‘The basic failure of strategy work is a failure to define the challenge that you’re trying to meet.’ Richard Rumelt is one of the world’s leading authorities on strategy. He’s also a keen rock-climber, and it was climbing that gave him the inspiration for his new book: The Crux. In…
‘I delighted in writing it. That doesn’t mean I found it easy.’ Time management has been seen as an issue for individuals for too long: Helen Beedham argues that the real issue is systemic. The way that organisations manage and value time, she says, is broken. And it’s not just…
“We knew that a handbook had to be incredibly practical… we tried to help people to really work through the stages that you need to think about.” There could hardly be a more important topic for businesses to engage with today than sustainability, and yet most businesses are still at…
‘It starts off as me working out what I think, and then it becomes something I’m going to share with other people… The point at which I allow myself to start imagining a reader is really important.’ Writing isn’t just a tool for communication, and your book isn’t just a…
They told Christian Busch that it would be ‘academic suicide’ to do his PhD on the science of luck. But it turns out that luck isn’t a random force at all: the results may be unpredictable, but the process of becoming luckier is a simple matter of creating more connections…
‘We’re designed as cyclical creatures, from the most basic microcycle of breathing in and out to the annual cycle of the seasons, and if the New Year to come is our time for resolutions and purposeful action, the days before it, these Twixtmas days, are a time for gathering our…
What DO commissioning editors look for in business book proposals? Eloise Cook is the publisher responsible for Pearson’s business list, and in this conversation she reveals what makes a proposal worth pursuing (and also what makes her quietly file it under B for Bin). We also talk about the future…
‘Why would you write 28 books? To get good at some of the stuff that you’re writing about.’ As well as writing those 28 books, Jeremy Kourdi has experience of senior leadership at The Economist, Duke University and the CMI. It’s fair to say he has an all-round perspective on…
We talk a lot on this show about the grind of writing business books, and indeed of business in general, but there’s a lot of joy to be found in the process too. This Best Bits episode celebrates all those moments, from the creative peace of the early morning start…
‘We wanted to explore how books, which seem to be a real missing link in the corporate world, could be brought in and really used to enhance people’s development… If I could step away from everything and invest in myself, what does that look like?’ If there’s one experience common…
