The conversation with ChatGPT
To demonstrate how AI is affecting consulting, it is a good idea to show what today’s technology can do. It is important to note that this technology is available to everyone and is free. Just imagine the possibilities when even more powerful tools are available for those willing to pay, or what experts can achieve using these tools.
Let’s start with a very practical example of the power of AI tools. First, this is a free tool available to everybody: ChatGPT. This tool has a voice function where you can practically “talk” to it. There is also the option to choose a voice. I selected the Maple voice because this voice should sound happy and sincere. I started a voice conversation, which means I don’t even need to type. I can directly start a conversation with the AI tool. Some months ago, the voice sounded very robotic. Today, the voice sounds incredibly real. Moreover, it is true that the Maple voice sounds happy and sincere as promised.
For practical reasons, I asked something easy but common in current digitalization problems.
No doubt that the English level of the AI tool is almost perfect, in pronunciation and also in grammar. English is the third language I learned (my mother tongue is Spanish, and I can speak German at a native level). It feels good to have a nice voice answering you so politely and professionally.
First, I told ChatGPT that I am a manager working in a laboratory, and ChatGPT should be the experienced consultant. ChatGPT understood the task perfectly:
Then, after some questions, I wanted to know the general steps that would lead me to a solution before knowing much about the details.
And I wanted to know more about step one, so I asked ChatGPT for the substeps of step 1 (identify the key processes that need improvement):
What I think about this conversation
Some years ago, only people with experience in the field could have clarity about the steps needed to help a customer (in this case, a laboratory manager) to select a new software. Today, ChatGPT knows this very well. As always, the difficulty lies in the details, and that is where the real work happens. What is the impact of this on consultancy? I think the change will be more on the customer’s side, because anyone can now prepare an excellent presentation with the help of ChatGPT, without being an expert. That means the customer will need to recognize the good teams, and from the good teams, of course, select the best one. These are the changes happening now and leading to further changes.
- First change: Customers need to be smarter in identifying the best consulting team, since today “knowledge” has become cheap. There are clear steps customers can take. This is not the topic of this post, but you can write me a message on LinkedIn to talk about it.
- Second change: Once customers can recognize the best consulting team, consulting companies will need to readjust their strategy and become more strict in selecting their consultants. The set of skills needed today is different from what was needed, for example, 10 years ago.
- Third change: The industry will shift from “dead knowledge” to “living knowledge.” I just invented these two terms to distinguish between knowledge any machine can provide (“dead knowledge”) and knowledge that only a creative expert can offer (“living knowledge”). The expert does not necessarily need to be a specialist in a field, but he or she must have a set of skills and knowledge that make them capable of delivering consulting services that truly help customers.
This all sounds very cryptic
Yes, because it would take many articles to really explain these different points. But the most important message here is: information has become cheap. And maybe it is better to use the word information if we want the word knowledge to maintain its important status. Maybe this is a much better distinction. Information has become so cheap that any machine can tell you anything. But knowledge—and only a knowledgeable person—can determine if this information is correct, if it can be applied in a specific case, and, most importantly, what to do when the standard way doesn’t work. That is the definition of an expert: somebody who knows what to do when things don’t go as expected.
Summary
Information is cheap today. Consultancy can no longer rely on information alone. For this reason, customers need to learn to recognize good consulting teams—in other words, to distinguish teams that only have information from those that have both information and knowledge.
The three main characteristics of the consultant of the future:
- An expert consultant can recognize which information is useful.
- An expert consultant knows which information to apply, in which situation, and at what time.
- An expert consultant knows what to do when things do not go as expected.
An AI tool will never be able to do that because, despite all the information it possesses, it doesn’t have the intuition, creativity, knowledge, experience, or common sense to apply information in the correct way. The real work lies in the details. A lot of money and time are lost because paying attention to details is difficult, and only experts can recognize them.
No responses yet