this out brilliantly.

00:01:52: he observed that innovation pilots almost always succeed right

00:01:55: because piles happen in a total vacuum.

00:01:57: exactly they happened in tightly controlled environments with clean data dedicated teams all of that.

00:02:02: but the moment you try to take that successful pilot and roll it out into an enterprise-wide transformation It fails!

00:02:08: It just hits a wall...it

00:02:09: hits a brick wall of fragmented architecture And totally disconnected operating models.

00:02:15: The underlying business hasn't changed.

00:02:17: Just the tool

00:02:18: which means the tech works, but the organization fundamentally doesn't.

00:02:23: And that leads to a really interesting point from Mark Baer-Shader.

00:02:26: He notes that the real bottleneck for transformation right now isn't technology at all.

00:02:31: It's not even lack of use cases.

00:02:33: The bottleneck is decision making speed.

00:02:37: Who actually owns the ambition in the C-suite?

00:02:41: Like who funds it when it crosses three different departmental budgets?

00:02:44: That is the core issue right there.

00:02:46: Yeah, Flora M highlights this exact thing.

00:02:49: She says The biggest hurdle is organizational adoption not the tech itself The capability of the technology just evolving way faster than the structural ability Of these companies to absorb it.

00:03:00: It's

00:03:00: like here's where it gets really interesting to me.

00:03:02: So giving someone the keys To a million dollar formula one car.

00:03:05: okay I like

00:03:06: where this has gone but they insist on driving in first gear Purely because that's how they've always driven their tractor on the farm.

00:03:12: They possess The Ultimate Machine, but have absolutely zero mindset to operate it at speed.

00:03:18: and this connects perfectly with an observation from Christian Rausch.

00:03:21: He noted when a sea level executive calls mandatory SAP migration an upgrade instead of transformation It is massive red flag.

00:03:30: Oh, that's such a good point.

00:03:32: It is failure of leadership.

00:03:33: Exactly They are actively avoiding the hard strategic work of changing how business operates and just hiding behind an excuse for IT update.

00:03:43: they're driving F-One car in first gear

00:03:46: And this creates a very dangerous cultural dynamic internally.

00:03:50: Sylvain Durantin notes that the AI honeymoon phase fades incredibly fast after about a year, employees actually lose engagement if their leaders fail to provide strategic clarity on what they're supposed to do with all of time these new tools just freed up.

00:04:03: Wow Yeah That makes sense.

00:04:05: If you don't know where your goal is You feel lost Right.

00:04:08: and Barton Coppola warns against what she calls The false alignment Of

00:04:12: the nodding room.

00:04:13: Yeah, you know that boardroom scenario where everyone just nods and agrees to avoid conflict?

00:04:18: But no one actually takes genuine ownership of the execution.

00:04:21: True transformation requires honest disagreement.

00:04:24: Oh a

00:04:25: hundred percent!

00:04:26: Without that friction...you get nowhere.

00:04:28: Mark D'Orlich perfectly summarizes this whole theme.

00:04:31: He says great ideas don't die because bad tech.

00:04:35: They die in the white space between organizational boundaries simply because no one is equipped to carry them across the gap.

00:04:41: Yeah, and Nate Suda and Sherry Gartner completely agree with this.

00:04:45: they noted that AI value is actively shifting away from simple ROI calculations toward actual operating resilience.

00:04:53: Okay, so what does this all mean for the people actually advising these enterprises?

00:04:56: Because if corporate clients are struggling this hard with execution.

00:05:00: The professional services firms, the consultants listening to this they must have to fundamentally rewire their own delivery models To help them cross that gap right.

00:05:08: Oh absolutely!

00:05:09: The entire consulting model is undergoing a massive stress test.

00:05:13: Jeremy Lim points out that AI is actively shrinking traditional scale advantages

00:05:17: Meaning What exactly?

00:05:18: Well, in the past a consulting firm's moat was having thousands of smart generalists.

00:05:23: That is no longer a competitive advantage because generalists are becoming easily substitutable by these automated frameworks.

00:05:30: The real motes now our deep industry knowledge networks and human judgment

00:05:34: Which makes sense right?

00:05:36: Leanne Sherlock and Kim Broody echoed this perfectly.

00:05:39: They pointed out that knowledge is not abundant or cheap.

00:05:42: Generating basic strategy framework takes seconds.

00:05:45: So the actual bottleneck is human judgment and the ability to execute the change, right?

00:05:49: And Ben T Smith emphasizes that The future is all about the AI assisted consultant.

