The Extraordinary Business Book Club

Alison Jones

Alison Jones, publisher and book coach, explores business books from both a writer's and a reader's perspective. Interviews with authors, publishers, business leaders, entrepreneurs, tech wizards, social media strategists, PR and marketing experts and others involved in helping businesses tell their story effectively.

  1. Episode 481 - Social anxiety at work with Becky Westwood

    5 DAYS AGO

    Episode 481 - Social anxiety at work with Becky Westwood

    "Love feedback, hate feedback, feel sort of somewhere in the middle, it still creates this sense of anxiety for everyone around." Organizational psychologist Becky Westwood is an expert in social anxiety at work. And that gives her a unique persepctive on the situation guaranteed to created anxiety in ALL of us: giving and receiving feedback.  In her book Can I Offer You Something? Expert Ways to Overcome the Horrors of Organizational Feedback, she invites us to reject the grim reality of most workplace feedback processes and return to the original sense of the word: nourishment. It's refreshingly human, and might just save you some lost sleep, not to mention relationships.  This book was named Short Business Book of the Year, and we talk about what length is the right length for a book, and how the answers come as you write, not before you start. So start.

    27 min
  2. Episode 480 - Under pressure

    2 FEB

    Episode 480 - Under pressure

    "We need to think carefully about whether it's going to be the kind of pressure that creates energy and joy and diamond-style transformation, or the sort that sucks the air out of the room and makes things buckle and break." Pressure is the new normal - in life, at work, in leadership, and also in writing. Other people put pressure on us, we put pressure on ourselves, we put pressure on other people... This Best Bits episode explores how we deal with that, and also whether it's possible to use it well, and to find some joy in it. (Spoiler alert: it is.) Hear from:  Henry King on becoming 'change native' David Sinkinson on how to enjoy pressure in the moment George Walkley on turning negative feedback into fuel for progress Dominic Colenso on the transformative power of career meltdown John Amaechi on curating your own power and the discipline of writing  Zoe Arden on the pressure to do justice to others in your writing Catherine Xiang on the pressures you don't even know are there.  Pressure is inevitable, how we respond is down to us.

    36 min
  3. Episode 479 - Startup Different with David Sinkinson

    26 JAN

    Episode 479 - Startup Different with David Sinkinson

    ' An author might be thinking, I can't wait till the book is out on a bookshelf... I would suggest focus on the experience of the writing and the pleasure of actually writing the book and the satisfaction you're going to get in doing that.' David Sinkinson, SaaS entrepreneur, podcaster, and co-author of Startup Different (all of this done in partnership with his brother, Chris) is a big fan of business books. On long commute after long commute they taught him pretty much everything he needed to know to start and succeed with his own business, and one of the reasons he wrote his own book was a desire to pay that back.  One of the ways he does that is by rejecting the easy myths: he's open about the doubt, the missteps and the WFIO moments (you'll have to listen) along the way, and along with the practical wisdom addresses the emotional weight of building a business, what he describes as 'baked-in empathy'. Having read a lot of business books is a great start when you're writing a business book, but nothing is ever going to make this easy. David has some great advice for anyone taking the job on (especially in partnership with a fellow author), and draws out the parallel with entrepreneurship: it's hard, you're constantly doubting yourself, but if you can let yourself appreciate the process while you're in it rather than obsessing about the outcome, you might just find it's one of the most grittily joyful experiences of your life.

    36 min
  4. Episode 478 - Bridging the Gap with Catherine Xiang

    19 JAN

    Episode 478 - Bridging the Gap with Catherine Xiang

    'I think that flow is quite important. It's almost like a cultural logic.' Intercultural communication is always complex, but for Western leaders seeking to build relationships as a way in to the mighty Chinese market, it's particularly tricky. From seating plans to changing job titles to how to ask for a solution to a problem, there are very different assumptions and unspoken rules. Which is why Catherine Xiang,  UK Director for LSE's Confucius Institute for Business, wrote Bridging the Gap:  An introduction to intercultural communication with China, named Specialist Business Book of the Year. It's tricky enough when everyone is speaking English, but if you're learning Mandarin, it gets even trickier: get the stress on a word wrong and you could easily proposition someone by mistake! For writers with an eye to the global market, there's a deeper significance too: not only language and metaphor but even the way the book opens or an argument is structured can embody a particular cultural bias.  Practical strategies and a thoughtful perspective on how to build genuine, effective cross-cultural relationships, at the meeting table and on the page.

