Trust the process. These words adorn the sign on star ghostwriter Joanne Gordon’s desk, and when former Coach CEO Lew Frankfort engaged Joanne to write the book that would ultimately become Bag Man: The Story Behind the Improbable Rise of Coach, published by Harvard Business Review Press in October 2025, it became the mantra that would guide their collaboration.
Lew had an enormously successful career building Coach into one of the world’s most iconic fashion brands. As he embarked on his authorship journey, he felt a deep responsibility to do justice to not only his own story, but also those of the company he’d devoted his professional life to leading and all the colleagues, friends, and family members who’d supported him along the way. Lew wasn’t looking to self-mythologize or portray himself as a “master of the universe,” but rather to dig deep and open up about the low moments as well as the triumphs.
As he put it, he set out to “tell the story of Coach in an authentic way that would discuss my own drive for excellence, my fear of failure, and the occasional depressive episodes I’ve had.”
At the keynote session of GOTG2 last month, 225 writing and publishing professionals were treated to an intimate conversation between Lew and Joanne about the secrets to their partnership’s success. Chief among them: how they developed a shared philosophy built around a few key guiding principles, starting with “trust the process.”
For Joanne — whose numerous collaborations with high-profile leaders include 2024 Andy Award winner Good Power, by former IBM CEO Ginny Rometti — trusting the process is a “hedge against the inevitable problems and obstacles that come up as we try to figure out ‘what does this look like?'” Part of that approach involved not letting “perfection be the enemy of progress” — meaning Joanne would share materials with Lew when they were still in a very rough form, allowing for iterative feedback, which helped her hone in on a voice and style that felt true to Lew.
To learn more about how they made their dynamic collaboration so rewarding, from “trusting the process” to striking the right balance between “magic and logic” in a creative co-enterprise, click here.
