Rule of Consulting: You can’t stop people from sticking beans up their nose • Hacker News Board

Re: Rule of Consulting: You can’t stop people from sticking beans up their nose

#31

Post by guylhem » Sun, Jul 10, 2011, 1:13 AM UTC

blantonl wrote: post #27

gruseom wrote: post #10

Gerald Weinberg's Secrets of Consulting is a masterful (yet whimsical) meditation on this subject. It's one of the few business books everybody should read, except it isn't really a business book, it's a people book. Much of the material is counterintuitive. It's kind of like Dale Carnegie for human irrationality. The book begins with the premise that just because someone is paying you for advice doesn't mean they ac…

I really like the link you've made between consulting and psychotherapy. You've touched on something that fascinates me, and that is the how an individual acts differently at home and at work. An example is the difference between how different types of salesmen operate. Those that sell to individuals (or families) must navigate through a very personal and emotional process, whereas salesmen that sell to corporations…

Seemed interesting so I started reading a bit of it to check whether it was worth committing real time to read the whole book :-)

Not sure yet, but you can check it for yourself. The beginning is available online on http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/31631/9/the-secrets...

Re: Rule of Consulting: You can’t stop people from sticking beans up their nose

#32

Post by blantonl » Sun, Jul 10, 2011, 2:09 AM UTC

guylhem wrote: post #31

blantonl wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like the link you've made between consulting and psychotherapy. You've touched on something that fascinates me, and that is the how an individual acts differently at home and at work. An example is the difference between how different types of salesmen operate. Those that sell to individuals (or families) must navigate through a very personal and emotional process, whereas salesmen that sell to corporations…

Seemed interesting so I started reading a bit of it to check whether it was worth committing real time to read the whole book :-) Not sure yet, but you can check it for yourself. The beginning is available online on http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/31631/9/the-secrets...

Thank you!

Re: Rule of Consulting: You can’t stop people from sticking beans up their nose

#33

Post by bedris » Sun, Jul 10, 2011, 2:09 AM UTC

gruseom wrote: post #10

Gerald Weinberg's Secrets of Consulting is a masterful (yet whimsical) meditation on this subject. It's one of the few business books everybody should read, except it isn't really a business book, it's a people book. Much of the material is counterintuitive. It's kind of like Dale Carnegie for human irrationality. The book begins with the premise that just because someone is paying you for advice doesn't mean they ac…

I agree that Secrets of Consulting is a terrific book. I've always been amused by Weinberg's The Lone Ranger Fantasy: "When the clients don't show their appreciation, pretend that they're stunned by your performance--but never forget that it's your fantasy, not theirs."

In addition to Weinberg's writings, Steve Friedl's advice on consulting is terrific: http://www.unixwiz.net/techtips/be-consultant.html

Re: Rule of Consulting: You can’t stop people from sticking beans up their nose

#34

Post by gruseom » Sun, Jul 10, 2011, 2:18 AM UTC

guylhem wrote: post #31

blantonl wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like the link you've made between consulting and psychotherapy. You've touched on something that fascinates me, and that is the how an individual acts differently at home and at work. An example is the difference between how different types of salesmen operate. Those that sell to individuals (or families) must navigate through a very personal and emotional process, whereas salesmen that sell to corporations…

Seemed interesting so I started reading a bit of it to check whether it was worth committing real time to read the whole book :-) Not sure yet, but you can check it for yourself. The beginning is available online on http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/31631/9/the-secrets...

Good find. I reread what's available there and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's been years since I read the book, and I've lost (probably lent) both copies I owned. The thing that struck me just now is how shrewd it is. The silly anecdotes and folsky banter are all there for carefully constructed reasons. I remember thinking before that he jumped around a lot and the logic of the text seemed arbitrary. It's anything but.

