Weinberg Laws

Sherbie’s 3 laws

Despite what they tell you, there’s always a problem
No matter how it looks at first, it’s always a people problem
Never forget they’re paying you by the hour, not the solution

Weinberger’s 4th law

If they didn’t hire you, don’t solve their problem

Deep down, people want to be able to say to their management, “Look, we realize that there is a problem, and we are working on it. We have retained a consultant.”

The law of raspberry jam

The further you spread it, the thinner it gets

If you offer advice to enough people that you’re making lots of money from it, you won’t be influential.

The Credit Rule: You’ll never accomplish anything if you care who gets the credit.

Weinberger’s law of twins

Most of the time, for most of the world, no matter how hard people work at it, nothing of any significance happens

Rudy’s rutabega rule

Once you eliminate your number one problem, number two gets a promotion

I’ve had thousands of consulting clients since then, but I can still hear Rudy’s scratchy voice asking that killer question. My great idea had a fatal flaw. I can remove one problem that’s my worst, but it always leaves another that used to be my second worst.

The hard law

If you can’t accept failure, you’ll never succeded as a consultant

The harder law

Once you eliminate your number one problem, YOU promote number two

Why is there always another problem? It seems to me that people need to solve problems—and we consultants are the neediest of the lot. For us, solving problems is synonymous with living. I need problems so badly that if problems didn’t exist, I’d have to invent them. And I do. Rudy would have put it better, as The Harder Law: Once you eliminate your number one problem, YOU promote number two. The ability to find the problem in any situation is the consultant’s best asset. It’s also the consultant’s occupational disease.

The hardest law

To make a bundle, be a star: Spread it wide and spread it far. But if you want to change the sun, best begin with Number One.

This may sound selfish and paradoxical, but in the end, it’s neither. I can never be of maxiumum help to clients if my problems are tangled uncontrollably with theirs. So I need to get my own mess straightened out before tackling theirs.

Unfortunately, as my own behavior demonstrates: Helping myself is even harder than helping others.

Chapter 2

If logic always worked, nobody would need consultants, so consultants always confront contradictions. “Don’t be rational, be reasonable”

Optimitis

Optimitis can be found in anyone who is asked to produce solutions to problems. It is an inflammation of the optimization nerve, that part of the nervous system which responds to such requests as:

Give us the minimum cost solution

Get it done in the shortest possible time

We must do it in the best possible way

In a healthy individual, the optimization nerve receives such requests and sends an impulse to the mouth to respond:

What are you willing to sacrifice?

In the diseased individual, however, this neural pathway is interrupted and the mouth utters some distored phrase like:

Yes, boss. Right away, boss.

The answer to optimitis is to identify the tradeoff – You don’t get nothin’ for nothin’

Until you learn to master the art of thinking in tradeoff terms, and then learn to juggle simultaneous tradeoffs, you’ll never be a healthy consultant.

I tend to do that because I’ve learned that people underestimate future time when it’s something that might be unpleasant, like dealing with an angry person

Fisher’s fundamental Theorem

The better adapted you are, the less adaptable you tend to be

Consultants are less adapted to the present situation, and therefore are potentially more adabtable. Their perception of now/then tradeoffs is different from those close to the problem, which makes them a valuable source of ideas, as well as people not to be trusted.

By working with a client for an extended period of time, it’s possible to establish trust by recommending only low-risk alternatives. This strategy is another now/then tradeoff: small results now for the possibility of bigger results later. But later, the consultant will be better adapted to the situation, and thus less likely to provide a truly big idea.

His risk was quite different: If he did nothing, he wouldn’t be any worse off than he was now. If he did what I suggested, he might be better off, but if my ideas flopped, he would be much worse off. With a secure job, he was well adapted to the present situation. With a shaky consulting contract, I was prepared to be much more adaptable, with his organization.

These consulting tradeoffs may explain something I’ve observed in myself and other consultatnts: Consultants tend to be most effective on the third problem you give them.

