Leading at The Edge

Dennis Perkins, Margaret Holtman, Jillian Murphy

• Publisher: AMACOM
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780814431610
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Liderazgo

Drawing on the amazing story of Shackleton and his polar exploration team's survival against all odds, author Dennis N. T. Perkins demonstrates the importance of a strong leader in times of adversity, uncertainty, and change.

Part adventure tale and part leadership guide, Leading at the Edge uncovers what the legendary Antarctic adventure of Sir Ernest Shackleton, his ship Endurance, and his team of twenty-seven polar explorers can teach us about bringing order to chaos through true leadership.

Among other skills, you'll learn how to:

• instill optimism while staying grounded in reality,
• step up to risks worth taking,
• consistently reinforce your team message,
• set a personal example,
• find things to celebrate,
• laugh small things off,
• and--even in the face of extreme temperatures, hazardous ice, scarce food, and complete isolation--never give up.

This second edition of Leading at the Edge features additional lessons, new case studies of the strategies in action, tools to uncover and resolve conflicts, and expanded resources.

An updated epilogue compares the leadership styles of the famous polar explorers Shackleton, Amundsen, and Scott, which transcend the one-hundred-plus years since their historic race to the South Pole to help today's leaders learn valuable lessons about the meaning of true success.

PART ONE

Ten Strategies for Leading at The Edge

1

Vision and Quick Victories

Strategy 1:
Never lose sight of the ultimate goal, and focus energy on short-term objectives.

… I feel sure that it is the right thing to attempt a march…. It will be much better for the men in general to feel that even though progress is slow, they are on their way to land, than it will be simply to sit down and wait for the tardy northwesterly drift to take us out of this cruel waste of ice.¹

—Ernest Shackleton

Leaders who take their organizations to The Edge must channel energy toward two equally important goals. First, they must continually be aware of their ultimate destination—their longer-term, strategic objective.

This ultimate goal, however, may be distant and uncertain. So while pursuing this long-term target, leaders also must be vigilant in focusing the scarce resources of the organization on the critical short-term tasks that create momentum and ensure survival. Ernest Shackleton demonstrated an almost uncanny mastery of these two essential, but very different, leadership skills.

Be Willing to Find a “New Mark”

It is hard to imagine a bleaker scene than the one surrounding the demise of Endurance. Shackleton and his crew had suffered as the ship was slowly, inexorably crushed by millions of tons of ice. For days, they watched the death agony of the ship, waiting helplessly as their floating home disintegrated plank by plank.

Even with the uncertainty of the shifting ice, wind, and ocean, life aboard ship had followed a relatively predictable routine. The crew had warm food and the comforting security of a familiar environment. Now, marooned on the ice and snow, their familiar, stable world had been turned upside down.

With the end of Endurance, Shackleton saw his dream of crossing the Antarctic Continent die as well. And he faced more than failure: Shackleton was not expected by the world to reappear until February 1916, and his chances of rescue were nonexistent.

In this wrenching moment of personal challenge, however, Shackleton was able to shift quickly his long-term goal from the crossing of the continent to bringing every man back alive. Refocusing his efforts, he wrote, “A man must shape himself to a new mark, directly the old one goes to ground.”² With no prospect of rescue, facing an unknown future with little chance of survival, he turned to his crew and simply said:“So now we’ll go home.”³

How was Shackleton able to exercise this kind of tenacity in the face of such overwhelming adversity? He certainly had his private doubts, writing in his diary, “I pray God I can manage to get the whole party to civilization.”⁴ Acutely aware of his responsibilities as the leader, Shackleton let go of his original plan, shifted his focus, and devoted himself completely to this new mission. By the intensity of his conviction and the force of his will, he instilled in others the deep belief that they would achieve their new goal: returning safely, without loss of life.

Lessons for Leaders

Efforts to explore the unknown are inherently filled with unexpected events. Changing environmental conditions and shifting opportunities are part of any truly innovative, challenging adventure. This means that, as a leader, you need to be willing to shift both long- and short-term goals without clinging to the past. Additionally, you must be able to commit to these new goals with as much passion and energy as you did to the original mark.

A classic business example of this is CEO Andy Grove’s decision to alter Intel’s direction. Intel, a company known for microprocessors, was once primarily a maker of memory chips. In the mid-1980s, Japanese chipmakers moved to win away Intel’s chip business by undercutting its prices by 10 percent. The Japanese were successful, and Intel lost $173 million in one year.

After considering many options, Grove determined to take Intel out of the memory-chip business and make a commitment to microprocessor manufacturing. In coming to this decision, Grove asked his colleague and former Intel CEO Gordon Moore a hypothetical question: “If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what do you think he would do?”⁵

Moore told Grove that this new CEO would take the company out of the memory-chip business. Grove decided that rather than wait for his successor to change things, he would do it himself. Thereafter, resources were redirected into developing Intel microprocessors, a business sector then secondary to chips. This new direction provided the foundation for Intel’s future success.

Intel continued to adapt to changing demand by looking beyond the microprocessor market. While projections for PC sales fell, Intel boldly acquired assets in the cable-modem chip, wireless chip, and security software businesses. It redirected resources to new product lines: Intel chips for tablet computers and smartphones.⁶ With each of these moves, Intel was finding a new mark and forging ahead in Shackleton style.

Do Something!

When Endurance went down, the crew’s anxiety might have been overwhelming. Instead, their energy was focused and channeled. Although many of their activities did not produce positive results, Shackleton was tireless in finding ways to capture the free-floating anxiety that permeated their situation. Shackleton looked for every opportunity to do something concrete, to take decisive action.

