Courage As A Skill

By KATHLEEN K. REARDON

Although the odds of success will be hard to estimate before the other decisions in the courage calculation have been made, it is possible at this stage to think about the likelihood of primary-goal achievement. The venture capitalist Tania Modic, for instance, managing partner of Western Investments Capital, took a big risk in her first job out of college, as the assistant marketing development officer at an international bank. Modic's fancy title had a catch: There was no marketing development officer for her to assist, and the work she was assigned was unchallenging. The ambitious Modic wanted to contribute to the bank's success and also to her own advancement. Having helped many people senior to her, she knew she had the skills to do their jobs. So, using vacation time and her own money, she traveled to New York, called on some accounts that her senior colleagues had allowed to languish, and revitalized them. When she returned, some high-placed noses were out of joint, but her courageous action gained the attention of senior management, and she was rewarded with praise and, later, a promotion.
Modic was not merely brash. She thought clearly about her goals and the circumstances surrounding her high-risk maneuver: the culture of the organization, her personal history and skills, and the points of view of others involved. Her primary goal was organizational  to revitalize the dead accountsand she estimated her chances of achieving that goal at about 70%. Her secondary goal was personalto raise her visibility  and she saw a 60% chance of succeeding at that. She estimated her chances of getting fired at about 5o%or higher if she failed to rescue the accounts. Modic decided that she could live with these odds: The upside for the bank was considerable, and for herself, she believed, even bad visibility was better than none. She took the plunge, and went on to an impressive career. Like many effective leaders, Modic succeeded by recognizing, early in her career, the advantages of careful risk calculation over impulsiveness.
Determining Your Goats' Importance
The second component of the courage calculation addresses these questions: Just how important is it that you achieve your goal or goals? If you don't do something about the current state of affairs, will your company suffer? Will your career be derailed? Will you be able to look at yourself in the mirror? Does the situation call for immediate, high-profile action or something more nuanced and less risky? Courage is not about squandering political capital on low-priority issues.
To distinguish such squandering from constructive risk, John Hallenborg, a Los Angelesbased senior entertainment manager, assigns importance at three levels. On the lowest rung of his risk-taking ladder are issues about which he does not feel strongly, though he may prefer a particular outcome and may say so m a low-risk situation. Middle-rung issues are those about which his opinion is strong but doesn't involve higher values; his feelings may change based on new information. At the top of the ladder are "spear in the sand" issues. He perceives these as resting on morals or values for which he is willing to take a stand and fight. Spear-in-the-sand situations require that you weigh your belief in the cause against the risks involved. Such situations are rare: They occur when negotiation is difficult or impossible, open minds are hard to find, and doing nothing is simply not an option. Peter Rost, a physician, formerly with Pfizer, drove his spear into the sand when he broke ranks with his employer by calling for legislation allowing the import of lower-priced medicines from
Canada and elsewhere  a practice the U.S. drug industry strongly opposes. He also put his job on the line in efforts to halt the sale of off-label drugs and the associated incentives for physicians. Rost did not take on the pharmaceutical industry lightly, and the move cost him his career. But his convictions
were too strong to ignore. He left the industry and went on to write The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman.
Tipping the Power Balance
People often assume that power in corporations is a simple matter of position on the organization chart. In attempting to please those above them, many people choose never to take a stand. But in reality, even those in top management give power to anyone on whom they are dependent whether for respect, advice, friendship, appreciation, or network affiliations.
Seen this way, power is something over which we really do have considerable control. By establishing relationships with and influencing those around you,for example, you gain sway over people who otherwise hold sway over you. This gives you a broader base from which to make bold moves.
You can wisely form supportive power networks in advance, but building them takes time. In 1981 Jack Gallaway developed his power base as part of a courage calculation on behalf of Ramada. At the time, Gallaway was president of the Tropicana hotel and casino in Las Vegas, which Ramada owned. The company, having spent $340 million to construct its Atlantic City casino, was selling off hotels to make up for a 300% cqst overrun. The last thing Ramada's board and top managers wanted to consider was any kind of expansion. But Gaillaway believed that expansion in the booming Las Vegas market was critical.
When he approached Ramada's senior managers about adding another hotel tower to the Tropicana, they told him to stick to his knitting. "They wouldn't even give me the money to work on the concept designs;" he recalls. He decided to see what he could do by leveraging his external network: He contacted an executive with Mardian, a Phoenix-based real estate developer. This was a clever move, because the powerful chairman of Ramada himself had previously passed on the executive's name.
Gallaway knew that Mardian was in the process of building a stadium in Las Vegas, and that the executive and other employees would need a place to stay while in town. So he made a trade: He provided Mardian's people with hotel rooms and transportation for a week in exchange for a complete set of concept drawings and an architectural model of a new Tropicana tower, worth more than $100,000. Mardian's senior managers knew this would give them the inside track if the hotel expansion was actually undertaken.
Gallaway's calculation paid off. When the Atlantic City operation opened in 1982, Ramada was again in the black, and Gallaway made his move. He presented Ramada's board with the drawings and the model, and the board approved the project. He knew that he could have been handed his head for going against the board's instructions, but he lowered the risks by tipping the power balance  working with someone he'd found through Ramada's chairman. Meanwhile, he proved himself a loyal "citizen" by keeping his

operation's numbers up. By the time the company's financial crisis was over, Gallaway had secured an invaluable foothold in Las Vegas.

