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More Secrets of Consulting
More Secrets of Consulting
More Secrets of Consulting
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More Secrets of Consulting

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More Secrets of Consulting is a sequel or extension to The Secrets of Consulting, but the two books may be read in either order. One reviewer said: "Just buy this book and improve your life. I add Mr. Weinberg to a short list of those authors and persons in my life that have made me a better person and provided some direction to the chaos of the universe."

Another reviewer said: 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 emphasizes 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.

Michael Larsen said, " More Secrets of Consulting" is a gem of a book, and remarkably quick reading.. Needless to say, a single read through will not impart all the wisdom and experience of this book, but there's much to ponder, and it's my hope I'll be able to put much of this in practice in my most recent venture. Perhaps a year from now, I'll be able to come back and see how well I did :).

Matthew D Edwards wrote: "Developing MORE of your soft and thinking skills. This builds on the first book in this series and is the same caliber, class and application value as the first. More insight from a consultant/leader/teacher with years of experience

Randy Given said, "This book is much better than the original 'Secrets of Consulting.' The original was released quite a while ago, and you can tell that the author has learned a lot in the meantime, and is better at presenting it. I would have given the original three stars, maybe four. This book I give five stars. Some of my bias may be that this book is more at the level of my current software consulting experience. Some of the topics (e.g., burnout) are sorely needed right now! It is good to see good books at good prices again. If you are a consultant, at least give this title a try.

Charles Ashbacher said, "If you were to buy this book and the previous one, 'Secrets of Consulting,' and read them, then your next step should be to place one in each of your hip pockets. For that is the only part of being a consultant not covered in these books. Wrapped in the guise of folk wisdom, the advice given here could and should be part of a business degree. For, no matter what the circumstances and the size of the companies represented on both sides, a business deal still reduces down to individuals who trust each other enough to 'like' each other in the business sense.

In many ways, you are being paid to tell your customers when they are not right and to do anything other than that is a moral breach of your contract. Weinberg spends a great deal of time in explaining how to deal with this critical situation and that advice hits the dime-sized target.

No one writes business advice better than Weinberg. If he ever decides to give up writing about business, he could make a career out of writing personal self-help books. It will be on my top ten

LanguageEnglish
Release dateDec 3, 2010
ISBN9781452387314
More Secrets of Consulting
Author

Gerald M. Weinberg

Gerald M. Weinberg (Jerry) writes "nerd novels," such as The Aremac Project, Aremac Power, First Stringers, Second Stringers, The Hands of God, Freshman Murders, and Mistress of Molecules—about how brilliant people produce quality work. His novels may be found as eBooks at or on Kindle. Before taking up his science fiction career, he published books on human behavior, including Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method, The Psychology of Computer Programming, Perfect Software and Other Fallacies, and an Introduction to General Systems Thinking. He also wrote books on leadership including Becoming a Technical Leader, The Secrets of Consulting (Foreword by Virginia Satir), More Secrets of Consulting, and the four-volume Quality Software Management series. He incorporates his knowledge of science, engineering, and human behavior into all of writing and consulting work (with writers, hi-tech researchers, and software engineers). Early in his career, he was the architect for the Mercury Project's space tracking network and designer of the world's first multiprogrammed operating system. Winner of the Warnier Prize and the Stevens Award for his writing on software quality, he is also a charter member of the Computing Hall of Fame in San Diego and the University of Nebraska Hall of Fame. The book, The Gift of Time (Fiona Charles, ed.) honors his work for his 75th birthday. His website and blogs may be found at http://www.geraldmweinberg.com.

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    More Secrets of Consulting - Gerald M. Weinberg

    More Secrets of Consulting

    by

    Gerald M. Weinberg

    SMASHWORDS EDITION

    * * * * *

    PUBLISHED BY:

    Gerald M. Weinberg on Smashwords

    More Secrets of Consulting

    Copyright © 2010 by Gerald M. Weinberg

    All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

    Smashwords Edition License Notes

    This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

    Contents

    Preface

    Foreword

    Chapter 1. Can I Beat the Law of Raspberry Jam?

