Moving Past Consulting

Most consulting engagements follow a familiar pattern. Client has a problem. Consultant analyzes, recommends, deploys. Invoice gets paid. Everyone moves on.

Six months later, the same problem resurfaces. Different flavor, same root cause. So another consultant gets hired. The cycle continues.

I've lived this cycle from both sides. As a contractor rotating through DoD agencies. As a consultant at Booz Allen, Deloitte, and the UN Foundation. I've watched organizations spend millions on solutions that never stick because nobody addressed the human problem underneath the technical one.

That's why I don't do traditional consulting anymore. I do something I call Technology Counseling.

The Rotating Door Problem

Here's what traditional consulting gets wrong.

It's transactional. You're hired to solve a specific problem, so you solve that specific problem. You're not paid to ask why the problem exists in the first place. You're certainly not paid to explore the organizational dynamics, the team fears, or the knowledge gaps that created the problem. I've been told on more than one occasion not to solve the client's problem outright.

"If we do that, they'll have no reason to renew the contract at the end of the year. We're here to make the problems they have as painless as possible. Without us, all of their frustrations bubble back up to the surface."

So, we fix the symptomsm but the causes remain.

This creates what I call the "rotating door of consultants syndrome." Organizations become dependent on external help because they never build internal capacity. Every technology change requires another consultant. Every new tool requires another engagement. The costs compound. The knowledge never transfers.

Why does this happen? Because consultants are measured on deliverables, not on understanding. On implementations, not on transformation. On billing hours, not on building resilience.

What Changes When You Counsel

Technology Counseling starts with a different question. Not "what technology do you need?" but "what human problem is this technology supposed to solve?"

Every technical failure has a human origin. Fear of change. Gaps in understanding. Misaligned incentives. Unclear vision. Resistance that nobody acknowledged or addressed.

If you don't understand the human side, your technical solution won't stick. It can't. Because people will find ways to work around it, ignore it, or undermine it. Not out of malice. Out of self-preservation and convenience.

I've seen million-dollar systems sit unused because nobody asked the people who'd actually use them what they needed. I've watched security protocols get circumvented because they made daily work impossible. I've debugged data pipelines where the real problem was that two teams refused to talk to each other.

You can't engineer your way out of human problems. You have to address them directly.

That's what counseling does. It creates space to understand the fears, the resistance, and the misconceptions. To listen before prescribing. To build solutions that work with human nature, not against it.

The Difference It Makes

When I engage with a client now, I don't start with technical requirements. I start with questions.

What are you trying to accomplish? What's blocked you so far? Who's involved? What do they care about? What are they afraid of? Where's the resistance going to come from?

The answers to these questions shape everything. The tools I recommend. The way I structure the implementation. The training I provide. The handoff I design.

Because the goal isn't just to deliver a solution. It's to build the client's capacity to own that solution, maintain it, evolve it, and eventually replace it when something better comes along.

That requires understanding. Partnership. Teaching. Sometimes, honestly, therapy.

Traditional consultants optimize for billable hours. Technology counselors optimize for clients who don't need them anymore.

Why This Matters More Now

AI is accelerating this problem.

Organizations are racing to adopt AI tools without understanding what problems they're solving or why those problems exist. They're deploying agents, fine-tuning models, and building automations because everyone else is doing it.

But AI doesn't fix human problems. It amplifies them.

If your teams don't communicate well, AI tools will amplify that dysfunction. If your data is messy because nobody agrees on definitions, AI will learn from that mess and reproduce it at scale. If people feel threatened by automation, they'll resist it, no matter how technically impressive your implementation is.

This is where the human side becomes critical. Where listening matters more than algorithms. Where understanding context beats computational power.

AI can recommend solutions. It can analyze data. It can generate code. But it can't sit with someone who's terrified they'll lose their job to automation. It can't navigate the political dynamics of two departments who don't trust each other. It can't build the confidence someone needs to try something new.

That's human work. That's counseling work.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Technology Counseling isn't about being nice or empathetic for its own sake. It's about recognizing that every technical problem is downstream from human decisions, human fears, and human misunderstandings.

When I work with a client, I'm trying to understand their story. What they've tried before. Why it didn't work. What they're afraid to admit. What they don't know they don't know.

Then I'm translating between worlds. Technical to human. Human to technical. Making advanced solutions accessible without dumbing them down. Building capacity, not dependency.

And I'm being honest when something won't work. When expectations are misaligned. When the real problem isn't the technology at all.

That's the counseling part. The willingness to tell uncomfortable truths, ask hard questions, and focus on what actually matters instead of what's easy to bill for.

Why I Do This

I learned to code so I could be a far more present parent. Technology gave me freedom, flexibility, and the ability to build a life worthy of my kids.

But I've also seen technology used to extract value without creating it. To solve problems nobody has while ignoring the ones people live with every day. To impress executives while making workers' lives harder.

I don't want to do that kind of work. I want to use technology to solve real problems for real people. To build things that make sense, not just things that are technically impressive.

That requires understanding the human side. Always.

So I don't call myself a consultant anymore. I'm more of a counselor. A guide. A partner in figuring out what actually needs to happen and how to make it stick.

Because the technology part? That's the easy part. The human part is what's hard. And that's where the real work happens.