Artificial Intelligence is reshaping how value is created and delivered. In consulting, the supply-side model of "more people, more hours" is under pressure. In healthcare, the supply-side model of "more beds, more throughput" is equally unsustainable. Across both industries, employees increasingly feel trapped between outdated systems, rigid performance frameworks designed by people who don't understand their work, and a sense that their efforts serve distant stakeholders more than the people in front of them.
AI has the potential to reset this balance — if leaders use it not only to transform services, but to re-engage their workforce.
Consulting: From Scale to Smarter Teams
For decades, consulting firms scaled through headcount. Armies of analysts, utilisation targets, and endless slide decks defined the business model. For employees, this often meant:
- Low engagement — work fragmented into repetitive research and reporting.
- Clunky systems — performance management that rewards hours logged, not outcomes delivered.
- Rigid frameworks — designed by people far from the coalface, with little understanding of what drives performance or fulfilment.
- Distance from value — the sense that effort accrues upwards to shareholders or partners, not the team or client.
AI is exposing the inefficiency of this model. Research and synthesis that once required weeks can now be delivered in hours by smaller, agile teams. The opportunity is to redesign consulting work around creativity, problem-solving, and impact — the things humans find meaningful, and that clients actually value.
Healthcare: From Capacity to Meaningful Care
Healthcare faces a parallel reality. Performance has long been defined by beds, waiting lists, and throughput. Clinicians spend hours navigating IT systems and duplicating paperwork, rather than focusing on care. For staff, this translates into:
- Burnout — energy consumed by administrative load.
- Disengagement — targets that measure flow and throughput, not patient outcomes.
- Rigid frameworks — national metrics designed at arm's length from the realities of frontline care.
- Disconnection — the gap between professional purpose and daily experience.
AI can't solve workforce strain overnight, but it can relieve low-value workload, surface insight at the point of care, and free staff to focus on meaningful engagement with patients.
From Shareholder Value to Shared Value
The structural flaw in both industries is clear: supply-side models often prioritise shareholder returns or system-level metrics above employee experience. That erodes engagement, accelerates attrition, and undermines trust.
AI offers a reset:
- In consulting, smaller empowered teams can deliver faster, with employees seeing clearer ownership of results.
- In healthcare, automation and decision support can restore time for care, reconnecting healthcare professionals with their purpose.
The shift is from shareholder value to shared value — where employees, clients, patients, and system stakeholders all benefit.
The Engagement Economy
AI collapses the gap between data and decision. But the deeper transformation is cultural. Employees in both consulting and healthcare increasingly expect:
- Tools that make their work more meaningful, not more monitored.
- Performance frameworks built with real understanding of the work, not imposed from above by disconnected leadership.
- Organisations that align purpose with impact.
If consulting firms and healthcare systems want to win trust from their markets, they must first win trust from their people—from engineers building the systems to clinicians delivering care.
Conclusion
AI is not just a technical upgrade — it's a chance to reimagine how work creates value. Traditional supply-side models, whether measured in headcount or hospital beds, are running out of road. The future belongs to those who use AI to unlock intelligence, engagement, and shared value — for employees as much as for clients and patients.
The future belongs to those who use AI to unlock intelligence, engagement, and shared value — for employees as much as for clients and patients.
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