By the late 1960s unprecedented changes were buffeting societies and businesses around the world. Arthur Andersen’s entrepreneurial culture helped produce new ways of creating and measuring business success. The consulting division’s rapid growth, coupled with changes in technology and a tumultuous world economy, created new challenges for partners. Innovative consulting leadership enabled Arthur Andersen to emerge as a dominant global consulting firm by the end of the 1970s, and assured that the consulting practice would play an increasingly important role within Arthur Andersen.
The era of pioneering artistry that began in the early 1950s was over. The consulting practice was getting too big and customer demands were becoming too complex to support that approach any longer. Vic Millar played an instrumental role in standardizing the firm’s approach to systems installations, paving the way for significant growth in the 1970s. He was convinced that it was time to reinvent Administrative Services and leverage its tremendous collective knowhow. The firm needed to standardize installations step by step so that personnel could move easily among major jobs. This type of reinvention would enable the firm to employ a greater number of people working under each partner to maximize profits per partner. Thanks to Millar’s initial efforts, Administrative Services embarked on a decade of significant growth—despite two international oil crises, a recession and persistent stagflation—based on encapsulating and standardizing its consulting expertise.
The firm’s Electronic Data Processing (EDP) practice, one of it’s seven practice competencies in the late 1960s, would overshadow all other consulting businesses a decade later. According to Millar’s insight the problem was that each peer was teaching differently, depending on the techniques developed in a particular office. Partners from New York preached one approach, from Chicago a second, and from Houston or Paris, yet another. The recruits didn’t know enough to pick up on the differences until they found themselves on a job where the manager or partner was doing something one way and they had been taught another.
Early 1970s
Beginning in the early 1970s and for nearly a quarter century (after which regional training became more prevalent as the firm mushroomed in size), a trip to the St. Charles campus was a rite of passage for newly hired consultants. Young men and women from around the world spent a few weeks in the office where they were hired, then off they went, typically for a three-week stay at the converted, and eventually greatly expanded, Catholic women’s college campus. The intense training in computer programming and other skills could be nerve-racking, but what consultants tend to recall most vividly is being exposed to the true breadth and depth of the consulting practice, and the friendships forged over punch cards or late-night drinks.
Joe Forehand was among the first wave of students. “I can remember going to that first basic Administrative Services school, he recalled. And what was striking to me was how many smart people that this firm had. That was one of the first things that stood out: the quality and the talent and the people that were your peers [were] extremely impressive. I think St. Charles itself and how we went about training was one thing that really struck me as something early on that was very different and was very important in terms of what it meant to be able to build the business.”
Still, all consulting people joining us start with time at St. Charles, which ensures a kick-start at Accenture.
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