‘The problem that you have here, it’s not a writing problem. It’s a thinking problem.’ When Adrian Hornsby faced the challenge of how to convey complex business information in a way that resonated with readers, he drew on his background in writing fiction for theatre to bring dense business concepts…
“When we’re talking about Do Deal, we’re really talking about the verb of how you deal with people… as an ongoing kind of living thing.” Richard Hoare didn’t set out to become an expert on negotiation. In fact his first attempt at negotiation, when he was offered a poorly paid…
‘I’m not going to live to be 10,000 years old, so I’d rather just write material that someone’s actually going to use. So top-down writing works for me because it’s a very economical way to write.” Dr Rachel Lawes is the world’s leading expert in semiotics and its application in…
“What’s important about creativity is not novelty, but difference. I want something different from what is happening now, and difference is much easier to discover because difference means different from now.” There’s a lot of mystique around creativity, but for practical people – people like scientists and engineers – being…
‘It’s not very difficult to write a book, but you need to start writing… I put my content on LinkedIn, for example, and this is where you then get feedback and it just gets you into this routine of writing. And you can then very quickly build up a really…
‘I decided not to do research, then write, then polish, but to have a big jigsaw approach, and do each day what I felt like doing. So if I felt like doing a bit of research, I would, if I felt actually I’ve got some stuff in my mind. I…
I set myself a tough challenge for 2019: read 100 business books in the year. It was a close thing, but I hit my target (if we allow manuscripts as well as published books, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t). You can see the full list here, but in…
Writing a book is hard work. One of the best things about this podcast is that so many guests reveal the brilliant, extraordinary, sometimes hilarious strategies that got them through the hard yards of planning and writing and out the other side. This is one of those podcasts. From smart…
At the start of 2019 I set myself the ambitious target of reading 100 business books in the year. Now we are 78% of the way through the year, and I am 60% through my list. So really, who am I to be offering reading tips? But the fact remains…
‘It sometimes feels like I get to see every business book published.’ As managing editor and business book reviewer for the Financial Times, not to mention the coordinator of the annual FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year award, Andrew Hill reads probably more business books than anyone else on the…
