Become a Fierce Leader: Breaking the Trance of "Best Practices"

We're celebrating the official publication of Susan Scott's new book Fierce Leadership today--#86 at Amazon as of this moment! This is Susan's long-awaited follow-up to her bestselling book on Fierce Conversations. Filled with stories, unexpected lessons, and clear vision, she shows us why blindly following "best practices" can hold us back from the connections, information, insight, and truth that are at the root of our success.

It's so exciting that Fierce Leadership gives us a path for taking the intimacy of fierce conversations to the level of teams, organizations, and the unknown emerging future around us.

Here's a great overview that introduces the 6 "worst best practices" and their alternatives in BusinessWeek, including the following tidbit:

Worst "Best" Practice #2: Hiring for "Smarts"

Increasing a company's "smarts" by 25% (ie. hiring people with credentials, pedigrees, high IQs) rarely increases revenue growth by 25%. Instead, your organization suffers from excessive certitude, people fighting to be "right" rather than to get it right. Einstein advised: "Take care not to make the intellect your God. It has powerful muscles, but no personality. It cannot lead, it can only serve." We've all known smart, empty people who ultimately failed.

And some praise from early readers:

David Allen, author of Getting Things Done and Making It All Work

"Susan's new book has serious style, in its best sense, and is a must-read for anyone even remotely thinking about influencing situations and organizations. It's a jam-packed compilation of truths and aproaches for grounding all those business how-tos in real substance that makes them work."

Lois P. Frankel, author of See Jane Lead

"Fierce is chock-full of fresh ideas! A great read for anyone who leads...and that's just about all of us."

Doug Stone, coauthor of Difficult Conversations

"Scott's unique combination of business expertise and bold imagination will reenergize leaders, employees, and managers alike."

Susan Scott, author of Fierce Leadership