Two weeks ago Lew and I discussed some of our favorite books that relate to Consulting and Professional Services.  We couldn't get through the list in one episode so we held over the second half to this week. Here is the balance of that list, or (Click here to read the first half)

(Lew) The Trusted Advisor by David H. Maister, Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford.  This is a very well thought out and researched book that contends that there is a five-step development that a consultant takes to become a client’s trusted advisor.  This includes Engaging the client to focus on their issues, Listening to them including their non-verbal communication, Framing their statements to make sure you understand, Envisioning to work with them to form a solution and Connecting and Committing together to what it will take to make it happen.

Like Lincioni’s Getting Naked, this is really a book about selling consulting and professional services without talking about selling.  The bottom line is if you work with a potential client, develop a relationship and slowly build your way up to being their trusted advisor, you won’t have to do traditional sales.  The client will come to you rather than you going to the client.

 

(Jeff) You can Negotiate Anything (Herb Cohen). This book dates back to 1982 but the fundamental rules of negotiation and the manner in which you approach a negotiation are universal; Everything is negotiable, just because it’s written down, previously agreed or otherwise apparently set in stone, it’s often possible to negotiate a change. It’s not about what you want, it’s about what they want. Keeping in mind what the other party wants or needs in the negotiation is more important than focusing on your own needs. You need to care, but don’t care too much.

Herb Cohen says that life is a game. If you are too emotionally invested in an outcome, you will likely overpay for it. Consultants constantly find themselves in all forms of negotiation, so understanding some of these fundamentals, and psychology of negotiation is important. The book shares anecdotes and stories that Herb uses to demonstrate his points. It’s an easy read and a good one to pick up every now and then to remind yourself of the fundamentals.

(Lew) The Hard Truth About Soft Skills: Workplace lessons Smart People Wish They’d Learned Sooner by Peggy Klaus This book discusses things like self-control, when to talk and when not to, dealing with criticism, office politics and oversensitivity.  Klaus uses real world examples from her experience and others to explain the dos and don’ts of dealing with people and being accountable.

My favorite chapter was on office politics, where she offered advice about avoiding gossip, affairs in the office and learning the unwritten rules of the office. This is a good book for consulting because you need to have these kinds of soft skills to deal with the many clients you’ll deal with.  Each client environment is just a little bit different from the other.  Every company has its own unique personality and a consultant needs to be able to navigate through it to be successful.

 

(Jeff) How to Measure Anything (Douglas W. Hubbard) I came across this book a year or so back when I needed to quantify some business criteria that was apparently un-quantifiable. The book is actually sub-titled - Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business.

I’ve always held that you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Now I’m not a statistical analyst but as a Knowledge Management practitioner I’m often faced with having to provide numbers to people who are. My approach has always been to start measuring something, this gives the analyst something to work with and you can work from there. This book did a couple of things for me; it justified some of the methods I’d been applying for a number of years, which was encouraging, and it also provided some creative methods for approaching process managem