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Although it’s a cyclical industry, the state of the consulting market seems unusually positive these days. The bullishness on growth seems directly connected to the plethora of buzzwords driving change. Digital … Block-chain … Analytics … every utterance in every market points to consultants as client-whisperers — sage advisors who can make sense out of these chaos-inducing disruptors.

Despite the rosy prognostications of providers, buyers of consulting services appear vexed in answering a basic question: “Who is my consultant?” We are predicting a fundamental shift in the consulting industry over the next decade (if not sooner).

Our view on integrated consulting is that it upends the business models of traditional consulting service providers. Global firms privately admit that traditional time-based, project-based consulting is unsustainable for firms of, shall we say, a certain size.

It’s simple math: dwindling labor market < pyramid consulting model < smaller/shorter projects. To cite Bono, global firms are “running to stand still.” The upheaval we’ll witness will be both from a business-model standpoint as well as with personnel. We’ve talked about firms partnering with clients in very direct ways. At the other end of the spectrum, firms must re-position themselves with the next generation as not only employers of choice, but ones with long-term potential that transcend increasingly fractious partnerships. For all the positivity, there is an underlying tension that makes these nervous times indeed.