Looking Inward

Here’s a short, but powerful, list of resources on the consulting process. The collection is priceless for true consultants-at-heart!

Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used, by Peter Block
Peter Block’s Flawless Consulting gracefully updates Block’s proven advice to match the transformations that business and society have undergone. “The days of long studies and expert-driven answers are passing,” the author proclaims in his new preface. “The task of the consultant is increasingly to build the capacity of clients to make their own assessments and answer their own questions.” He then subtly modifies his established recommendations accordingly for every step, from the initial client meeting and problem diagnosis through data collection and the execution of solutions.

The Value-Creating Consultant: How to Build and Sustain Lasting Client Relationships, by Ron A. Carucci and Toby Tetenbaum
This is a practical guide to the traps, pitfalls, and errors that frequently occur when working with consultants. This book sets the standard for all consultants and anyone who wants to improve the results they achieve through consulting relationships. Authors Carucci and Tetenbaum ably describe the skills that make for truly effective consulting. At a time when consultants are coming under attack from all corners, they would do well to heed the many savvy prescriptions for healthy client-consultant relationships that are set forth in this well-written volume.

The Seven Cs of Consulting: Your Complete Blueprint for any Consultancy Assignment, by Mick Cope
Every consultant needs a clear and concise change model that can drive the success of a wide range of change projects. Seven C’s of Consulting offers just such a model, Mick Cope’s proven 7Cs–client, clarify, create,change, confirm, continue and close. This book offers both new and experienced consultants a solid framework for managing any consulting assignment. Mick Cope shows how to use the 7Cs model to improve your professionalism, and deliver clearer and more measurable results to your clients and bring them back for more.

Leading Change, by John Kotter
Harvard Business School professor Kotter breaks from the mold of M.B.A. jargon-filled texts to produce a truly accessible, clear and visionary guide to the business world’s buzzword – change. In this excellent business manual, Kotter emphasizes a comprehensive eight-step framework that can be followed by executives at all levels. Kotter advises that twenty-first century business change must overcome over-managed and under-led cultures. “Because management deals mostly with the status quo and leadership deals mostly with change, in the next century we are going to have to try to become much more skilled at creating leaders.” Leading Change is a useful tool for everyone from business students preparing to enter the work force to middle and senior executives faced with the widespread transformation in the corporate world.

The Trusted Advisor, by David Maister
David Maister, Charles Green, and Robert Galford–consultants on professional-service management and customer-relation issues–believe nobody can become successful as a business guru until they first gain the confidence of their clients. In The Trusted Advisor, the authors effectively build their case through anecdote and illustration, then relay a solid series of relevant suggestions applicable to both would-be consultants and those already active in the field. Among their most potent suggestions is a practical, five-step development process that encourages outsiders to engage clients by focusing attention on the issues and individuals at hand; listening both to what they say and what they leave unsaid; framing the immediate problem from their perspective; envisioning with them how a solution might appear; and committing jointly to the actions and resources that will bring it about.

Beyond the Wall of Resistance: Unconventional Strategies that Build Support for Change, Rick Maurer
Many books have been written about change and how to do it. This one is different. It explores how to deal with the natural and inevitable resistance to change. Many organizations have already undertaken massive change efforts, wrenching processes which have left people reeling — and resistant. Rick’s book focuses on how to use the power of resistance to build support for change in organizations. It explores the nature of resistance, how to recognize it, and what to do about it. It is full of practical, immediately useful techniques and tips for ensuring successful and enduring change. Must read!

The Consultant’s Scorecard: Tracking Results and Bottom-Line Impact of Consulting Projects, by Jack Phillips
Today’s consulting business faces an accountability crisis. Consultants are increasingly being required to prove the measurable value – and return on client’s investment – of their work. The Consultant’s Scorecard outlines a valuable new program that allows both consultants and their clients to measure the success of consulting and performance improvement projects in terms of business impact, ROI, and other widely accepted performance standards. Based on innovative methods that have worked for leading companies including AT&T, Compaw, and Bristol Myers-Squibb – complete with case studies and examples – The consultant’s Scorecard contains checklists, tables, and charts to help the reader isolate each critical area of the consulting project. It is the first book to provide a step-by-step method for confidently evaluating the overall success of consulting and performance improvement projects.

High Impact Consulting: How Clients and Consultants Can Work Together to Achieve Extraordinary Results, by Robert Schaffer
In this new and revised edition of the landmark book High-Impact Consulting; Robert H. Schaffer reveals how senior managers unwittingly collude with their consultants to perpetuate the great waste inherent in “the five fatal flaws of conventional consulting.” Drawing on his own work with companies- Motorola, Rio Tinto, IBM, General Reinsurance Corporation, The World Bank, and other successful organizations- Schaffer offers a field-tested approach to working with consultants that has proven to get results. He identifies the key elements of an effective project design¾particularly that project objectives are defined in terms of client results rather than just consultant deliverables. The process enables clients to be certain that the work is carried out in ways that ensure success.

Clients for Life: How Great Professionals Develop Breakthrough Relationships, by Jagdish Sheth and Andrew Sobel
More than 15 million people in this country earn their livings by serving clients, and their numbers are growing every day. Unfortunately, far too few develop the skills and strategies needed to rise to the top in a world where clients have almost unlimited access to information and expertise. Supported by more than one hundred case studies and wisdom gleaned from interviews with dozens of leading CEOs and prominent business advisors, Clients for Life identifies what clients really want and lays out the core qualities that distinguish the client advisor — an irreplaceable resource — from the expert for hire — a tradable commodity.

The Consultant’s Tool Kit, by Mel Silberman
Consultants need help too! Consulting is a demanding profession and today’s busier-than-ever consultant needs intelligent tools and resources to speed up and improve the process of working with clients. Help is now here in The Consultant’s Toolkit, an indispensable collection of 50 sophisticated team and organizational assessment questionnaires, team problem-solving activities, and how-to guides for diagnosing and solving client problems. Whatever the challenges facing you as a consultant–from showing your clients how to manage and lead change, to improving relationships between departments, to goal setting and planning–this book provides dozens of client-tested problem-solving tools and solutions that can be used immediately, saving you hours of time and making your interaction with clients more effective. Created by 50 top professionals in the consulting industry, all the tools in this sourcebook are fully reproducible and can be easily customized to fit your client’s needs.

Note: The brief description on each book is referred from Amazon website. All description credits go to them.