High-Stakes Leadership

Chapter 8

Leverage

Courage and judgment are powerful and especially needed in high-stakes situations. Judgment without courage makes for interesting analysis but nothing else. Courage without judgment can motivate action, right or wrong. But, when combined—in the same place and at the same time—courage and judgment help leaders set direction and build enthusiasm to move toward it, leveraging themselves and their organizations many times over.

Necessary as they are, however, they are insufficient to fulfill a strategy. It is the implementation of great ideas that trips up many businesses, organizations, and individuals. My clients often ask, at the beginning of a strategic thinking process (notice I didn’t say strategic planning process), “How ...