An inspiring and down-to-earth guide to building a successful and satisfying consulting practice.
A book that encourages corporate consultants to bring their authentic self to their career.
“Be yourself” isn’t the kind of advice one usually expects from a business book, but this one persuasively makes the case that it’s beneficial to both consultants and their clients. Debut author Berg draws on three decades of experience building a successful consulting practice and working as an executive coach, and he aims his book not only at those who are currently consultants, but also anyone looking to get into the field. The first two chapters outline his career journey and industry challenges and introduce the “seven keys,” a set of core principles starting with “Know Who You Are” and “Master the Basics,” and winding up with “Make It Your Own.” Discrete chapters go into each key in depth, explaining why it’s important and how to apply it through the use of real-life examples. The last three chapters address how to get new clients and deal with difficult ones, and recap the book’s main concepts. Berg emphasizes pragmatism over precision; embracing critical thinking while remaining open-minded and curious; and listening to and clearly communicating with clients. Above all, he stresses that one should know and embrace one’s strengths in order to bring one’s authentic self to one’s role. The book offers practical information on value pricing versus hourly pricing, research methods, and creating recurring revenue sources, among other specifics. However, it effectively pays as much attention defining one’s guiding principles and finding the meaning of success. The writing is clear and concise with engaging touches of humor, and the author is candid about his own failures and successes. Numerous inspirational quotations from a wide range of sources enliven the text, with courage and authenticity as recurring themes. Berg also calls out the detrimental practices, questionable ethics, exorbitant fees, and low-quality results in the world of corporate consulting, even among large firms. However, much of his advice would be valuable to anyone whose business involves advising others or providing professional services.
An inspiring and down-to-earth guide to building a successful and satisfying consulting practice.Pub Date: July 27, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-952233-60-9
Page Count: 245
Publisher: Indie Books International
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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