A few weeks ago, our Head of Sales made an observation that has stuck with me ever since.
Consulting engagements almost always end in one of three ways:
- They tell us we’ve been doing everything wrong.
- They tell us we’ve been doing everything right.
- They tell us we’ve been doing well, but there are things we can do better.
If I had to guess, more than 80% of engagements fall into the third category, which is why consultants often hear the same criticism: “They’re just telling us what we already knew.”
There’s some truth to that.
Most strategy work, whether it’s done by consultants or an in-house strategy team, isn’t about uncovering a hidden secret or producing a groundbreaking insight.
More often than not, the facts are already somewhere inside the organization.
The problem is that they are scattered across different functions, levels of management, and company reports.
Organizations rarely suffer from a lack of information
Walk into a stakeholder interview expecting to discuss marketing strategy. Thirty minutes later, you’re no longer talking about marketing.
You’re hearing why Sales, Marketing, and Technology aren’t aligned. Why Risk or Finance is perceived as slowing every decision. Why Operations feels left out of key discussions. Why certain executives are rarely challenged. Before long, you realize the conversation was never really about marketing in the first place.
Earlier in my career, I viewed these conversations as distractions. They felt like unproductive venting that took time away from the “real work”.
Today, I see them differently.
They’re often the most valuable part of an engagement. After enough interviews, a pattern emerges. Different people describe different problems, but underlying issues begin to appear.
Perhaps incentives are pushing different functions in opposite directions.
Perhaps nobody has ownership of the customer journey from beginning to end.
Perhaps senior leaders believe the strategy has been clearly communicated when everyone below them has interpreted it differently.
Most organizations don’t struggle because they don’t know there’s a problem.
They struggle because nobody is able to connect the dots.
Everyone knows part of the story
Sales understands the commercial reality.
Marketing understands the customer.
Finance understands the numbers.
Technology understands the systems.
Operations understands what can actually be delivered.
Middle managers know where decisions get stuck.
Senior executives know the strategic priorities and external pressures.
An organization can contain a large amount of knowledge without the organization itself possessing a coherent understanding of what is happening.
Everyone owns a piece of the truth, without anyone seeing the whole picture.
Consultants and internal strategy teams offer value by providing a different perspective. Their job is not to optimize Sales, Finance, or Marketing. Their job is to understand how the pieces fit together.
Rather than asking, “What does Marketing need to improve?” a more valuable question is often something like “What is happening between Marketing and Technology that is producing this problem?”
It’s a different kind of question.
The value of an outsider
There is another advantage consultants have that is easy to overlook: independence.
Internal teams live inside the organisation. This can make them subject matter experts not only within their function, but also about political considerations. They know which subjects are taboo, and what executives are likely to think. This can lead to self-censorship as people tailor questions and answers based on what executives want to hear.
An outsider has more freedom to question sacred cows. Consultants can create value simply by legitimizing a discussion about something the organisation may already suspect.
A good therapist does not necessarily tell you something new. Often, you already know the important facts. The value comes from identifying patterns, challenging assumptions, reframing the problem, and creating a setting in which uncomfortable things can be said.
Good strategy work can play a similar role.
Why stakeholder interviews matter
This is why stakeholder interviews are more important than they appear.
The numbers tell you what is happening. People tell you why.
Metrics can tell you revenue is declining. Customer surveys can tell you satisfaction is falling. Operational dashboards can tell you projects are behind schedule. But they rarely explain the full story, which can emerge through conversation.
Every stakeholder interview adds a piece to the puzzle. The skill of the consultant is to discern idle complaints from meaningful symptoms to reveal a pattern that points to the underlying issue.
AI changes the economics of strategy work
AI will continue getting better at transcribing meetings, summarizing interviews, and drafting presentations. Those capabilities are quickly becoming commodities.
When information becomes abundant and analysis becomes cheap, the scarce resource become clear judgement and trusted relationships.
Someone still has to decide what matters. Someone has to recognise when seemingly unrelated issues are symptoms of an underlying root cause. And someone has to turn the analysis into a story that senior leaders will act on.
AI can help assemble the evidence, but the more valuable work requires judgment, context, and empathy. It remains deeply human.
Strategy is organizational sense-making
The mission of strategy consulting is to understand the bigger picture. You’re rarely the expert. Instead, you’re the person whose job it is to zoom out and understand what it all means.
The best strategy professionals spend far more time listening than talking. Not because they don’t have a viewpoint, but because they know the organization already contains most of the answers. The real job is to organize fragmented truths into a story that gives leaders the confidence to act.
Perhaps that’s the real value of strategy consulting. Helping organizations make sense of what they already know.
Jason Oh leads strategy and partnerships at Vanguard Canada. His career has spanned strategy consulting and corporate strategy, advising leading financial institutions on growth, transformation, and execution of strategic priorities.
Image: DALL-E
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