The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully Paperback – January 1, 1985

I picked up this book when I was thinking of becoming a full-time, free-lance consultant. Even though consulting clients will probably occupy only part of my time in the near future, I still find this book very useful.Being a successful consultant, according to Weinberg, essentially means learning to deal with a couple of inescapable elements of every business: irrationality and change.Consulting is hard because clients are not acting rationally. They will have a problem but will never admit it, and the problem is always a people problem, no matter how technical it might seem at first. These two facts are so well established that Weinberg labels them as The First - and respectively, The Second - Law of Consulting.This is one of the features of the book: lots of hard-learned facts are distilled into succinct - and at times pithy - laws, principles and rules. In order to make it easy to remember them, they are given fanciful names like Rudy's Rutabaga Rule or The Titanic Effect.Weinberg's advice is not to try to be rational at all costs, and don't force clients to admit their problems and fears. Consultants should be reasonable rather rational, cultivate a paradoxical frame of mind and help clients solve their problems by themselves.Consulting is also mainly about change: A consultant will be called in either to foster or to prevent change. Clients will typically be stuck in a troublesome situation and will need someone to jiggle them in order to become unstuck. A good consultant will need to learn how to amplify his own impact in order to act effectively on a client's organization, which is much bigger than him and with much more inertia.The last part of the book deals with marketing one's own services and putting a price on one's head. In my opinion, the best advice on this matter is The Principle of Least Regret:"Set the price so you won't regret it either way."This basically means that you should not set the price so low, in order to get the assignment, that you'll regret it if you obtain it. And you should not set it so high that you'll regret it when the client is unable to pay it. Rather, you should set it so that you'll feel about the same whatever happens. You shouldn't feel too bad if you're turned down and you shouldn't feel too bad if you're accepted, either.The book is highly readable, the format is entertaining and the number of useful tips per page is very high. It's also quite short, which is a virtue. No matter what your job is, if you're dealing with people, you should be reading it now!What more can I say? Highly recommended.

A man walks into a Hotel conference room and asks to have fresh squeezed orange juice for all of his audience. It has to be squeezed within two hours of being served. Nothing bottled! In truth, he doesn't want this service because he knows it would be expensive and out of their normal mode of operation. But depending on the answer he gets back, he will make a decision about reserving the room or not. What would you say as the room manager? I will explain.Some real time wasters have embittered my reading lately. Let me tell you, a 4.5 rating on Amazon guarantees nothing! Reading The Secrets of Consulting was not a time waster. I rate it as 4 stars.One principle that came out of it can work for some business types. The man with the orange juice request was looking for one answer: "Yes, we can do it, here's the price". If the manager would have said they can't do it, or he can do it at no extra charge, that wouldn't have worked. Services should be available at an expense.Weindberg explains trade offs this way. If your client wants it faster or larger, give it to them, but the trade off will be a higher price. Many times clients want everything and they want it now at the best quality. This principle helps me remember what is possible, and negotiations to make it worthwhile.There were plenty of good principles in this readable book. Weinberg is a technical consultant with a strong taste for principles and illustrations. However, if I were to rethink the title to help my colleagues understand it's usefulness in the workplace, it might be: Wisdom and Influence in the Workplace.

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It starts off with a bang.. The first four chapters are gold. The book kind of tapers off after that for me.. however it's just a matter of the early chapters setting a very high bar.Loved the style of amusing named anecdotes with sticky names like 'Rudy's Rutabaga Rule' OR Boulding's backward basis. I'm sure I'll be suffering from Main's Maxim a lot less :)Takeaways for me: Consulting/helping someone is not as much a matter of being rational as it is of being reasonable. This book throws the spotlight on the people aspect.. Observation, History, gaining and keeping Trust, Overcoming change and resistance have nothing to do with technology. These are essential skills.All in all: This book is a keeper ; Considering the 30-50 years of consulting experience... this book is worth the price many times over. Definite recommendation. Wish I had read this much much earlier.Nitpick: I've the Kindle eBook. Although the book has a TOC, the Goto TOC option is disabled. You can workaround this by placing a bookmark..

I'm a former software development consultant turned product developer. I'm thinking of moving back into consulting one day and thought I should refresh my knowledge of the field before jumping back in. This book gave me great insight on what makes a good consultant and how to deal with the human side of consulting problems. As I look back to many of my past experiences in consulting, I can clearly see how Gerry would have analyzed each situation into one of his stories that teach us a lesson about human interaction.I find it amazing how well Weinberg understands both technical people and the people that interact with technical people. I can easily see how he was able to build such a great reputation as a consultant over the years. His advice is also timeless. This book is nearly as old as I am, yet I still find it extremely relevant to today's consulting world. Technology may have changed (remember email was not ubiquitous when this book was written), but most of the people problems have remained the same.I highly recommend this book and anything else Gerry Weinberg has written. He's a top notch author.