Briefly, my approach to book-reviews: I generally prefer reviewing part of a book instead of the whole thing, because, when you try to summarise a whole book in 500 words or less + give an opinion on it, I think it takes a lot away from its value (reviewing midway also helps with processing the reading better). The downside is that a. I might give away too much of a book, discouraging you from buying it (I try not to), or that I draw the wrong conclusions (something that happened for “Positioning,” for instance).

Today, I aim to review “Consulting For Dummies,” the 2nd edition. Now, I don’t often pick up anything from the For Dummies series, but in this case, I heard the book was quite good and a number of improvements were made for the 2nd edition (one of the authors even commented about that on their Amazon page). The book is split into two parts, at least the way I segment it. The first part is focussed on coming up with the idea behind the consultancy and designing your services, the second deals with selling your services and growing the business.

I decided to read this book because for the last few months, I’ve essentially been consulting and wanted to learn more about this type of work. I consider myself strong in terms of product and process (in other words, in inventing things and structuring processes), and less so in sales, so the first part of the book (until chapter 11) definitely made a lot of sense to me. I’ll review the second part as soon as I get to it, which may be a few months/books down the line.

Book-summary (the first half only)

The book is well-written, uses a number of examples, and makes you work to get to the next chapter. As common in the For Dummies series, many tips are given in point-format, and examples, in this case interviews with practitioners, are given in grey boxes. The work consisted of a number of questions that you had to answer, starting with a “consultancy-test,” which asked questions like:

• do you enjoy solving problems?
• do you have faith in your capabilities of completing a job?
• do you enjoy working with people?

All three, problem solving, know-how, and the social side of things, are important components to the consulting process. I don’t remember my exact score, but I scored in the top-quartile for this test, which makes me “a born consultant.”

The second chapter expanded on that, asking you about what you enjoy doing, what you’re good and not good at, and how to connect the two (they don’t always go hand in hand). It also asks you:

• whether there’s really a need for your services,
• who your customers are,
• whether you’re the right (wo)man for the job,
• and whether the time is right.

All hard, but good questions, which make you think about whether you’re in it for the right reasons.

The next few chapters are about setting up an office, setting up your company, a code of conduct (important!), and how to set your rates (a chapter I found very relevant to my own needs). These chapters (3 to 6) are probably the most dry of the book, depending on what you find dry, of course. They serve as an intro, but practice and talking to practitioners will be needed to come up with fixed solutions to these problems.

The next few chapters, 7 to 11, are about actual consulting, which starts with

• the initial contact,
• identifying the problem,
• writing a proposal,
• collecting data about your customer,
• identifying solutions,
• presenting them,
• and implementing them.

Depending on where you’re at, you may not find all chapters equally useful. I liked the proposal chapter, as it offered a number of templates, but already knew much about the analytical and presentation advice offered. Nevertheless, it served as a good refresher as well to help me focus on what was essential. Chapter 11 on implementation is the most crucial (for some consultants…), as it’s about turning theoretical solutions into practical ones.

Conclusion

I really liked this book, but, as with all books like this, it’s only as valuable as the work you put in yourself. The business plan I’m writing for my consultancy certainly takes plenty of practical tips from the book, but the content is derived from my own experiences and knowledge. The exercises in the book (sadly, confined to the first few chapters mainly), do help you narrow down on what you want to do.

What it has offered me most is perhaps a new-found understanding of the practice of consulting, which I’ve never particularly respected in the past, seeing it more as ’selling air,’ than anything else. It is not the kind of practice that I want to have and I’m glad that the book offers enough ’scientific’ advice to be able to avoid that pitfall.

If you’re interested of getting into the consulting business or are currently “winging it” as one, I recommend this book. It is generic enough to work for any type of consulting, from strategic to whatever.

Vincent

Endnote: I bought the Dutch version of this book, as I’ve learned the hard way that many For Dummies business books work better when focussing on the country you’re operating in. This doesn’t apply to anything like software development or learning to play an instrument, though maybe cooking. The Dutch component of this book was fairly limited; some sections were dedicated to setting up a business in the Netherlands, but you could essentially get the same info from the local chamber of commerce.

In my short career, I’ve been exposed to maybe four projects, which have experienced development hell, which is a term used in creative projects that never seem to leave development, for either internal reasons (e.g. bad management or work ethic) or external reasons (e.g. lack of resources). One of my “hell projects” was my thesis and I broke out of it. Three were startups, of which two failed.

Ever since then, I’ve been very careful about avoiding these types of situations and try to follow certain informal guidelines to do so. They are mostly based on instinct, not so much on set principles that come out of, for instance, software development and general project management, both disciplines I have tremendous respect for and still have a lot to learn from.