    35 min
  5. Episode 477 - Autonomous with Henry King

    12 JAN

    Episode 477 - Autonomous with Henry King

    'Our businesses have been designed for us by us, for humans by humans, and that's what the big change is now.' What's the real promise and transformative power of AI in business? In their new book Autonomous:  Why the fittest businesses embrace AI-first strategies in digital labor, Henry King and his co-author  Vala Afshar make the case that organizational design will be transformed by agentic AI, with intelligent agents and humans collaborating seamlessly. It's an empowering vision: just as autonomous vehicles will democratize and expand humans' ability to move around, they argue that AI can augment and democratize our creativity and effectiveness. And Henry talks me through their ecosystem of iterative idea development, including the use of AI to challenge and expand those ideas, and offers super-practical advice for other writers in this space. If you're here for the intersection of cutting-edge technology, business strategy, the future of work and writing, this episode is very much here for you.

    38 min
  6. Episode 476 - A New Year invitation: explore more

    5 JAN

    Episode 476 - A New Year invitation: explore more

    'You have a choice about how you put content out into the world in 2026, and that choice isn't just a business choice, it's about who you are and what's important to you.' It's the time of year when we traditionally think about the changes we want to make in our lives to help us become the people we want to be. In 2026, I think we also need to think about what we want to KEEP doing for ourselves, even though AI tools might be able to do those things more quickly and easily.  Writing is a great example. From exploratory writing - early-stage, messy, private thinking-onto-the-page - to social media posts to writing a book, embracing the messiness and the hard yards is what will set you apart, personally and professionally.  Get out of your comfort zone and lean into writing that sparks genuine connection, builds trust and results in words worth reading. Because if you delegate your writing now, you're delegating you might just find you're delegating your thinking in the future.

    13 min
  7. Episode 475 - A Christmas pause

    22/12/2025

    Episode 475 - A Christmas pause

    'Christmas is so many things, but it is also quite simply a moment of pause between the year that's ending and the year ahead. And as every writer knows, pauses can be extraordinarily powerful.' It may be the most wonderful time of the year, but Christmas is also very often a hot mess of busy-ness, stress and tricky relationships. So in these few days as the excitement/expectations build, here's an invitation to press pause, just for a few minutes, and try something a little different.  Because Christmas - together with the odd days of Twixmas that follow ahead of the new year - is a great opportunity to press pause just for a few minutes. And sometimes, that the gift we REALLY needed.

    22 min
  8. Episode 474 - It's Not Magic with John Amaechi

    15/12/2025

    Episode 474 - It's Not Magic with John Amaechi

    'Almost every experience that I have is a story that I'm going to tell.' We often think of great leadership as 'magic,' but the truth is that's a convenient excuse. Great leaders aren't born that way - they become great by leaning in to what John Amaechi describes as ' a very boring set of skills and a huge amount of personal effort'. John's own background in the NBA showed him that the most extraordinary athletic achievements are the result of dull, consistent, mundane practice. That makes greatness accessible - though not necessarily easy - for anyone who chooses it. One of the most fundamental skills of leadership is storytelling, and John is a master at turning the raw material of daily experience into stories that connect, challenge and inspire. He has a model of storytelling that I guarantee you'll never forget. And why turn stories into books? Because books force the 'so what?' question. And that changes everything.

    33 min
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4.8
out of 5
45 Ratings

About

Alison Jones, publisher and book coach, explores business books from both a writer's and a reader's perspective. Interviews with authors, publishers, business leaders, entrepreneurs, tech wizards, social media strategists, PR and marketing experts and others involved in helping businesses tell their story effectively.

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