Hiring a consultant invites a familiar eye-roll. The skeptic’s version goes like this: a company pays a stranger to repeat what its own staff already said, then hands over a fee and a slide deck. Nicholas Mukhtar has heard the critique plenty. He thinks it misreads why the arrangement works when it works.
His defense does not rest on the consultant being smarter than the employees. It rests on position. An outsider holds a vantage point no insider can, for the simple reason that the outsider is not tangled in the daily grind, the office politics, or the assumptions everyone inside stopped questioning years ago.
Two buckets, one shared blind spot
Mukhtar sorts the companies he advises into two broad types. “I look at companies in two buckets,” he said. One is the large, established business that behaves like a sprawling bureaucracy and struggles to get out of its own way. The other is the startup, where a small group covers a dozen roles at once and tries to become a real organization before it falls apart.
Both share a weakness. The people closest to the work are often the least able to see it clearly. Mukhtar makes the case plainly. “There’s a lot of cynicism about companies using McKinsey and outside consultants, but the rationale is sound,” he said. “You bring in an outside voice that isn’t ingrained in the day-to-day, and can actually think creatively.” Distance is the product. A company cannot manufacture it internally, no matter how sharp its team.
A market that votes with its budget
The demand suggests the skeptics are outnumbered. The global management consulting market reached $1.06 trillion in 2025, sustained by companies seeking outside help on operations, finance, and growth, according to The Business Research Company. Organizations do not spend at that scale to hear their own ideas read back to them.
Mukhtar would attach a condition to the figure. The value comes from genuine independence, not from a famous logo or a thick credential. An advisor who simply ratifies what leadership wants to hear delivers nothing the company could not have produced for free. The outside perspective pays off only when it stays outside, willing to name the thing the insiders learned to talk around.
No template survives the client
For all his faith in the outside voice, Mukhtar rejects the notion that consulting means applying a stock solution. He has watched companies move through the same growth stages, yet he refuses to treat them as interchangeable. “Every entity and every person is unique, and you have to treat it that way,” he said.
That belief shapes how he runs an engagement. He studies what larger institutions built and where they went wrong, then resists the urge to copy any of it wholesale onto a different business. The creativity he prizes comes from pairing an outsider’s clear view with a close reading of the specific company in front of him. An advisor who brings only the first half produces generic advice. One who brings only the second half is just another insider. Mukhtar’s argument is that the combination, done honestly, is worth paying for.
