The Seven Cs of Consulting: Your Complete Blueprint for any Consultancy Assignment

Rating:
Summary: excellent overview of consultant roles,risks and chances
Review: Clearly stuctured in a good easy to remember mental model.Graphic,easy to read, with al least three ways to read it:/only graphis and tables,/specific tools to use the model and /the clearly explain text of theory and examples.Has good examples without distracting the reader,reinforcing the arguments.very good book.

Rating:
Summary: Elegant & Useful mix of approaches & tools
Review: Mick Cope presents a mind-provoking and comprehensive guide for consulting. The book contains a useful mix of elegant approaches and tools. What distinguishes this book from others is it's emphasis on the human-side of consulting, which can be easily overlooked. The book is packed with useful detail and vivid analogies.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent personal distillation of the consulting process
Review: Overview:
Cope utilizes a structured, yet customizable methodology for this book that provides an action framework for his readers. Here, he presents his viewpoint of the entire consulting process in a distilled, comprehensive model entitled "the Seven Cs framework" that he hopes will benefit readers in their consulting engagements.

The seven Cs of consulting in Cope's framework are:
1.Client: Getting it right from the start
2.Clarify: Understanding the real issues
3.Create: Developing a deliverable solution
4.Change: Working to make things happen
5.Confirm: Measuring the change
6.Continue: Making sure the solution sticks
7.Close: Signing off with style

This book provides a good overview of the field of consulting for both beginning and practiced consultants alike, as it combines theories of consulting, as well as recommendations and tips for best practices in a smooth, comprehensible manner. The client-centered nature of the book also helps reinforce the importance of prioritizing the needs of one's clients, and of nurturing the relationship between consultant and client. For example, Cope suggests that taking the perspective that a client might have about the proposed project is one way to ensure that one operates with a focus on the client. Such suggestions, if put into practice, could help change the way that a consultant sees her or his client. The framework is supposed to be adaptable to individual needs and unique situations, but always provides a focus on the best practices at each stage of the consulting project, and reminds readers that the end of one project can also mean the generation or development of a future-oriented consultant-client relationship.

Structure:
The book can be broken down into four main sections; each section consists of a set of relatively short chapters. This format presents a swift, easy read for both those who finish the book in one sitting, and those who do not have the time or inclination to do so. The brevity of each chapter also allows for easy overviews or referrals to be made, and presents a good starting point for further research into specific areas or ideas, if the reader wishes to investigate a particular topic or idea in greater depth and detail. Key questions included in the Pocket Guide are listed at the end of various sections and chapters in order to provide a succinct point that the reader can make use of in an actual consulting project.

Book Highlights:
Cope has made a brilliant attempt at making the key points of his book easily memorable. Along with using alliteration to make his points attractively memorable, as well as providing clear, useful graphs and charts, he has also included a detachable and foldable Pocket Guide at the end of the book, which lists the seven Cs, a brief description of each, and major points from the various chapters of the book. One fine example of how he makes points from this book memorable and easily comprehensible is through his comparing various types of decision-makers that one might encounter in an organization, to the key characters (King, Queen of Hearts, Knave, Joker and Ace) in a deck of cards.

Readers will also be pleased to note the smooth integration of consulting theory and practice in Cope's framework. Although the book presents a light, digestible read replete with examples of successful and unsuccessful consulting engagements, sections of the book utilize a psychology-textbook approach to portions of the consulting process. For example, he provides a summary of the benefits and detractions of various data collection methods, an overview of the crucial area of data validity, as well as recommendations for successful data analysis.

Cautionary Points:
Although this book provides an excellent synthesis of consulting theory and practice, readers should remember that it still represents the views and recommendations of a single consultant. While his examples and opinions are interesting and deftly expressed, there is not very much research support cited, as this book was not designed for academic purposes. Personally, it even seems that the citations he uses were selected because they seemed to support his theories, instead of having been included on the strength of their research validity or usefulness. This book therefore belongs more in the realm of popular psychology than of research psychology, even though it contains sections on best practices of applied research methods. Indeed, most of the book's bibliography consists of popular psychology and self-help titles. Readers should hence see this book as a general overview of one person's viewpoint and recommendations for the consulting process, and use it as a starting point for further research and investigation into topics or areas of interest.

Review of Appendix Section:
The Appendix of the book presents a practical reference guide to the consulting process. It lists in checklist format all of the key components of the Seven Cs model, providing 49 intervention elements such as "Build", and corresponding change descriptors such as "Have you identified what opportunities exist for further work?". This checklist was designed to assist consultants in asking key questions to themselves and their clients to increase the chances of planning and executing a successful consulting engagement, as well as to assist the development of productive working relationships between both parties.

Conclusion:
Cope presents a comprehensible framework of the consulting process that takes readers from the beginning to the end of consulting engagements, and includes useful examples, graphics and recommendations for best practices in the field. It is written in an easy-to-read style and format, and it combines theory and practice smoothly, hence providing a useful overview of the field and the theories that can be used to drive it. Clever inclusions of a detachable Pocket Guide and a checklist of key questions that a consultant could use for consulting projects make this book a practical tool as well. Readers should bear in mind, however, that this is the expression of one consultant's views and ideas of the consulting process, and therefore be prepared to investigate areas and ideas of personal interest at a deeper level in order to obtain more details of the idea's actual method and merit.