Process Consulting

Follow the expert advice in this book — the fifth in The Ultimate Consultant Series — and you will learn what it takes to work effectively with clients to launch and conduct projects and bring them to a successful conclusion. Alan Weiss, internationally recognized consultant and author of the best-selling Million Dollar Consulting, shows you how to form partnerships with clients who will enthusiastically assist and support the implementation of all your consulting projects.

• Chapter 1: Conditions for a Successful Intervention
  Stacking the Deck in Consulting Is Not Cheating
• Educating the Buyer
• Meeting Key Players
• Avoiding Environmental and Political Land Mines
• Wading Right In: Ten Steps to Launch
• Final Thought
• Chapter 2: Gathering Intelligence: Strategy
  Ensuring That Data Does Not Equal Intelligence
• Challenging Basic Premises
• Ensuring Alternative Sources of Information
• Avoiding Intimidation — Yours and Theirs
• Walking the Confidentiality Tightrope
• Final Thought
• Chapter 3: Gathering Intelligence: Tactics
  Ensuring That Information Does Not Equal Intelligence
• How to Focus a Focus Group
• The Balance Sheet on Focus Groups
• How to Conduct an Interview
• How to Create and Implement Surveys
• Staffing a "Hot Line"
• How to Observe (and See What Others Don't)
• Final Thought
• Chapter 4: Coaching Key People
  Coaches Offer Candid Advice, Not Cockeyed Certifications
• Observational Coaching
• Establishing the Rules of Engagement
• Providing Effective Feedback
• When More Than One Coach Is Required
• The Illness Called "Depression"
• Final Thought
• Chapter 5: Culture Change and Change Management
  You Are Not the Change Agent, No Matter What They're Paying You
• The Elements of "Culture"
• Creating Exemplars and Avatars
• Reinforcing Change
• The Real Change Agents at Work
• Overcoming Resistance
• Final Thought
• Chapter 6: An Interlude: Managing Misfortune
  If You Can't Stand the Chaos, Get Out of the Maelstrom
• Scope Creep Denied
• wo Lines of Defense
• Unforeseen Dramatic Events
• Sabotage
• Ugh! Failure!!
• Final Thought
• Chapter 7: Learning Lessons
  Creating Dynamic Instruction
• Learning Objectives as Outcomes
• The Adult Learning Sequence
• Embracing the Boss
• True Metrics (and There Ain't Four Levels)
• Final Thought
• Chapter 8: Developing Client Strategy
  If One Has No Port in Mind, No Wind Is a Good Wind
• The Fallacy of Planning
• The Notion of Motive Force
• The Huge Advantage of Optional Futures
• Strategic Profiling
• The Transition to Implementation
• Final Thought
• Chapter 9: Creating Change
  Is Change Management an Oxymoron?
• Creating and Applying Implementation Models
• Establishing Accountabilities
• Change as Reaction
• Sticking to the Buyer Like Glue
• Overcoming the Tough Resistance Factors
• Exploiting  Opportunity, or How to Create Reverse Scope Creep
• Some Thoughts on Team Building
• Final Thought
• Chapter 10: Improving Leadership
  The Power Is in the Engine Room, but the Wheel Is on the Bridge
• Emphasing Range, Not Style
• Crisis Management: The Extraordinary
• Tough Love vs. "Not on My Watch"
• Post-Heroic Leadership as a Consulting Objective
• Final Thought
• Appendix A: Sample Process Visuals
• Appendix B: Annotated Bibliography
  

A very, very good book.

The only things that stops this book from being rated Outstanding, are that the author is obvious limited by his own expertise (nothing wrong there, but it would have been more interesting to learn from other fields of consulting) and that the book should have been twice as long!

A more correct name would have been: "The Process of Consulting", as he describes (and prescribes) on how to handle consulting projects. In short, a book to read for all aspiring consultants out there.