Top Consulting books recommended by experts

At MentorCruise, we are all about making the most out of the experience of others. As part of that, we've connected and asked dozens of experts and professionals about their favourite Consulting books – and here are the answers.

Table of Contents

Fundamentals of Consulting

Understanding the concepts of Consulting starts with understanding the fundamentals. On your way to mastery, it's crucial for you to understand how certain concepts were derived, and why things work like they do. Starting with these resources is the best way to do so.

The Back of the Napkin

"There is no more powerful way to prove that we know something well than to draw a simple picture of it. And there is no more powerful way to see hidden solutions than to pick up a pen and draw out the pieces of our problem." So writes Dan Roam in The Back of the Napkin, the international bestseller that proves that a simple drawing on a humble napkin can be more powerful than the slickest Pow…

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The McKinsey way

"If more business books were as useful, concise, and just plain fun to read as THE MCKINSEY WAY, the business world would be a better place." --Julie Bick, best-selling author of ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW IN BUSINESS I LEARNED AT MICROSOFT. "Enlivened by witty anecdotes, THE MCKINSEY WAY contains valuable lessons on widely diverse topics such as marketing, interviewing, team-building, and brai…

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The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World

Remarkably, fifty years ago that's the way it was. Businesses made plans, certainly, but without understanding the underlying dynamics of competition, costs, and customers. It was like trying to design a large-scale engineering project without knowing the laws of physics. But in the 1960s, four mavericks and their posses instigated a profound shift in thinking that turbocharged business as nev…

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The McKinsey mind

McKinsey & Company is the most respected and most secretive consulting firm in the world, and business readers just can't seem to get enough of all things McKinsey. Now, hot on the heels of his acclaimed international bestseller The McKinsey Way, Ethan Rasiel brings readers a powerful new guide to putting McKinsey concepts and skills into action

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The McKinsey Engagement: A Powerful Toolkit For More Efficient and Effective Team Problem Solving

The third volume in the internationally bestselling McKinsey Trilogy, The McKinsey Engagement is an action guide to realizing the consistently high level of business solutions achieved by the experts at the world’s most respected consultingfirms. Former consultant Dr. Paul Friga distills the guiding principles first presented in the bestselling The McKinsey Way and the tested-in-the-trenches m…

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HBR's 10 Must Reads: The Essentials

Change is the one constant in business, and we must adapt or face obsolescence. Yet certain challenges never go away. That's what makes this book "must read." These are the 10 seminal articles by management's most influential experts, on topics of perennial concern to ambitious managers and leaders hungry for inspiration--and ready to run with big ideas to accelerate their own and their compan…

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Additional Consulting Reading

These books are not required for you to learn Consulting, but they are highly recommended for you to deepen your knowledge.

The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking

How many times have you written an email at work, read it back and found that it didn't make as much sense as you'd hoped? or worse, someone else has told you that they can't follow it. The Pyramid Principle will show you how to communicate your ideas clearly and succinctly.Barbara Minto reveals that the mind automatically sorts information into distinctive pyramidal groupings. However, if any…

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The Consulting Bible: How to Launch and Grow a Seven-Figure Consulting Business

The second edition of The Consulting Bible: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Expand a Seven-Figure Consulting Practice remains the most comprehensive and practical guide to the consulting profession, from launch to high growth, from marketing to implementation. Legendary consultant, speaker, and bestselling author Alan Weiss shows you how to create an independent or boutique consultin…

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Specializations and Deeper Consulting Knowledge

You've got your basics in order – time to move on to some advanced and specialized concepts. Consulting is evolving every day, these books can help you master it.

Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used

This Third Edition to Peter Block's Flawless Consulting addresses business changes and new challenges since the second edition was written ten years ago. It tackles the challenges next generation consultants face, including more guidance on how to ask better questions, dealing with difficult clients, working in an increasingly virtual world, how to cope with complexities in international consu…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

This list is curated by MentorCruise and can include Amazon affiliate links. Have any other suggestions? Add here.

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