How James Daunt Turned Around Barnes & Noble by Giving Up Control

When James Daunt took over Barnes & Noble, he wasn’t facing a simple retail problem.

He was facing a confidence problem.

The iconic bookstore chain had spent years operating in the shadow of Amazon, e-books, digital disruption, and a broader narrative that physical bookstores were destined to disappear.

Daunt had heard that story before.

Years earlier, he had stepped into Waterstones, the struggling British bookstore chain, under remarkably similar circumstances. Sales were falling. Stores were deteriorating. Employees had lost confidence. And competitors—especially Amazon—seemed to have an unbeatable structural advantage.

Daunt’s response was not to out-Amazon Amazon.

It was to make bookstores better at being bookstores.

In a conversation on Masters of Scale, Daunt explained the philosophy that helped him revive Waterstones and later bring that same approach to Barnes & Noble. His playbook offers a powerful lesson for entrepreneurs: sometimes the path to growth isn’t more control, more data, or more centralization.

Sometimes it is trusting the people closest to the customer.

The First Lesson: Survival Often Looks Like Stubbornness

Daunt didn’t begin his career as a turnaround specialist.

He began as a young entrepreneur opening a bookstore in 1990.

The timing could hardly have been worse. A recession hit. The Gulf War began. Neighboring businesses closed. His store struggled to generate enough revenue to cover its rent.

Like many first-time entrepreneurs, Daunt discovered that starting a business creates commitments much faster than it creates certainty.

He had investors to repay. Employees depending on him. Bills that still arrived regardless of whether the business was working.

What got him through?

In his words, “Probably stubbornness and application.”

The turnaround wasn’t dramatic. There was no single breakthrough campaign or viral moment.

Instead, the economics improved incrementally.

The business went from being badly underwater, to slightly underwater, to break-even, and eventually profitable.

That slow progression taught Daunt something he would carry into much larger companies decades later: business improvement is often the result of relentlessly improving dozens of small details.

Presentation. Service. Inventory. Assortment. Judgment.

For entrepreneurs searching for the one strategy that will transform their business overnight, Daunt’s experience offers a less glamorous answer.

You may simply have to get a little better every month.

Why James Daunt Distrusts Data-Driven Retail

One of the most surprising parts of Daunt’s leadership philosophy is his skepticism toward data.

Not because he believes data is useless.

Because he believes organizations frequently misuse it.

In retail, data naturally accumulates at headquarters. Once executives possess that information, Daunt argues, the temptation is to start controlling decisions centrally.

That can create efficiency.

It can also destroy what made individual stores valuable.

Daunt offered a simple example.

Board books for very young children can generate strong sales from a relatively small selection. Older children, by contrast, often read voraciously and benefit from an enormous assortment.

A purely spreadsheet-driven approach might allocate floor space according to historical sales volume. That could result in more space for board books and less space for young readers.

The numbers might look rational.

The customer experience becomes worse.

That distinction matters far beyond bookstores.

Entrepreneurs increasingly have access to dashboards measuring almost everything: conversion rates, click-through rates, churn, engagement, acquisition cost, retention, and revenue.

But measurement is not the same as judgment.

Data tells you what happened.

It does not automatically tell you what experience you should create next.

The Barnes & Noble Strategy: Push Decisions Toward the Customer

Daunt’s most important operational belief is that bookstores should not all look the same.

Different communities want different books.

Different employees understand different audiences.

And the people working inside an individual store are far closer to those customers than executives sitting at corporate headquarters.

So instead of creating a perfectly standardized chain, Daunt worked to give local booksellers more autonomy.

That required changing something deeper than organizational charts.

It required changing culture.

Daunt compared cultural transformation to stretching a rubber band. The moment leadership stops applying pressure, the organization naturally wants to snap back into its old habits.

That is why decentralization is harder than simply announcing that employees are “empowered.”

People who have spent years being told what to do do not instantly become comfortable making decisions.

They worry about making mistakes.

They wait for approval.

They defer upward.

Daunt’s response is to flatten hierarchies and encourage collective responsibility.

His goal is not to eliminate accountability.

It is to eliminate fear.

When a decision turns out to be wrong, his instinct is to recognize it quickly and change direction rather than spending time identifying who deserves blame.

“Okay, it was idiotic, move on,” he explained.

That philosophy creates something every founder eventually needs: an organization that can correct itself without waiting for the founder.

Why Barnes & Noble Barely Has a Marketing Department

Daunt’s philosophy becomes even more interesting when applied to marketing.

Barnes & Noble benefits enormously from BookTok, the TikTok community that has helped propel books and authors into bestseller status.

A conventional corporate response might be obvious:

Create a centralized social media team.

Identify high-performing content.

Build campaigns.

Purchase advertising.

Turn organic behavior into an optimized marketing funnel.

Daunt resists that instinct.

Barnes & Noble, he says, essentially has no traditional marketing budget.

Instead, many of the people creating and participating in book culture are already working inside the stores.

Young booksellers understand the trends because they are part of the communities producing them.

When a book begins taking off in one location, enthusiasm spreads organically between stores.

Daunt believes centralizing that behavior could make it less authentic.

His philosophy is remarkably simple:

If employees already understand the customer, get out of their way.

That lesson is particularly valuable for founders who instinctively insert themselves into every successful initiative.

When something works, the entrepreneurial impulse is often to formalize it.

Create a process.

Build a department.

Add reporting.

Scale it.

But some advantages disappear when they are institutionalized too aggressively.

The challenge is learning the difference between something that needs infrastructure and something that simply needs freedom.

Invest in Infrastructure, Not Control

Daunt is not anti-investment.

He simply directs investment toward systems that make employees more effective.

Technology.

Distribution.

Operational tools.

Infrastructure.

The center of the organization should make life easier for the people doing the work—not dictate every decision they make.

That is a useful framework for any growing company.

Ask yourself:

Is headquarters helping frontline employees make better decisions—or replacing their judgment?

As companies scale, bureaucracy often grows faster than value.

Every additional approval process feels defensible individually.

Eventually, employees spend more energy navigating the company than serving the customer.

Daunt’s model attempts to reverse that equation.

Leadership Does Not Have to Be Loud

Daunt also challenges another popular image of entrepreneurship: the charismatic, rally-the-troops CEO.

He describes himself openly as an introvert.

He is not trying to become the loudest voice in the organization.

Instead, his authority comes from something quieter.

He spent decades working on bookstore floors.

He understands the work his employees do because he has done it himself.

“I am genuinely a bookseller,” he said.

That identity matters.

Employees are far more likely to trust autonomy when they believe leadership understands their reality.

Daunt argues that leaders can operate from the backseat if the organization understands its strategy, direction, and culture.

Not every founder needs to become a celebrity CEO.

Clarity can substitute for charisma.

Trust can substitute for constant visibility.

The Entrepreneurial Lesson Behind the Barnes & Noble Comeback

Daunt’s approach to Barnes & Noble is ultimately less about books than it is about organizational design.

He believes customers still want bookstores.

He believes employees closest to those customers understand them.

And he believes excessive centralization can suffocate both.

For entrepreneurs, that creates a useful question as your company grows:

Are you building a business that becomes smarter as more people join it—or a business that simply gives the founder more things to control?

Early-stage founders often need to make nearly every decision themselves.

But what works at five employees can become destructive at fifty.

Eventually, scale requires something uncomfortable.

You have to trust other people’s judgment.

James Daunt’s career suggests that the payoff can be enormous.

Because sometimes the leader’s most important decision is deciding which decisions they no longer need to make.