The Consulting Apprenticeship: 40 Jump-Start Ideas for You and Your Business

by Steve Shu

The Consulting Apprenticeship is written for business professionals and consultants with a focus on nuances passed on during apprenticeship regarding consulting delivery. Business professionals can benefit with a jump-start approach to applying consulting principles to their business.
Designed for the busy professional, The Consulting Apprenticeship is a book of forty, quick-read ideas. These forty, short chapters are divided into four sections:
• Consulting Mindset – This section covers consulting ways of thinking and can be adopted by both company personnel and consultants.
• Consulting Techniques – This section covers specific tactics and toolkit methods when using consultative approaches in the trenches as either a company- or consulting firm-practitioner.
• Consulting Mastery – This section covers advanced perspectives on consulting and may be more useful to either company personnel evaluating consultants or mid- to senior-level consultants.
• Consulting Special Situations – Whereas the prior sections are applicable to a wide variety of situations, this section covers more infrequent, specific business situations involving consultative approaches in the trenches as either a company- or consulting firm-practitioner.
Each chapter of the book concludes with an optional, takeaway exercise. The exercises vary widely in terms of level of involvement. For example, in some cases you can refer to online material. In other cases, you can engage in deeper thinking or apply the concepts over an extended period of time.
However you choose to use this book, consulting mastery is a lifelong pursuit. I hope this book helps you with your journey.

Stephen Shu

Praise for The Consulting Apprenticeship

“When one of the companies I worked for needed help taking its consulting organization to the next level, I hired Steve Shu. His ability to drive our management team - all with different opinions on what we should or should not do - to a ‘so-what’ conclusion and pragmatic next steps gave us the jump start we needed. He is one of the best and deeply understands how consulting organizations should work. His book provides great techniques as well as tools you can use immediately.”
- Prakash Panjwani, CEO at WatchGuard Technologies, former President and CEO of SafeNet

“Steve Shu has put together a comprehensive guide to the all-important nuts and bolts of being a great consultant. The information in Chapter 21, ‘Eight Secret Weapons of the Modern Consultant,’ is worth the price of the book. If you’re serious about being a more effective consultant, read this book.”
- Michael McLaughlin, Author of Winning the Professional Services Sale and Principal Consultant at MindShare Consulting LLC; former Partner at Deloitte

“I’ve worked with Steve Shu on consulting projects related to innovation and the application of behavioral science principles. He is very well respected by both academics and professionals. And as a professor in the management and organizations area, and someone who has a son working as a management consultant, it’s great to see a book like his that addresses nuances of the profession of consulting.”
- John W. Payne, Joseph J. Ruvane Professor of Business Administration at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University

"Steve provides a thorough guide full of practical recommendations on how to drive any initiative to a positive outcome. If you are in a business to serve customers (internal and external), this is an essential read for you whether you're in a Fortune-50 company or a startup, or a management consultant. I found at least eight compelling and insightful recommendations that I can apply today in my technology startup to improve my relationship with my customers and partners."
- Anurag Khaitan, Venture Investor, Entrepreneur; former General Manager of Sprint Nextel Ventures and management consultant with PRTM

“Steve Shu has written a hands-on, highly practical guide for new management consultants and internal corporate business strategists alike. So many projects fail because they do not practice the basic consulting project management hygiene Steve describes in chapter 11. If you are new to the trade and want to greatly increase your chance of delivering successful consulting projects, read this book.”
- Robert Reppa, Vice President Strategy at Johnson Controls and former Partner at Booz & Company

150 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2015

About the author

Steve Shu provides consulting services and specializes in incubating new initiatives and business lines with a primary focus on services, technology, and behavioral science. He has more than a decade of experience setting up behavioral science initiatives and nudge units. He serves as a Managing Principal at Digital Nudging Tech (formerly Digitai), a behavioral economics innovation firm. Steve has three decades of industry experience and has consulted to or had management roles at organizations such as The Voya Behavioral Finance Institute for Innovation, Allianz Global Investors Center for Behavioral Finance, Allscripts, Nortel Business Consulting, PRTM Management Consultants (acquired by PwC), and numerous startups. He is a Visiting Lecturer at the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University.

Steve has a PhD in behavioral finance from City, University of London, an MBA from the University of Chicago, and both an MEng and BS in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University. He has attended executive education training on Dynamic Management at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.

Steve has put his decades of experience into his solo-authored books, Inside Nudging: Implementing Behavioral Science Initiatives and The Consulting Apprenticeship: 40 Jump-Start Ideas for You and Your Business.

Reviews

[Luqman · Rating 5 out of 5]

One the best books I have read

Practical and up to the point, I can apply many of the ideas on my every day management consulting situations.