What Are The Best Management Consulting Books?
There are four books that I recommend as core to the generic practice of consulting. These are:
- The McKinsey Way by Ethan Rasiel
- Process Consultation by Edgar Schein (dry read)
- Flawless Consulting by Peter Block (optional and highly recommended for those coming from engineering versus consulting backgrounds)
- The Pyramid Principle:Logic In Writing and Thinking (for managers & consultants especially) by Barbara Minto
Beyond the generic core, there are three major dimensions that come to the top of my mind when considering practitioner-level knowledge of the management consulting space:
- developing speciality and functional-area skills
- nurturing marketing and selling skills for consulting (for example, I highly recommend books like Winning the Professional Services Sale by Michael McLaughlin)
- developing knowledge and skills specific to managing both consulting practices and different organizational structures (for example, I like David Maister’s Managing The Professional Service Firm).
I have developed a working reading list that attempts to cover many of the areas above. It is a list for entry-level to advanced management consultants. It can be found here.
And for those readers seeking books and information on getting a job with a consulting firm, there are a number of other books out there. One site that sells such a book (“The Consulting Interview Bible“) is ManagementConsulted. As an aside, back in 2009 Kevin Gao (ex-McKinseyite) interviewed me for ManagementConsulted’s Life as a Consultant series.
The best historical account of the consulting industry I’ve read is The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World by Walter Kiechel
Finally, I just released a book entitled The Consulting Apprenticeship. The book focuses on nuances passed on during apprenticeship and complements the four books I mention at the beginning of this post or can be read standalone. More info at ConsultingApprenticeship.com.
The Consulting Apprenticeship is available for purchase at Amazon.
Edit (November 28, 2017): I just completed a new book, So What Strategy by Davina Stanley and Gerard Castles. The two authors began their consulting careers at McKinsey & Company (communications specialists). The book is thematically aligned with the books above, and I’ve written a review of the book here: The So What Strategy – A Highly Recommended Book for Business Communications. I also recommend considering their online courses here.
My Behavioral Science, Design, and Business Book Reading List
As I was gathering my thoughts for my Inside Nudging project (www.InsideNudging.com), a project that I envision tying together the application of behavioral science in business contexts and providing more of an inside look at innovation, strategy and implementation, I wanted to take stock of books that have probably influenced (liberally interpreted) the way I look at behavioral science.
Perhaps you’ll find something of here of interest to you for your weekend read. I am also open to getting more book recommendations. Thanks!
Psychology, Behavioral Economics and Finance
- Phishing for Phools (Akerlof and Shiller)
- Drunk Tank Pink (Alter)
- Predictably Irrational (Ariely)
- The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty (Ariely)
- The Upside of Irrationality (Ariely)
- Save More Tomorrow (Benartzi and Lewin)
- The Smarter Screen (Benartzi and Lehrer)
- Thinking Smarter (Benartzi and Lewin)
- The Foundations of Behavioral Economic Analysis (Dhami)
- Risk Savvy (Gigerenzer)
- Stumbling on Happiness (Gilbert)
- The Why Axis (Gneezy and List)
- The Happiness Hypothesis (Haidt)
- The Righteous Mind (Haidt)
- Inside the Nudge Unit (Halpern)
- Decisive (Heath and Heath)
- Made to Stick (Heath and Heath)
- Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman)
- The Undoing Project (Lewis)
- Dance with Chance (Markridakis and Hogarth)
- The Irrational Economist (Michel-Kerjan and Slovic)
- Scarcity (Mullanainathan and Shafir)
- Democracy Despite Itself (Oppenheimer and Edwards)
- Irrational Exuberance (Shiller)
- The Last Mile (Soman)
- Simpler (Sunstein)
- Misbehaving (Thaler)
- Nudge (Thaler and Sunstein)
Design
- Hooked (Eyal)
- Designing with the Mind in Mind (Johnson)
- The Design of Everyday Things (Norman)
- Envisioning Information (Tufte)
- Designing for Behavior Change (Wendel)
- Design-Driven Innovation (Verganti)
Business and Strategy
- Negotiating Rationally (Bazerman and Neale)
- Freakonomics (Dubner and Levitt)
- Blink (Gladwell)
- The Tipping Point (Gladwell)
- Yes! (Goldstein, Martin, and Cialdini)
- Blue Ocean Strategy (Kim and Mauborgne)
- Insurance & Behavioral Economics (Kunreuther, Pauly, and McMorrow)
- Behavioral Economics and Policy Design: Examples from Singapore (Low)
- Drive (Pink)
- Absolute Value (Simonson and Rosen)
- Wisdom of Crowds (Surowiecki)
Communication
- The Pyramid Principle (Minto)
- The Sense of Style (Pinker)
On My Future Reading List
- The Power of Noticing (Bazerman)
- Happy Money (Dunn)
- Switch (Heath and Heath)
- Irrationality in Health Care (Hough)
- The Art of Choosing (Iyengar)
- The Organized Mind (Levitin)
- King William’s Tontine (Milevsky)
- The Marshmallow Test (Mischel)
- Antifragile (Taleb)
PS. Here is a teaser video based on Chapter 1 of my book, Inside Nudging.