The Typology of Management Consultants

A matrix illustrating consultant roles: legitimizer, provocateur, validator, and challenger. It shows strategies like validating, introducing conflict, supporting implementation, and challenging strategy.

I never liked management consultants. Then, by some twist of fate, I became one.

Initially, I thought my antipathy originated from their high salaries and sharp suits. However, I realized their rewards weren't as sweet as they looked.

My issues with consultants can be summarized in three key points:

• I didn't meet enough experts—I only encountered interviewers who repackaged my insights as expensive recommendations.

• I couldn't compete with them—While I was overwhelmed with daily tasks, they enjoyed focusing entirely on problem-solving. I envied their time and peace of mind, which allowed them to obsess over improvement.

• They echoed my thoughts—They articulated precisely what I had said but received management attention and generous compensation for it.

Recently, I came across organizational management research that describes consultants as "legitimizers" and "devil's advocates." These aren't insults—they are just descriptions of their roles in corporate decision-making.

After 20+ years of working alongside strategy and management consultants, I've seen these roles up close. This article aims to help readers better understand the consultants they're hiring—or already dealing with.

Why Do We Need Management Consultants?

Sure, the obvious answer is to solve problems and improve processes.

But there are two less obvious reasons organizations bring consultants in:

1. Reducing uncertainty.

2. Easing post-decision anxiety.

Let's break that down.

Consultants and Uncertainty

Companies hire consultants to reduce uncertainty and prescribe paths to success, seeking answers on what to do and how to do it.

But ironically, consultants can also increase uncertainty:

• The quality and outcome of their work are hard to measure.

• Their relationship with the client is often ambiguous, including levels of trust.

• The consulting industry is "unbounded," creating uncertainties for both sides.

• Demand for consultants is discretionary—no guarantees their firms will exist tomorrow.

Consultants and Post-Decision Anxiety

Cognitive dissonance theory tells us decision-making often triggers anxiety—especially around accountability. Decision-makers naturally want to justify their choices.

Justifications come in two forms:

• Tactical: Maintaining the status quo—stability, operations continuity, and short-term wins.

• Strategic: Larger course corrections requiring external input and investment.

Executives rarely need consultants to justify tactical decisions. For strategic moves, however, consultants often add credibility—sometimes prioritizing explanations over performance.

Six Benefits of Management Consulting

Consultants contribute to strategic decisions in six key ways:

1. Offering independent, unbiased judgment.

2. Providing fresh ideas and innovative approaches.

3. Diagnosing problems and evaluating solutions effectively.

4. Bringing specialized technical skills that clients lack.

5. Augmenting internal resources and capabilities.

6. Facilitating knowledge transfer to upskill teams.

What Skills Do Management Consultants Bring?

My favorite definition of a management consultant is a

“critical outsider free of ingrained perspectives.”

But their skills go deeper than that. Consultants play three primary roles: experts, provocateurs, and legitimizers.

The Expert Role

Experts are hired for their unique knowledge, often data or skills the client lacks, such as competitor pricing insights.

They focus on content, not process—stepping in for unusual challenges and offering specialized solutions.

The Provocateur Role

Provocateurs act as devil's advocates—poking holes in strategies, asking tough questions, and challenging assumptions.

Fun fact: The term "devil's advocate" comes from the Catholic Church, where someone was assigned to argue against canonizing a saint.

These consultants are process-focused and generalists. They're often hired early in projects to introduce structured conflict and reframe problems.

The Legitimizer Role

Legitimizers blend the previous two roles.

Instead of questioning assumptions, they validate and reinforce them—helping to implement strategies clients already lean toward.

They specialize in providing "best practices" and recommendations backed by selective examples that fit the desired outcome.

A Radical Take on Consultants

Research distinguishes consultants from experts in one significant way:

• Experts create knowledge using creativity, imagination, and arguments to shape solutions.

• Consultants rely on standard solutions, delivering outcomes aligned with pre-defined project scopes.

In short—experts innovate; consultants optimize.

The Best Type of Company Consulting

People have always loved to hate doctors, lawyers, and consultants, and they still can't resist Googling their salaries.

Another popular question? What's the best type of consulting?

Most answers focus on rankings (Bain, McKinsey, etc.) or pay scales—claiming strategy consulting pays better than operations consulting.

