When McKinsey & Company recently announced that it had deployed tens of thousands of AI agents — complete with email addresses and employee IDs — it grabbed headlines. But the framing also raised deeper concerns. Was the firm demonstrating digital leadership, or unintentionally showing clients how to replace it?
In trying to emphasize how AI is transforming their internal workflows, McKinsey may have blurred the line between what machines do and what people are for. When you label AI as “employees,” you risk reducing the value of human work to its output and teaching clients that outcomes can be replicated without paying for judgment, context, or expertise.
It’s a branding risk. But more than that, it’s a business risk.
The White T-Shirt Problem of Professional Work
AI is flattening much of what used to be premium. Decks, research, competitive analysis, strategy templates — these once signaled value. Today, they’re baseline.
Think of it like a plain white T-shirt. On its own, it’s just a commodity. But style, context, and point of view are what turn it into something meaningful.
AI is making large portions of professional deliverables — in finance, HR, marketing, legal, and consulting — feel like plain white tees. Everyone has access. Speed and volume are no longer differentiators.
When firms lean too heavily into showcasing their AI capabilities as proof of output, they risk hiding the real differentiator: the interpretation, not the deliverable.
When AI Does the Work, Judgment Becomes the Value
If an AI agent can produce the same strategic framework a junior consultant would, then the framework itself was never the differentiator; the judgment layered on top of it was.
Real value has always resided in the human decisions: What matters most? What trade-offs are worth it? What signal should we act on? How do we apply all this in a messy, human organization?
Too often, professionals mistake production for value. But AI has exposed that much of what was billed as expertise was really just effort. And effort is now abundant.
AI-Heavy vs. AI-Enabled: The Strategic Divide
There’s an emerging distinction between firms that are AI-heavy and those that are AI-enabled.
AI-heavy firms use technology to pump out more, faster. AI-enabled firms use technology to inform better human decisions. The first looks more efficient. The second builds trust, authority, and strategic relevance.
In the AI-enabled model, humans move up the value chain. They make the hard calls, apply context, and carry accountability. And that’s what clients pay for.
Language Shapes Perception And Business Models
Calling AI “workers” subtly reinforces the idea that work is just output. But consulting, like many expert services, was never about volume. It was about informed action.
When leaders frame AI as talent rather than a tool, they risk collapsing their own pricing power. They risk making their people, and by extension, their firm, look interchangeable.
That’s why this conversation matters beyond McKinsey. Every organization using AI is making a choice, consciously or not:
- Will AI amplify your human expertise?
- Or will it replace the very value you once stood for?
A Leadership Question, Not a Tech One
In a world where the basics are free, leaders must answer a new question: Can you clearly explain why your people still matter? It’s not enough to deploy tools; you need to own what makes your firm distinct in an age when everyone has access to the same capabilities.
AI can write the memo.
Only you can decide what it means and why it matters.