00:05:54: it's not an either or scenario of Human versus machine but

00:05:58: here's where It gets really interesting and frankly a bit concerning for the industry.

00:06:03: there Is a critical risk in how we train the next generation Of these advisors.

00:06:07: Rob Jardine introduced this brilliant concept of psychological debt.

00:06:11: Yes, this is a crucial insight for anyone developing talent right now.

00:06:15: Unpack that concept.

00:06:24: So when a client pushes back on a slide in high stakes meeting and there is no underlying logic the junior consultant can defend, that psychological debt suddenly comes due.

00:06:44: They have the answer but they don't know why it's the answer.

00:06:47: It's really compelling warning But let us look at counter perspective of how these roles are evolving.

00:06:52: Christina Elringman argues that Junior Roles won't disappear And they wont just Atrophy Instead will reach hard parts much faster.

00:07:00: The Hard Parts being what?

00:07:02: things like stakeholder alignment and navigating complex client governance.

00:07:06: Instead of spending three weeks gathering data in a spreadsheet, they're thrust into the deep end of human

00:07:12: dynamics.".

00:07:13: Okay let me play devil's advocate here.

00:07:15: how is a twenty-three year old intern supposed to navigate complex stakeholder governance if they've never done the foundational grunt work?

00:07:24: To understand the underlying business logic yeah doesn't that just create massive liability for the partner leading engagement?

00:07:31: It does,

00:07:31: unless the firm fundamentally changes how it trains people.

00:07:35: Margaret Burke and Alicia Pittman highlight how firms like PwC and BCG are adapting by embedding continuous active learning directly into the flow of work itself.

00:07:45: Oh, I see!

00:07:46: Yeah And Daniel Gibson notes that the actuarial practice is actually doubling its intern class right now.

00:07:51: They want to intentionally build an AI native talent pool That intuitively understands these tools rather than trying to retrofit senior partners.

00:07:59: But you can't just train people differently You have to pay them different.

00:08:03: if your partner listening do this.

00:08:05: James O'Dowd raised a point that should genuinely terrify you.

00:08:08: Oh, yeah the compensation model argument

00:08:10: It's exactly outdated.

00:08:11: compensation models are quietly costing firms their best people.

00:08:15: You cannot preach cross-selling and deeply integrated collaboration to your clients But internally only pay your consultants for individual book ownership right?

00:08:25: You ultimately pay for behavior.

00:08:27: if you want a collaborative AI assisted firm you have to incentivize it.

00:08:30: you pay For Behavior.

00:08:31: is that simple?

00:08:32: And this massive shift in how consultants are working is being powered by a fundamental technological leap.

00:08:38: We're moving away from technology acting as passive co-pilot that just, you know waits for your prompt and Moving toward autonomous agents embedded directly into enterprise platform.

00:08:48: the agenda gay.

00:08:49: I wave

00:08:49: exactly The sources we reviewed across these two weeks or just flooded with massive partnership announcements reflecting an absolute arms race.

00:08:57: Tim Walsh and Atif Zaym highlighted KPMG embedding Anthropics Claw directly into their digital gateway.

00:09:03: They aren't just bolting a chatbot onto a website, they are fundamentally rewiring how work is delivered.

00:09:08: Yeah, and Mahesh Bhattacharla noted that PWC's expanded anthropic alliance is doing things like cutting cybersecurity incident response times from hours down to literal minutes.

00:09:20: It's everywhere.

00:09:20: I mean Pratik Agrawal mentions Bain's investment in the open AI deployment company targeting private equity portfolio value And Jad Bitar highlights BCG making a five hundred million dollar commitment with enthropic for social impact.

00:09:34: It is a sweeping industry-wide realignment.

00:09:37: But let me push back again, so what does this all actually mean for the listener?

00:09:42: If every single major consulting firm is partnering with open AI or Anthropic What is the actual differentiator of an enterprise?

00:09:49: if everyone has exactly same engine under their hood how do you win that race?

00:09:53: That's the multi million dollar question and answer lies in architecture.

00:09:57: it about context and orchestration.

00:09:59: Iris Simmons, reflecting on the recent Snowflake Summit argues that your competitive moat is no longer you're tech vendor.

00:10:06: It's your enterprise ontology.

00:10:08: Okay we need to unpack that Enterprise.

00:10:09: Ontology sounds like a consultant bingo.

00:10:11: What does it actually mean in plain English?

00:10:13: Think of as the master translator for entire company.

00:10:17: Imagine you have multiple autonomous agents working For You.

00:10:20: Your HR agent speaks French and your finance agent speaks Japanese.

00:10:25: If you just set them loose, they will actively work against each other because they don't share the same definitions of success.

