Courage needs a companion.

There's an ad out there, about the need for a Chief Courage Officer. In it, they ask a key question: Is Corporate America becoming too risk averse? Implicit in their question: Is that risk aversion oddly damaging the integrity and capacity of business for profit and good? The ad is from Price Waterhouse Coopers and it's a work of motivational art. I'd be proud to have it on my reel.



But I wonder. I wonder what that spot's journey was like, up, and through the bowels of several organizations? I think of the moments of doubt, overcome by inspiration, powered by belief in the message. I can hear people in a position to say "Go ahead," or "kill it," say exactly those words. I can imagine a Creative Group, suits and writers and art directors, circling the wagons on more than one occasion. And I could scribble the dialogue because I've been there. Doing the circling, I mean.

In that journey, to tell a story about courage, one that needs urgently to be told, I would hazard that there were several, perhaps legions of people saying "I dunno, seems risky." Or, "Who are we to say?" These people probably had reams of information implying as much, if interpreted just so. The idea of courage, that it's required for business to succeed, to blaze trails, to stretch and reach the potential we all want it to have was, I bet, "A good idea" in their minds. But still, "I dunno, seems risky." It still wasn't a compelling idea. Maybe it had all the elements of "we could do this", but perhaps none of what compels, impels a response of "should" or "must."

Something moves us across the bridge from could or maybe to should and must. But what? Courage is a yang to a yin, an act in service of something else. But to what?

Maybe the noble idea of Courage requires a second Job, a second admission that the hole Price Waterhouse is trying to point out, and to fill, is double-wide.

Courage needs a friend. ...Courage needs counsel: a Chief Conscience Officer.

[More why courage may slay the business dragons, yet seldom spots them, and often, creates them. But hey, all is not lost.]

[edit: 5.3.04 6:25. Yes, this is the ever-evolving intro, isn't it?]