Yeah; you make a great point about delivering value. I do think the partners brought a lot to the table though: they had usually done these types of projects be

Yeah; you make a great point about delivering value. I do think the partners brought a lot to the table though: they had usually done these types of projects before, so you at least had someone to point you in the right direction. And if not them, I used to reach out to other people internally for expertise on specific issues. I don't think that clients are delicate unique flowers, but they do often have a myopic view of the problem, so what they ask you for may not actually solve the problem they really have. Consultants at VERY large companies actually serve a huge communication function: because we get shuffled around from one part of the company to another, we're really good at connecting work that was done in one part of the company with another part of the company. Basically, because our clients don't know how to communicate with each other and form relationships, they hire us to do it for them. That's largely the niche that I see consulting settling into, and it's really not a bad division of labor.