Notes on The Secrets of Consulting by Gerald Weinberg

Our office engineering reading group just finished going through The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully by Gerald M. Weinberg. I really liked the book and got a lot out of it. It's not really about consulting; it's about dealing with other people in general and being street smart.

The book's tone was very similar to Taleb's, Buffett's, and Munger's: brutally honest, realistic, and folksy. Every chapter was filled with amusing stories and anecdotes, illustrating his dirt simple ideas and why people often forget them.

Below are my notes and biggest takeaways. As I read through the book, I saw so many examples of mistakes I had made or traps I had fallen into (like "Nothing new ever works" and the Law of Raspberry Jam), so reading this book was particularly meaningful for me.

1: why consulting is tough
Sherby's laws
1: in spite of what client may tell u, there's always a problem
2: no matter how it looks at first, it's always a people problem
3: never forget they're paying you by the hour not by the solution
4: if they didn't hire u, don't solve their problem 
10% promise: never promise more than 10% improvement. If u happen to achieve more, make sure it isn't noticed. 
Marvin's law: whatever the client is doing, advise something else
Credit rule: you'll never accomplish anything if u care who gets the credit
Lone Ranger fantasy: when clients don't show appreciation, pretend they're stunned by your performance, but never forget it's your fantasy not theirs
Law of raspberry jam: wider you spread it, thinner it gets. Influence or affluence: take your choice. 
Weinbergs' law of twins: most of the time, for most of the world, no matter how hard people work at it, nothing of any significance happens. For most systems, prediction of tomorrow is same as today. 
Rudy's rutabaga rule: once you eliminate your number one problem, number two gets a promotion
Hard laws of consulting
Hard law: if u can't accept failure, you'll never succeed as a consultant
Harder law: once u eliminate ur number one problem, YOU promote number two. Give up illusion that will ever finish solving problems. Learn to ignore problems. 
Hardest law: helping myself is even harder than helping others

2: cultivating a paradoxical frame of mind 
Consultants needed when logic not working
Don't be rational; be reasonable
People who think they know everything are easiest to fool
The business of life is too important to be taken seriously 
Optimitis and tradeoff treatment
Inability to resist solving problems
Correct answer: what are you willing to sacrifice
Tradeoff charts
One performance measure vs another
You don't get nothin for nothin
Treatment: let me check my tradeoff chart
Moving in one direction incurs a cost in the other
Time trade offs
Now vs later: balancing certainty with uncertainty 
Fisher's fundamental theorem: the better adapted u r, the less adaptable u tend to be
Risk vs certainty: different risk appetites
Third time charm: consultants tend to be most effective on the third problem u give them
Orange juice test: We can do it--and this is how much it will cost

3 being effective when u don't know what ur doing
Bolden rule: if you can't fix it, feature it
Marvins medical secrets
90% of all illness cures itself with no intervention. Deal gently with systems that should be able to cure themselves. 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 2 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 u say. The most important act in consulting is setting the 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. 
Featuring failure
Bolden rule
Faking success
Gilded rule: if u can't feature it, fake it
Inverse gilded rule: if something is faked, it must need fixing

4 seeing what's there
Law of the hammer: The child who receives a hammer for Christmas will discover that everything needs pounding
The study of history
White bread warning: if u use the same recipe, you get the same bread
Study other people or group's evolution before suggesting how u can do it better
Don't ask others how to do something; ask them how they did it
History teaches history teaches
If you don't study history of org then will repeat mistakes
Boulding's backward basis: things are the way they are because they got that way
Sparks law of problem solution
Chances of solving a problem decline the closer u get to finding out who was the cause of the problem
Keep it simple and not too detailed; you're a consultant not a district attorney
Study for understanding not criticism
Look for what u like in the present situation and comment on it
Why whammy
We may run out of energy or air but not reasons
Seeing beyond the conspicuous
The bigness is not the horse
Most of us buy the label not the merchandise
The name of the thing is not the thing
Label is not full description for understanding 
Maintenance vs design
Create more specific labels and break things up
misdirection method: using emotionally charged label
3 finger rule: when you point finger at someone, notice where other three fingers pointed
5 minute rule
Clients always know how to solve their problems and always tell the solution in the first five minutes

5 seeing what's not there
Browns brilliant bequest
Words useful but always listen to the music (especially your own internal)
Missing tools
Absence of a tool is evidence of quality problem
Look at non-problems to see what's working 
Reasoning from what isn't there
Level law: effective problem-solvers may have many problems but rarely have a single dominant problem
Look for missing histories and missing requests for help
How to see what isn't there
Find out what u usually miss in design a tool to ensure that you don't miss it again
Use other people like janitors
Investigate other cultures
Use laundry lists
Ridiculous
Weinberg law of fetch: sometimes far fetched is only shortsighted 
Rule of three: if you can think of three things that might go wrong with your plans then there's something wrong with your thinking
Loosening up your thinking 
Look for analogies
Move to extremes 
look outside the boundary
Look for alibis versus explanations 
The emotional component
Incongruence insight: When words and music don't go together the point to a missing element

