We routinely under-estimate the courage of an entrepreneur’s conviction and over-estimate the courage of a large corporate manager’s conviction.

Courage is the impact and rational ability to deal with the consequences both positive and negative of the problems that need solving, the decisions that need taking, the plans that need creating and the innovation that needs pursuing in an organisation.

It is not be conflated with the size and access to the “means” and resources at their disposal. The personal “hit” for Martin Sullivan (AIG), Bob Nardelli (Home Depot) or Dick Fuld (Lehman) is not in the same league as a $700,000 potential “hit” to the personal savings of a middle-income fortysomething ex partner, who is now a failed entrepreneur with a fintech startup on life support while funding his kids education and the mortgage.

The former elicits a brief media explosion, the inconvenience of stepping away in Fuld’s case briefly from the gilded squash and golf clubs, and the pivot to managing friends and the family’s wealth. The latter, a highly probable demand from the spouse to “get a job” fast, and quizzical looks nightly across the dinner table, as the family’s downward social mobility becomes a stark reality (private school, holidays, nights out).