The version of strategy consulting most people remember ended with a deck, myself before joining McKinsey is the same. With this style, the work might define a 5-year technology plan, a strategy to enter a new market, or the case for creating a new digital bank. The outcome was a clear direction, a set of high level architecture decisions, and a roadmap for management to get buy-in.
That work still matters but the reality gap is: the deck could explain what should happen without resolving how it would work inside a real organization, a real architecture, and a real production environment.
From advice to build
When I joined McKinsey, I saw the consulting model move closer to delivery. The firm was not only hiring traditional strategy profiles. It also brought in people with backgrounds like myself e.g., in product, architecture, engineering, cloud, data, and operations. Build by McKinsey now describes this openly: multidisciplinary teams of strategists, designers, architects, product managers, and engineers working alongside clients to build technology products.
That was the kind of role I was hired to do and it did suprise me in my early day. The job was not finished when the strategic answer was agreed. We had to double-click into the details:
- Turn the business ambition into product requirements
- Design an enterprise architecture that could work with existing systems
- Decide what should be bought and what should be built
- Assess vendors and work through the trade-offs with them
- Define an MVP that was small enough to deliver but meaningful enough to test
- Work hand in hand with the client technology team until the solution reached production
Each step could change the original strategy. A product requirement might expose a missing operating process. An architecture decision might reveal that the planned timeline was unrealistic. A vendor product might cover the common case but fail on the capability that creates competitive advantage. The vertical strategy still the same but the reality is more flexible and adapted.
The strategy is evaluated by the build
When a team has to build the first working version - MVP, questions become much more concrete. Who owns the data? Which system is the source of truth? How will security and regulatory controls work? What happens when a dependency fails? Can the client operate the product after the consulting team leaves?
These are technical questions, but they are also strategic questions. They affect cost, speed, risk, customer experience, and the company’s ability to change later. Getting closer to production therefore improves the strategy itself. The feedback loop is shorter. Assumptions are tested earlier. Decisions are made with a better understanding of their consequences.
Build with the client, not for the client
The most important part of this model is not that consultants can build software. It is that they build with the client team. A consulting team can help create the first MVP, set up the architecture, work with vendors, and introduce a stronger delivery rhythm. But the client still needs to own the product, operate it, and improve it after the engagement ends.
That means capability transfer cannot be a final workshop. It has to happen throughout the work: shared decisions, paired delivery, clear trade-offs, and client engineers owning meaningful parts of the system. The outcomes is a client team that understands why it was built that way and can take it forward, expand it.
This shift is not just McKinsey
This change is bigger than McKinsey. Other firm BCG X presents a similar combination of technology, design, business building, and delivery. Strategy firms are responding to a simple reality: clients do not only need an answer. They need help turning the answer into a working capability.
I do not think this makes classic strategy less important but it did raise the standard for it. A good strategy still defines where to play, how to win, and what not to do. The difference is that the work now continues through design, build decisions, the first MVP, and the path to production.