Seeing Around Corners: C-Suite Wisdom from America’s Most Insightful Leaders
Ken Banta
Post Hill Press (April 2025)

Two ears, two eyes, one mouth: Listen and observe at least 80% of the time

The title of this review was derived from an observation my Swedish grandmother shared with me when I was ten years old and about to begin a series of afternoon classes at the Art Institute of Chicago after attending classes at Myra Bradwell Elementary School. For years to come, there was so much to hear and observe in order to absorb and digest. Yogi Berra agrees: “There’s a lot to see when you’re looking.”

What we have in Seeing Around Corners is a delightful, thoughtful, and memorable smorgasbord of brain food, prepared by Chef Banta and his staff of gourmet thinkers. It’s all here: appetizers, entrees, and desserts as well as snacks. The material will not enable you to see around corners but it can help you to anticipate more and thus be better prepared to cope with whatever happens. It will also assist mullers such as I as we struggle to understand a world today that is more volatile, more uncertain, more complex, and more ambiguous than at any prior time that I can recall.

Here is a covey of leadership “nuggets” from seven of the 78 contributors. None is a head-snapper. All are practical, pragmatic, and humane:

o “People make mistakes all the time, including me.. so we don’t punish mistakes. We try to learn from mistakes. The cardinal sin is making the same mistake twice. That show s we didn’t learn anything.”  Dave King (Page 2)

o “The challenge in a lot of organizations is if you are serious about good leadership. if you actually believe that better leaders deliver better results, there needs to be some consequential accountability around that.”  Marc Effron (13)

o  “To me, the most powerful thing you can have is a map maker by your side, somebody really helping guide you through all the types of different situations. I’ve been fortunate in my career to have people around me that are really good at it.” Craig Tooman (25)

o “You can talk about culture all day, but culture, for me, it’s just one thing. It’s emulating behavior. That’s it. The person on the top is the one whose behaviors are emulated.”  Tal Zaks (59)

o “I strongly believe that organizations, particularly companies, will succeed or fail based on their managers’ ability to move the organization forward when the path ahead is unclear — not when it’s easy!” Dr. Jeremy Levin (85-86)

o “My acronym, REDI — respect, equity, diversity, and inclusion — emphasizes that respect is the most critical outcome and that those other outcomes — equity, diversity, and inclusion are impossible to accomplish or sustain if you don’t have respect first.” Gena Cox (115)

o We’re not just looking for someone to fill a role; we’re searching for a trailblazer who dreams big and acts boldly. Someone who’s ready to roll up their sleeves, dedicate their talents, and leave an enduring legacy of positive change on the world. We need an individual  who understands that the work we do today can shape a brighter tomorrow for generations to come.”  Jeff Karp (171)

There are hundreds of contributions of varying lengths within 17 dimensions of leadership. My suggestion is to keep the book near at hand and dip in and out of it frequently, perhaps whenever you are grappling with a difficult question to answer or problem to solve. Sometimes — not always — a different perspective can be helpful.

Thank you, Ken Banta, for welcoming your readers as honorary “members” of The Vanguard Network. I hope that many of them share their own thoughts with you about what effective leadership is…and isn’t. If there is another edition, I also hope that you will see fit to include several of those thoughts in it.