Quick overview

Great book for anyone considering getting into consulting or just starting out. There are plenty of great stories that illustrate key points of the book.

My notes

Why Consulting Is So Tough

• 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 First Law of Consulting is The Ten Percent Promise Law: Never promise more than ten percent improvement.

The Ten Percent Solution Another corollary is The Ten Percent Solution Law: If you happen to achieve more than ten percent improvement, make sure it isn’t noticed.

Consultants who don’t bury their huge successes are like guests who clean their shoes on the table napkins. They aren’t invited back.

Marvin’s Law A corollary of The Second Law of Consulting is one of Marvin’s Laws: Whatever the client is doing, advise something else.

The Third Law of Consulting could be interpreted to mean that the consultant should milk the client for as much hourly money as possible, but that’s not what it’s about.

The Credit Rule In short, managers may not be buying solutions, but alibis to give their management. A corollary of The Third Law of Consulting is The Credit Rule: You’ll never accomplish anything if you care who gets the credit.

In organizational consulting, Sherbie’s Laws of Consulting expose the essential competition between managers and consultants.

Which leads to my final law, which I’ll add to Sherbie’s: If they didn’t hire you, don’t solve their problem.

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 We’ve seen how difficult change is. This difficulty suggests that most of your consulting interventions simply won’t work. If that prospect sends you into deep depression, stay out of the consulting trade. But if you’re already in the racket, you’d better learn to live with failure. That’s what I call The Hard Law: If you can’t accept failure, you’ll never succeed as a consultant.

The Harder Law: Once you eliminate your number one problem, YOU promote number two.

The ability to find the problem in any situation is the consultant’s best asset. It’s also the consultant’s occupational disease.

Cultivating A Paradoxical Frame Of Mind

People who can solve problems do lead better lives. But people who can ignore problems, when they choose to, live the best lives. If you can’t do both, stay out of consulting.

Helping myself is even harder than helping others. That’s The Hardest Law, and that’s essentially what this book is about.

Don’t be rational; be reasonable.

You don’t get nothin’ for nothin’. We call this message The Tradeoff Treatment.

Until you learn to master the art of thinking in tradeoff terms, and then learn to juggle simultaneous tradeoffs, you’ll never be a healthy consultant.

The better adapted you are, the less adaptable you tend to be.

Consultants tend to be most effective on the third problem you give them.

The Third-Time Charm is one secret of consulting that we ought to leak to our clients.

Being Effective When You Don’t Know What You’re Doing

Ninety percent of all illness cures itself— with absolutely no intervention from the doctor.

It all depends on the system the consultant is trying to “cure.” If the system has a long history of practice in curing itself, then the consultant should lean toward the “do no harm” approach.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Repeatedly curing a system that can cure itself will eventually create a system that can’t.

Every prescription has two parts: the medicine and the method of ensuring correct use.

If what they’ve been doing hasn’t solved the problem, tell them to do something else.

Make sure they pay you enough so they’ll do what you say. Another way to state this is The most important act in consulting is setting the right fee.

Don’t give up the treatment too soon. Don’t stick with the treatment too long.

Know-how pays much less than know-when.

If you can’t fix it, feature it.

The purpose of consulting is not to make me look smart, but it’s not to make me look dumb either. Consulting is not a test for the consultant, it’s a service to the client.

The Inverse Gilded Rule: If something’s faked, it must need fixing.

Seeing What’s There

In short, the consultant studies history because, as the economist Kenneth Boulding says, Things are the way they are because they got that way.

Study for understanding, not for criticism.

The people who know the history are your best source of information. Rather than shut them up with criticism, try opening them up: Look for what you like in the present situation, and comment on it.

It’s the same with any consulting problem. The incompetent consultant doesn’t define problems, but simply labels them with the first word that comes to mind.

Seeing What’s Not There

Clients always know how to solve their problems, and always tell the solution in the first five minutes

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.

It’s one of the ironies of our business that consultants rarely get asked for help by the people who need help the most. That sometimes makes it tempting to jump in without being asked when you happen to be in the neighborhood. Don’t! When the request is missing, chances are you can’t help.

Find out what you usually miss and design a tool to ensure that you don’t miss it again.

