My Notes on “The Secrets of Consulting” by Gerald M. Weinberg:
- The first law of consulting: In spite of what your client may tell you, theirs is always a problem.
- The second law of consulting: No matter how it looks at first, it’s always a people problem
- Never promise more than 10% improvement (so the client doesn’t get embarrassed about how crap they were)
- If you happen to achieve more than 10% improvement, make sure it isn’t noticed
- Whatever the client is doing, advise something else (because what they have been doing hasn’t worked so far)
- You’ll never accomplish anything if you care who gets the credit
- If they don’t hire you, don’t solve their problem
- The Law of Raspberry Jam: The wider you spread it, the thinner it gets. Alternative: “Influence or affluence; take your choice”. One on one advice is very powerful for initiating change, an email newsletter or a book is weaker at influencing chance. But with the latter, with leverage, you can make a lot of money
- Most of the time, for most of the world, no matter how hard people work at it, nothing of any significance happens
- Once you eliminate your number one problem, number two gets a promotion
- The Hard Law: If you can’t accept failure, you’ll never succeed as a consultant
- Inverse of the Hard Law: Some people do succeed as consultants, so it must be possible to deal with failure
- The Harder Law: Helping myself is even harder than helping others
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