Opinion
The Deck Is Dead
The best slide ever written can’t answer a customer email or launch a workflow. Agentic AI can. That changes what consulting is for.
For three decades, consulting sold certainty in the shape of a deck. The slide was a proxy for progress: a narrative artifact we could invoice. But artifacts age quickly; systems endure. When agentic AI moved from novelty to reliability, it became clear that the unit of progress isn’t the slide—it’s the shipped capability.
“The value of advice rises when it operates.”
Agentic consulting pairs human judgment with autonomous agents inside guardrails. Humans define the outcome, call the escalations, and tell the story. Agents do the grind: research, integration, drafting, testing, and execution. The outcome arrives with telemetry attached. There’s nothing to “believe”—there’s something to measure.
From theater to throughput
- Artifacts → Automations
- Hours → Outcomes
- Assumptions → Telemetry
This isn’t anti‑strategy. It’s pro‑shipping. Strategy gains power precisely because it is implemented, observed, and iterated. That’s why we run two‑week pilots with acceptance tests. If it doesn’t deliver, you don’t pay.