If you can’t think of three things that might go wrong with your plans, then there’s something wrong with your thinking. The Rule of Three can be used to check any thinking process. It invariably turns up something that everybody missed, and if you’re a bettor, it will save you lots of money on “sure things.”

This method is so effective at seeing what’s missing that I’ve given it a name. In honor of Nancy Brown’s generous gift, I call it Brown’s Brilliant Bequest: Words are often useful, but it always pays to listen to the music (especially your own internal music).

Which brings us full circle, back to knowing yourself, which is where all good consulting work originates. Being able to see what’s missing in ourselves is the only possible way to keep us from looking more ridiculous than we really are.

Characteristics of A Powerful Consultant

1. Your task is to influence people, but only at their request.
2. You strive to make people less dependent on you, rather than more dependent.
3. You try to obey The Law of the Jiggle: The less you actually intervene, the better you feel about your work.
4. If your clients want help in solving problems, you are able to say no.
5. If you say yes but fail, you can live with that. If you succeed, the least satisfying approach is when you solve the problem for them.
6. More satisfying is to help them solve their problems in such a way that they will be more likely to solve the next problem without help.
7. Most satisfying is to help them learn how to prevent problems in the first place.
8. You can be satisfied with your accomplishments, even if clients don’t give you credit.
9. Your ideal form of influence is first to help people see their world more clearly, and then to let them decide what to do next.
10. Your methods of working are always open for display and discussion with your clients.
11. Your primary tool is merely being the person you are, so your most powerful method of helping other people is to help yourself.

Gaining Control of Change

A small system that tries to change a big system through long and continued contact is more likely to be changed itself.

The Weinberg Test is called “putting your money where your mouth is.” When we consultants propose changes, the first thing we should do is decide what level of Weinberg Test we’re designing for, then put our own feelings on the line. If human lives are at stake, then our own feeling of safety is the minimum goal. If money is at stake, then we have to personalize that money on a scale we’d feel if it were our own money.

You know no breakthrough ever works, but your clients seem to be suckers for every new fad. Rather than fight change, a more sensible approach is to learn to live with it. Or to make a living from it.

Trust everyone, but cut the cards. Or, in the present instance, Let them try whatever they like, but teach them how to protect themselves.

Trade Improvement for Perfection

Invent a Backup

If you must have something new, take one, not two.

Choosing Your Time and Place Another approach to protection against Pandora’s Pox is to choose the time and place to put the change into effect.

When you create an illusion, to prevent or soften change, the change becomes more likely—and harder to take. Rhonda’s Third Revelation applies to all possible approaches a consultant might use to help a client deal with change. Whatever approach you use, do it in an open, clear manner. That’s the greatest service you can offer a client, because when difficult changes begin, truth is always a scarce commodity. You should also encourage your client to face the truth at the earliest possible moment. If you really care about “protecting” people, don’t ever “protect” them from the truth. The truth may hurt, but illusions hurt worse.

What to Do When They Resist

Every consultant complains about resistance, but consider the alternative: It’s frightening to encounter a client who doesn’t resist your ideas, because that places the full responsibility on you to be correct at all times. Since nobody’s perfect, we need resistance to test our ideas.

“Well, if you’re gonna control buffalo, you got to know two things, and only two things: First is, “You can make buffalo go anywhere, just so long as they want to go there. “And second, “You can keep buffalo out of anywhere, just so long as they don’t want to go there.”

Clients tend to overestimate negative factors that go unspoken.

