👋 Hi, it’s Maurizio. Welcome to my newsletter on everything professional services.
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TL,DR: The skills that got you promoted over the initial decade of your career are the same skills which are holding you back today.
If you walk into the offices of McKinsey, BCG, Accenture, EY, Deloitte, or any of their peers, you will realize an almost tragic paradox.
The floors are filled with spectacularly intelligent people roughly a decade into their careers, who are stuck in a circling pattern, visibly struggling to progress.
They are blocked by the same skills that got them promoted in the first place.
For your first ten years in professional services, your entire worth is tied to being right. You run the numerical analysis, you catch the logical flaws, and ultimately, you build your entire professional identity around a “~0 defects” mentality.
But the moment you try to cross the threshold to Partner, that unique focus with having the mathematically correct answer becomes almost a liability.
The AI misconception (and what clients actually buy)
People outside the industry look at the rapid rise of AI and assume consulting is dead.
They think consulting is basically just generating information, formatting slides, and summarizing data.
If that were true, the industry would have been finished a long time ago!
It sounds obvious to those close to the industry, but it bears repeating: C-suite execs do not hire consultants because they lack data.
External consultants are hired because, for the enterprise, the stakes are terrifying and the competition is hot. In a hyper-competitive market, a business has to focus entirely on its core just to survive, so the executive team simply cannot afford the distraction of managing massive, sprawling transformations end-to-end.
They need it handled.
AI is perfectly able to generate an excellent-looking market map or a financial model. But an algorithm cannot shoulder the professional risk of a $1,000,000,000 decision.
More importantly, an algorithm cannot herd thousands of anxiously resistant employees through a complicated post-merger integration.
Consultants these days don’t just sell advice. They sell risk transfer AND they sell execution.
You are due for a Great Unlearning
This brings us back to the difference between the senior manager stuck in the holding pattern, and the Partner.
A Manager thinks their job is to deliver a flawless artefact.
A Partner knows their job is to absorb fear and drive actual change.
If you want to reach the senior ranks of a professional services firm, you have to start by understanding what capabilities are actually limiting your full potential, and then begin a methodical unlearning process right now.
Here are 5 ideas I want to share with you to start the transition.
1. Understand the personal stakes
Junior consultants only think about the financial or operational impact of a project. They look at the balance sheet.
Partners understand the hidden variable in every client exec group: the buyer’s personal career. Address their professional risk, protect their reputation, and make the executive sponsor look good.
If you can solve their personal fear, the corporate budget will follow.
2. Stop pitching your credentials
The worst way to sell consulting is to open a deck and pitch your firm’s awards, methodologies, past credentials, Best Place to Work 2020-2021-2022-2023-2024-2025-2026, you got the idea...
Instead, focus entirely on the diagnosis.
If you can articulate the client’s pain more precisely than they can, the client will automatically assume you have the cure.
3. Sell the firm’s capability, not your own
The hardest psychological leap for a senior consultant is looking an executive in the eyes and selling a complex engagement that you don’t personally know how to execute!
Ohhhh that’s hard.
You have to let go of this ancestral need to be the smartest person in the room and trust in your ability to assemble the right experts from across your firm’s global network.
4. Master the power of silence
You have to stop trying to prove your competence by dominating the meeting with facts and figures.
To demonstrate that you are knowledgeable and powerful you don’t need to talk the fastest. It is my personal opinion that’s the way to show precisely the opposite!
Instead, ask the single structural question the executive team has been actively avoiding. Ask it. Then, let the silence hang in the room.
5. Have a hard look at your calendar
Look at where your time goes.
The consultants who will never make Partner are entirely inward-facing. They spend their afternoons redlining their team’s deliverables to death, terrified some minor formatting error will sink their reputation.
Stop managing the commas, my friend. Instead, go have coffee with clients. Give away your best insights for free. Listen for the underlying issues that haven’t even made it into a contract yet. Rainmakers are built on the outside.
I may write more on this another day, but for now I will leave you with a key message:
Unlearn the habits that are keeping you stuck, get out of the office, and maintain a strong believe you will find the way to win.
All the best.
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I'd narrow 'an algorithm cannot shoulder the professional risk' to 'it can't be the one who signs', because the practical consequence is where the sign-off sits. When I use AI to list the spots that need a check, the list only tells me where to look; a person still makes the final call against the sources. In a proposal, that could mean naming the decision the sponsor has to defend upward and marking the evidence for it as have, partial or missing. How do you keep absorbing that fear from turning into liability nobody priced?
Yes, it’s like the whole previous model is totally inverted. Great article and great insights.