Here they are:

1. Avoid secrecy: I think this is a shared characteristic of all four of my projects. If you lock yourself into a room, literarily or metaphorically, you risk going into a surreal state of development, which is unaligned with how the market develops or how your own funding needs evolve for that matter, which is also market-determined. Outside input will expose you to much more data, force you to keep improving your product, and to be practical in doing so.
2. Build on past experience: I think this can be interpreted as three things:
   • One, avoiding secrecy in the sense that you involve external people and use their experience.
   • Two, working on projects that incrementally improve on projects you worked on before / that already exist, drastically decreases complexity and increases chances of success. Not so, focussing on radical innovation, which also has to pass the hurdle of finding a market.
   • Three, focussing on quick prototyping means that you have testable experiences within a project to base future development on.
3. Be a stubborn bastard: I only take this from my own thesis, which was perhaps the worst experience in my life, if I didn’t remember that there are far worse things. For instance, my first adult job required me to bike over 80 km everyday for more than 4 months, in rain, wind, and across mountains, sometimes at 4 in the morning. But it paid me more than most 18 year olds as well, I saved money on public transport, and learned to finish what I started, no matter how long it takes… most things worthwhile are hard work and mean that you have to cling to that belief even if most people around you don’t.
4. Set measurable milestones and monitor, monitor, monitor: One of the best bosses I’ve ever had, was the age that I am now, told me exactly what he wanted done by the end of the assignment, what he wanted on a day-to-day basis, and talked to me when things went off track. When they didn’t, he left me alone. Another boss of mine told me nothing, set an abstract goal, kept throwing new projects on my back even when the last one was only beginning, and blamed me when everything failed. Needless to say that I try to stick to the first method when managing myself and others.
5. Keep complexity down: I’m currently involved in restarting a business that I was previously engaged in (one of my failures), and which is drastically more simple. While before, we would have had to (re-)invent at least three wheels and restricted our market in the process, we now have to invent one and have a market so huge that it’s scary. I know that point 3 was to be stubborn, but being stubborn + choosing feasible projects = a twice as rewarding experience.

That’s it! As I’m sure this is a problem that plagues everyone once in a while, I’m very curious how you avoid development hell. Let us know in a comment!

Vincent

Dear App-maker and Apple,

I appreciate Spaces a lot as a feature on Leopard. I think it makes me more productive, in the sense that I am now completely focussed on my blog editor in space 2, and all the other distracting apps are stowed away in the other spaces. But Spaces isn’t perfect, which is part Apple’s fault and part Apps’ fault.

Exhibit 1: the preference pane

The Spaces preferences are a mess, one long list of messes. When adding an app to a certain space, it doesn’t go to that app in the list, instead it adds it, I have to search for it, and find it has been set to the latest space I used or assigned an app to (which is a actually good, I’m not a whiner).

Why is all of this centralised? If I want to see what space an app is assigned to, why not have me do that in the app-preferences? To me it makes so much more sense to install an app, go to its preferences or a menu-item, and just set the space from there. Instead of having to dig through the bloated preference pane.

Exhibit 2: the auto-switching

OK, I actually don’t have a problem with selecting an app and having it open in its appropriate space. But what I do have a problem is apps ripping me away from the space I’m in, sometimes multiple times, because… I don’t know, they call for it? This happens with Pages, with Marsedit, with Safari, and I don’t know what. Somehow, when it loads up stuff, like webpages or those pesky floating info-windows, it calls Spaces to attention and poof, I am ripped away from what I was currently doing.

That Sir, is not my definition of a productivity enhancer.

I have now set Spaces to not auto-switch, but what I would really like is for a. this not to happen and for b. to be able to set, per app, which one auto-swicthes and which doesn’t—another case for having Spaces be included in app-preferences.

Exhibit 3: ghost dialogue boxes

Regardless of what app I use, this happens constantly. Dialogue-boxes don’t always open in the same space as the app is in. Instead, a dialogue box opens, I know it does, but I can’t find it. And when I switch between Spaces, I sometimes see it floating by, like a ghost again. Hiding the app in front of it doesn’t work, the dialogue box disappears too. I have to minimise the app(S) in front of it, to find that stupid box. Not effective!

I want dialogue boxes per app to stick to the space they are set to, and preferably stay on top (if anyone knows a hack for the latter, post a comment).

In conclusion…

I assume that most of this is a design error on the part of Apple, but I’d really like for this to be improved. Exhibit 1 is clearly a user-interface issue, which could be drastically improved by allowing preferences to be set per app. Exhibit 2 and 3 are bugs, no more no less, and I hope that Apple gets it together and fixes it.

One of the things I’m always looking for are tools that teach me stuff in a language that I understand. I have several books on finance, some of which are great in describing the general picture, but lacking in the details; others of which are (probably) great in describing the details, but suck at the general picture.