00:10:32: The ontology is a governed semantic layer—the shared language that forces them to collaborate.

00:10:38: Diana Kearns-Manolatos stresses this exact point.

00:10:41: Tech architecture decisions must be made as one connected system not layer by layer.

00:10:46: That makes total sense.

00:10:47: If they don't share context, it's just chaos and near roots of very pointed out that the SAP Sapphire event signaled exactly this shift.

00:10:55: we are talking about agent to agent collaboration across HR finance and procurement without human intervention

00:11:01: which brings us To a critical financial point raised by Hughes Havern.

00:11:05: He challenges The dominant narrative that We Are in an AI bubble.

00:11:08: really how so?

00:11:10: He argues.

00:11:10: this is not the dot com era of early two thousands which was built purely on promises.

00:11:15: Today, hardware layer printing cash but real enterprise value will be unlocked by what he calls fifth-layer

00:11:21: The

00:11:23: services and deployment firms doing incredibly unglamorous highly technical work.

00:11:27: integration change management.

00:11:29: Jason Kev's experience with forward deployed engineering at KPMG perfectly illustrates that job shifting from delivering a beautiful slide deck to shipping working software directly inside the client's environment.

00:11:42: But handing the keys over to autonomous agents across connected architectures brings us a terrifying reality.

00:11:49: Governance can no longer be an afterthought, it is the sole factor determining whether a firm thrives or faces catastrophic risk.

00:11:57: Exactly!

00:11:58: Percentagee outlines how governance conversation almost always happens after deployment.

00:12:03: companies are tacking shiny AI veneer onto broken process Or worse, they're connecting an autonomous agent to vendor contracts without defined permissions.

00:12:12: That is insane!

00:12:13: An AI could automatically sign a legally binding vendor contract because someone didn't set the architecture up correctly?

00:12:19: Yes...unpriced risk.

00:12:21: And this raises an important point for corporate boards.

00:12:23: Evan Benjamin argues that boards urgently need philosophical literacy to govern these systems Philosophical

00:12:29: Literacy.

00:12:30: I love this concept.

00:12:31: Yeah it's fascinating Because these systems aren't just calculators.

00:12:34: When you deploy an AI to optimize a supply chain, it quietly imports assumptions about values evidence and acceptable trade-offs into the enterprise.

00:12:44: If the AI prioritizes aggressive margin expansion It might recommend actions that completely destroy company culture.

00:12:51: if A board cannot see the underlying worldview The technology is importing they cannot possibly govern the risk.

00:12:58: That Is profound and it completely changes how we view software testing.

00:13:03: Keith Klain provocatively states that the mission of testing is not to build confidence, its mission is to inform risk decisions.

00:13:09: Manufactured confidence is incredibly dangerous

00:13:12: because it encourages executives to deploy something they don't actually understand

00:13:16: right.

00:13:16: Drew Galati adds to this noting that enterprise AI desperately needs independent measurement.

00:13:21: Right now vendors are essentially grading their own homework

00:13:24: which is exactly why AI governance is exploding as a massive consulting service line of its own.

00:13:30: It's why we see teams celebrating PwC being named a Forrester leader in this space.

00:13:35: Jennifer Kosar, Alana Goldman-Bloomenfeld Dan Priest and Patrick Boone highlight that trust AI & Governance frameworks allow clients to scale responsibly.

00:13:45: Governance isn't the speed bump anymore.

00:13:47: it's the guardrail that allows you drive fast.

00:13:50: And we have to broaden the risk lens here because it's not just technology risk.

00:13:54: This need for real-time risk visibility is colliding violently with a macro environment that is fundamentally fracturing.

00:14:01: Oh, big time!

00:14:02: Karina

00:14:03: Nilsio notes that Alex Partners found only twenty nine percent of firms field A can identify emerging risks in real time and Andreas Peirschek points out that traditional fraud quietly eats five percent of organizational revenue annually...

00:14:15: ...and Brian Kostick argues that banks can't fund the future by adding more controls.

00:14:19: They need modern assurance and clear ownership.

00:14:22: It's a terrifying blind spot, especially when Christian Edelman warns that volatility is no longer just a disruption, volatility is the

00:14:28: environment.".

00:14:29: Exactly!

00:14:30: Dominic W & Morgan Montaigne highlight how geopolitical shocks like at The Gulf Crisis are forcing corporate leaders to build systemic resilience.

00:14:39: Daniel Tanabaum puts a hard price tag on this geoeconomic fragmentation.

00:14:45: He estimates it costs the global economy between two hundred and thirteen, and three hundred seven billion dollars annually.