I like this. We need to be uncomforable, to struggle, to say adaptable This is maybe while I like consulting. Not only do I get different problems, I also can’t get too comfortable The downside is once you build trust, you might be too adapted to be useful

The orange juice test

We can do it and this is how much it will cost

Answering either “yes” or “no” to a request for work isn’t enough information.

Book Club March 8

Adam&Todd: The art form is getting people to ask us to solve their problems. Getting them to identify that problem is hard. Adam: The idea of making it “their win” resonates Amber: You don’t get any credit and you shouldn’t want any credit to be successful. Kyle: The idea that only the consultants that don’t get anything done get invited back seems at odd with clients that are unsure they’re getting their moneys worth. Grosz: “I’ll be gone in a few months, I just want to see you do well” Brittany: 80% of the job is being an outside perspective. Jiggle things. Try to get them to change something to get them out of their rut. Todd: Do we want to be more adapted (elm shop, for instance) so that we can focus? Kevin/Todd/Sam: Does the OJ test apply to sales? Not really on bill rate, usually on size of team. But DevOps candidates have higher salary expections - can we bill them at a higher rate? Sam: How do we sell “here’s a problem that we should solve?” Amber: Leading questions, 5 whys. Todd: Get clients to articulate wants, impacts, and needs. You want to ask the other questions about impact because it A)increases urgency to get the solution and B) gives insights into other things to solve. Sam: Building the urgency is important because the clients are blind to their issues (snowblind) Ross: Leading questions are useful Jason: Rather than pointing out the problem immediately - list the symptoms first - once they’ve agreed they see those symptoms - point out this is typically the signs of problem X. Kevin: Once you get them to say yes to anything they’ll want to keep saying yes Amber: 5 Whys are nice because no one wants you to tell them what the problem is. But if they can get their on their own. Adam: And then they’re solving the problem themselves Jason/Sam/Amber: Sometimes 5 whys goes off the rails - you end up somewhere you don’t want to go Amber: Set guiderails - The why’s have to be actionable, we’re not going to do blame.

Chapter 3

Being effective when you don’t know what you’re doing

Three times out of four, consultants are asked to work on problems outside they’re speciality. They need a bag of generic problem solving tricks to work on these.

Marvin’s secrets of medicine

Ninety percent of all illness cures itself – with absolutely no intervention from the doctor

Deal gently with systems that should be able to cure themselves

The first law of engineering, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Repeatedly curing a system that can cure itself will create a system that can’t.

Don’t make a living solving the same problem for the same client, over and over.
Every prescription has two parts: the medicine and the method of ensuring correct use
If what they’ve been doing hasn’t solved the problem, tell them to do something else.
Make sure they’re paying you well enough so they’ll do what you say.

The most important act in consulting is charging the right fee.
Know-how pays much less than know-when

The Bolden rule

If you can’t fix it, feature it

Talking on the phone in your bedroom -> Executive time

The gilded rule

If you can’t feature it, fake it

The Oakmont Cascade neighborhood is unlikely to contain oaks, a mountain or a cascade

And that’s the danger when we smooth-talking consultants use The Gilded Rule. Once fakery works, we stop learning how to do real fixery.

The inverse-gilded rule

If something is faked, it must need fixing

Bugs are just mistakes. Someone applied the gilded rule. Clients who use euphamisms are hiding something, usually from themselves.

Chapter 4

Seeing what’s there

The law of the hammer

The child who receives a hammer for Christmas will discover that everything needs pounding.

You’re in danger if you only have one tool for fixing problems

The white-bread warning

If you use the same recipe, you get the same bread

Try to learn how things got the way they are so you don’t go backwards

Boulding’s backward basis

Things are the way they are because they got that way

History is important, but can be boring and irrelevant. Learn it anyway.

Spark’s law of problem Solution

The chance of solving the problem decline the closer you get to finding out who was the cause of the problem

Blame doesn’t help

Keep history simple and not too detailed.
Study for understanding, not criticism
Look for what you like in the current situation, and comment on it (Keep people talking)

The Why Whammy

We may run out of energy, or air, or water, or food, but we’ll never run out of reasons

The Label Law

Most of us buy the label, not the merchandise. The name of the thing is not the thing.

