If Machiavelli were alive today, he would be a consultant. This is the book he’d write.
— Art Kleiner
##A 07 70286 6
##T The Secrets of Consulting
The Secrets of Consulting
(A Guide to Giving & Getting Advice Successfuly)
Gerald M. Weinberg
1985; 228 pp.
ISBN 0932633013
$25 ($26.50 postpaid)
from:
Dorset House Publishing
353 West 12th Street
New York, NY 10014
800-342-6657
212-620-4053 (NY)
There is a tape version available, see card last card of this review for access info and to play an excerpted sound.
##A 07 77334 7
##T The Secrets of Consulting
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In order for a consultant to get credit, the client would have to admit there had been a solution. To admit there was a solution, the client would have to admit there was a problem, which is unthinkable. As a result, the only consultants who get invited back are those who never seem to accomplish anything.
##A 07 49758 8
##T The Secrets of Consulting
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Many years ago, Sir Ronald Fisher noted that every biological system had to face the problem of present versus future, and that the future was always less certain than the present. To survive, a species had to do well today, but not so well that it didn’t allow for possible change tomorrow. His fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection said that the more adapted an organism was to present conditions, the less adaptable it tended to be to unknown future conditions.
We can apply the theorem to individuals, small groups of people, large organizations, organizations of people and machines, and even complex systems of machinery, and can generalize it as follows: The better adapted you are, the less adaptable you tend to be.
##A 07 49991 9
##T The Secrets of Consulting
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Little by little, as you keep solving your worst problem, the percent of trouble caused by your worst problem will diminish, and your remaining problems will tend to become relatively equal in percentage. That’s why The Level Law holds:
Effective problem-solvers may have many problems, but rarely have a single, dominant problem.
To the extent that The Level Law holds true, a consultant can learn quite a bit about a client by observing the distribution of trouble across the existing problems. If you as a consultant find a relatively even distribution of problems, you may hypothesize that your clients are not seeing one major problem, but it is more likely that they have been keeping up with their problems without letting any one problem get out of control.
##A 07 49235 10
##T The Secrets of Consulting
If they don’t like your work, don’t take their money.
