Consultancy

Getting Started in Consulting
$19.95
Great step by step book on consulting. Everyone considering a consulting career should read. The book addresses how to set up a consulting practice, writing proposals, fees,etc. Highly recommended.

Management Consulting in Practice: A Casebook of International Best Practice
$39.95
The relationship between top management consultancy teams and their clients is reviewed through a series of case studies from large organizations working in both the public and private sectors to analyze the best consulting practices in management in Fiona Czerniawska & Paul May's MEASURING CONSULTING IN PRACTICE. Each case study is used as a foundation for analysis by a leading consulting industry commentator and a business technology author and consultant, making this a hard-hitting pick recommended for any serious business library collection.

Starting & Running a Successful Consultancy: How to Build and Market Your Own Consulting Business
$30.00

Shows you ALL of your weak points.
Good for for self analysis.

The Seven Cs of Consulting: Your Complete Blueprint for any Consultancy Assignment
$29.00
I have been freelancing in a semi-niche IT field for a few years now and am currently gearing up for launching a "proper" consulting practice to gain more commercial clients and higher profit jobs. This is the first book on consulting I purchased and I grabbed it up sort of quickly at the store based on the few pages I skimmed.

After just a few paragraphs the author gained my respect as someone who knows what they are talking about and who has clearly thought through these ideas before putting them to paper. The editor, on the other hand, should be fired. I found a typo on every page in the first chapter until I eventually had to force myself to ignore them and move on. My cover is different than the one shown here, so maybe other pressings are better.

I certainly would not consider this an A-Z guide for the business of consulting. However, it might the best book on client relationship management that I've ever seen. The author gets deep into the theories and philosophy of the customer. This is truly valuable stuff, especially in my field where working with computers all the time can start to turn everyone around you into an "application". Cope emphasizes heavily on mentality, who's thinking what, getting people thinking on the same page and more useful pieces of the psychology of dealing with people. Another thing I liked is how genre-neutral it is throughout. It is not written with the assumption that the reader is working in any specific field. The info is completely universally helpful to all.

Having said that, I took it upon myself to shelve this book for a later day after getting about 50 pages into it. Not because it's not good. It's just not what I need at the moment. I was looking for a thorough guide to the business of consulting and I found that in Alan Weiss' "Getting Started in Consulting". I will definitely return to "The Seven Cs" in the near future as it provides an edge that I haven't seen in any other book. If you are an established consultant and are looking to improve the way you work, interact and progress through your jobs then this is a great read. If you are brand new this is probably not the best primer.