There is something unintentionally comic about the way consulting firms present themselves. They like to emphasize that their people are brilliant graduates of the most prestigious universities, that they work tirelessly without enough sleep, and that they carry a rare level of insight. The surface polish is meant to impress, yet to a careful eye it resembles the kind of self-praise children offer when they want adults to take them seriously. Instead of radiating confidence, it reveals insecurity.
The root of this insecurity lies in the basic business model of consulting. Their fees are extraordinarily high, yet they cannot promise concrete outcomes. They do not run the businesses they advise. They provide frameworks, analyses, and recommendations, then move on to the next client in line. This creates a gap between their price and their accountability. To fill that gap, they rely on performance, reminding clients how smart and hardworking they are, even if the reminder feels excessive.
Seen from this angle, consulting becomes less a profession of quiet competence and more a theater of intelligence. The endless references to elite schools and sleepless workdays act like costumes on a stage. The firms know their audience wants assurance, so they deliver the show. Yet the louder the show, the more it betrays the underlying anxiety.
The Theater of Intelligence
If a consulting firm were judged strictly on results, the performance would be unnecessary. But because outcomes are shaped by countless factors outside their control, they rely on signals instead. A crisp PowerPoint deck, a new set of buzzwords, and a team that looks like it has been working all night become the substitutes for proof. Clients are not invited to see what was achieved, only what was performed.
This habit resembles the way children boast of having read many books or stayed awake until late. The point is not the content of the books or the value of staying awake, but the impression of effort. In the same way, consulting firms emphasize the rigor of their process rather than the fruits of their work. The claim is not “this idea transformed a company,” but “we are clever enough to come up with this model.”
There is a tragic humor in this. The people inside the firms are often genuinely smart and genuinely hardworking. Yet because they must constantly prove their worth without outcomes to point to, their intelligence is forced to wear a costume. The result is brilliance that looks comic, intelligence that resembles theater.
Survival Bias and the Myth of Hard Work
This pattern is not limited to consulting. It echoes in the stories told by successful entrepreneurs, CEOs, and celebrities. They often describe their journeys in terms of waking up at four in the morning, reading countless books, and working longer hours than anyone else. They might even add a spiritual dimension, claiming to have discovered secret methods or hidden truths that guided them to greatness.
Such stories inspire audiences, but they also mislead. The visible survivor attributes success to discipline, while the thousands who practiced the same discipline but failed are invisible. This is the distortion of survival bias. We hear only from those who made it, and they naturally assume their methods were decisive. The truth is more complex. Timing, luck, networks, and cultural forces often play a larger role than personal routines.
The effect is toxic because it creates a moral narrative around success. If someone rises to the top, it is said to be because of their discipline. If someone fails, it is implied they lacked discipline. The messy reality of chance and circumstance is erased. The myth of hard work becomes a way to protect the ego of the successful and to sell formulas to the hopeful. In this sense, the celebrity entrepreneur and the consulting firm share the same insecurity: both must keep telling stories that prove their competence, even if those stories simplify or distort reality.
The Consulting Paradox
Entrepreneurs at least have their own companies as proof. They can point to the tangible result of their labor, even if survival bias clouds the story. Consulting firms cannot. Their only product is analysis, and once the analysis is delivered, the responsibility passes back to the client.
This creates a paradox. They must produce something tangible, but what they produce is not a business result, only a representation of thought. The slide deck becomes their artifact. The report becomes their monument. The terminology they invent becomes their legacy. The consulting product is not transformation but presentation.
Clients often admire these reports. They are well-structured, data-driven, and visually polished. They feel professional. Yet the memory of them fades quickly. A month later, the new vocabulary is forgotten, the graphs are blurred in the mind, and the recommendations lie dormant. The impression remains of something impressive but strangely empty. This is why one might call them well-crafted mediocrity.
Well-Crafted Mediocrity
The phrase captures the paradox perfectly. The work is undeniably crafted. It is polished, proofread, templated, and delivered with ceremony. It feels rigorous, as if brilliance has been distilled into charts and bullet points. Yet it rarely stirs the imagination or plants seeds of lasting change.
The mediocrity lies not in the effort but in the inspiration. The reports are often too safe, too abstract, too laden with jargon. They look impressive but leave little behind. In this sense, consulting shares a trait with certain corners of academia, where the invention of terms and the publishing of papers is more about fulfilling the ritual of scholarship than shaping the world. The mind is engaged, but the heart is not.
Calling it mediocrity does not mean the consultants are incompetent. It means the structure of their work pushes them toward appearance over substance. When survival depends on proving brilliance without producing outcomes, mediocrity wrapped in polish is the natural result.
