‘Seeing somebody need you, seeing somebody in pain, is not necessarily traumatizing: not being able to help them is a moral injury that is traumatizing. So I also wanted to challenge ideas of what hurts.’ Most of us run away from disaster. Similarly, we try to avoid painful emotions. For…
‘Slow journalism for us was just a way of encapsulating that feeling that when you take your time, you can do something more quality.’ In a media landscape dominated by the white-hot, reactive world of social media and rolling news, it can be hard to keep a sense of perspective.…
‘Accountability is… probably the most empowering concept you have to live the life you want to live, when you understand it.’ When we speak about accountability in business, very often the context is negative. It’s about consequences and blame. But if we see accountability as ownership, it’s a radically different,…
‘[Writing] is a craft. It’s no different to knitting or painting by numbers or whatever, you just have to learn the craft. It might take practice and it might take learning a few rules, but, you know, they’re not that scary.’ For Robert Kelsey, writing is an essential business skill…
Back in episode 286, I set out a list of things that editors hate and how to avoid them. Apparently that was very helpful, but lots of people have suggested that I needed to do a more positively focused companion episode, so here it is: what makes editors’ hearts sing?…
What’s the magic by which the Word document you’ve been working on for so many weeks and months is transformed into a book? Jo Bottrill, head of Newgen UK, is a book production expert who’s worked with thousands of authors to perform exactly that magic, and in this conversation he…
‘I came to writing really late. I was told I couldn’t write… I had no first degree. I came to learning at 40 plus with an idea that I couldn’t write, but I still loved learning. So it’s been a total joy. It’s like, wow, you can do that too,…
When you’re writing a business book – or indeed any business writing – WHAT you’re saying is the most important thing, of course. But HOW you say it can make all the difference as to how people read it. I asked a group of editors what really pushed their buttons,…
For most of the guests on this show, writing a business book is part of building a personal and professional brand. This week I talk to someone who has no interest in having his name on the book he’s written: he just wants to get the concept out there. When…
‘By the way, do you have a strategy for you? Because if you don’t, you should.’ That throwaway line in a top-level strategic meeting was a game-changer for Kathryn Bishop. As a high-flying professional and academic, she had an astonishing array of strategic models at her disposal for evaluating options…
