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Fierce Leadership: A Bold Alternative to the Worst "Best" Practices of Business Today |  | Author: Susan Scott
Publisher: Broadway Business
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $13.44
as of 11/24/2009 22:57 CST details
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Seller: carla5226
Rating:  46 reviews
Sales Rank: 3047
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 336
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 0385529007
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.4092
EAN: 9780385529006
ASIN: 0385529007
Publication Date: September 15, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
A Q&A with Susan Scott
 Question: The title of your book is Fierce Leadership. Can you tell us what you mean by "fierce"? Susan Scott: In the dictionary there are several definitions for almost every word and when I ask people to put a positive spin on the word "fierce," people suggest: passionate, bold, robust, unbridled, strong, intense, powerful. That’s why I use the word "fierce"--it wakes me up, it’s exciting, it sounds bold, it sounds passionate. It doesn’t sound boring or careful or dull or controlled. That’s what I mean by the word "fierce"--and "fierce leadership," of course, is all of those things. In martial arts, senseis have a saying, "You are always practicing something; the question is, What are you practicing?" Fierce leadership is a practice, a way of life, a way of thinking and behaving that a leader can bring into his or her life everyday. In Fierce Leadership we are pointing out some so-called "best practices" of leaders today and showing that they are actually far more problematic than they are positive and providing an alternative. Question: So if some of today’s most widely accepted business practices are wrong-headed and ineffective, why do we insist on clinging to them? Susan Scott: Well, we are very used to the over-parsed, acronym riddled corporate way and somewhere along the line someone suggested these as best practices. "Best Practices" is a widely used term to describe the best techniques or the best methods that are in use in a company, a field, or an industry. Unfortunately, companies often confuse the latest or the trendiest with the best and lock onto these practices. The best practices of one era are often superceded by the even more ludicrous fads of the next. There is a direct link between leadership practices and results. We need to develop the ability to spot the "tells" that let us know that our practices aren’t working and, in fact, are getting us the opposite results from what we want. A fierce leader is someone who had acquired Squid Eye. Question: What is Squid Eye exactly? Susan Scott: It’s the ability to see the Squid while he is blending into his natural environment. The ability to see him just being himself, even when he doesn’t want you to see him, even when he is hiding. Having Squid Eye means you see many things others cannot and do not see. It’s like having sight in the presence of the blind, you are a selective and efficient information gatherer. This is what Squid Eye really means. So for a fierce leader, with Squid Eye, they begin to spot the tells that let us know that these "best practices" aren’t working. Question: Another thing you stress is the value of relationships and conversations in business. Why are relationships so important for our careers and our bottom line? Susan Scott: There is a bold and, I feel, compelling line between leadership and fierce leadership. You cross that line once you begin to understand and act on the central premise of everything fierce, which is If you want to become a great leader you must gain the capacity to connect with your colleagues and customers at a deep level, or lower your aim. So, whether your goal is to improve workplace relations or gain market share, your most valuable currency is not IQ, it’s not the ability to build a really cool power point deck, or analyze a case study or write a white paper. Your most valuable currency is emotional capital. And this is far from a naive, feel good notion; it is really good business sense. In fact, I am proposing that human connectivity, as opposed to strategy and tactics, is the next frontier for exponential growth and the only sustainable competitive edge.
Product Description
From the author of the acclaimed book Fierce Conversations comes the antidote to some of the most wrongheaded practices of business today.
·“Provide anonymous feedback.”
·“Hire smart people.”
·“Hold people accountable.”
These are all sound, business practices, right? Not so fast, says leadership visionary and bestselling author Susan Scott. In fact, these mantras — despite being long-accepted and adopted by business leaders everywhere — are completely wrongheaded. Worse, they are costing companies billions of dollars, driving away valuable employees and profitable customers, limiting performance, and stalling careers. Yet they are so deeply ingrained in organizational cultures that no one has questioned them. Until now.
In Fierce Leadership, Scott teaches us how to spot the worst “best” practices in our organizations using a technique she calls “squid eye”–the ability to see the “tells” or signs that we have fallen prey to disastrous behaviors by knowing what to look for. Only then, she says, can we apply the antidote..
