Admiral James Stavridis

Former Supreme Allied Commander at NATO and author of Sailing True North: Ten Admirals and the Voyage of Character

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Book Recommendations:

Provocative, jolting, superb, and on target! The Kill Chain is all of those things and more. If you read only one book to better understand the challenges facing the US military and the promise of emerging technologies, this should be it. (from Amazon)

From a former senior advisor to Senator John McCain comes an urgent wake-up call about how new technologies are threatening America's military might. For generations of Americans, our country has been the world's dominant military power. How the US military fights, and the systems and weapons that it fights with, have been uncontested. That old reality, however, is rapidly deteriorating. America's traditional sources of power are eroding amid the emergence of new technologies and the growing military threat posed by rivals such as China. America is at grave risk of losing a future war. As Christian Brose reveals in this urgent wake-up call, the future will be defined by artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and other emerging technologies that are revolutionizing global industries and are now poised to overturn the model of American defense. This fascinating, if disturbing, book confronts the existential risks on the horizon, charting a way for America's military to adapt and succeed with new thinking as well as new technology. America must build a battle network of systems that enables people to rapidly understand threats, make decisions, and take military actions, the process known as "the kill chain." Examining threats from China, Russia, and elsewhere, The Kill Chain offers hope and, ultimately, insights on how America can apply advanced technologies to prevent war, deter aggression, and maintain peace

To the immense benefit of the nation, two giants of America’s story are beautifully captured in this highly readable account of how their extraordinary lives intertwined. A must read to understand today’s complex discussions of race and social justice! (from Amazon)

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The New York Times bestselling author of George Washington's Secret Six and Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates turns to two other heroes of the nation: Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. In The President and the Freedom Fighter, Brian Kilmeade tells the little-known story of how two American heroes moved from strong disagreement to friendship, and in the process changed the entire course of history. Abraham Lincoln was White, born impoverished on a frontier farm. Frederick Douglass was Black, a child of slavery who had risked his life escaping to freedom in the North. Neither man had a formal education, and neither had had an easy path to influence. No one would have expected them to become friends—or to transform the country. But Lincoln and Douglass believed in their nation’s greatness. They were determined to make the grand democratic experiment live up to its ideals. Lincoln’s problem: he knew it was time for slavery to go, but how fast could the country change without being torn apart? And would it be possible to get rid of slavery while keeping America’s Constitution intact? Douglass said no, that the Constitution was irredeemably corrupted by slavery—and he wanted Lincoln to move quickly. Sharing little more than the conviction that slavery was wrong, the two men’s paths eventually converged. Over the course of the Civil War, they’d endure bloodthirsty mobs, feverish conspiracies, devastating losses on the battlefield, and a growing firestorm of unrest that would culminate on the fields of Gettysburg. As he did in George Washington's Secret Six, Kilmeade has transformed this nearly forgotten slice of history into a dramatic story that will keep you turning the pages to find out how these two heroes, through their principles and patience, not only changed each other, but made America truly free for all.

Admiral James Stavridis, US Navy--"Having led several significant organizational transformations over the years of my Navy career, I found Mark Johnson's book particularly on point. He is a true pathfinder in the world of business thinking!" (from Amazon)

Named a Top 10 Business Strategy Book of 2018 by Inc. magazine In his pioneering book Seizing the White Space, Mark W. Johnson argued that business model innovation is the most proven path to transformational growth. Since then, Uber, Airbnb, and other startups have disrupted whole industries; incumbents such as Blockbuster, Sears, Toys "R" Us, and BlackBerry have fallen by the wayside; and digital transformation has become one of the business world's hottest (and least understood) slogans. Nearly a decade later, the art and science of business model innovation is more relevant than ever. In this revised, updated, and newly titled edition, Johnson provides an eminently practical framework for understanding how a business model actually works. Identifying its four fundamental building blocks, he lays out a structured and repeatable process for reinventing an existing business model or creating a new one and then incubating and scaling it into a profitable and thriving enterprise. In a new chapter on digital transformation, he shows how serial transformers like Amazon leverage business model innovation so successfully. With rich new case studies of companies that have achieved new success and postmortems of those that haven't, Reinvent Your Business Model will show you how to:Determine if and when your organization needs a new business modelIdentify powerful new opportunities to serve your existing customers in existing marketsReach entirely new customers and create new markets through disruptive business models and productsSeize opportunities for growth opened up by tectonic shifts in market demand, government policy, and technologiesMake business model innovation a more predictable discipline inside your organizationBusiness model innovation has the power to reshape whole industries--including retail, aviation, media, and technology--redistributing billions of dollars of value. This book gives you the tools to reshape your own company for enduring success. Reinvent Your Business Model is the strategic innovation playbook you need now and in the future.

General Stan McChrystal’s Team of Teams is an instant classic. Best leadership book I have read in many a decade, by one of our nation’s most gifted and iconic general officers. (from Amazon)

Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World book cover
General Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman, Chris Fussell

From the New York Times bestselling author of My Share of the Task and Leaders comes a manual for leaders looking to make their teams more adaptable, agile, and unified in the midst of change. When General Stanley McChrystal took command of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in 2004, he quickly realized that conventional military tactics were failing. Al Qaeda in Iraq was a decentralized network that could move quickly, strike ruthlessly, then seemingly vanish into the local population. The allied forces had a huge advantage in numbers, equipment, and training—but none of that seemed to matter. To defeat Al Qaeda, they would have to combine the power of the world’s mightiest military with the agility of the world’s most fearsome terrorist network. They would have to become a "team of teams"—faster, flatter, and more flexible than ever. In Team of Teams, McChrystal and his colleagues show how the challenges they faced in Iraq can be rel­evant to countless businesses, nonprofits, and or­ganizations today. In periods of unprecedented crisis, leaders need practical management practices that can scale to thousands of people—and fast. By giving small groups the freedom to experiment and share what they learn across the entire organiza­tion, teams can respond more quickly, communicate more freely, and make better and faster decisions. Drawing on compelling examples—from NASA to hospital emergency rooms—Team of Teams makes the case for merging the power of a large corporation with the agility of a small team to transform any organization.

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