Consulting 101
Sauder’s book does a modest thing on purpose: it writes down the hundred and one small professional behaviors that consulting firms assume you know and never teach — how to behave in a client’s office, what to put in a status report, when to escalate, how to bill time without flinching. Almost nothing in it will surprise anyone with two years of engagements behind them, which is exactly why it belongs on the shelf: for the person with zero years, it compresses the most avoidable mistakes into a weekend read.
The ideas that stick
- You are always on stageAt the client site there is no backstage; the hallway comment travels faster than the deliverable.
- The status report is a trust instrumentNot paperwork — the weekly proof that nothing is being hidden. Bad news ages terribly.
- Manage the client's expectations, then your workSurprises, not defects, are what get consultants rolled off.
- Know the meter is runningBilling discipline — honest hours, visible value — is presented as ethics, not administration, and that framing is right.
Where it creaks
It’s a listicle at book length; the tips are numbered, brief, and uneven, and the 2010s-era texture (conference bridges, business casual) shows its age at the edges. There is no theory here to disagree with — which also means nothing to grow on. It’s the safety briefing of this shelf: necessary once, dull thereafter. Pair it with Block early — Sauder covers how to behave on the engagement, Block covers what the engagement is.
Situational — the right book for one specific reader at one specific moment, and honestly skippable for everyone else.
Read it if
- You start your first consulting job within the next ninety days
- Nobody has told you what a status report is actually for
- You lead juniors and want a cheap, sane onboarding text to hand them
Skip it if
- You have two or more years on client sites — you've already learned this the slow way
- You're expecting strategy or craft; this is deliberately the etiquette layer