Informed by over a decade of conversations with Fortune 500 executives, this book is that antidote. With fierce new approaches to everything from employee feedback to corporate diversity to customer relations, Scott offers fresh and surprising alternatives to six of the so-called “best” practices permeating today’s businesses. This refreshingly candid book is a must-read for any manager or leader at any level who is ready to take a long hard look at what trouble might be lurking in their organization - and do something about it.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 46
 Sparkly, but basic November 23, 2009
E. M. Van Court (Honolulu, Hawai'i, USA)
Ms. Scott touches on many basic points well, but this book comes across as more of a pitch for her consulting business than as a 'stand-alone' work.
I rather looked forward to this book, as I've been in both predominantly male, and predominantly female organizations, and had good and bad female and male bosses, but I hadn't read much on leadership by women.
I didn't see much that was particularly brilliant, but a lot that was competent and well packaged. Ms. Scott turns a nice phrase and uses vivid imagery, but in the end, it boils down to "deal with people (superiors, subordinates, and customers) openly and honestly, don't tolerate stupid, put the customer first". Several times, she stresses the need for 'after action reviews'; going through the 'what was the plan, what happened, what do we do again, what do we avoid, how do we do better' drills. This is a powerful tool in a healthy organization, and seldom gets as much attention as Ms. Scott gives it. However, I'm not certain the aggressive, confrontational attitude she preaches would work well for middle-managers who want to retain their positions. A boss advocating this book as a model might go looking for a new model in short order, if she or he gets feed up with having every decision challenged. This is more a reflection of disfunctional people and organizations than a criticism of the book itself.
My reservations about this book came to a head when Ms. Scott recommended doing away with jargon and buzzwords. This from a author whose book uses "fierce", "squid eye", "mokitas", radical transparency", and "customer centricity" with gay abandon. All these words an expressions are the sort of things that poor managers (bad leaders) latch onto and parrot until it becomes a cruel joke on the employees. Very quickly, words and phrases like these become an indication that the (bad) manager is about to blame someone and met out punishment.
I'd approach this one with caution. It would be very easy for it to be cited as a justification for some really ill-considered management.
E. M. Van Court
 Caution: use only as directed November 22, 2009
Aaron Gutsell (Clementon, NJ)
There is no doubt that Susan Scott can strike a chord in all of us. Her company is obviously successful as the teamwork she frequently discusses in her book includes problem solving, innovation, and participation at every level by every employee of Fierce Inc. But we're not all Susan Scott, either, and it just isn't possible for everyone to be nakedly and brutally honest, we may not be comfortable discussing someone's torrid divorce in an open company meeting, the divorce that is severely affecting the individual that is affecting the team. I was all fired up and inspired by Scott, and took a guy aside to have our 'fierce conversation.' Well it lasted all of a few minutes and the guy walked out on me and has been hostile ever since. So the truth may have to be padded, it may have to be introduced tactfully or in dribbles, or as Scott points out, an organization has to state that jobs are on the line, constantly perform and improve, and also make it easier on themselves by weeding out those who are not meeting those expectations. There is plenty of humor in the book, and great quotes from diverse scholars. She talks of 'squid eye' and the New Guinean word mokita "that which everyone knows and no one speaks of." Her concept of radical transparency is appropriate in the digital era where Google status is basically a matter of reputation. A senior executive recently told me that one of the biggest challenges he now faces within his organization is "controlling the message" because word gets around so fast these days via cell phones and email. Susan Scott's point really comes home that there is very little 'controlling the message' in the digital age, so internal company memos, the minutes of meetings, managerial disagreements, profit margins, everything should be available to everyone, that's radical transparency. Overall you cannot fail to take something away from 'Fierce Leadership,' and at the very least I would consider reading Scott's previous book, 'Fierce Conversations.'
Readable, not Revelatory November 19, 2009
New England Yankee (Northern New England)
I'll confess right at the start that I'm not a fan of what I regard as the "business self-help" genre. The blockbusters invariably become the fount of precisely those irritations about which the author of Fierce Leadership complains.
The hook here - right on the front cover - is that the book is anti best practice, which should prove attractive to those of us groaning under the latest and greatest such rolled out by management. The reality, however, is the author actually picks and chooses her business nostrums rather than rejecting them wholesale as intimated. So while she dumps on, say, anonymous feedback (yay!), she's all about truth-telling and transparency, boldness, and other such things that - wait for it - live and breathe under various best practice guises, as most of us who toil in major corporations know.
What Fierce Leadership is really all about is authenticity, which the author dissects in various ways and in example after example. Sometimes that's called "transparency," sometimes "connecting with the customer," etc. but it pretty much amounts to the same thing, even if the context gives it a slightly different flavor.
