The setup

Half a year ago I read the book Secrets of Consulting by Gerald Weinberg. Now I have just finished the follow up, More Secrets of Consulting. And, as always, I wanted to have a quick review and think.

This book was on my list of books I wanted to read to improve my consultancy skills. Which seems I will not be using directly for a while.

The review

I want to be brief here, because you can read the other review and a) most of what I say in terms of style and content is similar; b) understand that this is another book you want to read. Really recommended.

The tools

The interesting thing about this book is the use of actual objects to represent approaches or recommendations rather than the laws seen in the first book.

The laws are evocative (law of strawberry jam, for example), but I think they are too specific to the author, to his history. There is a connection for him between the name of the law and the meaning of the law. If you want to use them, you need to rename them so that makes sense to you, an anecdote from your own history, so it can actually become a mnemonic that is easy for you to remember.

The tools described in this book, though, are quite aligned with what they represent. You have the Detective Hat, and is exactly what you think it is. And then you have the mirror … and the link is straightforward to make between the object and the use. Having this very concrete representation of ideas makes them simple to recollect and know what to do. Of course, the biggest problem is that, unlike the laws, probably they are more limited on what they could represent.

The other interesting thing that gets talked in the book, at the end, is the idea of having an actual toolbox (can be a small pouch, or bag), with representations of these tools/objects (like small toys, or similar). Then it becomes effortless to recall the actions that you can do to fulfill your job.

I need to read more from him.