Re: Rule of Consulting: You can’t stop people from sticking beans up their nose

#35

Post by dennisgorelik » Sun, Jul 10, 2011, 3:15 AM UTC

berberich wrote: post #26

dennisgorelik wrote: post #25

First commenter under that article gave a link to http://www.kingdom.com as an example. I wonder what they did -- that web site is not responsive at the moment.

Looks like it's an ecommerce site specializing in church-related technologies.

So what did go wrong?

Just web site uptime or something else?

Re: Rule of Consulting: You can’t stop people from sticking beans up their nose

#36

Post by j_baker » Sun, Jul 10, 2011, 4:35 AM UTC

dkarl wrote: post #9

Of course, if they answer they enjoyed it and it was wonderful, then they are not someone I can relate to or help in any way. Or, of course, you might be about to learn something, since sticking beans up your nose is a metaphor you chose for something you think is so stupid you would never actually try it.

There are certain ideas out there that are just objectively dumb. Even if it works out for you at first. Building a startup's web app in assembly language? That's just plain dumb. Same with using SQLite for an application that handles millions of transactions a second. Or keeping a database of financial transactions without backups.

Believe me, there are times when you run into people who have ideas that are so dumb, you don't have to try them to know they won't work.

Re: Rule of Consulting: You can’t stop people from sticking beans up their nose

#37

Post by uast23 » Sun, Jul 10, 2011, 5:04 AM UTC

The read is indeed true but hasn't it taken the nose and beans analogy a little too far, beyond reader's interest? It could have been a better read if there was a little diversion from nose and beans to some actual scenarios.

Re: Rule of Consulting: You can’t stop people from sticking beans up their nose

#38

Post by johngalt » Sun, Jul 10, 2011, 5:12 AM UTC

mcantelon wrote: post #12

A buddy of mine refers to this phenomena as "fish pizza". "You want fish on your pizza? Alright... here you go."

Yumm... Anchovy pizza.

I recommend a veggie special + anchovies. If you don't want all the veggies anchovy and black olives works too. Don't combine anchovy with pepperoni or sausage as its salt overload.

Re: Rule of Consulting: You can’t stop people from sticking beans up their nose

#39

Post by JoshTriplett » Sun, Jul 10, 2011, 5:28 AM UTC

JangoSteve wrote: post #30

JoshTriplett wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason that Open Source communities often react to strange questions with "can you explain what you want to do?" or a similar request for the bigger picture. Too many people start down a chain of reasoning based on how they want to solve a problem, get to step 7 of 10 of a bad plan, and ask for help proceeding to step 8. Explaining how to get to step 8 solves the problem they think they have, but asking for…

The problem with this sort of response is that, somewhere down the road, someone else using that open-source project will be working on an entirely different problem and actually have a legitimate need to make that same jump from point a to point b . Naturally they'll hit up the googles and get excited when they see that someone else had that exact problem before. But then, instead of a solution, they are presented w…

On the other hand, I love when I search for the answer to some specific question I think I have, and find an answer that points to the thing I ought to use instead. People often follow the same wrong paths to a solution.

Re: Rule of Consulting: You can’t stop people from sticking beans up their nose

#40

Post by pnathan » Sun, Jul 10, 2011, 5:54 AM UTC

JangoSteve wrote: post #30

JoshTriplett wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason that Open Source communities often react to strange questions with "can you explain what you want to do?" or a similar request for the bigger picture. Too many people start down a chain of reasoning based on how they want to solve a problem, get to step 7 of 10 of a bad plan, and ask for help proceeding to step 8. Explaining how to get to step 8 solves the problem they think they have, but asking for…

The problem with this sort of response is that, somewhere down the road, someone else using that open-source project will be working on an entirely different problem and actually have a legitimate need to make that same jump from point a to point b . Naturally they'll hit up the googles and get excited when they see that someone else had that exact problem before. But then, instead of a solution, they are presented w…

I think for small scale problems, it's easier just to have a 'wrong' solution that works right, than it is to go the 'right' solution which inevitably involves more complexities and analysis.