“Managing the numbers,” by Richard Stutely, is a book that does both well. It basically takes you through the process of:

• dealing with financial problems;
• of putting it in the greater context of the organisation;
• of splitting it smartly across sections;
• and, most importantly, keeping that continuity by using one company as an example, which, if you put it all together, form one great excel-sheet.

In other words, if you’re “fearful of finance,” like me, but absolutely need to know it, like me, it’s the perfect book.

Things I like most are actually the pictures, which give you an overview of how everything fits together. No, perhaps not this one:

…but this one, which essentially shows you who allocates the budget, who spends the money, who makes the money, and who manages profit (and loss)…

…and this one, which is all about calculating return on an investment.

(appologies for the funky layout and colouring, they were taken from a phone).

It is a book written for people that don’t want to spend too much time on things like this (90% of the planet), but know that they need to keep track of it for the good of their organisation. If this fits your situation, then I warmly recommend it.

I have to warn you though: if you’re just a tourist/beginner in this area, then this book is definitely not for you.

Vincent

I want to apologise for a number of things, I’ve done (and not done) here on Tech IT Easy. I realise that I’m one of the few active bloggers, to which some say “I’ll take what I can get,” but I have a certain internal standard of quality, which is much, much higher than anyone ever imposed on me externally. So, I feel apologies and a reality check are necessary.

• First off, my last post on “what’s coming up on Tech IT Easy.” It isn’t coming up anywhere close, because of two reasons, that, one, I am not Robert Scoble and can’t disclose everything I do so freely (not even 10%). Two is that there simply is a lack of time at the moment.
• Second, my post about disabling commenting on Tech IT Easy. In blogging, the right to comment is like the right to free speech everywhere else. I don’t actually think that blog posts are very rewarding to read unless you can a. comment or b. read whether people correct you in a comment. It’s like a clumsy Wikipedia, which would suck without public input.
• Third is that, currently being “the boss” of Tech IT Easy, I haven’t take that responsibility very seriously at all. If there is anything I can predict is that this is something I will seriously consider, perhaps leading to some changes on the site, the team, or myself.

So, I hope you can forgive me and we can continue this platonic relationship we have more casually (or less casually, if I do commit to being more of a manager to Tech IT Easy).

Your faithful Tech IT Easian,

Vincent

Since last September, I’ve been taking a Ph.D. level course on the future of internet, IT and related fields called Bit Bang at Helsinki University of Technology’s Multidisciplinary Institute of Digitalisation and Energy. The students are all Ph.D. students from either TKK (HUT), University of Art and Design Helsinki or my own Helsinki School of Economics. The course is given by a former CTO of Nokia, Yrjö Neuvo. So, the course is a kind of a dream team of Finnish education system…

During the fall, we were divided into groups and my group’s task was to write about the implications of carbon nanotechnology until 2025. The other groups wrote similar papers on other technologies such as Processors & Memory, Telecommunications and Printed Electronics. Now, during the spring, we’ll do similar papers but on much broader topics: intelligent machines, globalisation, future of media and future of living. These papers will be combined into a book at the end of spring term (thanks to the Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund). To get a feeling of what we are writing, here’s an excerpt of our nanotechnology report’s introduction (PDF).

But, now to the more important part. As a part of this course, we’re going to a week-long study trip to California at the end of February, between 23th–28th. We’ll be visiting Berkeley, Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, and some other places and most of us will spend the week-end at San Francisco. If this sounds familiar, long time readers of this blog might remember Jeremy’s original Tech IT Easy SV trip in 2007.

The program for the trip is starting to form and these are some of the places and people we’re probably going to visit. The official program isn’t out yet, but this is what I quickly jotted down.

• University of California, Berkeley; David Messerschmitt
• Stanford University, and coincidentally, Stanford Entrepreneurship Week (We’ll also be attending the Fair on 24.2.).
• Trip Hawkins at Digital Chocolate (he’s probably more better known as the founder of Electronic Arts)
• Mårten Mickos at Sun Microsystems (was CEO at MySQL)
• The Google
• Ideo
• IBM (most likely one of their research centers somewhere in Palo Alto)
• HP Labs
• Nokia lablet & Nokia Research Center at Palo Alto
• Michel Wendell at Nexit Ventures
• And probably some others that I already forgot about

It’s starting to look like a busy week (perhaps not as busy as Jeremy’s, though.) and the guys we’re meeting with aren’t exactly small players. So, here’s my question to you: What should we/I ask from these guys? We have the amazing opportunity to talk with these guys and it would be nice to know what the Tech IT Easy crowd would be interested to know.

This is my second trip to USA and first to San Francisco, so another question from me is: What should I do and see at SF? Basically we have four days of official program and two “vacation” days.

The above program is just the official program, and there’s a group of us eager Ph.D. students from Finland’s top universities who would probably want to see more of what’s going on in SF. All ideas are welcome, but keep in mind our strict time constraints.