    Chapter 2. The Wisdom Box

    Chapter 3. The Golden Key

    Chapter 4. The Courage Stick

    Chapter 5. The Wishing Wand

    Chapter 6. The Detective Hat (and Magnifying Glass)

    Chapter 7. The Yes/No Medallion

    Chapter 8. The Heart

    Chapter 9. The Mirror

    Chapter 10. The Telescope

    Chapter 11. The Fish-Eye Lens

    Chapter 12. The Gyroscope

    Chapter 13. The Egg, the Carabiner, and the Feather

    Chapter 14. The Hourglass

    Chapter 15. The Oxygen Mask

    Epilogue. The Traveling Tool Kit

    Summary of Laws, Rules and Principles of Consulting

    Further Reading

    Preface

    [This volume can be considered a sequel or extension to The Secrets of Consulting, but the two books can be read in either order. Also, the Preface serves as a preface to both, as together they form a single piece of work.]

    If you are a consultant, or if you ever use a consultant, this book is for you. That's a wide scope, because nowadays, nearly everyone is some kind of a consultant. There are hardware consultants and software consultants, social workers and psychiatrists, management consultants and worker consultants, energy consultants and information consultants, safety consultants and accident consultants, beauty consultants and septic tank consultants, consulting physicians and consulting attorneys, wedding consultants, decorators, genetic consultants, family therapists, economic consultants, bankruptcy consultants, retirement consultants, funeral consultants, and psychic consultants.

    And those are only the professionals. You're using a consultant when you ask your neighbor what he uses to remove crabgrass from his lawn. You're being a consultant when your daughter asks you what college she ought to attend. In the United States, at least, you don't have to have a license to advise someone on what car to buy, or to help another find the quickest route to Arkadelphia.

    With such diversity, what do all these consultants have in common? What would make them all want to read this book? My definition of consulting is the art of influencing people at their request. People want some sort of change—or fear some sort of change—so they seek consulting, in one form or another.

    Many people influence other people without a request. A judge can sentence you to thirty years of hard labor. Your teacher can assign you thirty pages of hard reading. Your boss can give you thirty days of hard traveling. Your priest can apportion you thirty Hail Marys. Judges and teachers and bosses and priests can act as consultants. But they're not consultants in these cases, because these forms of influence are enforced by some authority system, not necessarily by the willing participation of the person influenced.

    Other influencers have no authority, but are not consultants because they lack the request. Car dealers and other salespeople come to mind in this category. Again, they may act as consultants, but they're not consultants when they're trying to sell you something you didn't ask for.

    Being called a consultant doesn't make you a consultant, either. Many people are called consultants as a way of glorifying their dull jobs. Some software consultants, for instance, are retained strictly as supplementary programming labor. The last thing their clients want is in be influenced. All they want is grunt work turning out computer code, but by calling their temporary workers consultants, they can get then for a few dollars less than if they called them something more mundane.

    Conversely, you may be a consultant even if you don't have the label. Anyone with a staff job is acting as a consultant to the line management. When they hired you, they were requesting your influence (why else would someone hire a staff person?). After you've bets on the payroll for a while, however, they may forget that you were hired to help. Sometimes, even you forget, so your task is a bit different from that of the outsider called in to work on a specific problem.

    This is not a book about how to become a consultant. That part easy. Most likely, you already are a consultant, because you become a consultant whenever you accept someone's request for influence. It's after you accept the request that you start needing help. When I became a full-time consultant, I soon discovered that few people request influence when their world is behaving rationally. As a result, consultants tend to see more than their fair share of irrationality. You may have noticed, for instance, how frequently someone who asks you for advice will then attack you angrily because of the requested advice. Such irrationality drives consultants crazy, but if they can cope with it, it can also drive them rich.

    There were times, though, when I couldn't cope with it, so I turned to writing books to restore my sanity. Anyone who is irrational enough to buy one of my books may be requesting influence, but at least I don't have to give the advice face-to-face. That's why my books are cheaper than my consulting fees.

    Most of the time, though, I enjoyed the direct interaction with my clients, if I could stand the irrationality. If I wanted to stay in the business, it seemed to me I had two choices:

    1. Remain rational, and go crazy.

    2. Become irrational, and be called crazy.

    For many years, I oscillated between these poles of misery, until I hit upon a third approach:

    3. Become rational about irrationality.

    Foreword

    [Author's Note: Because so much of The Secrets of Consulting and More Secrets of Consulting derive from Virginia Satir's work, I'm placing her Foreword in both volumes.]

