When I first learned about the consulting industry, I encountered a question that continues to resonate deeply: What exactly is the value of consulting?
At first glance, the idea seems paradoxical. Business founders have built companies from scratch, and surely no one knows a business better than a seasoned executive. So, why would these people pay millions for external consultants? What can an outsider really offer?
Even socially, this question surfaces often. When I tell people I work in consulting, I’m usually met with puzzled looks: Consulting in what? Training? For which industry? When I explain that we work across industries, the confusion deepens. That’s when I realized, consulting is not an easy profession for outsiders to understand. Unlike roles in finance, HR, or sales, its value isn’t immediately tangible.
This article aims to demystify consulting from a practitioner’s perspective and explain why businesses, especially large ones, are willing to invest heavily in it. The first question we’ll address is the most fundamental.
1. Why Are Clients Willing to Spend Millions on Consulting?
Reason One: Consulting as a Corporate Doctor
If there’s one metaphor that captures the role of a consultant, it’s this: consultants are corporate doctors.
Just as people visit doctors when something feels wrong, despite being unable to pinpoint the cause, companies do the same.
Business leaders often sense a problem long before they can identify it. They may have attempted to address issues internally, only to find that their efforts either fail to solve the core problem or exacerbate it.
Let me illustrate with a real-world example. A CEO approached us believing his company’s issues stemmed from a lack of strong corporate culture. He invested significant time and effort into revising the company’s mission, values, and communication channels. Employees were required to participate in regular trainings and cultural reaffirmations. Yet, despite these efforts, there was no measurable improvement in organizational performance.
When we conducted a deeper assessment, the real issues came to light: overlapping structures, bloated teams, and poor alignment between strategy and execution. The problem wasn’t the culture, it was structural inefficiency. The CEO had misdiagnosed the symptom (an underperforming culture) for the cause (misalignment).
This example highlights a critical insight: poor outcomes are symptoms; the real problem is the hidden root cause.
A business leader might not be able to articulate the source of poor performance, but they nonetheless feel the consequences: declining productivity, stalled growth, or deteriorating morale. And when the cost of inaction becomes greater than the cost of hiring help, bringing in external expertise becomes not just viable, but essential.
This is where consulting delivers its highest value: diagnosing invisible or misunderstood problems, and structuring actionable, effective solutions.
If a company risks losing tens of millions due to inefficiencies, spending a few million to address the root cause can be a rational and high-ROI decision. The larger the organization, the more complex the challenges, and the higher the potential returns from solving them.
Reason Two: Consulting as an Enabler
Consulting doesn’t only serve executives. Its value to middle managers and frontline employees is equally critical.
In any large organization, internal departments have varying priorities, and individuals often lack the authority or visibility to drive change. As a result, even when people see clear inefficiencies, they are often unable to act.
Consultants can play the role of external change agents, empowered to connect all levels of the organization. We gather insights from various departments, synthesize them into a structured framework, and present them to leadership. At the same time, we translate executive vision into actionable guidance for those responsible for implementation.
This dual role, top-down alignment and bottom-up communication, can be essential to driving change in large organizations. Consultants often become the catalyst that help companies do what internal teams have long wanted to do but lacked the support or structure to execute.
Moreover, consultants bring tools, templates, benchmarks, and experience. While executives focus on outcomes and strategy, internal teams must handle the execution, including the legal, logistical, and interpersonal challenges that arise.
Take a personnel optimization project we led. The CEO’s objective was to reduce headcount and improve operational efficiency. From his perspective, it was about setting targets and assigning responsibility. But for the managers tasked with implementation, the issues were far more granular: how to structure fair layoffs, avoid legal risks, conduct difficult conversations, and maintain morale?
As consultants, we were able to support both ends. We helped the CEO structure the plan, and we worked with individual managers on the finer details, providing documentation, communication frameworks, and legal best practices. This dual support is a defining feature of high-impact consulting: bridging strategy with execution.
2. What Sets Effective Consulting Apart?
Many assume the core of consulting lies in developing a well-written report or polished presentation. While documentation is important, the real value comes from influence and execution.
A consulting report, no matter how comprehensive, has no impact if it remains on paper. Our job as consultants is to facilitate real change. This requires time, communication, iteration, and on-the-ground presence.
Consultants spend significant effort in working groups, meetings, and cross-functional sessions to ensure recommendations are understood, accepted, and implemented. It’s not just about providing a solution, it’s about making the organization want to act on it.
This is where experience, empathy, and communication skills matter most. It’s what separates junior consultants from seasoned professionals. The ability to understand an organization’s unique dynamics and lead them through change is what ultimately defines consulting success.
The bottom line
To summarize, the value of consulting lies in diagnosing complex problems, aligning diverse stakeholders, and enabling sustainable change.
For executives, consulting provides clarity on issues that are difficult to identify internally, along with actionable strategies to resolve them.
For internal teams, it offers structure, tools, and the executive backing needed to implement difficult changes effectively.
And for the organization as a whole, consulting can drive transformation by bridging the gap between vision and reality.
That’s why companies, especially large ones, are willing to invest millions in consulting engagements. Because the pain is real, the stakes are high, and the cost of doing nothing is often far greater than the price of a solution.
When executed well, consulting is not a cost, it’s an investment in clarity, capability, and long-term growth.
Casey Ma is an MBA and MPH student at Yale University, specializing in Healthcare Management. With a background in strategy consulting, marketing, and project management, her passion lies at the intersection of healthcare transformation and strategic problem-solving. She is an advocate for collaborative innovation and enjoys engaging with professionals who share her enthusiasm for the healthcare and marketing sectors.
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