Jim McCann – författare

Jim McCann has spent his career talking. For McCann, the founder and CEO of the world’s leading florist, 1-800-Flowers.com, being open and ready to speak to a variety of audiences is his most pow­erful leadership tool.

In Talk Is (Not!) Cheap, McCann illustrates how the art of conversation leadership—the process he developed to engage others and create forward momentum in the workplace—can be used to inspire, innovate, and win. Using a blend of how-to and insightful personal stories, this book argues that the gift of gab may just be the most critical (and undervalued) skill set in today’s workplace.

Lessons include how to overcome hesitation when diving into conversation with strangers and knowing when to just “shut up and listen!” McCann’s practical advice comes from twenty years of experience as the voice of small busi­ness, and from meeting and exchanging ideas with other influential business leaders around the world.

Whether you’re interacting with customers, pitching new business to a client, or seeking to be heard within your own company, Talk Is (Not!) Cheap will strategically transform the way you communicate and listen. With McCann as your guide, this important book will teach you how the art of conversation leadership can improve and joyously change your life.

In 1981 ten prisoners died on hunger strike in a jail, ten miles west of Belfast. First called Long Kesh during internment (1971-1971), then the Maze Prison, then the H-Blocks, it was rarely out of the national and international news forty years ago, especially when one of the prisoners, Bobby Sands, was elected as an MP before he died after sixty-six days without food.

Jim (Jaz) McCann was an eyewitness to these events. Arrested at twenty after attempting to kill a police officer, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He and hundreds of others refused to wear a prison uniform, protested that they were political prisoners, and were locked in their cells, where they wore only a blanket, for over four years in grim conditions.

Jaz McCann knew several of the hunger strikers and in this remarkable testimony he recalls his life in the IRA, the deprivation of seventeen years behind bars, his friends and comrades, including several of the hunger strikers, his participation in the mass prison breakout in 1983, and the electoral rise of Sinn Féin following these events which had a profound effect on the subsequent political complexion of Ireland.

It is an immensely honest and raw account, full of pathos and dark humour, from a former combatant and is an important contribution to Troubles’ literature.