    Reading The Secrets of Consulting is a very special experience. The book appeals to my sense of humor, my awareness of human foibles, and my knowledge of how human systems work. Most especially, this book enlarges my view of how change takes place, of how a consultant in any context can become more effective.

    It is profound in its meaning and humorous and colorful in its presentation. Jerry Weinberg's style is such that he shares his experiences and knowledge with me; I feel inspired, rather than defensive. As I read, I can identify with the people and the problems he describes, and I take pleasure in laughing at myself and in learning from the situations that apply to me.

    The Secrets of Consulting is far more than a consultant's handbook. It is actually a book about how people can take charge of their own growth. As a family therapist, I've found it helpful to understand people's behavior and the relationship between consultant and client by relating it to our birth into this world, an appearance into an unequal triad: father, mother, child. The father and mother are supposedly grown, and the child is totally dependent on the adults. What we learn from birth to adulthood is related essentially to this; although much of what we learn is unconscious, it gives us both our feelings about ourselves and about our importance to the world. It also gives us skills for coping, which can be augmented by consultants.

    Unconscious or not, our basic childhood learnings still operate, whether we're in the role of client or consultant. Jerry Weinberg often gently teases the reader, as well as himself, about some of these powerful unconscious lessons that get in the way of our hoped-for results.

    For example, every one of us needs approval and open recognition of success: Look, Ma, no hands, says the proud son while riding his bicycle, hoping Mama will smile. When Mama doesn't, the child's need is unfulfilled and, as an adult, he may still look for that smile, but in the wrong context.

    Further, many of us still dance between the wish and need to know and the fear of rejection that might come from revealing our needs. After all, we think to ourselves, "if I am smart, I should know everything already and be able to handle every situation well. If I don't, it is a sign of my weakness, stupidity, perverseness, or incompetence.

    Acknowledging such flaws would be intolerable. When this interpretation is made, most of us play games, either hiding our true feelings or projecting them onto someone else: thinking, for example, I don't need you. And if it looks as if I do, it is probably because you are at fault."

    Giving help, offering new ways to cope, is the consultant's job; but in order for the consultant to succeed, the job needs to be framed and approached with just that dance in mind. By asking for the consultant's help, the client is saying, sometimes nonverbally, I need you. I can't say so directly, so find a way to help me without destroying my sense of worth. The wise consultant answers in a way that recognizes the client's self-worth, but also doesn't compromise his own. Otherwise, no real or lasting change can take place.

    As the wise consultant, Jerry Weinberg illustrates this key point in many different contexts. He points to effective and interesting ways to approach the dance, and always praises the client who knows when and whom to ask for help as a mark of greater intelligence than as an admission of incompetence. In this context, both client and consultant grow in learning and strength, and everyone feels good.

    After all, aren't the secrets of consulting basically what growth, competence, and good human relations are about? Namely, that we feel good about ourselves and about others, and that we experience our hopes and goals being fulfilled.

    October 1985

    Palo Alto, California

    Virginia Satir

    Chapter 1. Can I Beat the Law of Raspberry Jam?

    When I mentioned to my pal, Michelle, that I was writing a sequel to my earlier book, The Secrets of Consulting, she shook her head in disbelief. Why don't you quit while you're ahead? Don't you believe your own preaching? What about The Law of Raspberry Jam?

    Michelle was referring to the law that describes how the Great Message gets diluted when carried too far: The wider you spread it, the thinner it gets. She doubted that a second volume could be good as the first.

    Yeah, she continued, I'll grant that your first book was pretty good, so why didn't you stop when you were ahead? Are you just trying to cash in on its success?

    "Well, truthfully, Michelle, I am trying to cash in on the success of Secrets. Should I be ashamed of that?

    Not unless you're not giving value to your readers.

    Fair enough, I said. I'll start the book by letting the readers know what kind of value they can expect. So let's try an analysis.

    I explained to Michelle that up until now, Secrets has sold over 100,000 copies. I also explained that many readers have told me how much they'd increased their annual consulting income by applying such secrets as The Ten Laws of Pricing, the Orange Juice Test, Marvin's Great Secrets, The Buffalo Bridle, and the Ten Laws of Marketing. She agreed, because she claimed it had increased her income, too.

    By how much, I asked.

