How CEO James Daunt helps Barnes & Noble come back to life | Fixable

Video Description

The resurrection of Barnes & Noble is one of the most remarkable turnaround stories of the modern business era. Chief revival architect and CEO James Daunt joins Anne and Frances to discuss the unconventional leadership strategies that helped him navigate through the pandemic and keep bookstores alive in the age of Amazon and e-books. They explore James’s non-hierarchical approach to team building, dive into the challenges he faced on his mission to revitalize the company, and discover the principle at the heart of his strategy: being nice. This is an episode of TED's Fixable podcast. Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://link.mgln.ai/M3ovC5 For the full text transcript, visit ted.com/podcasts/fixable-transcripts Subscribe to TED Instagram: @ted YouTube: @TED TikTok: @tedtoks LinkedIn: @ted-conferences Website: ted.com Podcasts: ted.com/podcasts Follow Anne and Frances at Instagram: @annemorriss and @francesxfrei https://anneandfrances.com/ The TED Audio Collective is a collection of podcasts for the curious. The TED Audio Collective videos may be used for non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons License, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives (or the CC BY – NC – ND 4.0 International) and in accordance with our TED Talks Usage Policy (https://www.ted.com/about/our-organiz...). For more information on using TED for commercial purposes (e.g. employee learning, in a film or online course), please submit a Media Request at https://media-requests.ted.com. 00:00 Intro 01:23 From banking to bookstores 03:49 Turning Waterstones around 05:45 Challenging hierarchy 07:54 The Barnes & Noble story 10:03 Surviving the pandemic 12:12 Rearranging stores 14:02 Important decisions 19:20 Unconventional leadership 22:22 The importance of writing 23:34 Amazon vs. Barnes & Noble 25:47 BookTok 27:26 The future of books 32:02 Reinventing an organization