The Courage to Soar

"In the titles of today's best-selling business books certain words appear over and over: winning, success, power, making the rules, breaking the rules, speed, agility. To me, there's an important theme missing from these books that I'd like to talk about— courage.

I see the definition of courage in four parts:

• THE COURAGE TO BE ourselves. To be proud of who we are as a firm and as individuals. We are the strategist, the realist, the technologist, the thinker, the doer, the transformer. These are Booz Allen's intrinsic values and capabilities. When we have the courage to be, we embrace and live these qualities we treasure their uniqueness. When we don't have it, we devalue ourselves and our firm, and we envy others.
  
  
• THE COURAGE TO CHOOSE. It's always easier to 'keep on keeping on,' to avoid hard choices and trade-offs. But we need to make good choices and hard decisions, day after day. We need to take on important issues, and drive them to closure. Actually, it's a very good thing for us, for our profession, that choices are hard. Fundamentally, what we do for a living is help our clients make hard choices. Strategy is all about making choices—what a company will be, and do, and equally important, what it won't do.
  
  When we've risen to the occasion and made hard choices, it's paid off handsomely for us. When we decided in Vision 2000 to pursue specific commercial target clients and deliver an integrated service offering combining strategy, operations, and technology, we enjoyed tremendous growth. When we implemented Vision 2000 in WTB, we chose not to be a big systems company and not to pursue large, commodity-type contracts. Instead we focused on being the best, not the biggest, and succeeded beyond our wildest expectations.
  
  
• THE COURAGE TO CHANGE. We need to break out of the routine and Challenge, the status quo. Embrace and lead change so we will be creating, not reacting to, the next breaking wave. Beyond the things like our values that we should never change and the comfort and pleasure we take from familiar things, we need to guard against letting routine—the status quo—become an end in itself. When this happens, we become weak and complacent. We must continue to try new and different things whether consulting for equity or a change in our ownership structure or a new kind of business venture. We need to break out once and for all from the mindset of 'that's the way we've always done it.'
  
  
• THE COURAGE TO SOAR. The courage to soar is about feeling and believing. It's about 'going for it,' about striving, and excelling every day for the sheer challenge and joy of it.
  
  European Regional Operations Director David Newkirk made an interesting observation about the kind of people who succeed here at Booz Allen, noting that they share two traits. First, of course, is intellect. The second trait he looks for at the bottom of a resume, usually under the heading of 'other interests.' David says, 'I look for people who have done something very hard and very well, like compete in a marathon or sing in an opera, something at which they strive to excel for the sheer self-satisfaction of the quest.'
  
  It's those who are driven to excel for the feeling, the personal satisfaction of being the best, who really make it at Booz Allen, he observes, not those who need to please other people.
  
  I would like to close by sharing a story that illustrates the courage to soar: One day, as he was about to perform before a packed opera house, Nicolo Paganini (one of the greatest violinists of all time) suddenly realized that he had walked out on stage with a strange violin—a standard orchestra model. Realizing he had no other choice, he began to play with all the skill he possessed. Afterward, the audience gave him a standing ovation and everyone agreed he had given the performance of his life. That night Paganini said, 'Today I learned the most important lesson of my career. Before today, I thought the music was in the violin. Today, I learned the music is in me.'
  
  I say to all of you, the music is not in the marketplace or in the business schools or in the halls of government. The music is in us. All we need is the courage to soar.