obelisks and reputiques
Selecting the Right Strategy Firm in the Age of AI
For 40 years, strategy consulting ran on a simple geometry lesson: pyramids scale. Juniors at the base, partners at the top, leverage in between. AI ended that math. Not because consulting stops mattering, but because the bottom no longer carries the same weight.
The large firms won’t die; they’ll compress. In a September HBR article, David S. Duncan, Tyler Anderson and Jeffrey Saviano called it the ‘Consulting Obelisk’: senior-heavy, thinner middle, far fewer juniors, with AI doing work that used to justify headcount.
In this model, the value of a big firm becomes brand assurance, governance, cross-functional integration, and the ability to mobilize multiple senior teams quickly when the problem is big, ambiguous, or political. You are paying, in part, for the institutional wrapper—and in the right situations, it’s worth every penny.
On the other end, we believe a different model is emerging in importance: the Reputique. Think hub-and-spoke. At the hub: one or two deeply credible experts who own judgment, clarity, and trust. Around the hub: a small, AI-fluent core and a curated network, onshore/offshore, as needed. Variable cost, minimal machinery. The proposition is senior attention, speed, and domain relevance. A few people who know how to drive AI really well can now do what twenty analysts did in 2019. Clients are buying named, accountable expertise amplified by modern tools.
Both models are viable. But the middle—junior-heavy leverage as the value proposition—falls away. The mid-sized, mid-reputation firms that once scaled by throwing more bodies at a problem will be squeezed out entirely.
Strip away the assumptions: obelisks are not inherently “slow,” and reputiques are not inherently “cheap.” Both are AI-native, both can leverage offshore, both can be fast. The difference is where the economics and risk controls live.
With an obelisk, you get institutional assurance: partner coverage, methods with auditable paper trails, cross-discipline interlock, and brand credibility that works well in boardrooms, with auditors, and with regulators. That assurance costs money because it requires standing capability whether your project runs this quarter or next. When the stakes include Wall Street guidance, consent decrees, or enterprise-wide change, you are buying confidence that the work can withstand external scrutiny and internal politics.
With a reputique, you get concentrated expertise: direct access to the senior mind, a lighter operational footprint, and costs that map more directly to the problem at hand. The trade is obvious and often desirable: less institutional wrapper, more decisive judgment. Inside many mid-market to large companies, that’s exactly what moves the ball, especially when the work is bounded, time-sensitive, or demands contrarian clarity rather than orchestration.
The real choice clients face
Most executives won’t phrase it this way, but this is the decision:
Do you need institutional cover, or do you need the right answer fast?
If the deliverable will be shared with a board, a regulator, a rating agency, or three functions that distrust each other, the obelisk earns its premium.
If the deliverable is a pricing playbook for next quarter, a market-entry thesis for three priority countries, or a plan to exploit a rival’s weak flank before they notice, the reputique outperforms on speed, relevance, and cost-to-impact.
An additional truth often gets lost in the discourse: breadth for breadth’s sake is a marketing asset, not a client need. No one buys consulting work simultaneously for “20 industries” and “100 countries.” They buy my industry, my geography, right now, and whether the team across the table has earned the right to advise on it.
How the next decade will actually work
The industry won’t converge on one model. It barbells.
Obelisks dominate high-scrutiny, high-coordination mandates: portfolio resets, post-merger validations, auditor-visible synergy cases, multi-BU operating model changes. They will be smaller than today, denser with partners and directors, and tightly integrated with internal AI and global delivery capabilities. Their margins stay strong because the brand continues to matter when politics and public markets are in play. And what about the “talent pipeline” when there are fewer entry-level roles? The junior bench was never the partner pipeline that people outside the industry romanticize. Most analysts leave after two to three years; partners largely arrive post-MBA or laterals. Hollowing out the base doesn’t kill the pipeline to senior talent, but it does force different development models.
Reputiques dominate bounded, high-impact decisions: pricing and bundling overhauls, competitive strategy briefs, cross-border entry sequencing, customer-backed product bets. They will look tiny from the outside, and enormous inside your problem: senior attention you can feel, AI that accelerates the right questions (not just the grind), and field truth from curated networks that don’t need a PMO to function.
The interesting part is the seam. Smart clients will stage work: reputiques for the answer and the edge; obelisks for the wrapper and the rollout—or vice-versa when the mandate demands it. The firms that struggle will be those that pretend nothing has changed.
If you’re a Head of Strategy: a clean way to decide, and defend your choice
You don’t need a matrix; you need one sentence you can say out loud.
“This touches the board and auditors; we chose an obelisk for institutional assurance.”
Or
“This is a time-boxed, high-leverage decision; we chose a reputique for senior attention and speed.”
If you go with an obelisk, you maintain the option to also engage a reputique to pressure-test a thesis. If you go with a reputique, you maintain the option to engage an obelisk later, to scale to enterprise rollout.
That’s it. Align the firm structure to the scrutiny, scope, and speed your mandate demands. You can defend that to any CFO or CEO because it’s anchored in outcomes.
In an industry built on frameworks, it’s the shape of the firm itself that’s now under review, and the savviest clients are already selecting accordingly.
Adil Husain is Managing Director of Emerging Strategy, a “Reputique” global competitive strategy firm. He’s spent over two decades in the trenches, helping clients outmaneuver competitors in complex markets.
He writes to test ideas, challenge conventional wisdom, and draw smart people into orbit.
If you want to connect, collaborate, or argue, you can reach him at ahusain@emerging-strategy.com
What happens to our young people? Both these strategies eliminate junior consultants. As a society we are shortchanging and destroying our youngsters in so many ways.