<p>Consulting is a profession, an art and a science, a process and an industry. All of these views are taken in this introductory textbook on fundamental concepts and tools which should generally be valid for all kinds of consulting activities, regardless whether they refer to internal or external consulting, strategy or IT consulting, process or content consulting and so on - the book should serve as a general introduction into principles of consulting. The goals of the book are to provide an overview of essential consulting topics, to introduce basic concepts and applicable methods for consultants and to prepare the reader for consulting work, either as a consultant or as a client. Hence, the target groups of this book are (potential) consultants who would like to reflect on their (future) work and extend their scope of thoughts and activities, (potential) consulting clients who would like to improve their (future) interaction with consultants and students of (my) introductory consulting courses who would like to work as or with consultants in their future career. <br /><br /> The book is written in a very concise style, is sometimes even sketchy and includes many figures. This should serve to the time constraints that the targeted readers of this book usually experience. It should also motivate the readers to consult the references and further readings, thus reinforcing the introductory nature of this book.</p>