Marketing Your Services

The 10 Laws of Marketing

1. A consultant can exist in one of two states: State 1 (idle), or State 2 (busy).
2. The best way to get clients is to have clients. Everyone likes to go with a winner. There’s no better marketing tool than a sincere refusal to consider additional work. Because consultants spend a lot of time in State 1, prospective clients see most consultants as overly eager to get work. If they happen to encounter you when you’re in State 2, they decide you must be something special. They want you for their consultants, and even if they can’t have you right now, they’ll call you first when they have another assignment
3. Spend at least one day a week getting exposure (you’ll think of lots of free opportunities). 3 kinds:
   • The kind you pay for (Advertising. “I’ve never known an independent consultant who got a dollar’s worth of business from advertising).  Hand out business cards to professional groups, meetings, people you meet.
   • The kind you get free
   • The kind you get paid for. Cultivate your speaking skills, many groups will pay you to address them. If you polish your writing skills, there are hundreds of magazines hungering for articles. If you develop your training skills, you can conduct seminars in which people will pay to be introduced to your abilities
4. Clients are moe important to you than you can ever be to them.
5. Never let a single client have more than one-fourth of your business. To be able to say yes to yourself as a consultant, be able to say no to any of your clients.
6. The best marketing tool is a satisfied client
7. Give away your best ideas. Do everything possible to encourage your clients to take over the work you’ve been doing. They usually igve me direct credit, but even if they don’t they love you for your generosity. This increases the chance they’ll give me future business, or recommend you to others
8. It tastes better when you add your own egg.  The egg that makes the difference can be almost anything, as long as it’s something consumers contribute for themselves
9. Spend at least one-fourth of your time doing non-billable activities. Reasons why:
   • If your time is solidly booked, you will not be in a position to take advantage of sudden opportunities for new business
   • Be able to respond to genuine client emergencies
   • Keep slack in the schedule incase of physical accidents/sickness
   • You will burn out or run out of ideas
   • Learn not to give your clients too much
10. Market for quality, not quantity

Putting a Price on Your Head

The 10 Laws of Pricing

• Pricing has many functions, only one of which is the exchange of money
• The more they pay you, the more they love you. The less they pay you, the less they respect you.
• The money is usually the smallest part of the price. (Eg costs of meetings, times, cost of change, all add to the cost. The higher the total cost, they more they will pay attention, but it may reach their limit for what they will pay you)
• Pricing is not a zero-sum game. Increase income by selling books, using their services, contra, experiment on their staff for your own research
• If you need the money, don’t take the job. Why not? If you need the money badly, you may set your price too high in order to get solvent on this one job. Or, you may set your price too low, hoping to sell the job on the basis of price. Both of these occurrences destroy the usefulness of price as a tool in your consulting.
• If they don’t like you work, don’t take their money. Fee as feedback. Offer your services on the basis of a fee that will be paid only if your client is completely satisfied with your work. Explain “after we’re finished, if you don’t’ agree that I was worth the fee, they can have their money back”. If they don’t ask for their money back, it boosts your confidence.
• Money is more than price. Charge a non refundable deposit if a client wants to book you for a specific date
• Price is not a thing; it’s a negotiated relationship
• Set the price so you won’t regret it either way
• All prices are ultimately based on feelings, both yours and theirs

How to be Trusted

The 10 Laws of Trust

1. Nobody but you cares about eh reason you let another person down
2. Trust takes years to win, moments to lose
3. People don’t tell you when they stop trusting you
4. The trick of earning trust is to avoid all tricks
5. People are never liars in their own eyes. They may give you incorrect facts. Simplifying, smoothing, omitting are not lies. You can protect people from information overload.
6. Always trust your clients – but cut the cards. Arrive at your conclusions with information from more than one source
7. Never be dishonest, even if the client requests it
8. Never promise anything. Make contingent promises.  Eg a contract says that you’ll try to do something, and that if I do, they’ll pay you for your service. If you don’t succeed, they don’t pay.
9. Always keep your promise. If your rule is “maximum of 20 people in this class”, and the client wants 2 extras, set a premium price for the additional 2.
10. Get it in writing, but depend on trust

Getting People to Follow Your Advice

• Never use cheap seed. Seeds are like ideas.
  • Do whatever you can to get the best ideas before you invest a lot of money cultivating them.
• A prepared soil is the secret of all gardening.
  • In other words, it’s the preparation before you plant an idea that makes most of the difference as to whether it works or not.
• Timing is critical.
  • Too often, consultants broadcast their ideas the moment they happen to get them, rather than the moment that’s right for germination.
• The plants that hold firmest are the ones that develop their own roots.
  • The same is true for ideas, but sometimes we can’t seem to resist grinding them into the ground.
• Excessive watering produces weakness, not strength.
  • Too many resources poured into a young idea produces lots of action, but few results. Ideas, like plants, thrive on a certain amount of struggle.
• In spite of your best efforts, some plants will die.
  • Farmers, because they’re always working with a large, complex system, learn to live with failure and to not take it personally.