The Label Law: Most of us buy the label, not the merchandise. Linguists and philosophers put this in a different way: The name of a thing is not the thing. In this way, they remind us of our tendency to attach a name—a label —to every new thing we see, and then to treat that thing as if the label were a true and total description.

The Three Finger Rule

When you point a finger at someone, notice where the other three fingers are pointing

Overrun and underbudgeted are two terms that apply to the same situation. It’s just blame. Overrun = budget correct, underbudgeted = work correct. Managers tend to speak of overruns because it minimizes their contribution to the problem, workers speak of underfunding for the same reason.

The Misdirection Method

Attaching an emotionally charged label to direct attention away from one aspect of the situation

Labeling the situation as an overrun assumes that the budget was correct. Labeling it as underfunding assumes that the work was done as efficiently as possible. Each label tends to steer people away from examining one aspect of the project. Managers, who make budgets, tend to speak of overruns, because that protects them from looking at their contribution to the problem. Workers, who don’t make budgets, tend to speak of underfunding, because that throws attention off them and onto management.

The Five-Minute Rule

Clients always know how to solve their problems, and always tell the solution in the first five minutes.

BookClub Apr 5

Amber/Rae/Sam/Kevin/Grosz

Fixing what isn’t broke: Keep doing what clients ask so they keep asking us to do more (work late)
Self-reinforcing on both sides. Consultants want to solve problems and clients like having their problems solved by someone else.
Super heros just make it exist in time

Kevin (marvin’s 5th law) Are we charging enough for our advice? Raelyn - if they only want us for dev and don’t want our advice should we charge more?

Sam/Amber/Kevin/Jeremy

Systems fix themselves - do we just need to empower the people to do the work
Pick your battles - don’t fight to fix something that might fix itslf
Make it the client’s win - they use us as a sounding board and fix it without any intervention from us
Unnecessary urgency - problems pop up and maybe we don’t need to fix them (will they cure themselves)?
Is “now” the right time to do this? - try to avoid reacting to everything

Kevin/Amber: Feature it if you can’t fix it - sounds tricky - might get dependent on the faking

Sam: Consulting is not a test for the consultant - it’s a service for the client

Sam/Ali/Kevin//Grosz/Amber/Steve:

Don’t make judgments too quickly - try to understand what was happening
Oftentimes the person to blame is yourself
It is now a problem, it was the solution before
Being clear about intentions and avoiding hurt feelings

Grosz/Kevin/Amber:

Praising with faint damn (making excuses)
Trying to avoid blame but someone really wants to assign blame

Brittany:

The anti-rubber duck - tell the duck who’s fault it is - blame bear

Grosz/Sam: Higher Rates vs Fewer Hours Worked vs limited visibility in the value provided Plays into symptom of feeling TD is expensive Avoiding moral arguments over working too many hours - this doesn’t work for me, you might have a different situation/perspective Is TD the solution if you’re looking for hours on the keyboard? Long term effects vs $$

Brittany/Sam: Instead of talking about the bad behavior, instead model the good behavior Rockstars should go home! Talk about hours - notice employees that might not have good work/life balance and ask for them Should we advertise when we’re taking slack time

Talk about the productive things you do, not just “goofing around” time

Grosz: When is it appropriate to take a higher moral ground and lie/hide from the client?

protecting the employees over the client needs

Chapter 5: Seeing What’s not there

The absence of a tool for tabulating complaints is a sign of quality problems. You need complaints to produce quality software.

“Why are you so negative? Don’t you want to see what our good probrammers are doing?”

Looking for the absence of problems gives you new tools/insights

Level Law

As you solve your worst problems, all of your remaining problems end up being equally important.

Effective problem-solvers may have many problems, but rarely have a single, dominant problem.

