How to give advice (for a living)

This is not the first time I’ve read The Secrets of Con­sult­ing. I’ve made a deal with myself to read this every time I leave a full-time job to go back to work­ing for clients on a con­tract basis. My father (him­self a more suc­cess­ful con­sul­tant than I’m like­ly ever to be) gave me his copy a dozen years ago or more and in the mean­time I’ve read it cov­er to cov­er at least four times and browsed through it many more than that. I’ve rec­om­mend­ed it again and again and final­ly bought a new copy of the book since the one dad gave me had become so bad­ly tattered.

It’s full of impor­tant infor­ma­tion that’s valu­able for any­one even vague­ly relat­ed to con­sult­ing. Wein­berg’s writ­ing is decep­tive­ly light and breezy, and con­tains some real pow­er­hous­es of insight.

Wein­berg’s strength is his abil­i­ty to illus­trate a par­a­digm shift so that the read­er gets brought along for the ride. If you’re averse to sud­den, some­times humor­ous shifts in per­spec­tive, you should cer­tain­ly avoid this book.