The most interesting people strategy comment I saw this week wasn't about layoffs.
It was about AI costs.
At the Axios AI+NY Summit, Glean CEO Arvind Jain made the point that AI usage costs are rising quickly enough that companies may need to factor them into hiring decisions.
That's a massive shift. And most consulting firm founders haven't thought about what it means for their business.
The Simple Math That's About to Get Complicated
For founders of consulting and professional services firms, the people equation has always been straightforward: How many people do we have? How many hours can they bill? What margin do they create?
But AI changes that equation completely.
A person is no longer just a salary line item. They're a salary line plus tools, systems, AI usage costs, data access, and management overhead.
Which means the question is no longer: "Can we afford another $75K person?"
It's: "What return will this $90K person create with all the technology and support around them?"
Where Most Firms Will Get This Wrong
This is where I think many founder-led consulting firms are about to get caught.
They'll add AI tools and expect productivity to magically improve. They'll tell people to "use ChatGPT" without redesigning how work gets done. They'll keep measuring utilization as if every billable hour is still equal.
Here's what's going to surprise them: AI doesn't automatically increase Return on Person. In some firms, it may actually reduce it.
More AI subscriptions. More complexity. Same client output. You end up spending more per person while getting the same results.
The Questions That Actually Matter
The firms that win will ask completely different questions:
Where does human judgment actually matter? Not where we've always put humans, but where human thinking genuinely adds value AI can't replicate.
Which roles become more valuable? The positions that can now produce dramatically more because AI handles grunt work.
Which roles need complete redesign? The jobs built around tasks AI now does better and faster.
Which people create real leverage? Not just staying busy, but actually multiplying the value of every tool around them.
The Real Opportunity
The opportunity isn't to replace people with AI. It's to build a firm where every person becomes dramatically more valuable because the work has been redesigned properly.
Instead of a $75K person doing $75K worth of work, you have a $90K person doing $200K worth of work.
This requires completely rethinking how work gets done. Not just "adding AI" to existing processes, but mapping every role to understand where humans add unique value and where AI takes over completely.
The Bottom Line
The consulting firms that dominate the next decade won't be the ones with the most AI tools. They'll be the ones where every person is a force multiplier - where humans and AI are designed to work together, not compete for the same tasks.
That's the people strategy conversation founders need to be having right now. Not "How do we cut costs with AI?" but "How do we redesign everything so our people become exponentially more valuable?"
P.S. - If you're still thinking about AI as a tool to make existing processes faster, you're missing the bigger opportunity. The real leverage comes from redesigning the work entirely. That's where Return on Person actually multiplies, instead of just adding costs.
