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Product Description
Consultants need more than technical skills—they need self-awareness and a strong set of personal abilities. Weinberg helps computer consultants identify and strengthen each aspect of their performance using a "consultant's tool kit" of seventeen memorable symbols. He devotes a chapter to each of these symbolic tools, from The Wisdom Box to The Fish-Eye Lens to The Oxygen Mask and more.
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Customer Reviews
Don’t get me wrong. This is not in any way a bad book: it’s still as well written and humorous as Weinberg’s other books, and chock full of amusing stories and “laws” derived from them. Anyone involved in consulting of any sort will still get a great deal out of it. But if, like many men, you’re uncomfortable talking and reading about “feelings” you may find this less easy to read.
The “Consultant’s Tool Kit” of the subtitle is actually a complex metaphor. Each component of the toolkit is a metaphor for a certain aspect of your personality and personal capabilities. For example, the wishing wand is a metaphor for understanding, and being able to ask for, what you want from a professional relationship. The chapter around this metaphor first explores why most people either don’t know what they want or are unable to express it, and suggests ways to make your wishes clearer. It places this in a professional context, contract negotiation, and emphasises how the personal ability to express and value your wishes will help you negotiate more successfully.
In a similar way other chapters focus on developing wisdom and new knowledge, managing time and information, being courageous with your decisions, learning how to say yes and no, understanding why you and others are in the current situation, and keeping yourself in balance, avoiding burnout and other self-destructive conditions.
These are all important not only to consultants, but to anyone trying to establish a more satisfying professional or personal life by managing problems, by self-improvement and by better handling their relationships to other people.
Weinberg could have presented much of this material in a style
much closer to the earlier book, but instead chose a more introspective approach which demands a greater investment on the part of the reader. Only time will tell how this investment is repaid, but I believe it will be for me.
The book is structured around 'the consultant's tool kit', a set of symbolic objects that represent the resources needed for effective consulting, or indeed life in general. The original toolkit was devised by the family therapist Virginia Satir, and has been added to and extended by Weinberg. For me this made the book feel somewhat more structured than its predecessor.
My only criticism of the book is that at 200 pages it felt too short and left me wanting much more. There is also an inevitable degree of overlap with 'The Secrets of Consulting', and to a lesser extent with some of Weinberg's other books. Despite this I think this is a book I will want to come back to time and time again.
Jerry offers you a toolkit, full of metaphors. I like metaphors, I can remember them better.
For me personally the best metaphors are;
The Lump Law,
The Courage Stick,
The Wishing Wand,
The Yes/No Medallion.
Thank you Jerry for sharing.
Listmania!
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