No glaring issues means a client knows how to solve problems

If you as a consultant find a relatively even distribution of problems, you may hypothesize that your clients are not seeing one major problem, but it is more likely that they have been keeping up with their problems without letting any one problem get out of control. The fact that no one major problem exists implies that some effective problem-solving mechanisms are already in place.

A client with one glaring problem is missing something

(and you probably can’t just point it out)

If one problem accounts for a major part of all the trouble, and has done so for some time, the client is evidently not terribly effective at problem-solving and has not been concentrating on problems in a worst-first manner. Although the payoff for a solution to the worst problem would be big, the consultant in this situation is not likely to find a very fertile environment for ideas to take root. Instead of looking for existing problem-solving mechanisms, you may want to do something simple that will knock out a visible chunk of the big problem and do it in such a way as to increase your credibility. You can then use your credibility to gain a commitment of some resources to start on the next chunk. But the drawback of this strategy is that it makes the clients more dependent on the consultant, and thus even less able to solve their own problems. A better approach may be to ignore the big problem initially and work to establish the clients’ own problem-solving mechanisms. Choose something simple and relatively certain of success. Even though the solution of a minor problem has a low payoff in and of itself, the clients will learn how to solve their own problems themselves.

How to See What Isn’t There

Be aware of your limitiations

(know what things you miss and design a tool to help you)

Use Other People

Investigate Other Cultures

Use Laundry Lists

When working in poorly defined situations, you probably can’t say in advance what elements must be present for success, so a laundry list is preferred. It’s also important not to grow too confident about your list, lest you become even more likely to miss something critical. I have to start using this term

Check the Process

Avoid a meeting dominated by a couple individuals:

If a meeting is dominated by one or two individuals, I know that I’m not getting the ideas of all the others. I try to keep the dominant individuals under control, but if I can’t, I terminate the meeting. Then I meet the participants individually in an environment more conducive to their participation.

The rule of Three

If you can’t think of three things that might go wrong with your plans, then there’s something wrong with your thinking

LOOSENING UP YOUR THINKING

Look for analogies
Move to extremes
Look outside the boundary
Look for alibis versus explanations

Listen to the music

“Sometimes when I’m not getting anywhere with the words, I listen to the music.”

The most effective method of finding that element is simply to comment on the incongruity and allow the client to respond.

Chapter 6 - Avoiding traps

Create triggers for yourself

How do you set up timely reminders to avoid forgetting important details?

The Main Maxim

What you don’t know may not hurt you, but what you don’t remember always does.

The Titanic Effect

The thought that disaster is impossible often leads to an unthinkable disaster.

Building triggers you can’t igore

The tally card:

To alter the habit of interrupting other people, I advise clients to keep a record of the time of each interruption and whom they are interrupting.

Book club, chapter 5 and 6

Brittany: Wait to answer a question, see if someone else chimes in Solving the day-to-day problems isn’t really the consultant job

Brittany/Adam/Amber/Grosz: Drill into what they want - is this what you want us to fix?

We’re there - what is the ask? We’re trying to identify other things to fix as well Can it be iterative? - “Do you want us to fix this?”
You’re there to coerce them into giving you the problems to solve

Steve/Kevin/Brittany You can’t point out the biggest problem because they need to learn how to identify it

Use leading questions
Pointing stuff out can be a poltical landmine - maybe they aren’t willing to fix these things
Just jiggle something and see what changes

Kevin/Brittany:

Have to solve a few problems first to build trust and point stuff out
The law of 3 - You’re most effective on the third problem
Pickle problem - You become less effective as you get brined (become like the client)
We become Better at solving problems in their context ** Start out better as consultants (jigglers) and then later better devs (problem solvers)

Brittany/Kevin/Amber: Titanic effect - assuming something is unsinkable leads to your downfall

