C-Suite Network™

5. Gary Shapiro

As CEO of the Consumer Technology Association ®, owner and producer of CES ®, Gary Shapiro has had a front row seat to the launch of nearly every recent major technology. He’s seen tech companies rise and fall, and bankrupt entrepreneurs become billionaires. After more than four decades in the industry, he knows that leaders who make it in the tech world have one thing in common: they know how to pivot.

Drawing upon detailed case studies, economic theory, and personal experience,Pivot or Die offers a behind-the-scenes look at the development of innovative technology and business strategies. Along the way, Shapiro offers a “pivot” framework for leaders in technology and beyond to stay flexible and agile:

  • The startup pivot: how startups can shake up industries and maximize the advantage of new ideas
  • The forced pivot: adapting to the unforeseeable (or simply unforeseen) and meeting shifting consumer demands
  • The failure pivot: why failure can deliver better lessons than success and how to take those lessons forward
  • The success pivot: Beating the market by seizing opportunity and out-pivoting your competitors

In laying out each of these pivots, Shapiro shares unique lessons on how leaders can change minds and mindsets and steer their organizations to success in an increasingly competitive environment.

4. Corey Williams

In this insightful blueprint, Corey Williams brings his personal life experiences and 20 years of coaching leaders and organizations to help you Own Your Life Now. Grounded in biblical, business, and practical examples, as well as questions, to spark thought, discussion, and application. Owning Your Life will help individuals and teams develop their very own personal blueprints that will help them take ownership and gain mastery over their life and the organizations they lead.

This is not just a book of information; instead, it is an architectural blueprint that will help readers tear down the patterns that hinder them. Additionally, it will allow them to realize their best design and build up those that support and promote the very person they are designed to become. If you are ready to take ownership over your life and gain mastery over those areas that require another level of self-awareness and intentionality to see breakthroughs, this is the book for you.

3. Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set out to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell’s classic “Politics and the English Language,”but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories—our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking—expose and distort our realities.

In the first of the book’s three intertwining essays, Coates, on his first trip to Africa, finds himself in two places at once: in Dakar, a modern city in Senegal, and in a mythic kingdom in his mind. Then he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he reports on his own book’s banning, but also explores the larger backlash to the nation’s recent reckoning with history and the deeply rooted American mythology so visible in that city—a capital of the Confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares. Finally, in the book’s longest section, Coates travels to Palestine, where he sees with devastating clarity how easily we are misled by nationalist narratives, and the tragedy that lies in the clash between the stories we tell and the reality of life on the ground.

Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive myths that shape our world—and our own souls—and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.

2. Malcolm Gladwell

Twenty-five years after the publication of his groundbreaking first book, Malcolm Gladwell returns with a brand-new volume that reframes the lessons of The Tipping Point in a startling and revealing light.

Why is Miami…Miami? What does the heartbreaking fate of the cheetah tell us about the way we raise our children? Why do Ivy League schools care so much about sports? What is the Magic Third, and what does it mean for racial harmony? In this provocative new work, Malcolm Gladwell returns for the first time in twenty-five years to the subject of social epidemics and tipping points, this time with the aim of explaining the dark side of contagious phenomena.

Through a series of riveting stories, Gladwell traces the rise of a new and troubling form of social engineering. He takes us to the streets of Los Angeles to meet the world’s most successful bank robbers, rediscovers a forgotten television show from the 1970s that changed the world, visits the site of a historic experiment on a tiny cul-de-sac in northern California, and offers an alternate history of two of the biggest epidemics of our day: COVID and the opioid crisis. Revenge of the Tipping Point is Gladwell’s most personal book yet. With his characteristic mix of storytelling and social science, he offers a guide to making sense of the contagions of modern world. It’s time we took tipping points seriously.

1. Ina Garten

Here, for the first time, Ina Garten presents an intimate, entertaining, and inspiring account of her remarkable journey. Ina’s gift is to make everything look easy, yet all her accomplishments have been the result of hard work, audacious choices, and exquisite attention to detail. In her unmistakable voice (no one tells a story like Ina), she brings her past and her process to life in a high-spirited and no-holds-barred memoir that chronicles decades of personal challenges, adventures (and misadventures) and unexpected career twists, all delivered with her signature combination of playfulness and purpose.

From a difficult childhood to meeting the love of her life, Jeffrey, and marrying him while still in college, from a boring bureaucratic job in Washington, D.C., to answering an ad for a specialty food store in the Hamptons, from the owner of one Barefoot Contessa shop to author of bestselling cookbooks and celebrated television host, Ina has blazed her own trail and, in the meantime, taught millions of people how to cook and entertain. Now, she invites them to come closer to experience her story in vivid detail and to share the important life lessons she learned along the way: do what you love because if you love it you’ll be really good at it, swing for the fences, and always Be Ready When the Luck Happens.

Tom Fox

The “Nuts and Bolts” for Creating a Comprehensive Compliance Plan

The first chapter of this unique work lays out a succinct yet thorough 31-day approach to operationalizing a company’s compliance regimen. Beginning with a section on what 2020 brought to the compliance landscape, the chapter goes on to methodically outline best practices for everything from establishing policies, procedures and internal controls, to assessing risk, training, handling investigations and more. Each day ends with three key takeaways you can implement at little or no cost.

