In-House Consulting – What Is It Really?

Central Strategy Teams

In large organizations, there are typically central strategy teams, often referred to as Corporate Strategy. These teams are primarily responsible for shaping the company’s overarching strategic direction. Working closely with the CEO, the board, and top management, they lead key projects and strategic meetings. Based on my experience, Corporate Strategy teams typically handle the following tasks:

Preparing critical meetings: This usually includes quarterly board meetings, CEO updates, executive team briefings, and other essential gatherings focused on the company’s strategic direction—such as leadership offsites to discuss product strategies.
Monitoring major projects: Although Corporate Strategy teams rarely own a specific product or deliverable, they play a vital role in the strategic planning and execution of high-priority projects. Their responsibilities include defining the core problem, supporting the development of a shared vision and goals, creating detailed work plans, collaborating across teams, and ensuring the project stays on track. This also involves setting up project governance with regular status updates to keep stakeholders informed.
Driving special initiatives: Often, new initiatives emerge from projects or strategic meetings. For example, a company might decide to create an internal venture capital unit to support startups with which it envisions future collaboration. Corporate Strategy teams frequently initiate, implement, and either maintain these initiatives long-term or hand them off to a dedicated team after the initial setup phase.

Specialized Strategy Teams

Alongside central strategy units, many organizations have specialized teams that focus more closely on specific products, regions, or functions. These teams tend to operate more on an operational level and are closely aligned with particular business areas.

Product Strategy Teams

Product strategy teams are usually much more specialized. Their main goal is to ensure the product’s success and that it meets market expectations. Throughout the product lifecycle, these teams play a critical role by

Conducting research to identify customer needs and generate product ideas
Shaping the product using methods like Design Thinking while focusing on key product requirements
Developing go-to-market strategies including target audience analysis, defining pilot criteria, and designing marketing campaigns
Analyzing major weaknesses of the current product, benchmarking against competitors, defining new features to make the product a market leader, or prioritizing enhancements under budget constraints
Collaborating with product development, design, and other teams to solve problems, ensure timely delivery of product changes, meet customer expectations with new features, and regularly align with management

Since the strategy team is usually an integral part of the product team, it often leads cross-functional coordination to ensure all deliverables are met on schedule.

Regional Strategy Teams

In many companies, the responsibility for executing corporate strategy lies with regional teams. These teams are accountable for implementing and selling products and solutions within their respective regions.

This involves tasks such as developing strategies to achieve key regional goals and metrics, tracking performance, finding solutions when major obstacles arise, and preparing documents for leadership meetings, typically project updates.

Function-Specific Strategy Teams

It is also common to find dedicated strategy roles within internal departments like marketing, finance, or compliance. While these roles may resemble in-house consulting positions, they often function more like a Chief of Staff to the department heads. Typical responsibilities include:

Developing a departmental strategy usually with a one- to three-year horizon aligned with the team’s goals
Preparing executive updates focused on short-term strategies, core objectives, and relevant KPIs
Tracking key projects by coordinating and managing cross-functional initiatives or top-priority projects within the department

How to Know if a Career in In-House Consulting Is Right for You

If you're considering a career in in-house consulting, it's important to weigh the key advantages and potential drawbacks before making a decision.

Pros of In-House Consulting

Better work-life balance: Many people leave traditional consulting due to burnout or demanding hours in search of a more sustainable lifestyle. An in-house consulting role allows you to continue working on strategic topics while gaining more control over your schedule and enjoying more balanced working hours.
Deeper business insights: As an external consultant, you’re typically brought in as a trusted advisor to shape a vision or recommendation. Once implementation begins, you’re often no longer involved, even though that’s when some of the most critical decisions are made. In-house consultants, on the other hand, usually stay much closer to execution and long-term impact.

Cons of In-House Consulting

Compensation growth: External consultants often experience rapid salary increases, sometimes as much as 20 to 30 percent per year, with steep pay jumps at each career level. In-house consulting salaries tend to grow more steadily, with significant increases usually tied to promotions.
Slower career progression: In consulting, promotions are strongly performance-driven and often come quickly. At McKinsey, for example, it’s not unusual for top performers to make Partner in under seven years. In corporate roles, promotions tend to happen more slowly and can depend on factors beyond your control.
Less travel: If you enjoy the frequent travel that comes with consulting, it’s worth noting that in-house consultants typically travel much less. While some exceptions exist, most in-house roles are based at a single location with occasional business trips.

Role-Specific Pros and Cons of a Career in In-House Consulting

A career in a central strategy team can offer exciting insights and high visibility, but there are also challenges you should be aware of when making your decision. Let’s take a closer look at the key aspects.

Corporate Strategy

Advantages of Corporate Strategy Roles

Visibility with top management: Working in corporate strategy often means direct exposure to senior leadership. This is a great opportunity to build your reputation and open doors to future roles within the company.
Insights into various parts of the business: Central strategy teams usually work across departments and regions. Just like in classic consulting, you gain a broad understanding of the company in a short amount of time.

Disadvantages of Corporate Strategy Roles

Less real problem solving: Sometimes corporate strategy roles devolve into “slide factories” – the focus is more on creating visually appealing presentations based on predefined input rather than on actual strategic thinking.
Limited ownership of content: Final accountability typically lies with product or P&L teams – similar to the role of external consultants. This can make you feel more like a project manager than a true strategy consultant.
High-intensity phases around key milestones: Although working hours are generally better than in external consulting, periods leading up to board meetings, CEO updates, or quarterly reports can be intense (with long days and weekend work).

Function-Specific Strategy Roles

Additional advantages (on top of those mentioned above) of function-specific roles in in-house consulting:

Greater content and operational responsibility: Function-specific strategy teams often have more ownership over content and are seen as subject-matter experts within the organization. This allows them to shape the strategic direction of their focus area.
Closer collaboration with other teams: Being embedded in a functional unit fosters strong cross-functional collaboration and closer working relationships – which is a big plus in day-to-day work.

Disadvantages of function-specific in-house consulting roles:

Limited view of the overall business: You’ll develop deep expertise in your specific area, which is valuable – but you may not gain the broader company-wide perspective that central strategy teams typically have.
Lower visibility: Your visibility tends to be limited to the leadership within your own function, rather than across the broader organization.

Key Takeaways

In-house consulting roles are an attractive career option for many reasons. Especially if you enjoy the strategic work of consulting but are tired of constant travel and long hours, this path could be a perfect fit. The work remains intellectually challenging, but the work-life balance is significantly better – and you often see projects through from start to finish.

Another major benefit: in-house consulting positions are often an ideal entry point into a company you're interested in for the long term. You quickly get to know key stakeholders and can build an internal network, which can help you transition into other roles down the line.

That said, in-house consulting may not be the right choice if you don’t actually enjoy the nature of consulting work. Additionally, getting your foot in the door can be challenging, as many companies specifically target former MBB consultants. However, with solid networking and thorough interview preparation, this hurdle can definitely be overcome.