Short Form vs Long From Reach and Impact | Henry Mintzberg | 509

If fewer people are buying and reading books, why should a thought leader write one? Today we delve into the world of authorship and publishing with Henry Mintzberg. Henry is a Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University and the author of more than 20 books including Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development and Simply Managing: What Managers Do - and Can Do Better. Our conversation starts by discussing where you find the value in writing a book. Whether it be the intrinsic value of codifying your thought leadership or the extrinsic value of higher engagement and client acquisition. Henry shares with us his compulsion to write books, regardless of if they succeed or not. He discusses how a few newer books have not done as well as expected and how difficult topics like climate change might play a part in those results. When publishing about important, but hard topics that many would rather not think about how do you get your message out?  Henry talks about expanding into new modalities to capture the audience’s attention and how hard it is to get uninterrupted attention for your topic.  He explains how interruption is just one of the reasons a book can have a bigger impact than articles, even if the book reaches only a fraction of the audience a short-form piece might. Three Key Takeaways: ·         Reaching ten thousand people with a book can be far more influential than reaching one hundred thousand people with an article. ·         A publication date is not a measurement of value.  Many books continue to be relevant years after their publication. ·         Do what is in your heart.  Don't let anyone talk you into something else because you will end up doing it badly.