We’ll start with a truism: in business, you need to be smart. In fact, smartness—whether it’s called cleverness, practical intelligence, or savvy—is the operating currency of twenty-first-century organizational culture. The leaders the world admires are tremendously smart, whether they’re in business—like Bill Gates of Microsoft, Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo, Tim Cook of Apple, and Ursula Burns of Xerox—or in politics—like U.S. presidents Obama and Clinton and former U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.

What all very smart leaders have in common is an ability to impress us with their intellectual prowess and ability to succeed at very high levels. They see patterns in seemingly random information. They take decisive action while others are still trying to understand or appreciate the situation. They seize opportunities that many regard as too risky and show an ability to make strategic choices that confer them a competitive edge. Some are big picture thinkers; some excel at executing strategies and others at innovating breakthrough products.

All this considered, it seems desirable to be a smart leader, and it is. When we exercise our smarts, we not only experience success; we also feel strong and capable, operating at the top of our game. We want more of this good thing. If we are in the position of leading an organization, we want to leverage our smartness to succeed and help others succeed.

But these are complex and uncertain times, and many leaders are discovering that smartness alone is insufficient to achieve both success and a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment. Smartness and more smartness is increasingly failing to bring meaningful growth and prosperity to organizations and their leaders. In our experience, wise leadership succeeds where smart leadership cannot.

Thus, this book is not about moving you from smart leadership to smarter leadership, but about setting a trajectory toward wise leadership—an expanded capacity to act and lead wisely (without losing your smartness). It’s about what potentiates your wise leadership and what it is that wise leaders do differently. At its core it is an exploration of practical wisdom—how reflective actions, thoughtful application of smartness, and the deployment of enlightened self-interest allow you to become successful in a sustainable way while making a difference to others along the way. And it contains a road map and personalized tools for you to make the journey.