You stop testing it because it’s always worked
You make decisions based on this thing being solid and unchangeable ** We have to do it this way because no one else knows how ** How do we find the right way to engage with someone who doesn’t do knowledge sharing
Find a common philosophy/context to poke holes in the unsinkable thing
Using the tools in your toolbox - pairing, documentation, mandatory vacation ** Find the one that appeals to the problem person, that they’ll adopt as their idea

Steve/Grosz/Brittany

Finding the gaps
Using people, learning other cultures, laundry list
Writing down everytime you do it just to become aware of your habits

Brittany/Grosz/Steve/Amber

Reassuring that Weinberg doesn’t seem to have it all figured out
Good to be able to say to clients: I don’t have all the answers, but lets figure it out
Help people learn how to learn
Working your way out of a job
Intentional Humility
Opposite of being the expert and dictating how it should be done
We know how to be flexible and have good conversations
There’s no way to know it all in modern software development
The worst case scenario is usually not so fatal, so learning on the fly is reasonable

Chapter 7 - Amplifying Your Impact

Jiggling

As a jiggler, my job is to get something started, to cause some changes that will ultimately get the system unstuck.

Could the organization itself have generated the other questions? In other words, could it have jiggled itself?

retros

I was able to jiggle this stuck communication system because 1. I was a neutral person who would not betray any one individual. 2. I knew a technique whereby people could reliably but anonymously reveal their true feelings about the schedule. 3. I possessed general skills in facilitating accurate communication. 4. I understood how communication systems work, and how they could be established to avoid blockage in the future.

Opportunities to jiggle

For one thing, people don’t always see what their real problems are, so consultants are often employed to make the system get even more firmly stuck on the wrong problem. This feels dangerous and incongruent with the idea that you should be asked to solve the problem

Less is more. This is The Law of the Jiggle

Seeing Internal Behavior

Most of us are more or less blind to nonverbal behavior. If I talk about it, many people simply don’t know what I mean, much as a blind person would be mystified when told that an elephant is gray.

Hidden Agenda Technique

Seeing Feelings

Same idea as Crucial Conversations - slow down and be aware, take stock

THE POWERFUL CONSULTANT

If you keep amplifying your impact, you’ll eventually become a more powerful consultant. Your consulting style will reflect an increasingly complex understanding of your task and will have the following characteristics:

Your task is to influence people, but only at their request.

You strive to make people less dependent on you, rather than more dependent.

You try to obey The Law of the Jiggle: The less you actually intervene, the better you feel about your work.

If your clients want help in solving problems, you are able to say no.

If you say yes but fail, you can live with that. If you succeed, the least satisfying approach is when you solve the problem for them.

More satisfying is to help them solve their problems in such a way that they will be more likely to solve the next problem without help.

Most satisfying is to help them learn how to prevent problems in the first place.

You can be satisfied with your accomplishments, even if clients don’t give you credit.

Your ideal form of influence is first to help people see their world more clearly, and then to let them decide what to do next.

Your methods of working are always open for display and discussion with your clients.

Your primary tool is merely being the person you are, so your most powerful method of helping other people is to help yourself.

Chapter 8 - Gaining Control of Change

Prescott’s Pickle Principle

Cucumbers get more pickled than brine gets cucumbered.

Roamer’s Rule

Struggling to stay at home can make you a wanderer. Struggling to travel can make you a stay-at-home. The best way to lose something is to struggle to keep it.

Fast-Food Fallacy

No difference plus no difference plus no difference plus … eventually equals a clear difference.

Ford’s Fundamental Feedback

People can take any amount of water from any stream to use for any purpose desired.

People must return an equal amount of water upstream from the point from which they took it.

This works because you need the water to do work, and it’s inescapable because the output is the input.

Consultants seeking to preserve quality should first verify that the people responsible for quality are, in fact, downstream from that quality.

Clients realize that consultants are protected from the consequences of their own recommendations I’m overly sensitive to this

Weinberg Test

Would you place your own life in the hands of this system? Put your money where your mouth is

Chapter 9 - How to Make Changes Safely

Nothing new ever works, but there’s always hope that this time will be different.