The book has two poles of advice, though: in addition to authenticity, the author hammers the notion of honing your B.S. detection ability. For some bizarre reason, she's chosen to call this "squid eye." (The reason for the term is explained in the book, but is pretty forgettable ...) Most people, of course, need little honing, else how to explain the appeal of Dilbert, even among management?
I view this book as making emotional appeals, where many business books take a cooler, mechanistic approach (e.g., 7 Habits). It makes it fun to read, and the examples are inspiring, but success based on personal characteristics, projection, and presence aren't for everyone. If you have the personality suited to the style advocated in this book, you will find encouragement. If you do not, well let's just say there are a lot of ways to come off as a phony, including trying to appear authentic.
Very different. Very readable. Take with a grain of salt.
Read Fierce Conversations First November 19, 2009
Kathryn Bennett (Phoenix, AZ USA)
After the introduction, this book starts "After thirteen years running think tanks for CEOs, I wrote "Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work & in Life, One Conversation at a Time. The book you're holding in your hands or listening to right now is a equel to that book. Ideally, if you haven't read Fierce Conversations, read it before you continue."
After reading a few more pages of this book, I did just that and I'd recommend that to you as well. In fact, if you have some business experience and common sense, you won't even need to read this book after reading Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success in Work and in Life, One Conversation at a Time because this book just applies the principles in that book to dissecting some common "Best" Practices. I found Fierce Conversations to be very thought provoking and inspirational. This book was not nearly as exciting to me, mostly because I have no interest in the so-called best practices that are discussed in this book. I have always thought of best practices as being much more specific and detailed - the ones described here are too general to be really meaningful or useful. Sometimes the devil is in the details. I'm not saying that this book is a waste of time. It does have many pithy observations about business as usual and presents new and useful ways of looking at common business practices.
Ms. Scott is on a Fierce(tm) Mission November 18, 2009
Brian Kodi
Ms. Scott wrote this book with the hope of instigating no less than an epiphany in the reader; and she hit on all cylinders in that endeavor. Here's why most of us need to heed her advice: In the chapter on Fierce Practice #6, Ms. Scott throws out a peculiar statistic; "..I'm betting that two out of three people suffer from alethophobia. And the approved cure, administered by companies all over the world, is far worse than the disease." This disorder is defined by the Wiktionary (I couldn't find a definition in the dictionary) as a "crippling fear of truth". Ms. Scott defines it as "an intense, abnormal or illogical fear of the truth." So if you're one of the two thirds of the population who suffers from this condition, "Fierce Leadership" may be your remedy.
Many of Ms. Scott's proposals, if widely adopted by businesses would no doubt vastly improve life for everyone; sellers, buyers, consumers. These ideas include authenticity, radical transparency, and the one near and dear to her heart, deep human connection which is emphasized throughout the book: "Connect the people in our homes and businesses and cities and countries, so that we and our children and our colleagues and customers breathe connection in and out like oxygen. Souls rising. Resulting ultimately in that elusive concept we call peace on earth." (last chapter - Crossing a bold line)
Despite Ms. Scott's denial that "Mineral Rights Conversation" is not therapy, it sure sounds like it is. This particular style of conversation can be utilized "to break someone out of victim mode". It is a seven step process complete with a list of how to avoid traps guaranteed to derail your objective to break a person out of victim mode. Once you've done it three times, it will feel natural, and it works 95% of the time. This is the kind of patronizing and formulaic advice throughout the book Ms. Scott preaches against, and denies she practices.
Peace on earth is indeed an elusive concept as Ms. Scott stated, and if you're put off by Ms. Scott's in your face conversational style to drill concepts into your head, you will certainly not find it in "Fierce Leadership" either. If you manage to look past her condescending demeanor, her advice has the potential to "improve both your performance and pleasure in everything you do." I happen to be a bigger believer in Steve Kerr's "Reward Systems" Reward Systems: Does Yours Measure Up? (Memo to the CEO) idea of aligning incentives with desired performance. Mr. Kerr, the former chief learning officer for GE and Goldman Sachs is of the opinion that if your employees aren't behaving the way you expect them to, the culprit is most likely your flawed rewards and not the employees. I doubt Ms. Scott's advice on being real and cultivating human connection will stave off the next Financial crisis, the Enron debacles etc. But effective reward systems and smart regulations will. We are only human, and we will act according to our self interest, with or without deep connections to others.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 46
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