For Sarah Gillard, Director of Insight and Assurance at the John Lewis Partnership, to understand John Lewis, you have to go back to its founder, Spedan Lewis and why he created the company as it is. Learn more in this interview with Sarah.

Appraisals don’t really work, argues Sophie Bryan. “Working in HR you get lots of negative feedback. People complain that they don’t agree with their manager’s rating. They especially resent getting feedback on something that happened long ago, that they are now powerless to correct.”

That was the challenge that Donna Reeves explored with two store managers when she was Director of Group Internal Communications and Engagement Development at Kingfisher PLC. Read Henry’s interview with Donna to learn more.

What would life be like if work was so engaging that it didn’t feel like work? Henry speaks to Nikki Gatenby, Owner and Managing Director of Propellernet, about the SEO agency’s Superengaged culture.

When we started organising conferences at Happy, we asked ourselves: how do we make them great interactive experiences, where you don’t have to make an effort to meet people and you get the chance to talk about what you hear?

If you take 15 minutes to reflect at the end of the day, you can improve your productivity by 22.8%. That’s the conclusion of a study at Harvard Business School. Participants spent 15 minutes writing in a journal to embed their learning from the day, and produced these dramatic results.

Great management is as important as great leadership and most of us have had managers who coached and challenged us, and enabled us to do better than we thought we could do.

Last month, I asked in my newsletter and on LinkedIn for your favourite business reads of 2017. Here are your responses – as well as my own choices.