The history of IMC USA is the story of the hundreds of people who gave ceaselessly of their energy, time, and money over many decades to ensure that management consultants could learn, share and prosper in an ethical manner. Whether its management was paid or volunteer, internal or outsourced, located in New York City or Washington D.C., IMC indomitably persisted.

IMC showed that it is an organization able to accommodate a change in its member profile, as it did when the AMC entrepreneurial infusion supplanted the number of IMC members in large firms. When IT replaced industrial engineering as a chief specialty of the membership, and when greater technology investment was required to administer the membership, IMC persisted through the shift in technology. When CCO supplanted IMC and ACME, IMC remained an identifiable force of will. When IMC broke off from CCO and ACME, it survived the organization shift and the cyclical consulting environment in general.

What is included in the IMC USA History document is the story of the Institute as it evolved from its early days to the contemporary organization representing management consultants in this information age. This story is at times compelling, at times frustrating, but at all times the story of our peers' survival, as the voices of the past speak to the future consultants and leaders of IMC. The story contains all the necessary elements for contemporary readers: sex, fraud, theft, waste, Shakespearean flaws in the leaders, and a passionate love for the profession. It exemplifies the hard work that went into keeping IMC alive for you, the reader, and for generations of consultants to follow.

We've put into the appendices documents that may be useful to future IMC Boards, to prevent "re-inventing wheels," and to provide the basis for developing that "better" wheel. Where we have quoted or attributed to a specific author herein, we've taken the liberty of correcting grammar and typographical errors for the readers, but we have not changed the author's intent. Such quotes are shown in a different font. Also, we have eliminated the CMC and FIMC designations, for ease in reading, but all principals are CMCs; most are FIMCs. Likewise, we have kept IMC to refer to the Institute, although IMC became IMC USA at the millennium to conform to ICMCI member institute naming conventions, except when referring to ICMCI or the IMC of the future, when we use IMC USA.

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