Welcome to the Inner Circle, where I share what’s going on behind the scenes as I write my book, Outsized Leadership.
This is where I’ll tell you how the book is actually going. What I’m working on, what I’ve changed my mind about, and the parts that aren’t working yet. Roughly once a week. Every so often I’ll ask you something, so I can incorporate your thoughts and experience into the process.
I thought I would start with how this book came about, and how the book I’m writing isn’t the book I set out to write.
What I meant to write
I wanted to write a personal development book. Broad, general readership, the sort of thing that could in theory be picked up by anybody.
I’d been thinking about the idea for a couple of years without doing much about it, inspired by the huge success of people like James Clear with Atomic Habits. So in April this year I entered a 10-day Book Proposal Challenge, designed specifically for non-fiction books, to see if that would kick-start me.
I ended up winning the challenge, and the publishing contract that came with it, but not with the book I had planned.
The challenge makes you build the proposal properly. Who it’s written for, other books it’s competing with, how big that market actually is, why you’re the person to write it, and how you’d get people to buy it. Ten days of the questions I’d been quite happily avoiding.
What became obvious
Somewhere around day three it was pretty clear I was thinking about writing the wrong book.
Every honest answer I gave pointed me in a narrower direction. My 22 years at KPMG, including seven years as a partner. My COO and Head of People experience. The clients I work with now. The programmes I run, the executive coaching I do. My existing writing in the form of my weekly newsletter, and LinkedIn and YouTube content. The people who read my writing and, more to the point, the people who buy my services.
All of it was centred on how to make mid- to senior-level leadership easier and more impactful, particularly inside large and complicated organisations. I had much less authority to write a broad personal development book, despite having been a big follower of personal development since I first picked up Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People when I was 15.
So I stopped, and started again.
Where it went from there
It turned out I already had most of the raw material, just scattered across programmes, client work and about three years of writing. What I hadn’t done until the book proposal challenge was to put it all together.
That’s what the rest of the challenge became, at least from the perspective of what the book would be about. (Which is only a small part of a book proposal – more on that in a later newsletter).
By the end of the ten days I had the whole thing mapped out. 26 chapters, the full contents page, and a proposal I really believed in and that felt authentically mine.
So, that’s how it all got started. I’ll share more about what’s actually in the book next week.
Before then, I’d love to ask you one question:
What’s one thing about leading in your role that’s got harder over the last few years?
A sentence is plenty, but feel free to share more if you like. Your answers will shape what goes into the book, which is a big part of why you’re here. Just hit reply and let me know.
Thanks for being on this journey with me, I appreciate your support.
Mostyn
P.S. If you know someone who’d find this interesting, please do forward it on. They can sign up here.