For any old timers here. What did consulting use to be like before, say, the 90s? Did you use computers? I assume you typed written reports rather than slides? What did you use instead of Word, Excel and PPT? Were you on the road a lot? What were the pressing client issues of the day?

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My dad was a consultant for a bit back then. he said the biggest difference is due to lack of excel etc partners couldn’t ask for every and all possible analysis to be done with 50 variables that can be changed. Back then you did 2/3 versions and a ton of research to back up why the variables you chose were the most important

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Oh and travel was the same as now although less internationally

Overhead transparencies or presentations printed on flip-boards. Presentations had to be completed the day before to allow time for printing. Decisions were made in person and in real-time because you couldn’t debate it after meetings on email. There was no email.

The primary difference today is significantly less direct interaction with clients. Back then, we were spending a lot more time physically meeting with clients. There was a lot less of these 1 hour meetings throughout the day. Outside of the most senior executives, the client’s day wouldn’t be scheduled like it is today on Outlook. You would walk into someone’s office or call them and they would generally be available.

Imagine if everyone didn’t have computers, email, or mobile phones. You would have to meet people in person or call them directly in their offices and talk.

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I started my career at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) in1990. Rarely lived and worked in same city. Theory was clients wanted to see butts in seats, so left Sunday night and went home Friday night. Projects were longer, in healthcare lots of systems work. First project consolidated all of accounting onto one mainframe system. Prior to that each component (AR, AP, GL) were either manual (literally a General Ledger!) or small homegrown single function apps. Worked mostly on dumb terminals connected to the mainframe. First "laptop" we used to call a lunchbox - about the size of an old fashioned boom box.

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My dad was in healthcare consulting in the 80s and 90s, focusing on anything and everything revenue related for hospitals, especially Medicare and Medicaid. Lots of hospital system consolidation in the 90s, which led to a lot of work in his niche (primarily revenue concerns with integration) and him being a road warrior.

His company was all in on Lotus SmartSuite, with Lotus 1-2-3 being the main software he used, along with Lotus Word Pro and Lotus Freelance Graphics. They migrated to Microsoft Office in the late 1990s, but by that point he was lining up his exit to one of the hospital systems. Some presentations he made on the road were done via transparencies, depending on the client and their IT infrastructure.

Probably 75% of his travel was regional via car with the rest being national via air.

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Forgot to add--my dad is long since retired, but still has his desk in the basement of my parents' house and he's got his Rolodex and floppy case with copies of the Lotus products on them!

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A partner in my office told us that the reason “old school” consultants were so good at applying pyramid principle was because if they didn’t, that meant actual more time spent manually editing content for clients. That partner said “nowadays you can just select, copy, paste, delete in an instant but imagine having to ask your assistant to manually change something 100 times? It wasn’t efficient. We strived for the perfect titles.”

Assistants would edit the transparencies for the projectors, manually cut and stitch together the graphs, tables etc whatever was needed for paper copies, too. So I imagine there was a LOT more thought in what exactly you wanted to say.

This was all part of a storylining class and this gave us a great intro for why it’s so important and why you should use it to “imagine you have a limited amount of paper to get your point across.”

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I've heard from partners they used lot of transparencies and overhead projectors, bur curious to learn more.

I imagine old school consulting to be much like how it was characterized in early textbooks in the field; e.g. process improvement at some mfg client, trying to increase volume of widgets etc. Or HR consulting in identifying which departments to lay off. I imagine it was mostly region-based? Like you’d drive out to a client. Air travel would be the exception, not the norm. And write up your report when you got back into the office.

Agree with much more client interaction. Working space shared with clients.

Great stories, fascinating stuff; almost Don Draper-esque - thank you

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