00:14:52: The pressure is coming from all sides.

00:14:54: Diane asks notes persistent inflation And the feds narrow path regarding rate hikes.

00:14:59: Which brings us to the physical manifestation of All This Pressure are the Global Supply Chains.

00:15:03: Casper Blix Simonson argues that supply chains don't fail simply because of complexity.

00:15:08: they fail when that complexity grows faster than the organization's ability to govern it.

00:15:12: Right,

00:15:13: Christian Kroschel says.

00:15:14: supply chains need actual decision authority now not just more cross-functional planning meetings.

00:15:19: and Zat Cole notes resilience is a pure competitive advantage.

00:15:23: Let us connect this back into tech conversation because this where digital and physical worlds crash in each other It

00:15:28: s like trying build massive digital city without laying down any concrete.

00:15:32: Hadi Hamoud emphasizes a massive reality check here.

00:15:36: While AI looks completely digital, its constraints are highly physical.

00:15:39: It needs massive amounts of energy and compute

00:15:41: power.".

00:15:42: And we're seeing massive strategic moves to secure this physical layer!

00:15:46: Valentino Coaster notes SAP's €三 hundred million investment in France specifically for sovereign cloud capabilities.

00:15:53: Steve Suarez highlights the US government treating quantum computing as a two billion dollar national security priority.

00:15:59: Pedro Oliveira mentions Kuwait's eight hundred twenty five million dinar telecom project as a major milestone for digital infrastructure.

00:16:07: The map is being redrawn

00:16:08: and the financial map is shifting right alongside it.

00:16:11: Arjun Veer Singh points out the Global Financial Center's index shows Dubai rising rapidly as a financial power.

00:16:16: Meanwhile, Nadine Charlon emphasizes that sophisticated saws investors are getting much smarter.

00:16:22: they're looking straight past top line revenue and demanding strict cohort analysis

00:16:26: And Neha Cabra warns traditional banks That while they currently keep customers account They are rapidly losing moment of decision to AI assistance upstream on.

00:16:36: There's

00:16:36: just so much pressure everywhere.

00:16:37: I mean, we saw so many hyperspecific examples of this shift too across these weeks.

00:16:42: Yeah like Rema Seraphie pointing out how AI is completely reshaping tax delivery to higher value work or Patrick Schmucki talking about the institutional bottleneck in pricing climate resilience.

00:16:54: Right and then you have optimistic leadership moves trying to navigate all this Bob Sternfels focusing on inclusive growth Hubritus Meinike tying sustainability directly to business value

00:17:04: And Paula Belostis-Mugersa diving into the economics of healthy longevity, which is fascinating.

00:17:10: Plus Eric Seier looking at European EV adoption.

00:17:13: Yeah

00:17:13: it's all about leading through contradiction right now Which Dr.

00:17:16: Andreas Berlin and Leon Dorscher has explicitly talked about.

00:17:19: Christian Schonelling even published research showing how executive instability directly lowers ESG disclosure.

00:17:26: Everything Is So Deeply Connected.

00:17:27: The pace of this change is just relentless.

00:17:30: We started by talking about giving someone the keys to a Formula One car, but driving it like a tractor…the machine has completely changed – the track had completely changed!

00:17:40: So the only question left was whether organizations are willing to learn how drive all over again or if they'll keep hiding in their nodding room?

00:17:47: Which brings us back into our final provocative thought for you to mull over as we close today's deep dive... It comes from Tim Persons, who introduced the concept of The Jeven's Paradox to this debate.

00:17:59: Oh

00:17:59: I love This Paradox!

00:18:00: it asks a very simple question What happens when a resource gets cheaper?

00:18:05: Human behavior dictates that people just use much more of it.

00:18:09: Right.

00:18:09: like if you make highways wider To reduce traffic You end up with more cars driving on them.

00:18:13: Exactly So what happens When intelligence itself Gets Cheaper?

00:18:18: If AI makes analysis, drafting and synthesis completely abundant and practically free then simply having the right answer is no longer your competitive moat.

00:18:27: Because everyone has the right answers!

00:18:29: Right.

00:18:30: The ultimate premium for professionals in M&A VC & Consulting will not be generating answers.

00:18:36: It'll have to ask the most contrarian highly contextual questions that NO machine would ever think to prompt.

00:18:43: That's the new human mote.

00:18:45: If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:18:48: Also check out our other editions on Private Equity, Venture Capital and M&A.

00:18:52: Thank-you so much for joining us in the deep dive!

00:18:55: And don't forget to subscribe.