Management consulting has been the same shape for sixty years.

A team of bright generalists, organized into 8-20-week engagements, parachutes into a client. They run interviews, build models, produce a deck, present recommendations, hand off implementation to someone else, and leave.

The unit of work is the slide. The unit of value is the recommendation. The unit of billing is the partner-hour, leveraged through associates and analysts. The economics rest on a pyramid: junior staff doing the analytical work cheaply, billed at multiples that fund senior partner compensation in the millions.

This shape held when the work was understanding the business. When the constraint was what should we do? — Slides answered the question. The deck was the deliverable because the deck was the decision.