Rowitz On Leadership

January 2025 Book Club Selection- Daniel Karkavy, THE 7 PERSPECTIVES OF EFFECTIVE LEADERS, Baker Books, 2020. Your leadership effectiveness is determined by the decisions you make and the influence you have. To make the best decisions and have maximum impact, you need to see your business from seven perspectives: current reality, vision strategic bets, the team, the customer, your role, and the customer.

Mid-January 2025 Book Club Selection-John Rossman and Kevin McCaffrey BIG BET LEADERSHIP, Rodin Books, 2024. The book’ mission is to help business executives and leaders mitigate the risks of engaging in high stakes gambles while maintaining the ambitious goals which motivate all of us to grow.

February 2025 Book Club Selection- Edward P. Crapol, JOHN TYLER-THE ACCIDENTAL PRESIDENT, University of North Carolina Press, 2012. Tyler(Tenth President) is the first vice-president to become President on the death of President Benjamin Harrison. He used slaves to help him staff the White House. Tyler was not considered to be a good president. Tyler did manipulate the Constitution to increase the executive power of the president. He is considered a traitor because of his involvemenr with the Confederacy during the Civil War.

Mid-February Book Club Selection- Stephen M. R. Covey- TRUST AND INSPIRE, Simon and Schuster paperbacks, 2023. This book is the compelling answer to the traditional command and control approach to leading people. Trust and Inspire is the practical guide to how anyone can lead in our ever-changing workplace.

March 2025 Book Club Selection- Bill George,, AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP, Jossey-Bass, 2003. Authentic leaders are committed to building enduring organizations. Authentic leaders are committed to making the world better for all its citizens and leading with your heart as well as your head, These leaders understand their purpose, practice social values, lead with heart, establish connected relationships and demonstrate self=discipline.

Mid-March 2025 Book Club Selection- Bill George and Zach Clayton, TRUE NORTH: A EMERGING LEADER EDITION, Wiley, 2022. The authors offer practical strategies and techniques to become an authentic leader and reveal how you can navigate your own path to success.

April 2025 Book Club Selection-John C. Maxwell and Jim Dornan, BECOMING A PERSON OF INFLUENCE, Harper Collins Leadership, 1997. This book has ten chapters on the activities of an influential person. An influential person will positively impact the lives of other people. Specifically, the influential person has integrity with people, nurtures other people, has faith in people, listens to people, understands people enlarges people, navigates for other people, connects with people, empowers people, and reproduces other influencers.

Mid-April 2025 Book Club Selection- James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, EVERYDAY PEOPLE, EXTRAORDINARY LEADERSHIP, John Wiley, 2021. This book is a follow-up to the classic THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE. The authors look again at the five leadership practices from new data (The Five Practices: Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart)

May 2025 Book Club Selection= Anthony Fauci, ON CALL Viking, 2024. This is an important memoir by a public health physician working for a national government agency. Politics clearly had a role on Fauci’s work. The book deals with Fauci’s work on AIDS, the war on terror and disease and the Ebola terrorism experience. The book demonstrates leadership in action and should be read by public health and medical leaders.

Mid-May 2025 Book Club Selection- Mary Abbajay, MANAGING UP, Wiley,, 2018. This book deals with effective approaches for managing your manager based on personality and behavioral preferences. Is the boss an Innie or Outie. According to workstyle personalities, is your boss an energizer, advancer, harmonizer, or evaluator? As to difficulty, is your boss a micromanager, hands off boss, a narcissist, impulsive pushover, BFF boss or a workaholic, incompetent, or a nitpicker?

June 2025 Book Club Selection-Scott Mautz, LEADING FROM THE MIDDLE, Wiley, 2021,. Not only do you have to report to manager. Leading in today’;s organization can be a complicated thing.. Not only do you have to teport to managers above you in the organization, you have to lead others at your level or below in the organization. This is a playbook for managers to influence up, down, and across the organization.

Mid-June 2025 Book Club Selection- John C. Maxwell, LEADERSHIFT, Harper Collins, 2019, Your leadership skills change over time. Maxwell discusses these eleven changes in the context of shifts in your leadershift skills over time. Successful leaders must embrace these essential changes over time. Then leaders need to stay ahead of rhe curve by not only relying on speed but thriving on timing , innovating and making changes before they are necessary.

