Book speedwriting?

I asked followers on LinkedIn how they would use 4 months of sabbatical credits like I have accumulated over two decades at Deal Architect. I got plenty of suggestions including this from Andre Blumberg, CIO at Hong Kong based CLP who I have profiled in earlier books

“Four months? You’d write two books, easily.”

Andre is an ultra-marathoner so I am flattered by his standard of speed, but my style of book writing depends on a large number of conversations with executives. I have said often if my voice is more than 10% of a book, I have failed. My blogs, Instagram and other social media is where I share plenty of my voice. In our advisory work, clients get plenty of my voice. But books that I help write are for story telling by innovative executives. And arranging such conversations takes plenty of time.

But surely, having 7 earlier books helps shorten writing time? It does, up to a point.

I recently shared details of two books my team has helped with in the last 18 months – Moment of Service by Darren Roos, CEO of IFS and Business as Unusual by Thomas Saueressig and Peter Maier of SAP.

Moment of Service involved about 50 conversations with IFS, customer and partner executives resulting in 1,000 pages of transcripts, slides and research material and took my team about 4 months. We delivered a draft of 300 pages. The IFS team added their voice and trimmed that total content down to  a very readable 200 pages.

Business as Unusual involved about 150 conversations resulting in 2,500 pages of transcripts and other materials and we delivered a first draft of 400 pages. Took us roughly 6 months. SAP and Rheinwerk Publishing added material, trimmed other and ended up with a 300-page book dripping with innovation stories.

So could we have done either much quicker?

Firstly, it absolutely helps to start with a premise and a pool of potential interviewees. Darren Roos had a pretty crisp definition of the Moment of Service theme. IFS had gone through a branding exercise a few months earlier. Most of his customers and partners were comfortable with the concept. Still the logistics of identifying who to interview, arranging the recordings , transcribing them, getting approvals is a labor-intensive process.

The SAP book subject matter was much more complex. It covers 8 “megatrends”  - Resilient supply networks, Future of capital and risk, Integrated mobility, Everything-as-a-service, Sustainable energy, Lifelong health, New customer pathways and Circular economy. We were looking for very innovative customers who were pushing the boundaries of low-carbon energy, breakthrough medicine, new financial instruments, differentiated store experiences, new business models etc. We were looking to interview a broad range of specialty research firms and partners beyond SIs. We ended up with  strategy firms, Bain and Co and Accenture Strategy,  the mobility services firm, MHP which is part of Volkswagen, the industrial robotics firm, Beckhoff, the Advanced Services Group at Aston U and the energy research firm, Det Norske Veritas among others. Frankly, without SAP’s amazing industry and global reach we would have not got that variety with other vendors even if had taken 3x the time.  

But hasn’t technology and automation helped make the process speedier? Absolutely, in the data collection process. No way could I have traveled to 35 countries to meet with interviewees especially with pandemic travel restrictions. Zoom and Teams were a massive help. So was being able to listen to the digital files of interviews as if they were podcasts on my walks and via Bluetooth in the car. Helped me decide what to excerpt from each.

Tech has also helped make easier the graphics that IFS and SAP developed for their books. Printing and Distribution has similarly become more efficient. SAP Press is offering the Business as Unusual book through many more booksellers around the world and in more eBook formats

Given all the advances in AI, voice recognition and transcription technology has surprisingly not improved much. We have so many accents, acronyms and jargon in tech world that machines just cannot keep up with Tina, who has transcribed most of my book interviews for the last 5 years. And the SAP book in particular has whole bunch of chemistry, geology. medicine, automotive, banking and other lingo in addition.

Same thing with editing. I like to cite the experience from the Godfather movie. Coppola shot 90 hours of film and delivered a 2-hour version to the studio. The studio asked him for more and the released version was about 3 hours long – still less than 5% of what was filmed! Two of the 6 editors won Oscars for their work. 50 years later, I find editing is still an art form. Good editors are worth their weight in gold.

So 2 books in 4 months? Sorry Andre, like I told you if I was to use 4 months of sabbatical time to write another book, it would be fiction. About an analyst who is in the middle of international intrigue and chaos and saves the world. Jack Ryan if he had stayed an analyst.

If the Mrs. would allow me to spend 4 months looking like this nerd 😊