The Extraordinary Business Book Club

"When you're trying to create something, when you're trying to change something, when you're trying to think differently about something, writing for me is the way that you unravel the spaghetti... you end up with some really clear, precise thinking that... moves the thing forward." As Chief Envisioning Officer at Microsoft (yes, really) and now as a consultant Dave Coplin sees his role is as a 'pragmatic optimist', helping companies reimagine themselves with the help of technology. The Covid pandemic has accelerated this process, and one of its legacies will be a willingness to break from outdated processes and embrace new possibilities. He's also pragmatic when it comes to writing, recognising that it's a low-tech but incredibly powerful thinking tool in the digital age. And that, as he says, when you put words together in the right way - on the stage or on the page - they make things possible. Honest, insightful and very, very funny.

So many people [are] skimming the surface of what they can be and do in the world. And I was too. So often in life and at work it can feel as if we're surrounded by people who are disengaged and disconnected, half asleep and half alive. Sometimes, if we're honest, we ARE those people. Dr Alise Cortez has spent years studying engagement - or the lack of it - and has dedicated herself to helping people realise the brutal truth: this is your one precious life, and it's up to you to make something of it. In this conversation we talk about why 'passion' and 'purpose' have become such problematic words, the importance of enthusiasm and vulnerability, why talking is such a valuable tool for writing, and why writing is an infallible guide to show you what you don't know. Wake up and be inspired.

'A town isn't a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it's got a bookstore, it knows it's not foolin' a soul.' - Neil Gaiman, American Gods For most booklovers, bookshops - especially independent bookshops, that care about their books and their readers, stock just what you didn't know you wanted, and provide recommendations for your Next Big Read - are places of pilgrimage. Yet they're under threat like never before, closed in the face of COVID and battling the might of Amazon, with its staggering inventory, low prices and seductively easy ordering. Faced with the bleak vision of the end of bookshops on the high street, publisher Andy Hunter and the American Booksellers Association decided to put up a fight. They created bookshop.org, a B-Corp dedicated to matching Amazon's logistical might but with a key difference: their profits would go not into one man's already over-full pockets but be shared with the wider book ecosystem, and especially independent bookstores. Bookshop.org is now in the UK, and in this conversation I talk to Jasper Sutcliffe (formerly at Foyles) about how it works, why it matters, and how to make the most of it as an author as well as a reader.

'With a book you're not just paying for the pages you read, you're paying for someone to make the rest of the world shut up for a minute while you can concentrate.' Uri Bram knows a thing or two about the value of content and attention. He curates the internet, after all, as the publisher of The Browser and The Listener ('the absolute dream job'). He's also the author of Thinking Statistically, a self-published surprise bestseller (and noone was more surprised than Uri...) In this conversation we discuss why statistical literacy matters more than ever, why less is more valuable than more, and why books keep us sane in a world of infinite distraction. Shut up, world: I'm reading.

'If you are in a position of real power and authority, it's the dialogue with yourself that defines your capacity to run an organization.' Dr Pippa Malmgren - economist, entrepreneur, innovator and advisor - returns to the podcast on the publication of The Infinite Leader to talk about how leadership is evolving, and about how her own and her writing partner Chris Lewis's approach to writing has evolved too. This is a masterclass in reader-centred writing, in fusing creative, philosophical thinking with practical application, and in ego-free collaboration.

In some ways every week on the Extraordinary Business Book Club we're talking about the results of a book-writing experiment - and many books are themselves the results of fascinating experiments in business and life. In this Best Bits episode we don our white coats and safety glasses and head fearlessly into the laboratory to watch the magic happen in the company of some of our most recent researchers... Anne Janzer on how her marketing career proved the lab in which she refined her writing experiments Zoë Routh on starting early and the endocrinology of writing in flow Rob Hatch on the research findings of a long-term newsletter experiment Elvin Turner on introducing user experience research into writing for explosive results Cath Bishop on narrative fusion - bringing together different strands of experience in the white-hot heat of the writing lab Rita Clifton on distilling ideas, the Wall of Content and the application of the seat of the pants to the chair Gayle Mann on the importance of finding your own best way to conduct your writing experiment Shuhrat Ashurov on the alchemy of stories and a lifetime of experimenting with storytelling.

Cath Bishop has performed at the highest standard in three very different fields: sport, international negotiation, and business coaching. An Olympic medallist and world champion herself, she has seen first hand the intense highs and lows of competition - how it serves us as humans, and how it doesn't. We are as a culture obsessed with winning. The word has seeped through our language across sport, politics, business, education... we accept without question that to come first, to beat the competition, is the outcome we celebrate. It's not working out too well for us, even for the winners themselves. In The Long Win, Cath explores a different way of looking at success: how could we reimagine 'winning' to work better for us as people, as a society, and as inhabitants of the planet? Fascinating insights too into the hard work of shaping such a complex, wide-ranging argument, and tips on keeping your focus as you write.

"We are bombarded every single day by buzzes and dings and notifications... I wanted to help people find some simple ways to reclaim the power of their decisions instead of reacting all the time, to take a breath or to set up some simple rules and systems that they could use to make better decisions for their life, for their business." Rob Hatch had been training to write a book for nine years without knowing it, as he built up not only a loyal readership for his weekly newsletter (all now poised to buy his book on launch day) but also his own writing practice. In this conversation we talk about making technology work for us rather than against us, finding your people, seeking out critical feedback and some super-practical tips to help you regain control of your most precious resource of all - your attention.

"Some days it feels like an emotional connection with the people who need to hear it. And those are good article days... it's a great pleasure when people write back saying, Oh, that just hit the mark for me today. That was exactly what I needed to hear. Did you write it just for me? And I'm like, No, I wrote it for me, but I'm glad it helps you." Zoë Routh has been writing all her life, but she still wrestles with imposter syndrome, titles, and days when it just feels like a chore. Luckily for us, she's learned a lot of really useful stuff about how to deal with all of that, and she shares it generously in this week's conversation, along with some insights on dealing with difficult people and what happens when we get outdoors.

The best business books include powerful stories that get across key points in a memorable, engaging way. What if we could make those stories accessible to more people, more easily? That's the vision that prompted Shuhrat Ashurov to create Storypack, a microlearning app that gives people in business access to a library of stories from business books and also encourages them to add their own. Shuhrat talks about how he personally recognised the power of story-based learning, the difficulty of getting people on board in the early stages, and the way he and the team have worked with authors to extract the various types of stories in their book from the context of the book so that they can stand alone and reach more people, more easily. Whatever the future for business books, this is surely a part of it.