6 avoiding traps 
Titanic effect: thought that disaster is impossible often leads to an unthinkable disaster 
Staying out of trouble
Laws rules and edicts
Triggers
Main Maxim: what you don't know may not hurt you but what you but you don't remember always does
The potato chip principle: if you know your audience it's easy to set triggers
Building your own system of bills that you can't ignore
attach notes to remind u
Tally cards: Record times of doing something you don't like
Use physical devices 
use hand signals
Mutual trigger pacts
Using your unconscious mind
Listen to the songs in your head
Catchy commercials 

7 amplifying your impact
Teaching the blind: everyone sees a part of the whole and identifies the whole with that part
Getting stuck
Organizational jigglers to unstick systems
Giving speeches
Asking questions
Less is more
Teaching others to accept that other views are possible
Ppl need shared experiences to be on same communication page

8 gaining control of change
Romer's rule: best way to Lose something is to struggle to keep it
Prescott's pickle principle: cucumbers get more pickled than brine gets cucumbered
The system usually wins out against lone battler
A small system that tries to change a big system through long and continued contact is more likely to be changed itself
Roamer's rule: struggling to stay at home can make you a wanderer
Homer's rule: struggling to travel can make you stay at home
Fast food fallacy: no difference plus no difference repeated eventually equals a clear difference
Ford's fundamental feedback formula: people can do anything they want as long as they personally have to live with the consequences
Weinberg test: would you place your own life in the hands of this system?

9: how to make changes safely
Rhonda's first revelation: it may look like a crisis, but it's only the end of an illusion
Nothing new ever works
Yet people always want something new
Pandora's Pox: Nothing new ever works but there's always hope that this time will be different
Living with failure
Hope caused by marketers
Dealer's choice: Trust everyone but cut the cards
Let them try whatever they like, but teach them how to protect themselves
Accept failure
New system won't stop failures
Failure is inevitable
Trade improvement for perfection
Apply rule of 3 to consider how new system can fail
Invent a backup
Preventive medicine
Edsel edict: if u must have something new, take one, not two
Choosing your time and place to put change into effect
Volkswagen verity: if u can't refuse it (newness), defuse it
Make practice runs in similar situation
Break newness into parts to be adopted singly
Let others share in the breaking in
Rent before buy
Buy new models near end of model year
Add in one at a time, allow a generous breaking in period of lower productivity, give meaningful but not critical work, provide backups for inevitable failures 
Time bomb: response to these ideas as wasting time: time wounds all heels
Surest way to waste time is to throw caution to the winds
Rhonda's revelations
It may look like a crisis but it's only the end of an illusion
When change is inevitable we struggle most to keep what we value most
Use others' struggle to understand what they value most
When u create an illusion to prevent or soften change, the change becomes more likely and harder to take
Never protect PPl from the truth

10: what to do when they resist
U can make buffalo go anywhere as long as they want to go there
Naming the resistance in a neutral way
Keep mouth shut. Limit statement to 1-2 short sentences then stop talking. 
You can keep Buffalo out of anywhere just so long as they don't want to go there
U can make someone move when u hit on something they want
Introduce element of fantasy in asking what someone would change 
Find ways to relieve client fears and uncertainty
Insurance 
Options

11 marketing ur services
9th law of marketing: spend at least 1/4 of ur time doing nothing 
I need more business vs I need more time
Best way to get clients is to have clients
Spend at least one day a week getting exposure
Clients are more important to you than you can ever be to them
Never let a single client have more than one fourth of your business
Lynne's law of life: to be able to say yes to yourself be able to say no to any of your clients
The best marketing tools is a satisfied client
Give away your best ideas
It tastes better when u add your own egg
Involve the client in the solution
Keep slack in schedule

12 putting a price on your head
If they don't like your work, don't take their money
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
Pricing is not a zero sum game
If u need the money, don't take the job
Money is more than price
Price is not a thing; it's a negotiated relationship
Principle of least regret: set the price so u won't regret it either way
All prices are ultimately based on feelings, both yours and theirs

13 how to be trusted
Nobody but u cares about the reason u let another person down
Trust takes years to win, moments to lose
People don't tell u when they stop trusting u
The trick of earning trust is to avoid all tricks
People are never liars in their own eyes
Always trust your client and cut the cards
Never be dishonest even if the client request never be dishonest even if the client requests it
Never promise anything
Always keep your promise
Get it in writing but depend on trust

14 getting people to follow your advice
In spite of your best efforts some plants will die
Never use cheap seeds or ideas
A prepared soil is the secret about gardening
Timing is critical
The plants that hold firmest are the ones that develop their own roots
Excessive watering produces weakness not strength

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