Living with Failure

Accept that the new system will fail

The first line of defense is accepting that the new system will fail, possibly in several ways. When I find myself thinking, “I must have this change because I can’t afford failures,” then I’m in big trouble. If I can’t afford some failures, a new system won’t help. And neither will an old one.
How can this fail?

The next line of defense is to spend thirty seconds considering how this better way of using the system might fail. Applying The Rule of Three, I may not catch everything, but I always catch a few of the big ones that would otherwise get away.
Invent a backup

The next line of defense is to invent a backup. The alarm backup is simple: Provide another alarm. But that’s not the only possible backup. Some of the failures can actually be turned into backup methods, given a little twist.

Making change

Edsel Effect

Consultants and other fanatics with new ideas are dangerous to the established order, so why not put them all in one place, out of harm’s way. That approach guarantees that even if each of the individual ideas is terrific, the result will be a debacle

Time Bomb

Don’t do everything at once

Hire employees one a time

Hire them one at a time, allow a generous breaking-in period of lowered productivity, give them meaningful but not critical work to do, and provide backups for their inevitable failures.
Install one new unit at a time

Add one unit at a time, provide a generous breaking-in period of lowered productivity, use them for meaningful but not critical work, and provide backups for the inevitable failures.

When I recommend these strategies, the most frequent objection is that they “waste time.” People always seem to be in a hurry to get new things working. Now that’s only reasonable, for if they weren’t important, we wouldn’t be bothering with them in the first place.

Dealing with change

Rhonda’s Revelation

It may look like a crisis, but it’s only the end of an illusion
When change is inevitable, we struggle most to keep what we value most
When you create an illusion to soften change, the change becomes more likely and harder to take

Whenever my clients struggle in the face of change, I can use that struggle to discover what they value most.

All this resistance makes acceptance harder Hold up a mirror and don’t protect them from the truth

Chapter 10 - What to Do When They Resist

If things feel off - Learn to listen to the music - what do you do when people resist? What do they do?
Name the resistance - neutral - Crucial Conversations techniques ** Client is asking for endless details (stalling): “I believe we can make some progress on solving the problem without that information, so let’s try to work for a little bit with what we have”
Wait for a response

Waiting is hard for me because I get tense when the room grows silent. But so do the clients, and it’s their problem we’re working on, not mine. Eventually, I’ll be gone from the scene, leaving them to implement the changes, so I might as well let them practice taking responsibility. They always do, eventually, if I wait long enough.
Don’t rush to “solve” the resistance

Having identified the resistance, I’m often tempted to rush right in to try to set things right. Most people have theories about how to overcome resistance, but most of those theories won’t work for a consultant.

Resistance is the consultant’s label. To the client is is safety

Work together to name the gains and losses of an idea

When my client and I put a name and a clear description on some potential loss, the irrational fear evaporates. radiate assumptions
Finding unconscious sources of resistance ** How would you feel if we stretched out the schedule by six months? ** Would this plan seem more attractive if we chould somehow cut the cost by thirty percent? ** What if we could do it without bringing in additional people? ** Suppose we left the computer alone and just changed the process? ** What one thing could we change in this plan that would make the most difference to you? ** As we implement this plan, what is one thing ou want to be sure doesn’t change?
Get out of the way If you can’t win, stop resisting. You don’t have to have the brillaint solution. And sometimes the lack of opposition will cause the client’s resistance to collapse.

Chapter 11 - Marketing Your Services

Give away your best ideas

The Duncan Hines Difference

It tastes better when you add your own egg. The “egg” that makes the difference can be almost anything, as long as it’s something consumers contribute for themselves. Any time I’m overeager to sell myself, I try to have an answer to every question. Ignoring The Duncan Hines Difference, I stifle my clients’ attempts to participate in solving their own problems. If I fail, I look stupid, which is bad enough. If I succeed, I make the client feel stupid, which is far worse.