The Expanding Circle of Advice Economies
The same mechanism appears in other industries built on advice rather than results. Self-help authors write books not to demonstrate the fruit of their ideas but to sell the methods themselves. Motivational speakers are paid not to live inspiring lives but to narrate inspiration to others. Writers on the internet produce guides on how to earn money by writing, yet their income often comes only from producing more guides.
These are circular economies. They feed on themselves. The value is not in the outcome but in the continuous act of explaining how outcomes could be achieved. In each case, the authority comes not from building or creating but from narrating how others should build or create. The economy sustains itself through repetition, not through transformation.
The resemblance to consulting is clear. Just as firms live off frameworks and templates rather than outcomes, these industries live off methods rather than substance. The market rewards those who sound confident, not those who quietly produce.
The Irony of Productivity Without Output
Perhaps the most striking case is the productivity industry. The internet overflows with guides on note-taking apps, calendar hacks, and organizational methods. Writers review endless systems of efficiency. Yet when one looks for their substantial contributions, there is often little to find. The productivity itself is self-referential, devoted to the art of being productive about productivity.
This is the purest irony. Productivity should be measured by what is produced. Instead, it becomes measured by how many tutorials on productivity one can create. The loop closes in on itself. Audiences consume content about productivity rather than producing anything themselves, and the gurus sustain their relevance by publishing more of the same.
The similarity to consulting is exact. In both cases, the performance of intelligence or efficiency replaces the substance of transformation. The audience admires the polish, yet the memory fades quickly. What remains is not inspiration but fatigue.
Why It Feels Childish
When industries overemphasize their own brilliance, they start to resemble children seeking approval. The child wants recognition and so insists they are smart, hardworking, or unique. The mature adult simply demonstrates competence through action. The child boasts of staying awake late, the adult lets the work speak for itself.
Consulting firms, self-help gurus, and productivity writers often fall into the childish pattern. They proclaim effort and cleverness because they lack the security of quiet confidence. Their industries do not give them the space to let results speak. So they fill the silence with self-praise.
This is why the show looks comic. Intelligence that must constantly announce itself feels insecure. Hard work that must constantly be narrated feels desperate. The childlike quality is not in the individuals but in the structures that force them to play this endless theater of worthiness.
The AI Mirror
The arrival of artificial intelligence throws this theater into sharper relief. Machines can already produce polished reports, complete with jargon and graphs. They can write motivational articles filled with formulas for success. They can generate endless guides to note-taking apps. In other words, AI can replicate the very outputs that once justified consulting fees, self-help books, and productivity blogs.
This does not mean AI is destined to flood the world with mediocrity. The quality of its output depends on the depth of the dialogue. If treated as a vending machine, it will return shallow advice. If engaged as a partner in thought, it can reveal surprising insights. The difference lies not in the tool but in the way humans approach it.
What AI does make clear is how fragile the old economies of advice have become. If a machine can produce the same polished mediocrity at scale, then the human claim to authority must rest on something deeper than polish. The theater of intelligence will no longer be enough.
Quiet Competence Over Theater
What would a mature alternative look like? Instead of selling methods, firms and individuals could show substance. Consultants could shift from producing impressive reports to forming longer partnerships where they share risk and responsibility. Their value would come not from polished decks but from the trust built in difficult decisions.
Writers could stop filling the air with guides to success and start producing works that have intrinsic worth. Instead of endless articles on how to earn money online, they could write essays, stories, or research that move readers. Their credibility would come from substance, not from promises.
Productivity could return to its original meaning. Systems of efficiency would be tools for enabling creation, not subjects of creation themselves. The goal would be to build something worth sharing, not to perfect the art of rearranging to-do lists. True productivity would be measured by what enters the world, not by how cleverly tasks are managed.
The Value of What Remains
The phrase “well-crafted mediocrity” is both an accusation and a mirror. It accuses industries that rely too heavily on polish without substance. But it also reflects a broader cultural hunger. People are tired of advice without results, inspiration without roots, productivity without creation. They long for something deeper than the theater of intelligence.
Consulting firms, self-help authors, and productivity gurus may continue their performances, but the cracks are visible. Their survival depends on whether they can grow into maturity. Quiet competence, steady partnership, and meaningful output are the qualities that will remain valuable when the theater is no longer convincing.
The image of a consultant bragging about sleepless nights or a guru promising success through secret routines may still draw attention. But the future belongs to those who no longer need to shout about their worth. Confidence is not loud. True intelligence does not need costumes. Maturity speaks softly, but it leaves a trace that endures.
Image by beauty_of_nature
Tom’s Blog 