AI Human Skills, You Tube’s Impact, and Lesser Apes
The Courageous Leadership Lie the Press is Selling You
The business press has a new obsession with courageous leadership.
Harvard Business Review dedicated their September cover story to it. Nordic Business Forum built an entire 2024 conference around it. BetterUp, McKinsey, and dozens of thought leaders and influencers can’t stop talking about it.
Here’s what they’re all telling you: If you’re playing it safe, stuck in analysis paralysis, not innovating fast enough, or not making bold moves, then you are the problem because you lack courage.
Here’s what they’re not telling you: You don’t have a courage problem. You have a systems problem.
The Real Story Behind “Courage Gaps”
The VP was anything but cowardly. She had a track record of bold moves and wasn’t afraid of hard conversations. The CEO wanted to transform the company by moving from a product-only focus to one offering holistic solutions that combined hardware, software, and services. This VP was the obvious choice.
Her team came to her with a ideas that would reposition the company for long-term growth. She loved it. They tested the ideas. Customers loved them. But not a single one ever launched.
It wasn’t because the VP or the CEO lacked courage. It was because the board measured success in annual improvements, the CEO’s compensation structure rewarded short-term performance, and the VP required sign-off from six different stakeholders who were evaluated on risk mitigation. At every level, the system was designed to kill bold ideas. And it worked.
This is the inconvenient truth the courage press ignores.
That success doesn’t just require leaders who are courageous, it requires organizational architecture that systematically rewards courage and manages risk.
What We’re Really Asking Leaders to Overcome
Consider what we’re actually asking leaders to be courageous against:
- Compensation structures tied to short-term metrics
- Risk management processes designed to say “no”
- Approval hierarchies where one skeptic can overrule ten enthusiasts
- Cultures where failed experiments end careers
The courage discourse lets broken systems off the hook.
It’s easier to sell “10 Ways to Build Leadership Courage” than to admit that organizational incentives, governance structures, and cultural norms are actively working against the bold moves we tell leaders to make.
What Actually Enables Courageous Leadership.
I’m not arguing that there isn’t a need for individual courage. There is.
But telling someone to “be braver” when their organizational architecture punishes bravery is like telling someone to swim faster in a pool filled with Jell-O.
If we want courage, we need to fix the things the systems that discourage it:
- Align incentives with the time horizon of the decisions you want made
- Create explicit permission structures for experimentation
- Build decision-making processes that don’t require unanimous consent
- Separate “learning investments” from “performance expectations” when measuring results
- Make the criteria for bold moves clear, not subject to whoever’s in the room
But doing this is a lot harder than buying books about courage.
The Bottom Line
When you fix the architecture, you don’t need to constantly remind people to be brave because the system enables. Individual courage becomes the expectation, not the exception.
The real question isn’t whether your leaders need courage.
It’s whether your organization has the architecture to let them use it.
If you can’t answer that question, that’s not a courage problem.
That’s a design problem.
And design is something that, as a leader, you can actually control.
Divergent Thinking, College Towns, and AI Poison
The Top 5 Questions from 300 Innovators
“Is this what the dinosaurs did before the asteroid hit?”
That was the first question I was asked at IMPACT, InnoLead’s annual gathering of innovation practitioners, experts, and service providers.
It was also the first of many that provided insight into what’s on innovators and executives’ minds as we prepare for 2026
How can you prevent failure from being weaponized?
This is both a direct quote and a distressing insight into the state of corporate life. The era of “fail fast” is long gone and we’re even nostalgic for the days when we simply feared failure. Now, failure is now a weapon to be used against colleagues.
The answer is neither simple nor quick because it comes down to leadership and culture. Jit Kee Chin, Chief Technology Officer at Suffolk Construction, explained that Suffolk is able to stop the weaponization of failure because its Chairman goes to great lengths to role model a “no fault” culture within the company. “We always ask questions and have conversations before deciding on, judging, or acting on something,” she explained
How do you work with the Core Business to get things launched?
It’s long been innovation gospel that teams focused on anything other than incremental innovation must be separated, managerially and physically, from the core business to avoid being “infected” by the core’s unquestioning adherence to the status quo.
The reality, however, is the creation of Innovation Island, where ideas are created, incubated, and de-risked but remain stuck because they need to be accepted and adopted by the core business to scale.
The answer is as simple as it is effective: get input and feedback during concept development, find a core home and champion as your prototype, and work alongside them as you test and prepare to launch.
How do you organize for innovation?
For most companies, the residents of Innovation Island are a small group of functionally aligned people expected to usher innovations from their earliest stages all the way to launch and revenue-generation.
It may be time to rethink that.
Helen Riley, COO/CFO of Google X, shared that projects start with just one person working part-time until a prototype produces real-world learning. Tom Donaldson, Senior Vice President at the LEGO Group, explained that rather than one team with a large mandate, LEGO uses teams specially created for the type and phase of innovation being worked on.
What are you doing about sustainability?
Honestly, I was surprised by how frequently this question was asked. It could be because companies are combining innovation, sustainability, and other “non-essential” teams under a single umbrella to cut costs while continuing the work. Or it could be because sustainability has become a mandate for innovation teams.
I’m not sure of the reason and the answer is equally murky. While LEGO has been transparent about its sustainability goals and efforts, other speakers were more coy in their responses, for example citing the percentage of returned items that they refurbish or recycle but failing to mention the percentage of all products returned (i.e. 80% of a small number is still a small number).
How can humans thrive in an AI world?
“We’ll double down,” was Rana el Kaliouby’s answer. The co-founder and managing partner of Blue Tulip Ventures and host of Pioneers of AI podcast, showed no hesitation in her belief that humans will continue to thrive in the age of AI.
Citing her experience listening to Radiotopia Presents: Bot Love, she encouraged companies to set guardrails for how, when, and how long different AI services can be used. She also advocated for the need for companies to set metrics that go beyond measuring and maximizing usage time and engagement to considering the impact and value created by their AI-offerings.