Laws of Marketing for Quality

A consultant can exist in one of two states: State I (idle) or State B (busy).
The best way to get clients is to have clients.
Spend at least one day a week getting exposure.
Clients are more important to you than you can ever be to them.
Never let a single client have more than one-fourth of your business.
The best marketing tool is a satisfied client.
Give away your best ideas.
It tastes better when you add your own egg.
Spend at least one-fourth of your time doing nothing.
Market for quality, not quantity

Chapter 12 - Putting a Price on Your Head

Knowing that price is more than money, you can increase your compensation in a variety of ways that may not increase the cost to your client. _ This seems interesting, not so much for compensation but to gain respect. What sort of things can we ask clients for? _

For instance, when clients want me to hold a certain date, I may ask for a nonrefundable fee to compensate for possible loss of business if they change their mind. Such a fee also forces clients to consider the contract more carefully, and to respect the value of my time.

Pricing is not about rationality but emotionality

Laws of Pricing:

Pricing has many functions, only one of which is the exchange of money.
The more they pay you, the more they love you. The less they pay you, the less they respect you.
The money is usually the smallest part of the price.
Pricing is not a zero-sum game.
If you need the money, don’t take the job.
If they don’t like your work, don’t take their money.
Money is more than price.
Price is not a thing; it’s a negotiated relationship.
Set the price so you won’t regret it either way.
All prices are ultimately based on feelings, both yours and theirs.

Book Club Chapters 11-12

On marketing

Being able to say no to our clients - don’t want to take every gig
Clients are more important to you than you are to them
Set them up to be successful, rather than solving all their problems for them - getting them in a place where they can do it and feel like they own it
Think more holistically - delighting clients, help them solve their own problems, leave a good taste in their mouths

Fix it themselves

It’s humble to let them fix it

Other compensation

Going to new places
Learning on the job
Paid to create open source

Client Respect

Higher cost = more effective = dont waste the consultants time = more respect
Put more on the line if you want change - Go to the gym more if I’m paying twice as much *

Chapter 13 - How to Be Trusted

Laws of Trust

Nobody but you cares about the reason you let another person down.
Trust takes years to win, moments to lose.
People don’t tell you when they stop trusting you
The trick of earning trust is to avoid all tricks

Getting hidden feelings out in the open is the most straightforward thing I can do to increase trust.
People are never liars - in their own eyes

sometimes make a mistake and fail to give needed information, but I recognize that it’s equally wrong to overload people so they miss the important information. This feels like something devs struggle with, we default to very precise and detailed, which allows us to ignore greater truths “Not a bug”
Always trust your client - and cut the cards
Never be dishonest, even if the client requests it

Having done one dishonest service, you’ll be expected to perform another the next time it’s required. she thought it would be all right because I had allowed two extras in the previous group. She didn’t remember my words, only my actions, which she took as implicit, blanket permission. Avoid just this one time, no one remembers your caveats just that you did it
Never promise anything
Always keep your promise
Get it in writing, but depend on trust.

By all means get it in writing, but don’t ever believe that a written contract will remove the need for trust between you and your client.
Remember the Golden Rule

Chapter 14 - Getting People to Follow Your Advice

Create conditions where your idea can grow.

Too often, consultants broadcast their ideas the moment they happen to get them, rather than the moment that’s right for germination.

Book Club, Chapters 13-14

Trust is existential and absolute. You own this and it’s yours.
I trusted his intention but not his ability. Trust breaks down and then you start making decisions based on that breach.
Setting boundaries and being the bad cop. Rather than saying yes and getting compromised.
Much like people won’t tell you when they stop trusting you (law 4). Same concept occurs with client delight, they won’t tell us if they’re unhappy, they’ll just stop wanting us and recommending us.
- How do we get this info
- Closeout form to get feedback
- NPS to get leading info
Bertrand Russell - Conquest of Happiness - seems interesting
The trick to earning trust is to avoid all tricks (4th law). But you’re still manipulating them to ask you to help the problem they won’t admit they have.
Everything is easier if you have aligned self-interest - you need to get to that point to be a good consultant