Courage 171
Another leader who took a daring action is Eric Schmidt of Novell.
He didn’t climb a cliff or swing high on a trapeze. Rather, he told the
truth when almost everyone was advising him not to. He acted with
courage, and his actions encouraged others to do the same. ‘‘When you
enter a downturn... you have to fight the instinct to be overly cautious
... Rather, you have to encourage your most creative people to take
chances... The alternative is to succumb to a culture of fear in which
a bleak vision of the future becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.’’
On Schmidt’s third week on the job, it became evident there would
be a $20 million loss for the quarter. Some ‘‘leaders’’ would have soft-
pedaled this, or ‘‘played with the numbers.’’ Schmidt took a courageous
gamble. He decided to announce the loss. The co-chair of Novell, John
Young, endorsed this difficult decision. ‘‘Later he told me he knew then
he’d made the right decision in hiring me. But after that announcement,
everyone thought that the company was dead as a doornail.’’ Schmidt’s
courage didn’t stop with an announcement. He took immediate mea-
sures to cut costs, develop new products, and make divestitures. Thanks
largely to these courageous decisions, he was able to put the company
back ‘‘in the black’’ within one year.^20
Courage often involves speaking one’s mind despite strong, powerful
opposition. Barry Diller is known today as one of the world’s most
powerful media and entertainment executives. But he got there through
a series of experiences that challenged and gradually built his courage.
Diller says it’s important to ‘‘plunge into the uncomfortable; push, or
be lucky enough to have someone push you, beyond your fears and
your sense of limitations. That’s what I’ve been doing... overcoming
my discomfort as I go along.’’^21
Early in Diller’s career, his boss asked him to read a script and tell the
producer what he thought. After he gave the producer his honest opin-
ion, Diller was thoroughly chewed out. Someone with less courage
might have concluded he was not cut out for the entertainment indus-
try. However, he learned from this experience and went on to select
the scripts forRaiders of the Lost ArkandFlashdanceas well as launching
a ‘‘big hairy audacious’’ venture, the Shopping Channel.
One of the biggest tests of courage is the willingness to challenge