The Secrets of Consulting

is an excellent book by Jerry Weinberg (isbn 0-0-932633-01-3). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages. I know I've snippeted this book before, but I read it again and a really good book deserves a repeat snippet.

Consultants deal in change.

Consulting is the art of influencing people at their request.

..there is the problem of balancing certainty now versus uncertainty in the future.

Consultants are less adapted to the present situation, and therefore are potentially more adaptable.

The toughest problems don't come in neatly labelled packages. Or they come in packages with the wrong labels.

The bigness is not the horse.

The true expert can see multiple aspects of a situation, but the novice sees only... whatever is most conspicuous.

We all know that things tend to fall between cracks and that cracks occur at boundaries, where one system joins another.

For a trigger to be effective, the timing must be perfect: Too late means you're already committed to the troublesome action, while too early means you may forget again betwixt the cup and the lip.

There are always opportunities to jiggle.