Say Goodbye to the Billable Hour, Hello to the Real Unit of Value

Columbia's Rita McGrath nails it in the Wall Street Journal: When AI can tear through documents, models, and decks in seconds, billing by the hour starts to look like a bug, not a feature, and the consulting model built around it begins to wobble.

In all professional services, including crisis and issue management, nobody cares how long it took. They care whether you helped them make the right call. The real unit of value is the decision you help the client make, not the time it took to get there.

A quick note up front: I spent a big part of my career in consulting. I understand the economics, the pressure, the expectations, and the reality that in professional services, value has often meant "what your expertise allows you to charge."

This post isn't a critique of consultants. It's a look at how the model evolves as AI reshapes the work itself. And now, from the "other side" building CrisisCommand --- an AI associate that supports experts in issue and crisis management --- I have deep empathy for the firms navigating this moment.

So here's what CMOs and CCOs are telling me directly:

I'll use LLMs and tools like CrisisCommand for 80--90% of our issue and crisis work. I'll use a top consultant for the hardest 10--20%. But the big retainers for being "available" and calls with too many junior people have to stop.

In other words, they see AI and vertical tools as the operating layer that carries the work, while senior advisers focus on the judgment calls.

My take: AI isn't replacing consultants. It's replacing the analytical lift that once justified large teams and long timelines, forcing firms to rethink how value is packaged and priced.

And the traditional model is already showing strain, including two of my former employers:

• Accenture now pays many entry-level consultants by the hour and encourages them not to work overtime, according to a former colleague. If accurate, that's a massive shift.
• WPP, once valued at £24bn, now trades near £3.1bn, in part because it fell behind the AI innovation curve and couldn't deliver the pace clients expected.

The idea that "more hours = more value" collapses when hours collapse. What's left is the part clients were really paying for all along.

The premium is shifting decisively to:

• Senior, deep domain experience and judgment
• Strategic framing grounded in research and precedent
• Stakeholder insights and sequencing
• The judgment call that actually shifts the outcome
• And having the right leaders and influencers on speed dial when it matters

So this isn't the end of consulting. It's a rebundling of value around the partner and the partner's judgment. And, a shift away from the layered staffing model beneath them (the "school bus," as our competitors liked to call it when I was at Accenture).

How do firms evolve?

Here are three practical ideas that reshape capability without undermining core competency.

1. Shift from deliverables to decision acceleration

If the deck is instant, clarity of thinking and solutions becomes the premium. Clients want the moment-shaping decision, not the 4 to 6-week project behind it.

How to implement:

• Recast proposals around decision paths and first-72-hour plans.
• Offer a 2--4 hour intake + accelerated insight sprint using LLMs combined with proprietary knowledge bases and tools like CrisisCommand.
• Begin every engagement with: "What decision(s) must we enable the client to make?" and align all work accordingly.

2. Move from the pyramid to the hourglass

The classic pyramid relied on junior labor. AI now performs a lot of that work... fast.

The winning model becomes the hourglass:

• A team of senior domain experts driving judgment
• AI engines + proprietary knowledge bases performing the mid-layer cognitive lift
• Flexible human talent deployed where human nuance is truly needed

How to implement:

• Use AI to enable or automate research, initial strategy development, and early drafts.
• Build an internal AI studio to translate senior partner guidance into rapid analysis and content.
• Shift junior roles toward client-facing learning and shadowing, not back-office production work. This is how the next generation develops judgment: by observing it early, not grinding through tasks AI now does better.

This isn't cost-cutting. It's capability-building for a market that is moving faster than ever.

3. Price like your judgment matters

If AI compresses the work, pricing has to follow the value: the critical moment, not the effort.

Outcome-based fees. Advisory subscriptions. Moment-based value.

Bill for the moments that change the trajectory. Not the minutes it took to produce slide 47.

How to implement:

• Launch Crisis Readiness subscriptions blending AI acceleration, knowledge bases, and senior advisory.

Here is an example: If your firm understands the administration's DEI rollbacks and how regulatory, legal, and reputational pressures will cascade across public and private sectors, CEOs, CHROs, and CCOs will pay for timely, scenario-based guidance tailored to their organization's specific risk landscape.

• Introduce (or preserve) moment rates or crisis rates for high-stakes moments: regulatory response, leadership transition, political exposure, reputational threats.
• Tie fees to milestones, not labor.

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The window for change is short

Consulting firms have 6--12 months to modernize their operating and pricing models. Not because AI replaces consultants. It doesn't. But clients are already changing how they buy expertise, and the firms that adapt first will define the next decade of advisory work.

From what I see building CrisisCommand, the pattern is simple: AI takes on the heavy lifting of crisis analysis and coordination so that experts spend more of their time in the conversations and decisions where they uniquely add value.

The consulting firms that modernize now won't just survive the AI era --- they may define it.