Will AI Replace Junior Consultants? Inside McKinsey’s PowerPoint Revolution
PowerPoints at the push of a button? AI at McKinsey is rewriting the consulting playbook. One of the world’s most prestigious consulting firms is deploying a proprietary AI—a move transforming everything from client deck creation to proposal drafting, with ripple effects across the industry. Can technology free junior staff for higher-value work, or is this the dawn of automation anxiety in white-collar roles? Let’s dive in.
🌍 The Rising Tide of AI in Consulting
- Mass Adoption: Over 75% of McKinsey’s 43,000 employees now use their internal AI tool, Lilli, every month. That’s more than 32,000 consultants and staff turning to AI for daily tasks!
- Automation of Entry-Level Work: Lilli can create entire PowerPoint decks and tailor tone—replacing tasks typically done by junior analysts.
- Operational Scale: Lilli answers over half a million prompts each month and, on average, employees use it 17 times a week.
- Productivity Leap: According to a company case study, workers save 30% of the time they would have spent gathering and synthesizing information—equivalent to hours reclaimed weekly firmwide.
It’s not just about speed—Lilli allows for secure input of confidential client data, something public AIs like ChatGPT can’t offer. The software, named after McKinsey’s pioneering first female hire Lillian Dombrowski, was built from the firm’s vast archive of 100,000+ documents and interviews spanning nearly a century—a treasure trove for AI learning.
🚀 Meet Lilli: McKinsey’s Game-Changing AI Assistant
Why is Lilli making waves? Because in consulting, junior staff have long spent countless hours assembling research, building slide decks, and scouring for expertise. With Lilli, consultants simply prompt the AI to:
- Draft PowerPoints and Proposals: Type in your request, and Lilli not only generates slides but can adjust tone to match the firm’s distinct style using a “Tone of Voice” tool.
- Research Trends and Best Practices: Instantly pull insights from decades of McKinsey know-how, all while protecting confidential information.
- Find Internal Experts: Locate colleagues with niche experience fast, enabling smarter project team-ups.
No wonder so many at McKinsey are embracing Lilli—it’s faster, safer, and leverages a company’s institutional memory in real-time. For clients, that means more focused consulting, not consultants bogged down by deskwork.
✅ Broader Industry Shifts & The Upside
- ✅ Efficiency Explosion: Automation of repetitive tasks lets consultants focus on strategic, high-impact client work.
- ✅ Rising Expectations: McKinsey isn’t alone—rivals like Bain use “Sage” (powered by OpenAI), and Boston Consulting Group employs “Deckster” to enhance presentation polish. The race for smarter consulting is on.
- ✅ Flexible Talent Use: Freed-up analysts can dig deeper into client challenges, rather than compiling routine materials.
- ✅ Secure AI Adoption: Unlike public AI tools, in-house solutions like Lilli promise trusted data handling, a vital point with sensitive client projects.
🚧 Not All Smooth Sailing: What Are the Challenges?
- 🚧 Job Shifts for Juniors: As Lilli absorbs staple tasks, is there a risk for entry-level roles? While McKinsey says it won’t cut analyst numbers, the nature of these jobs is rapidly evolving.
- ⚠️ Industry-Wide Concerns: Beyond consulting: IBM recently replaced hundreds of HR staff with AI, reallocating resources. Meanwhile, recruitment for new grads in the tech sector dropped by 25% year-over-year, now just 7% of new hires at big tech, per SignalFire.
- 🚧 AI Skill Gaps & Oversight: Employees need new skills to fully harness AI. There’s also a risk if over-reliance on automation leads to generic output, losing the “human touch”.
- ⚠️ Change Management: Firms must guide staff through rapid workflow shifts and address concerns about job security and upskilling—no small feat in a tradition-steeped industry like consulting.
📈 Looking Ahead: Will AI Uplift or Undercut Human Talent?
- ✅ If successful: AI will let talented consultants deliver more value, focusing on strategy and creative problem-solving—not shuffling slides.
- 📉 If mishandled: Junior consultants risk feeling sidelined, and firms could face a skills drain if foundational experiences vanish for new hires.
- 🚀 The sweet spot: Use AI to automate tedium, then double down on training, mentorship, and client empathy—areas machines just can’t master.
What do you think? Is this the future of knowledge work, or should we tread carefully as AI floods the consulting world?
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Sources: Sherin Shibu, edited by Melissa Malamut. McKinsey Is Using AI to Create PowerPoints and Take Over Junior Employee Tasks: 'Technology Could Do That', June 2024. https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/ai-creates-powerpoints-at-mckinsey-replacing-junior-workers/492624