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If you are a consultant, ever use one, or want to be one, this book will show you how to succeed.
With wit, charm, humor, and wisdom, Gerald Weinberg shows you exactly how to become a more effective consultant. He reveals specific techniques and strategies that really work!
Packed with practical details, the book shows you how to
* keep ahead of your clients
* create a special "consultant's survival kit" * trade improvement for perfection * negotiate in difficult situations * measure your effectiveness * be yourself
You will also find straightforward advice on marketing your services, including how to:
* find clients * get needed exposure * set just-right fees * gain trust
The Secrets of Consulting -- techniques, strategies, and first-hand experiences -- all that you'll need to set up, run, and be successful at your own consulting business!
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This is a little book with some big messages. As the subtitle says, it's a book not only for those who give, or sell, their advice, but it's also for those who are taking or buying it.
It's a book both for those who help to manage change, and for those undergoing change themselves. Many people should read it. That said, the main focus of the book is on those who produce the advice and ideas. If you are a consultant as I am, this may be one of the most important books in your collection. I have read it cover to cover twice, and parts of it many other times.
The book is written with a light, humorous touch, illustrated both with many funny stories and some very apt cartoons and quotations. From each discussion he abstracts multiple "laws" and reminders, which on their own should prompt you to remember the key points he discusses.
Weinberg doesn't pull any of his punches. Consulting is hard, and the secrets are guides to improving your success and survival rate, not any set of "magic wands". He addresses ways in which you can fail just as much as ways to succeed. In successive chapters, the book deals with the nature of consulting and the problems it can address, and how to develop your own mind so that your can see the problems and come up with possible solutions to them.
Throughout, Weinberg teaches us to focus on the "people" problems: cultural, political and psychological, which tend to be at the heart of any issue, assuming that, as he says, "it's always a people problem". If you can solve the people problems, the practical problems should be easy by comparison.
...
In later chapters, the book focuses specifically on how to make consultancy more effective: how to improve the impact of what you do, how to help make change happen, and the importance of things like setting the right price and marketing yourself.
This is an easy book to read, with lots of good advice very humorously presented. I can thoroughly recommend it to all consultants, would-be consultants, clients and would-be clients.
When I quit my day job, and struck out on my own, this book was invaluable. In fact, I re-read it now and then, to help my piece of mind. Weinberg's book describes several key aspects of consulting, which a consultant needs to know for success. Trust of the client, pricing the consultant can live with, pitfalls to avoid are some topics. Though Weinberg describes general management consulting, his principles extend to other consulting fields. Best of all, I know when to say $100 an hour, and when to say $50, and to be happy with the result.
Yet the reading is light and enjoyable. Recommended especially for the self-employed consultant, or the downsized or dilbertized, who want to be self-employed.
This book is full of insights which are invaluable to anyone in consulting or considering it for a career. The light-hearted and often comedic style belie the pragmatic nature of the wisdom presented in this book. It's a cross between Plato and Dilbert.
I've tried to keep copies of this book around to no avail. I've lost two books passing it around to customers and fellow consultants. I've remembered and used "The Three tenets of Consulting", "The Orange Juice Test" and "Rudy's Rudabaga Rule" hundreds of times over the last ten years. A true classic. I'm glad to find I can get replacement copies on Amazon.com!
This title by Weinberg is *THE* book to have if you fill any type of consulting role. Don't worry if you aren't a full time, dreaded consultant - you'll find plenty of good rules on giving and receiving advice in this work. I have personally purchased 5 copies of this over the years because my copies seem to "disapear" as soon as I tell anyone about it.
Every single person who picks up this book on my recommendation takes the time to let me know how much they liked it - and that says something about Jerry's work. Because Jerry gets his points across by telling stories, this book is the perfect read for a flight, a few minutes between meetings, or when you can't take another seventeen noun, passive voice sentence that most IT texts use.
A must buy for anyone who works in teams, gives advice, or ....well, it's for anyone.
This book has undoubtedly some key advices for anyone interested in being (or working with) a consultant . Advices such as "The trick of earning trust is to avoid all tricks" and "People are never liars - in their own eyes" and many others are invaluable. However on certain topics Weinberg goes on his own tangent and a little too much self-esteem emerges, i.e. he over-emphasises some self-behaviors as the right thing to do (like he's always great ideas, his high-fees are always justifiable, etc) and therefore not fully shareable. On a plus note I'd say this book is thick with irony and funny moments, showing that Mr Weinberg doesn't take himself too seriously. Overall this book is a good reading but is not to be taken as a bible as some "self-righteousness " about the author emerges pretty clearly, so take its content critically.
This is the most funny AND instructive book I ever read about consulting. I own two copies - one for my own use, and one floating around loaned out to colleagues. Weinberg uses examples you simply won't forget.
Lets face it every fool can handle technology, but it takes expert to work with people. At least thous who are working in IT business tend to think so but the thought is not on solid groud.
With a little help of this book one can understand what is that people stuff, like how to co-operate and make changes without being rude. Even if you think you are really good with people the book can help you be better.