Courage As A Skill

By KATHLEEN K. REARDON

Although the odds of success will be hard to estimate before the other decisions in the courage calculation have been made, it is possible at this stage to think about the likelihood of primary-goal achievement. The venture capitalist Tania Modic, for instance, managing partner of Western Investments Capital, took a big risk in her first job out of college, as the assistant marketing development officer at an international bank. Modic's fancy title had a catch: There was no marketing development officer for her to assist, and the work she was assigned was unchallenging. The ambitious Modic wanted to contribute to the bank's success and also to her own advancement. Having helped many people senior to her, she knew she had the skills to do their jobs. So, using vacation time and her own money, she traveled to New York, called on some accounts that her senior colleagues had allowed to languish, and revitalized them. When she returned, some high-placed noses were out of joint, but her courageous action gained the attention of senior management, and she was rewarded with praise and, later, a promotion.
Modic was not merely brash. She thought clearly about her goals and the circumstances surrounding her high-risk maneuver: the culture of the organization, her personal history and skills, and the points of view of others involved. Her primary goal was organizational  to revitalize the dead accountsand she estimated her chances of achieving that goal at about 70%. Her secondary goal was personalto raise her visibility  and she saw a 60% chance of succeeding at that. She estimated her chances of getting fired at about 5o%or higher if she failed to rescue the accounts. Modic decided that she could live with these odds: The upside for the bank was considerable, and for herself, she believed, even bad visibility was better than none. She took the plunge, and went on to an impressive career. Like many effective leaders, Modic succeeded by recognizing, early in her career, the advantages of careful risk calculation over impulsiveness.
Determining Your Goats' Importance
The second component of the courage calculation addresses these questions: Just how important is it that you achieve your goal or goals? If you don't do something about the current state of affairs, will your company suffer? Will your career be derailed? Will you be able to look at yourself in the mirror? Does the situation call for immediate, high-profile action or something more nuanced and less risky? Courage is not about squandering political capital on low-priority issues.
To distinguish such squandering from constructive risk, John Hallenborg, a Los Angelesbased senior entertainment manager, assigns importance at three levels. On the lowest rung of his risk-taking ladder are issues about which he does not feel strongly, though he may prefer a particular outcome and may say so m a low-risk situation. Middle-rung issues are those about which his opinion is strong but doesn't involve higher values; his feelings may change based on new information. At the top of the ladder are "spear in the sand" issues. He perceives these as resting on morals or values for which he is willing to take a stand and fight. Spear-in-the-sand situations require that you weigh your belief in the cause against the risks involved. Such situations are rare: They occur when negotiation is difficult or impossible, open minds are hard to find, and doing nothing is simply not an option. Peter Rost, a physician, formerly with Pfizer, drove his spear into the sand when he broke ranks with his employer by calling for legislation allowing the import of lower-priced medicines from
Canada and elsewhere  a practice the U.S. drug industry strongly opposes. He also put his job on the line in efforts to halt the sale of off-label drugs and the associated incentives for physicians. Rost did not take on the pharmaceutical industry lightly, and the move cost him his career. But his convictions
were too strong to ignore. He left the industry and went on to write The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman.
Tipping the Power Balance
People often assume that power in corporations is a simple matter of position on the organization chart. In attempting to please those above them, many people choose never to take a stand. But in reality, even those in top management give power to anyone on whom they are dependent whether for respect, advice, friendship, appreciation, or network affiliations.
Seen this way, power is something over which we really do have considerable control. By establishing relationships with and influencing those around you,for example, you gain sway over people who otherwise hold sway over you. This gives you a broader base from which to make bold moves.
You can wisely form supportive power networks in advance, but building them takes time. In 1981 Jack Gallaway developed his power base as part of a courage calculation on behalf of Ramada. At the time, Gallaway was president of the Tropicana hotel and casino in Las Vegas, which Ramada owned. The company, having spent $340 million to construct its Atlantic City casino, was selling off hotels to make up for a 300% cqst overrun. The last thing Ramada's board and top managers wanted to consider was any kind of expansion. But Gaillaway believed that expansion in the booming Las Vegas market was critical.
When he approached Ramada's senior managers about adding another hotel tower to the Tropicana, they told him to stick to his knitting. "They wouldn't even give me the money to work on the concept designs;" he recalls. He decided to see what he could do by leveraging his external network: He contacted an executive with Mardian, a Phoenix-based real estate developer. This was a clever move, because the powerful chairman of Ramada himself had previously passed on the executive's name.
Gallaway knew that Mardian was in the process of building a stadium in Las Vegas, and that the executive and other employees would need a place to stay while in town. So he made a trade: He provided Mardian's people with hotel rooms and transportation for a week in exchange for a complete set of concept drawings and an architectural model of a new Tropicana tower, worth more than $100,000. Mardian's senior managers knew this would give them the inside track if the hotel expansion was actually undertaken.
Gallaway's calculation paid off. When the Atlantic City operation opened in 1982, Ramada was again in the black, and Gallaway made his move. He presented Ramada's board with the drawings and the model, and the board approved the project. He knew that he could have been handed his head for going against the board's instructions, but he lowered the risks by tipping the power balance  working with someone he'd found through Ramada's chairman. Meanwhile, he proved himself a loyal "citizen" by keeping his

operation's numbers up. By the time the company's financial crisis was over, Gallaway had secured an invaluable foothold in Las Vegas.