Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #159675 in Books
• Published on: 1985-04-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 228 pages

Review
." . . much more than about giving advice successfully. It's a guide that recognizes and respects the individuality and freedom of each person you deal with in business and social dealings. It's clear-eyed and clever and fun to read. Highly recommended."

Synopsis
In this book the author offers a personal tour of the often irrational world of consulting. He chooses a storytelling format, deriving rules, laws and principles from his anecdotes to make the points memorable. His style is informal and personal, the secrets applicable to other disciplines. This book does not tell you how to become a consultant but midst the wit and humour are practical steps to become more effective in this highly competitive profession. Among the topics covered are pricing and marketing your services, keeping ahead of the client, avoiding traps, finding alternative approaches, establishing trust, measuring your effectiveness and dealing with client resistance.

Customer Reviews

One of the most important books for any consultant
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.

The most valuable book about consulting I've ever read.
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.

How to price consulting? This book told me how.
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.