But this article suggests a different perspective:

• Being an expert is a badge of honor and a foundation for a proud career.

• Being a legitimizer might lack prestige—but it's often the highest-paid role.

• Being a provocateur is ideal for those who enjoy challenging norms and pushing boundaries to solve complex problems.

Ultimately, the best consultant isn't defined by titles or rankings—it's the one you trust to deliver what you need.

Truly yours, Captain Obvious. (this text has been initially published in November 2021.)

Consultants and the Danger of Groupthink

While consultants are often hired to reduce uncertainty and ease post-decision anxiety, their presence can amplify a well-known cognitive bias: Groupthink.

Groupthink occurs when decision-makers prioritize consensus over critical evaluation, leading to flawed choices. Symptoms include:

• Illusions of invulnerability—overconfidence in decisions.

• Self-censorship—team members withholding doubts or concerns.

• Pressure to conform—silencing dissent to maintain harmony.

• Rationalizing warnings—downplaying external risks or criticism.

How Consultants Fit into Groupthink Dynamics

Legitimizers as Enablers

Legitimizers may unintentionally reinforce Groupthink by validating existing ideas instead of challenging assumptions. Their role as supporters of pre-determined strategies can strengthen overconfidence and reduce critical thinking.

Provocateurs as Disruptors

Provocateurs counteract Groupthink by introducing structured conflict. They force teams to confront difficult questions and stress-test their decisions, disrupting consensus to reveal blind spots and overlooked risks.

Experts as Anchors

Experts bring data and specialized knowledge, acting as reality checks. However, their insights can sometimes be over-relied upon, creating authority bias, where teams defer to expertise without questioning applicability.

Balancing Consultants and Internal Voices

Companies should view consultants as facilitators—not substitutes—for critical thinking. Decision-makers must resist the temptation to outsource responsibility entirely. Instead, they should:

• Use provocateurs early to stress-test ideas.

• Bring in experts for targeted knowledge gaps.

• Deploy legitimizers carefully, ensuring they complement—not rubber-stamp—internal decision-making processes.

Consultants in the Context of the Agency Theory

Agency theory (or principal-agent model) is one of the building blocks of the Theory of the Firm. 

An agency relationship is created when a person (the principal) authorizes another person (an agent or a consultant) to act on their behalf.

Then, the firm is viewed as a set of contracts between self-interested actors seeking to maximize their personal (economic) gain. 

Principal vs. Agent problems

Central problems in agency theory are:

• the conflict in goals between the principal and agent (isn't this the common problem for most of your consultant engagements?),

• information asymmetry, i.e., agents have more information than the principals, which also has two instances of

  • adverse selection or pre-contractual opportunism,

  • the moral hazard of post-contractual opportunism (attempt to defeat contractual goals to seek self-interest).

Consultants and Moral Hazard (Exercise)

Let's review the real-life example.

The company (Principal) hires an IT consultant (Agent) to select a supplier for a complex IT system. The consultant's fixed fee is £20,000.

The consultant has more technical expertise (information asymmetry) and can:

1. Choose the best supplier (Supplier A) and help the company generate an extra £ 200,000 in revenue.

2. Choose a suboptimal supplier (Supplier B), resulting in a £50,000 loss for the company, in return for a Supplier B commission (£40,000.)

The consultant may prioritize personal gain by selecting Supplier B, creating a moral hazard due to information asymmetry.

Game theory highlights the challenge of aligning the consultant’s interests with the company’s goals to reach a Nash Equilibrium.

Nash Equilibrium 

Nash Equilibrium is a central concept in Game Theory. It is used to analyze strategic interactions between players (decision-makers) where each player's outcome depends not only on their own decisions but also on the decisions of others. 

It represents a situation where no player can improve their payoff by unilaterally changing their strategy, given the strategies chosen by the other players.)

The company can offer a performance-based contract (e.g., 25% of extra revenue) to incentivize the consultant to choose the best supplier. In this case, the Nash Equilibrium occurs when the consultant selects Supplier A and receives a higher total payoff (£70,000).

Payout table

	Supplier A  (Best Choice)	Supplier B  (Commission)
Basic Contract	Consultant: £20,000 Company: £200,000	Consultant: £60,000 Company: -£50,000
Performance-Based Contract	Consultant: £70,000 Company: £200,000	Consultant: £60,000 Company: -£50,000