    Oh, at least $10,000 a year, and that would be conservative.

    Okay, I said, so, assuming that each copy was read at least once, those readers have increased their earnings by $1,000,000,000 a year. And that's every year from now on.

    Okay, she said. I'll buy a copy.

    The Law of Strawberry Jam

    Well, if you're like Michelle, who's the type who believes in numbers, that argument ought to convince you, too. If this book is even half as good as the first, it's still filled with enough jam to make it delicious to read. But what if you're not like Michelle? What if you need general principles to convince you? Then you'll have to read on, and learn about The Law of Strawberry Jam.

    To young visionaries, Raspberry Jam is a discouraging law, but that's because they haven't paid sufficient attention to the preserves they distribute on their morning toast. If they'd only experiment a bit with strawberry jam, they'd tumble onto a discovery that could change their lives.

    Slather a bit of raspberry jam on a few slices of bread, and you'll see it growing thinner and thinner. But if you try the same trick with strawberry preserves, you'll notice that no matter how much you try to spread it, the lumps remain! Or, in the words of the Law of Strawberry Jam,

    As long as it has lumps, you can never spread it too thin.

    In strawberry jam, the lumps are strawberries. In the Great Message, the lump is you! As long as your medium of communication involves your own body in the flesh—speaking, writing, hugging—your message cannot be infinitely diluted. And that's why I decided to write this volume about you, the individual consultant, and the personal tools you need to make your messages lumpier than the ones carried by clones issuing forth from the big consulting factories.

    The Law of Grape Jelly

    Ours is not an age of strawberry jam. Grape jelly seems to be the favorite covering for the American Restaurant Toast—it's absolutely without lumps or even tiny seeds. In fact, it's absolutely without taste, which eliminates complaints. You might complain that the jam tastes off, but you can hardly complain that it has no taste whatsoever.

    Not having lumps, grape jelly are perfect for processing through machines. It's that lumpy third dimension—the depth—that makes copying impractical. Grape jam spreads infinitely thin, so the spreader can color any number of slices of toast out of a single sterilized plastic container. With strawberry jam, there's always the danger of finding a lump, thus consuming the entire portion control container on a single slice.

    It contains no surprises and it's cheap to manufacture—these two properties of grape jelly combine to give the Law of Grape Jelly:

    Nobody ever bothers to complain about grape jelly.

    The Law of Grape Jelly is a law about expectations. Another way of stating the law was one of my father's favorites:

    If you don't expect much, you'll never be disappointed.

    With the sale of ideas, you can also adopt a grape jelly marketing philosophy. If you're presenting a course, it's best from the distributor's point of view to have it reduced to an outline totally lacking in lumps, so that it can be taught by any of a dozen cloned lecturers. Even better is to have it reduced to a video tape or disk that can be played anywhere and give a uniformly thin result. This approach serves to eliminate the bad lumps at the same time it strains out the good ones. Nobody ever found an entire caterpillar in their grape jelly.

    Manufactured items are designed to be built of identical components by a series of processes that require not the slightest individuality on the part of the assemblers. Office procedures are reduced to steps that can be carried out by anybody who can fog a mirror. Like grape jelly on white toast, they're not superbly satisfying to their customers, but at least the product is uniform and entirely predictable.

    The Lump Law

    In another book of mine, An Introduction to General Systems Thinking, I introduced the Lump Law:

    If we want to learn anything, we mustn't try to learn everything.

    In other words, it pays to choose your lumps.

    By applying The Lump Law (see, I do use my own principles), I convinced myself that this book should, like the first, not attempt to cover everything a consultant ought to know. Instead, I would confine myself to a few essential tools that every consultant—and really everybody who ever gives or seeks advice—should always have close at hand. Hence the title, The Consultant's Tool Kit.

    Many of the other things that a consultant ought to know can be found in the books of Peter Block, who has certainly taught me a great deal. In an interview with Peter, Paula Jacobs asked: What do you see as the single most important life lesson for consultants? He answered:

    The person is the product. Working on becoming a more authentic, whole person is the best business strategy. We are selling an intangible service, so clients have no way of knowing what they will be getting and whether they can derive value from what they get. ...The more direct we are, the better human contact we make, the more centered and self aware we are, the more likely the client will see us a someone who they can lean on, someone who delivers on promises, someone they can learn

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