Understanding Compliance Responsibility Across the Organization

The Compliance Handbook also takes a close look at the role of all professionals with compliance responsibility, from Compliance Officers and Boards of Directors, to Human Resources, to Internal Audit and Internal Controls and Communications and Training professionals.

In-Depth Treatment of Hot Topics and Trends

The Handbook provides an in-depth look at the latest thinking and trends for the full range of critical compliance topics, including:

  • Compliance and business ventures
  • Third party risk management
  • The Board’s Role in Compliance
  • Continuous improvement
  • Compliance innovation
  • And much more

Incorporating Current Government Pronouncements

The Second Edition incorporates the most current government pronouncements governing best practices compliance programs including: the 2019 Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs released by the Fraud Section of the Department of Justice, and its 2020 Update; the updated FCPA Resource Guide 2nd edition; the Framework for OFAC Compliance Commitments; and the 2019 DOJ Antitrust Division’s Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs in Criminal Antitrust.

Jon Petz

In Person and Hybrid Meetings, the cornerstones of collaboration, inspiration, and progress have suffered excruciating humiliation at the hands of corporate America. Gone are the days of meetings designed for outcomes, engaging virtual meetings, focus and participation. Instead, meetings drone on like some sort of soul crushing, walking-dead zombie robbing workplaces of joy, productivity and time. Bit there is good news: meetings can be saved . . . by you!

This first of its kind book introduces a radical new approach and premise. Every attendee has a right and a responsibility to make every meeting productive for all involved.  No more suffering in silence.  This entertaining eye-opening book gives specific wording for handling the most common challenges, so the next time you run or attend a meeting you know exactly what to say and do to make that meeting rock (instead of suck.)   

Kelly Fuhlman

Have you ever wished a superhero would come down and rescue you in those chaotic life moments of life? The easiest thing to do is wait for someone more qualified to come along and fix what has been broken for so long. What if I told you that hero was you?

From dyslexia, drug addiction, and trauma, there were many times when author, Kelly Fuhlman didn’t think she would make it. Even in times of great success, she still felt lost. The truth is the only person who can save each of us is ourselves. Through her journey, Kelly shares how to seize back your life from waiting for the hero to becoming your own. No matter what the condition of your life, or your heart, we will journey together to see proof that no matter how far you fall, you can get back up. You can be courageous and Be the Hero and Rescue Yourself! It’s time to dust off your cape, and step into your purpose and healing as your own hero.

Stedman Graham

Become a passionate, purposeful, and meaningful leader through identifying who you are, your strengths, and your skills.

New York Times bestselling author Stedman Graham’s Identity Leadership is a very personal and prescriptive guide that is based on his philosophy that a leader can’t lead others until he can first lead himself-the more he works on himself — the more he can give to those around him. To know our purpose in life, we begin with our passions, skills, and talents, and with this book we learn how to channel the best of who we are to achieve success for ourselves and those we lead.

In Identity Leadership, Graham examines why self-awareness matters, how leaders lead, the importance of communication, and much more. He then shows the reader how to step into their role as a leader and create their identity leadership plan. Key to the journey is believing in yourself, knowing your competence, continually challenging yourself, and being patient with yourself. Graham uses anecdotes from his own life, as well as discussing successful leaders, to illustrate the importance of identity leadership in each of our lives.

Self-leaders can create a roadmap that leads to personal growth, development, and improvement of performance in every area of life. Identity Leadership provides the tools-self-awareness, emotional intelligence, discipline, and more-needed to continually plan and execute learning and development of our talents and skills. These tools enable readers to commit to a personal vision and lead with purpose.

Troy Korsgaden

In the business world, an inflection point happens at a critical moment when the situation calls for new thinking and a different strategy. Troy Korsgaden—a highly sought-after insurance and financial services consultant, speaker, and the author of seven books—believes this is that moment for the insurance and financial industry. Previous assumptions about the way we do business are no longer accurate. His warning is that if we don’t see the need to change—and change now—many of us will lose customers…and perhaps lose our businesses.

This book will guide you to adapt your insurance or financial services agency to reach and serve customers in the ways they want to do business. Troy Korsgaden shares a blueprint for a new business model to set your firm up for success in today’s rapidly changing environment.

Take a hard look at your role, firm, or carrier as it is today, and ask yourself, “Where am I now?” and “How did I get here?” Take a rigorously honest approach when looking at your business. What have you done right, and what could have been done better? Are you poised for the future? What areas could you improve? In what areas do you thrive? When is the last time you retooled any of your procedures or workflows? Many professionals show up every day without a real plan, and their schedules are dictated by the brushfires that flare up during the day. They don’t have a defined and purposeful schedule to guide them. Don’t let that be you!

Start today, setting up your firm for success. Create an action plan to retool everyone and everything within your agency or firm. The bottom line is to have a seamless ecosystem at the firm level and/or the carrier level. Think of it like a digital experience. You enter through the main hub, and when you are offered a different product, most of the time you feel you’ve left the hub. It feels odd and uncomfortable because the process has suddenly become complicated. Our task is to create a reality for our customers in which they never feel they’ve left our hub.

To ride the new wave in our culture and our industry, you need to create a network that blends excellent customer experience, a wide array of options in your offerings, and the creation of expertise partners to whom you can refer your customers who need products and services you don’t currently offer.