July 2025 Book Club Selection-Walter R. Borneman, POLK, Random House, 2008.Polk occupied the White House as President from 1845 to 1849. He fought for and won tariff reductions, reestablished an independent Treasury, brought Texas into the Union, bluffed Great Britain out of the major part of Oregon and wrested California and much of the Southwest from Mexico. his excellent leadership skills were only evaluated after his time in office.

Mid-July 2025 Book Club Selection- Robert Reffkin, NO ONE SUCCEEDS ALONE, This is an interesting memoir by an author who is Black and Jewish. Reffkin tells the story of his life in terms of how he became a leader. He considers his growth as a leader from his relationship with his mother and his mentors. He also demonstrates how his work with others was important.

August 2025 Book Club Selection-Malcolm Gladwell, REVENGE OF YHE TIPPING POINT, Little Brown, 2024. This book is another look at the first book by Gladwell published in the year 2000.. Through a series of new stories, the author and a troubling form of social engineering Gladwell offers a guide to making sense of the contagions of the modern world. This book will be important for leaders to read.

Mid-August 2025 Book Club Selection-Annabel T. Ray, ZACHARY TAYLOR; THE FORGOTTEN President WHO CHANGED AMERICA, 2025. Taylor was a career soldier who became President. He had major victories in the Mexican-American War. Although he was a slaveholder, he opposed the expansion of slavery into the newly acquired western territories. He died in 1850 which was only sixteen months into his term. People wondered if he had been poisoned.

September 2025 Book Club Selection-Perry M. Smith and Jeffrey W. Foley, RULES AND TOOLS FOR LEADERS (FOURTH EDITION), Pedigree Book, 2013. This is an excellent resource book for leaders. Each chapter covers another rule or tool for a leader with an excellent discussion of the rule with examples. The rules fall into the following categories: developing your personal leadership and leading others. This is a book that you will want to keep on your desk.

Mid-September 2025 Book Club Selection- Jose Eduardo Pinto, MILLARD FILLMORE 2023., This is a short biography of Fillmore who became President after the death of Zachery Taylor in 1850. Fillmore was interested in international trade. He also had an interest in railroads, canals, rivers, harbor and uniform currency. He also was concerned with keeping sectional peace.

October 2025 Book Club Selection-Jim Collins and Morton T. Hansen, GREAT BY CHOICE, Harper Business, 2011. This new book by Collins focuses on not only performance but on the unstable environments faced by leaders now. Based on nine years of research the authors enumerate the principles for building a truly great organization in unpredictable, tumultuous and fast-moving times.

Mid-October 2025 Book Club Selection-Jim Collins, TURNING THE FLYWHEEL, ,2019. In this monograph, the author discusses the importance in creating a good to great organization tool for leaders to use in their organizations. It feels like turning a giant flywheel. Each turn builds upon previous work as the leader makes a series of good decisions.

November 2025 Book Club Selection-Yuval Noah Harari, NEXUS, Random House, 2024. This is one of the best book selections of this year. Nexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information brings us from the Stone Age through the canonization of the Bible, the invention of print, the rise of mass media, the recent resurgence of populism to Artificial Intelligence This book is an important one for leaders to read.

Mid-November 2025 Book Club Selection- Jim Collins, HOW THE MIGHTY FALL, —-, 2009. Not all organizations are successful. In this book, Collins looks at the five stages these failed organizations go through: Hubris Born of Success, Undisciplined Pursuit of More, Denial of Risk and Peril, Grasping for Salvation , and Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death. This is a good book for the followers of Collins work on good to great organizations.

December 2025 Book Club Selection-Garry Boulard, THE WORST PRESIDENT ,i.Universe, 2015. This book continues our study of presidential leaders. James Buchanan was our 15th President and is considered by many experts to have been one of our most ineffective presidents. Buchanan failed to stand up to the slaveholding interests of the South. Boulard presents a narrative of a timid and vacillating president whose drift and isolation opened the door to the Civil War.

Mid-December 2025 Book Club Selection-John C. Maxwell, FAILING FORWARD, Thomas Nelson, 2000. This book deals with the mistakes we make and how to learn from these happenings. Maxwell teaches straightforward principles for overcoming failure and gives fifteen solid steps to help leaders become the kind of achiever they have always wanted to be.