The initial attempt to drag Endurance’s heavily laden lifeboats was a complete failure. Their goal was to head northwest for Paulet Island, hoping to reach the emergency food stores that Shackleton knew had been left some twelve years before. This trek of 312 miles was an unbelievably ambitious undertaking. Even Shackleton had expressed doubts that it could be accomplished at the projected rate of five miles a day—the best they could hope for, dragging sleds and lifeboats across the jagged ice. The boats were essential, since their plan was to reach open water and then to sail to safety.

In spite of the dangers, Shackleton understood the need to try. The task was nearly impossible, but this immediate activity shifted attention from the loss they had just suffered to the clearly defined task ahead. After recovering supplies from the ship and packing the sleds, the journey began. Shackleton and three others forged ahead, searching for a passable route.

Their route was obstructed by a series of pressure ridges, each of which required heavy chopping with shovels and mountaineering pickaxes. The advance party was forced to perform the mind-numbing work of clearing a level trail, and the rest of the expedition followed, manhauling the sleds in relays. After three hours on the trail, the expedition had gone only a mile from the ship in a straight line.

Ironically, the rising temperatures of the next day made things even worse. The expedition members were now plowing through snow stew, bulldozing their way inch by inch, foot by foot. The men sweated profusely, swore at the snow, and made little progress. At the end of the day, they had bulled their way just one more mile. Realizing that it was impossible to go on, Shackleton faced reality and called a halt to the march.

Not surprisingly, this change of plans created no small measure of disappointment. After all, this was to be a march to the open ocean, and eventual rescue. Once more, Shackleton defused a potentially destructive mood, turning the crew’s attention toward salvaging any remaining food, clothing, and other supplies from the wreckage of Endurance. Frank Wild and six others returned to retrieve gear and—most important—the third lifeboat. Then, all hands focused on the new task of establishing Ocean Camp.

Shackleton’s first decision after Endurance went down was in some ways a glaring mistake. They had no chance of covering the vast distance to Paulet Island, and precious energy was wasted on an unreachable goal. Or was it?

Shackleton had discovered the absolute importance of sustaining psychological momentum on an earlier adventure, the British Antarctic expedition of 1907–1909. Marooned in McMurdo Sound, he sensed growing frustration and anxiety among the expedition members. To create an outlet, he proposed climbing Mount Erebus. The ascent was marked by days of suffering, sickness, and fatigue, but it concluded with a major achievement: the first ascent of an Antarctic peak.⁷

The “sledge march,” like the ascent of Mount Erebus, served its purpose. The march kept the crew from dwelling on its misfortune and redirected their energy toward concrete action. Perhaps most important, the effort forced the members of the expedition to work together toward a common goal.

Lessons for Leaders

Leading at The Edge means seizing every opportunity for decisive action and refusing to be discouraged when some efforts prove unsuccessful. The very act of doing something concrete creates a sense of momentum, and a series of small victories will lay the foundation for eventual success.

James Burke, CEO of Tylenol-maker Johnson & Johnson, faced a difficult (and now iconic) decision in September 1982, after an unknown person laced Extra Strength Tylenol capsules with cyanide, causing seven deaths. His handling of the Tylenol danger is a powerful illustration of the value of decisive action in a crisis situation. He had to choose between waiting for conclusive evidence of a nationwide threat or incurring the cost of recalling all the capsules.

The public had come to equate Johnson & Johnson’s products with health and safety; now people were panicking. The company’s response would be critical to restoring trust in Tylenol, the company’s top-selling product, and the rest of the firm’s product line.

The way in which Burke and J&J responded is now regarded as the gold standard of crisis management. Burke’s and the firm’s actions were guided by the company credo: “The first responsibility is to the customer.” Burke quickly formed a strategy team to deal with the crisis, posted a $100,000 reward for finding the killer, ran full-page newspaper and television ads offering consumers an exchange of capsules for tablets, set up a toll-free hotline to field questions, and established public programs to reach doctors and other significant constituencies.

The company redesigned its packaging and eventually retrieved some 31 million capsules from stores and homes around the country. Three months after the crisis, thanks to the company’s quick action, tablet sales had returned to 80 percent of the precrisis level. The Tylenol capsules were eventually replaced with more tamper-resistant caplets. Decisive action saved the company’s market and—more important—its reputation.⁸

The problems faced by Continental Airlines did not involve loss of life, but the company and its leaders faced a similarly daunting situation. Greg Brenneman, former president and COO, described the state of the airlines during one crisis:

Managers were paralyzed by anxiety. The company had gone through ten presidents in ten years, so standard operating procedure was to do nothing while awaiting new management. The product, in a word, was terrible; the company’s results showed it…. And the company hadn’t posted a profit outside of bankruptcy since 1978.⁹

On the verge of an unprecedented third declaration of bankruptcy, and with employee morale in shambles, Brenneman and former CEO Gordon Bethune devised a strategy for Continental that they called the “Go Forward Plan”—then they went forward. Brenneman remembers:

If you sit around devising elegant and complex strategies and then try to execute them through a series of flawless decisions, you’re doomed. We saved Continental because we acted, and we never looked back.¹⁰

These decisive actions by Continental’s leaders enabled the airline to survive another sixteen years. It weathered the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the economic plight of the airline industry until merging with United Airlines. While he was at the helm, Bethune’s leadership had a major impact on the airline: Continental went from receiving dismal customer reviews to winning prestigious awards for excellent quality and customer service.¹¹

The spirit of moving forward is exemplified in a story recounted by my friend Bob, a senior manager in a large federal agency based in Washington, D.C. Bob was given the task of revitalizing two regional offices, one located in New York, the other in Boston. Although he was in constant contact with the two offices by phone, he was often required to be physically present to troubleshoot. He did this by using the New York–Boston airlin...