Episode 469 - Rebrand Right with Rachel Fairley & Sarah Robb
The Extraordinary Business Book Club
Release Date: 11/10/2025
Episode 487 - Measuring Inclusion with Paolo Gaudiano
The Extraordinary Business Book Club
'Inclusion is what you do and diversity is what you get.' Paolo Gaudiano's expertise ranges from rocket science through computational neuroscience to the really tough work: diversity, equity and inclusion in organizations. It's not got any easier over the last couple of years, but it's not got any less important, either. Paolo simply points to the evidence: focusing on improving workplace experiences for all employees leads not only to happier people but also to better business outcomes. His book - Measuring Inclusion: Higher profits and happier people, without guesswork or backlash - was...
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Episode 486 - Going All In at the London Book Fair
The Extraordinary Business Book Club
'If you're into it, read into it.' Fresh (sic) from the London Book Fair, this week's episode brings together perspectives from across the industry on the National Year of Reading campaign. Does reading even still matter? [Spoiler alert: it matters more than ever!] And how can we - as an industry and as individuals - encourage people to do more of it, given all the competing demands on their attention? As well as finding out what's happening in the industry, learn how you can join the movement to make reading a more intentional, joyful part of your everyday life, and I'm not just talking about...
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Episode 485 - People Glue with Helen Beedham
The Extraordinary Business Book Club
‘If you love somebody, set them free,’ advised Sting back in 1985. Little did he know he was setting out a core principle of leadership for the 21st century. It’s the big idea behind award-winning author Helen Beedham’s second book People Glue: Hold on to your best people by setting them free, which leans into that paradox with rather more by way of helpful detail than the Police front man ever provided. Through rigorous research and conversations with top CEOs she has identified four key freedoms that top talent most values, and also the anti-freedom forces that most frequently prompt...
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Episode 484 - Hope is a Strategy with Ian Pettigrew
The Extraordinary Business Book Club
‘We don’t understand much about hope, and yet people are crying out for it from leaders.’ If you ever hear someone dismissively say ‘hope is not a strategy’, be sure to introduce them to Ian Pettigrew, author of Hope is a Strategy. He will disabuse them of the idea that hope is simply wishful thinking and introduce them to a more muscular, active concept: hope that can be – MUST be – wielded with rigour and realism. In Ian’s book (quite literally), hope isn’t rainbows and unicorns; if it is, you don’t get away with that twice. Neither is it about ignoring reality until...
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Episode 483 - Relentless with Chris Lovett
The Extraordinary Business Book Club
'O nce you know that you can't do it all, it becomes a little bit easier.' Why do so many of us feel like we’re drowning in endless demands and to-do lists, at work and at home? Why, when we have so many smart productivity tools, is it so damn hard to get the important things done? If you relate, I’d like to introduce you to Chris Lovett. Because HE can introduce you to the genius idea of ‘strategic laziness’, and also explain how an author with no time can write a book perfectly designed to be read by people with no time. If you’re looking for the antidote to hustle culture, if...
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Episode 482 - Giving writers a voice with Kevin Anderson
The Extraordinary Business Book Club
‘The crux of our whole business is just really finding talented people to help others do what they can't do themselves as well.’ Kevin Anderson never planned to become CEO of one of the biggest editorial agencies in the world, but that’s where his knack for seeing opportunities in a fast-changing industry together with the guts to take them has landed him. In this episode, we talk about how publishing professionals can support authors at every stage – from clarifying the concept through writing the manuscript to securing the right deal (and we note that ‘the right deal’...
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Episode 481 - Social anxiety at work with Becky Westwood
The Extraordinary Business Book Club
"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 ...
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Episode 480 - Under pressure
The Extraordinary Business Book Club
“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...
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Episode 479 - Startup Different with David Sinkinson
The Extraordinary Business Book Club
' 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...
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Episode 478 - Bridging the Gap with Catherine Xiang
The Extraordinary Business Book Club
'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...
info_outline'If you haven't diagnosed where the problem lies in the first place, how do you know which lever to pull?'
If your idea of a rebrand is a new colour palette and an updated logo, think again.
Too often, superficial design changes don't just fail to deliver growth, they actively damage the brands they were intended to bolster. Rachel Fairley and Sarah Robb have helped some of the world's biggest companies refresh their brands from the inside out. They argue that rebranding is more a strategic undertaking than a design project, and it's definitely NOT something that should be driven by a new leader's ego.
This is a conversation for anyone invested in understanding the deeper mechanics of making a brand work over the long term, but also for anyone who wants to write a book that makes a real difference for its readers.