Flawless Consulting, Enhanced Edition


Book Description

This Third Edition to Peter Block's Flawless Consulting addresses business changes and new challenges since the second edition was written ten years ago. It tackles the challenges next-generation consultants face, including more guidance on how to ask better questions, dealing with difficult clients, working in an increasingly virtual world, how to cope with complexities in international consulting, case studies, and guidelines on implementation. Also included are illustrative examples and exercises to help you cement the guides offered.




The Flawless Consulting Fieldbook and Companion


Book Description

Don't venture into the consulting field without this essential Fieldbook & Companion! Following on the heels of the best-selling Flawless Consulting, Second Edition comes The Flawless Consulting Fieldbook and Companion. Whether you work as a consultant or you work with consultants, this relentlessly practical guide will be your best friend as you discover how consulting influences your business- and real life-decisions and those of others. The Flawless Consulting Fieldbook and Companion is packed with: Sample scenarios Case studies Client-consultant dialogues Hands-on tools Action plans Implementation checklists "Wow! A companion a business owner can't be without! The insights of 30 consultants the caliber of Peter Block is priceless." --Sue Mosby, principal, CDFM2 Architecture Inc. "This book is a companion piece for both the desktop and bedside of those who do consulting full time or in their role as leader. I plan to keep this book close to me to both guide and inspire my work." --Phil Harkins, president, Linkage, Inc.




Flawless Consulting


Book Description

This Third Edition to Peter Block's Flawless Consulting addresses business changes and new challenges since the second edition was written ten years ago. It tackles the challenges next-generation consultants face, including more guidance on how to ask better questions, dealing with difficult clients, working in an increasingly virtual world, how to cope with complexities in international consulting, case studies, and guidelines on implementation. Also included are illustrative examples and exercises to help you cement the guides offered.







The Answer to How Is Yes


Book Description

Modern culture’s worship of “how-to” pragmatism has turned us into instruments of efficiency and commerce—but we’re doing more and more about things that mean less and less. We constantly ask “how? and still struggle to find purpose and act on what matters. Instead of acting on what we know to be of importance, we wait for bosses to change, we seek the latest fad, we invest in one more degree. Asking how keeps us safe—instead of being led by our hearts into uncharted territory, we keep our heads down and stick to the rules. But we are gaining the world and losing our souls. Peter Block puts the “how-to” craze in perspective and presents a guide to the difficult and life-granting journey of bringing what we know is of personal value into an indifferent or even hostile corporate and cultural landscape. He raises our awareness of the trade-offs we’ve made in the name of practicality and expediency, and offers hope for a way of life in which we’re motivated not by what “works,” but by the things that truly matter in life—idealism, intimacy, depth and engagement.




The Abundant Community


Book Description

" We need our neighbors and community to stay healthy, produce jobs, raise our children, and care for those on the margin. Institutions and professional services have reached their limit of their ability to help us. The consumer society tells us that we are insufficient and that we must purchase what we need from specialists and systems outside the community. We have become consumers and clients, not citizens and neighbors. John McKnight and Peter Block show that we have the capacity to find real and sustainable satisfaction right in our neighborhood and community. This book reports on voluntary, self-organizing structures that focus on gifts and value hospitality, the welcoming of strangers. It shows how to reweave our social fabric, especially in our neighborhoods. In this way we collectively have enough to create a future that works for all. "




Lords of Strategy


Book Description

Imagine, if you can, the world of business - without corporate strategy. Remarkably, fifty years ago that's the way it was. Businesses made plans, certainly, but without understanding the underlying dynamics of competition, costs, and customers. It was like trying to design a large-scale engineering project without knowing the laws of physics. But in the 1960s, four mavericks and their posses instigated a profound shift in thinking that turbocharged business as never before, with implications far beyond what even they imagined. In The Lords of Strategy, renowned business journalist and editor Walter Kiechel tells, for the first time, the story of the four men who invented corporate strategy as we know it and set in motion the modern, multibillion-dollar consulting industry: Bruce Henderson, founder of Boston Consulting Group Bill Bain, creator of Bain & Company Fred Gluck, longtime Managing Director of McKinsey & Company Michael Porter, Harvard Business School professor Providing a window into how to think about strategy today, Kiechel tells their story with novelistic flair. At times inspiring, at times nearly terrifying, this book is a revealing account of how these iconoclasts and the organizations they led revolutionized the way we think about business, changed the very soul of the corporation, and transformed the way we work.




Flawless Consulting


Book Description

PRAISE FOR flawless consulting, fourth edition “In this new edition, Peter Block further refines his unique offering of frameworks and practical guidance for facilitating transformation (and creating health) in human systems. Peter is a sage advisor, artfully demonstrating how to cultivate change based on invitations, authenticity, engagement, and respect. What is notable is continued movement beyond diagnosis and intervention, toward an intentionally generative approach in which the new emerges through collaborative co-creation—the same remarkable shift that my colleagues and I are striving to advance and understand in healthcare.” —PAUL N. UHLIG, MD, MPA, FACS, Cardiothoracic Surgeon, Kansas Medical Center, Andover, Kansas “Peter Block’s Fourth Edition of Flawless Consulting is the same invaluable treasure-trove of consulting insights, values, steps, checklists, and thoughtful questions that were in earlier versions. But the latest edition has incorporated the new realities of working virtually, conducting key steps with clients online, and updated thoughts on the power of strength-based approaches to addressing deep problems. This revised classic continues to be a ‘must-read’ for those new to consulting, and a ‘must-reread’ for those of us who thought we were doing well, but now realize there are numerous ways to improve. If you are a consultant of any type, at any level of experience, you will find old and new wisdom here to lift up your practice, engage effectively, and serve clients with more impact.” —SETH R. SILVER, Ed.D., President, Silver Consulting, Inc; Co-author of Meaningful Partnership at Work “I first encountered Flawless Consulting years ago as a mid-level HR generalist. The HR function at my employer was struggling with partnering and execution challenges across departments. Flawless Consulting introduced terminology and tools to navigate misaligned HR service delivery expectations and strained relationships. Fast forward to the digital age and this program is as relevant as ever. Bots and data analytics aren’t solving human interface opportunities—Flawless Consulting does.” —WALLY KUHNS, President, WK Leader Solutions, Encinitas, CA




Stewardship


Book Description

Block presents models of stewardship, both for entire companies and for individuals, to produce reforms in such areas as human resource practices, performance appraisal, and the role of staff groups.




Humble Consulting


Book Description

Consulting in Complex and Changing Times Organizations face challenges today that are too messy and complicated for consultants to simply play doctor: run a few tests, offer a neat diagnosis of the “problem,” and recommend a solution. Edgar Schein argues that consultants have to jettison the old idea of professional distance and work with their clients in a more personal way, emphasizing authentic openness, curiosity, and humility. Schein draws deeply on his own decades of experience, offering over two dozen case studies that illuminate each stage of this humble consulting process. Just as he did with Process Consultation nearly fifty years ago, Schein has once again revolutionized the field, enabling consultants to be more genuinely helpful and vastly more effective.