What You're Really Paying For When Big Four Shows Up

The frameworks are table stakes. The pattern recognition is the product.

Here's a question that haunts every VP who's ever signed a six-figure (or seven, eight, or more) consulting contract: How could a 25-year-old consultant outperform a 45-year-old internal director? And, even harder, when they're successful, why?

It's not that they know more. Your director has 20 years of institutional knowledge they'll never match. It's that the McKinsey consultant has seen more failures compressed into less time. In 18 months, they've observed the various ways complex projects implode at a dozen different companies. Your director has maybe only seen a few.

That pattern recognition is what you're actually buying. And if you've ever watched a consulting team skip straight to automation without questioning whether the work should exist, you've seen what happens when you buy the framework without the judgment.

Now that AI can replicate the frameworks, understanding when you're paying for genuine insight versus repackaged methodology matters more than ever.

The 70% Problem

McKinsey's own research shows that 70% of transformations fail. Not 70% of bad transformations. 70% of all transformations, including the ones led by the consultants publishing these statistics.

The failure rate for digital transformations specifically? Some research puts it as high as 87%.

Those numbers might make you angry. Not at the consultants necessarily, but at the pattern they reveal. Organizations keep making the same mistakes. They automate broken processes. They systematize chaos. They spend millions building faster versions of things that shouldn't exist.

The consultants who watched this movie a hundred times can spot it in the first week. That's valuable. The question is whether you can develop that same pattern recognition yourself.

The Framework They Don't Put in the Proposal

There's a sequence that experienced operations people use whether they call it by name or not. It shows up in lean manufacturing, in IT service management, in every serious transformation methodology. The consultants from Wayne Fortuna's era at Hutchinson Technology called it ESSA: Eliminate, Simplify, Systematize, Automate.

The order matters. Most failed transformations skip straight to automate.

Eliminate asks: Should this work exist at all? You'd be surprised how often the answer is no. That weekly report nobody reads. The approval workflow from three reorgs ago. The reconciliation process that exists because at one point two systems didn't talk to each other but now they do. Before you make something faster, ask if it should happen.

Simplify asks: Is this more complex than it needs to be? A customer onboarding process with 47 exception paths isn't a process. It's a confession that nobody has thought clearly about what onboarding actually requires. Complexity is usually a symptom, not a feature.

Systematize asks: Can this be done the same way every time? Standardization isn't about crushing creativity. It's about freeing creativity for the work that actually needs it. You don't want your finance team getting creative with close procedures.

Automate comes last, not first. Only after you've eliminated the unnecessary, simplified the complex, and systematized the variable should you hand something to technology.

When organizations automate workflows without reviewing their relevance or efficiency, they bake in their dysfunction. They build expensive, inflexible systems that move garbage faster.

What the Consultant Actually Sees

I spent years as a SOC 2 auditor, evaluating whether companies' systems actually worked. What I learned is that the documentation usually lies. Beautiful policy documents sit next to broken operations. The gap between what companies say they do and what they actually do is where transformations go to die.

The young McKinsey consultant isn't smarter than your director. They've just seen that gap at scale. They walked into Company A and watched an automation project fail because nobody eliminated first. They saw Company B try to systematize before they simplified. They documented the same failure patterns across a dozen industries.

I've watched this movie myself. I've been in the room when a transformation got killed because we automated before we simplified. The external consultants had been paid to help. Instead, they saved the methodological gaps as ammunition. The transformation got redirected to a major firm that charged ten times more to do the same work with better optics. That's when I learned: the frameworks aren't the product. Knowing which framework applies to which mess, and recognizing when someone's playing a different game entirely, is the product.

Experience is becoming the real premium: Partners with pattern recognition, judgment, and leadership maturity are more valuable than ever. The AI can generate the frameworks. The AI can't tell you which framework applies to your specific situation.

The Self-Assessment

Before you sign that next consulting contract, or before you kick off that automation initiative, run through this yourself.

The honest answers often hurt. That process you were planning to automate? Maybe it shouldn't exist. That system you were going to build? Maybe you need to standardize the underlying work first.

When You Actually Need the Consultant

Sometimes you do need external help. Here's when it makes sense:

When you don't have enough data points. If this is your first major transformation, you're building your pattern recognition in real time. An expensive lesson.

When politics blocks elimination. Internal teams can't always say "this entire department is working on something that shouldn't exist." Consultants can. That air cover costs money but sometimes it's the only path.

When speed matters more than cost. Developing pattern recognition internally takes years. Buying it is faster.

When you need someone to blame. I'm only half joking. Sometimes the board needs to hear a recommendation from McKinsey that your team has been making for two years.

When You Don't

When the problem is obvious. If you already know that the process is broken, you don't need someone to confirm it. You need someone to fix it.

When you're automating to avoid hard conversations. Technology doesn't solve people problems. It makes them more expensive.

When you haven't done the ESSA work. Hiring consultants to automate a process you haven't evaluated is like hiring an architect before you've decided what building you need.

The Pattern Recognition You Can Build

AI is changing what consultants deliver. McKinsey now counts 25,000 AI agents as part of their workforce. The research is getting automated. The deck-building that used to take months now takes minutes. What's left is judgment, relationship, and pattern recognition.

You can build pattern recognition without spending decades at McKinsey. You just need to be intentional about it.

Study failures, not just successes. Every transformation post-mortem is a data point. The 70% that fail have more to teach you than the 30% that succeed.

Apply ESSA rigorously. Every time you're asked to automate something, force the conversation back to eliminate. You'll be unpopular at first. You'll save millions eventually.

Cross-pollinate. The consultant's advantage is seeing the same problem in different industries. Seek out operations leaders outside your space. Join communities where people share failures, not just wins.

Question the scope. When someone brings you a solution, ask what problem it's solving. Then ask if that problem should exist.

The real value of Big Four consulting isn't the frameworks or the junior talent. It's the library of failures in the partners' heads. Understanding which mistake you're about to make and recognizing the early warning signs. And, because they are experts at systems and process they have standardized how that knowledge is taught, embedded in their processes, and actually used.

That library doesn't belong to any firm. It's just accumulated experience, organized by pattern. You can build your own.

And guess what. Once you do, now you have a fantastic opportunity to find real work to automate and be a massive success story. All without the army of consultants or 18-month engagements.

FAQ

What does ESSA stand for in process improvement? ESSA stands for Eliminate, Simplify, Systematize, Automate. It's a sequential framework that ensures you've removed unnecessary work, reduced complexity, and standardized processes before investing in automation.

Why do most digital transformation projects fail? According to McKinsey and other research firms, 70-87% of digital transformations fail primarily because organizations automate broken processes, focus on technology instead of culture, and skip the foundational work of elimination and simplification.

When should you hire a management consultant? Consider external consultants when you lack pattern recognition from similar transformations, when internal politics prevent honest assessment, when speed is critical, or when you need external credibility to move stalled initiatives.