Over the past 18 months or so, I’ve felt a shift – not in the core principles of consulting, but in the shape of what clients expect from an advisory firm.
Strategy isn’t dead, but it doesn’t stand alone anymore. Clients don’t want ideas in one phase and action in another. They want results – faster, clearer, and more embedded in how they work. And increasingly, they expect those results to be shaped by data, powered by platforms, and accelerated by AI.
So what does a successful advisory firm look like in 2026?
It’s not a reinvention. But it is a rethink. And from where I sit, it comes down to six things:
1. They Deliver Strategy + Execution in One Motion
The separation between “strategy firm” and “execution partner” is fading – and rightly so. A strategy’s purpose ultimately should be to ensure effective execution. To that end, the most impactful consulting work today doesn’t draw hard lines between phases. Rather, it blends insight and implementation into a single motion.
That doesn’t mean every advisory firm needs an army of delivery resources. But it does mean your strategy needs to be implementation-ready from day one. You need to know what good execution looks like. You need to be able to collaborate with delivery teams – whether yours, your client’s, or a partner’s. And increasingly, you need to stay involved long enough to see the value land.
We’ve always taken pride in being pragmatic: we design roadmaps that account for a client’s capacity for change. What’s new is that clients now expect more of that end-to-end accountability. Clients don’t want to read about outcomes. They want to experience them.
2. Successful Firms Build Advisory Practices Around Tech & Data
For some firms, tech and data are enablers. For others, they’re a separate offering. But the best advisory firms in 2026 will treat them as foundational to how they work – not a bolt-on, not an afterthought, but a starting point.
That’s always been part of our DNA. But what’s different now is the pace. Clients aren’t just asking what to do, they’re asking how it aligns with their roadmap for analytics/AI investment sequencing and cloud migration, or whether their software platform investment is pulling its weight. The platform context is no longer downstream. It’s often the first constraint… and the first opportunity.
We’ve seen real traction when AI is tied to something tangible: improving underwriting cycle time, enabling smarter sales plays, flagging fraud before it hits. AI strategy for its own sake won’t get funded. But AI embedded in the way a client runs their business? That’s here to stay.
3. They Show Up with Industry Fluency, Not Just Frameworks
There was a time when being the smartest generalist in the room was enough. That time has passed. Clients today are more informed, more skeptical, and more strapped for time. They want advisors who speak their language, understand their regulators, client, customer and ecosystem partner priorities, and data models, with a strong sense of what “good” looks like in their space.
That means deep industry knowledge is no longer a differentiator – it’s table stakes. So is operator experience. The best advisory teams I’ve worked with include former executives, product owners, and domain leads who’ve sat on the other side of the table.
That doesn’t mean frameworks are irrelevant, they just don’t carry weight on their own. Your credibility comes from demonstrating you can apply them in a context that feels real, tested, and grounded in the client’s world.
4. They Monetize Intellectual Capital at Scale
The old model of billing by the hour is still alive, but it’s not aging well. Clients want faster time to value, and advisory firms want better margins. The answer, for many, is to productize what they know.
That could be accelerators. Diagnostics. Data sets. Industry benchmarks. Even internal AI co–pilots to speed up delivery. The best firms are finding ways to codify their IP and make it reusable, so each project builds on the last. We’ve been leaning into this as well – not just for internal efficiency, but because it leads to better client outcomes.
When your starting point is smarter, your impact is faster.
5. They Build Flexible, Expert–Driven Teams
The big pyramid – the old model of scaling through a large base of junior talent – is under pressure. Clients are asking tougher questions about who’s on their team and what value they’re adding. The best advisors don’t want to manage layers of abstraction either – they want to do meaningful work.
In this new world, smaller, more senior teams win. So do teams that can flex, with fractional experts, 1099s, and cross–functional pods that adapt to the work at hand. We’ve found success by building a strong core team, then surrounding them with a broader network of specialists. It gives us scale without rigidity. And it gives our clients the expertise they need, when they need it.
6. They Let AI Shape the Firm, Not Just the Offering
AI isn’t just a tool we bring to clients. It’s a force that’s reshaping the internal mechanics of consulting itself.
Firms are starting to use AI not just to deliver faster, but to think differently about how they work – how knowledge is managed, how proposals are generated, how junior staff learn the craft. (That last one especially has a lot of folks scratching heads.) In the past, firms scaled through leverage. Now, they scale through automation and IP reuse – much of it AI-powered.
That changes how we build teams, how we price work, and how we compete.
At the same time, clients are under pressure to show ROI on their own AI investments. So advisory firms need to show up with more than buzzwords – we need to connect AI strategy to business value, fast. That means building credibility in AI use cases that matter: decision intelligence, risk modeling, underwriting optimization, compliance automation, and more.
The firms that treat AI like a slide in a pitch deck will be left behind. The ones that embed it into everything they do – and do so responsibly – are the ones that will lead the next era of consulting.
Final Thought
A lot of this feels familiar, at least to me. But it’s sharper now, more urgent. The fundamentals of great advisory work haven’t changed – the context has. That means we need to build firms and teams that can operate at this new tempo.
Clients still want insight, but they expect it to be embedded in action. They still want strategy, as long as it’s grounded in tech, data, and the realities of execution.
If we get that balance right, I think the best years of advisory are still ahead of us.
