Business Acronyms list – that every consultant should know!
Life as a consultant
Consulting Careers Should I become a consultant?
Types of consultant (Future content)
Internal vs External consultants (Future content)
Using consultants well (Future content)
Consultants vs I-Bankers vs Managers vs Entrepreneurs (Future content)
Management Consulting publications
Management consulting companies regularly share their latest thinking in their publications:
McKinsey Quarterly (subscription only)
Useful books for Consultants
“Flawless Consulting” by Peter Block
Peter Block is particularly strong on the “soft” aspects of consulting. So don’t expect tools and analysis. Instead, read this book if you want to know how to build trust with your client, how to overcome resistance, how to engage your client rather than just come up with a smart answer. The subtitle of this book is “A guide to getting your expertise used”. With this book, you stand a chance of doing some good too.
“The Fifth Discipline” by Peter Senge
Way ahead of its time, Peter Senge succeeds in a tour-de-force romp that starts with a deep insight into systems thinking, goies into great detail about how to build a learning organisation and ends with a virtual maifesto for work in the 21st Century. A favorite.
“Leading Change” by John Kotter
If you only have time to read one book on change, this is it. Kotter steps systematically though the phases of change, with many examples of what works and what doesn’t.
“Influence” by Robert Cialdini
Fascinating book based on psychological reasearch about how people influence each other. Even when you know how, the ways described in this book still work!
“In Search of Excellence” by Tom Peters and Waterman
The original book that focused on the “soft” side of management. Much of it turns out to have been invented by Tom Peters and then examples found to fit, and many of the companies fell from grace soon after. Despite this, it holds gems of wisdom.
“McKinsey’s Marvin Bower” by Elizabeth Haas Edersheim
The best read if you like biographies and you want a historical perspective on how the management consulting industry developed. Particularly good on how Marvin Bower championed the ethics of consulting, setting it up as a profession, not a business.
Business Problem Solving Websites
UK Government consulting tools – this used to be a website to provide a consulting toolkit to UK Government Depertments, now recorded as a pdf.
Powerful Problem Solving – Problem Solving Site by Arnaud, Vice-Provost at Rice University. Goes in depth into the tools of problem solving.
OutThinker tools -More thinking tools from Kaihan Krippendorff
Mind Tools – A collection of 200+ thinking tools, with a easy to understand step-by-step approach to applying them
Consulting Toolkit 