Speed: How Leaders Accelerate Successful Execution

CHAPTER 12

DISPLAYING COURAGE

Courage is not the absence of fear, butrather the judgment that somethingelse is more important than fear.

—AMBROSE REDMOON

For many people work is a bit like a water park ride called the Lazy River. Basically this ride is a meandering circle in which people float on tubes around the river, moving at the same pace as the water under them. They can just relax because no effort is required and there is no danger or excitement in the ride.

Many employees come to work, get on their tube, and go with the flow of the current until it’s time to go home. In our research we found that courage is one of the key characteristics of leaders who exhibited high levels of speed. In other words, they got off their tube, ran ...