Customer Reviews

The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully

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I'm having to order another copy of Secrets of Consulting because I lent the last one to a friend, and it's never come back home. There's a reason for that. This is the kind of book that people borrow, but never want to part with again.

A lot of consulting books are filled with fluff, common sense advice that you already know, or only ONE good thought in 250 pages. In 17 years of consulting, however, I've never found a better guide to solving the REAL business problems that you'll encounter. (And it's useful for more than just consultants, too.) Weinberg gets his message across in simple, memorable anecdotes that I can recite perfectly, fifteen years after I first read the book: The Orange Juice Rule, Rudy's Rutabaga Rule.

Here's one fer-instance. A client says that he wants something special done in a project you've already budgeted and possibly already started. Do you tell her "no way!" and lose the business? Do you do the extra work, grumbling about it (and maybe losing money on the deal)? Or do you apply the Orange Juice Rule? (You don't think I'll give away the answer, do ya?) I can't tell you how often I've applied the Orange Juice Rule and saved my business relationship as well as my own budget.

Besides, this book is just plain fun to read. It's light enough to be entertaining, but his advice will help you run your business better... for several years.

What exactly is consulting? And how does one consult successfully? This informative book attempts to answer these questions in a humorous, easy-to-read style. Throughout this book, Weinberg introduces and explains dozens of consulting laws, rules, and principles - and right from the start, with his laws of consulting laid out, you will be captivated by Weinberg's philosophy:

The First Law of Consulting: In spite of what your client may tell you, there's always a problem.
The Second Law of Consulting: No matter how it looks at first, it's always a people problem.
The Third Law of Consulting: Never forget they're paying you by the hour, not by the solution.
The Fourth Law of Consulting: If they didn't hire you, don't solve their problem.

Some of my many favorite laws, rules, and principles:

The Bolden Rule: If you can't fix it, feature it.
The Lone Ranger Fantasy: When the clients don't show their appreciation, pretend that they're stunned by your performance - but never forget that it's your fantasy, not theirs.
Marvin's Second Great Secret: Repeatedly curing a system that can cure itself will eventually create a system that can't.

Have you seen the new poster that reads "Consulting: If you're not a part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem."? Weinberg would not agree with this statement - his Sixth Law of Pricing says that if they don't like your work, don't take their money. An alternative to these types of posters? Blow up the cartoon illustrations in this book and hang them in your office.

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.

Whether you are an independent, or officially classed as an employee, you are a consultant. No matter what your role in the development process is, what you think, know and do matters in the final outcome. The keys are to know how to express your beliefs as well as how to receive the beliefs of others. Much of the advice given in this book can be applied across all areas of the spectrum, both in job classification and function.
However, the main focus is on the unattached person who wishes to earn a living giving advice to those who may not want to receive it, much less pay a living wage for it. That is a hard task, but fortunately, Weinberg knows this arena very well. He dispenses invaluable advice in the form of simple, folkish sayings that you should post on the wall and repeat several times a day. For example, "The Hard Law: If you can't accept failure, you'll never succeed as a consultant" and "The Law of Raspberry Jam: The wider you spread it, the thinner it gets." The best advice often has a homespun flavor, and these consulting aids, sometimes complex only in their simplicity, will help you plot a path to a successful business as a consultant.
However, it is only advice and not a bible, so the hard part is up to you. If you want to know what makes a consultant work, either because you want to use one or be one, then this is the book you must read. By seeing the view from both sides of the fence, you can plot a successful strategy, independent of whether you are the giver or receiver of the advice.

I first read this book in 1987 when I was working as an independent computer consultant. It quite literally changed my life. Never before had I read the wisdom which this book presents. The lessons presented can be applied to any field, or any endeavor you choose. I currently work in the social services field but I still find myself going back to this book on more than one occasion. I HIGHLY recommend that anyone considering a career change buy this book. It will remain on your bookshelf forever.

The thing is that he knows that by titling a chapter "Rudy's Law of Rutabega" rather than titling it "How to Keep Problems in Perspective" he has helped you to remember his points. They keep coming to me when I'm in a situation. I must have explained Rudy's Law of Rutabega a few hundred times to friends, family, and clients.

Whether you are employed by a company, or you are an independant consultant, you are asked to give and take advice, and to solve problems. As a programmer, I found this book very useful, but the book does not really have anything to do with programming, or consulting. It's more about dealing with the problems, giving and accepting advice, and maintaining a helpful [and professional] demeanour in the midst of an essentially human [and therefore not essentially technical] set of problems.

Best advice: never promise to solve a problem. Promise 10% improvement to a working system at best. A doubling of productivity/throughput makes you you look good, at someone else's else's expense. That person then becomes your enemy. Not worth it.

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.

It's hard to imagine this book is twenty years old. The content is relevant, entertaining and insighful.

Weinberg doesn't pull any punches either. Among his "laws" of consulting: "In spite of what a client may tell you, there's always a problem." and "No matter how it looks at first, it's always a people problem."

The book is full of easily understood advice, written in an engaging way. Weinberg covers how to market services--"There's no such thing as the right amount of business"--pricing, and client relationships.

After decades in the business Weinberg got as much of his experience out of his head and onto paper. It's a gem of a book.

Weinberg reminds us that "the thought that disaster is impossible often leads to unthinkable disaster." Great advice for any consultant.

This book belongs on every cosultant's bookshelf--after reading it thoroughly, that is.

Mike McLaughlin, coauthor with Jay Conrad Levinson, Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants.

Along with "The Art of War", I read this book 3-4 times a year. Why? Because I keep falling back to the silly state I was in before I first read them.

I think the title throws off a lot of people. This really isn't a book about consulting as a business. Heck, it's not even about consulting as a hobby. Actually, the book isn't about consulting. It's about communication...hence the "...Giving and Getting Advice Successfully" part of the title.

Look, most of the time, when a person has a problem, it's not because of lack of intelligence that he can't solve the problem. This book goes a LONG way explaining why it's a culture, or context, or perception problem and that the person consulted isn't there because he's smarter. It may be that the situation just doesn't ALLOW the problem to be solved. Or it may be that the person has been experiencing the problem too long.

As an example, like any couple, my wife and I ask each other to do things. Some of the time, we REALLY need the other person to do exactly what was asked. The problem was that neither of us could discern those situations. So, I took Gerald's advice and created a trigger. Now, when either of us makes a request and then follows it with the trigger, the other party not only agrees to do the thing....but recognizes that they better do or suffer the consequences. (BTW, the trigger is "It's important to me." When I hear those words from her, I KNOW I need to really listen to what she's saying.)

If you read this book and only learn 1 secret that improves your communication, then you'll get your money back in spades. Or, be like me, reread it on a regular basis, and grow.

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.