High altitude climbing provides many lessons that apply to business, says former business owner Werner Berger, the oldest North American to summit Everest and President of Strategic Results International.
He gave this tip in a recent interview with Marian Cook, founder of consulting firm Business Transition Experts, as part of a series of interviews on “Selling Your Business for More”.
In this extract from the interview he explains the situation in more detail.
Marian Cook: What did you learn from climbing Everest? Can you apply that in corporate consulting?
Werner Berger: Many, many, many learning experiences come out of high altitude climbing.
You cannot be on a mountain bound together with your fellow climbers and not be in high communication.
You have to have alignment to a common purpose; you have to have trust. You have to know that your life depends on the other person and their life depends on you. So there’s a real camaraderie that develops.
The question becomes how to deal with a problem as opposed to getting angry at the mountain. It would be very easy to say, why does this mountain throw these crevices in our face, or why is the weather changing whenever I get to high camp. This drove me off Mount McKinley twice. It took me a third time to get to the top.
Generally, when something isn’t working the way it’s supposed to work, we get angry at the person as opposed to just saying, okay, so the wind has moved in and it’s now snowing, so what do we now do? Let’s look at how do we resolve this issue. That was probably one of the biggest learning experiences for me.
Some others are just simply being aware we are human beings. We will go through some emotional roller coasters, and when we know that they’re going to happen, we also don’t have to react to them.
The whole idea of the climb becoming a win/win joint effort also translates into every single business activity. As a manager I have to know my job is to make sure my employees feel like winners, because only when they feel like winners will they have any pride in their work.
When they have pride in their work, they will do a good job, performance goes up. That’s natural.
In fact, when you really look at what the boss’ job is, the boss’ job is to serve his or her employees so they can do their job. So those are just some learning experiences that come to mind. There’s a host of others.
I was thinking about high communication; there cannot be a hidden agenda on the mountain.
I thought of two others that I think are really critical. It is very lonely at the top. And how I got to that in an experiential sense, I was aware that the guides do a tremendous amount of work not just leading us up the mountain and making sure that everywhere is safe, but making sure that everything is organized.
When the snow was very, very deep on Denali the first time we went, the head guide was in front plowing through about two and a half feet of snow creating a path for the rest of us. I quickly became aware that nobody said, my gosh, you did such a phenomenal job today, thank you, thank you, thank you.
That brings to mind how many times do employees say thank you to the boss for really providing this opportunity and providing the environment to have them actually be able to make a living.
The other one that came to mind was that, on the mountain, you have to live in the present. You cannot live in terms of what’s happening in the future or what happened yesterday. You’re thinking of the next step, the next platform that has to be built, the next snow block that has to be cut and melted down for water.
In day to day lives, we’re not in the present and it’s really in the present where Nirvana lives.
What I mean by that is, when I find myself on a mountain day after day living in this space, I find a shift occurring in who I am being, relative to appreciation, relative to humility, relative to just being in awe of so much of what is around me.
Every time I remind myself of that, when I’m back in this world or this other world, my spirits lift and my interactions with others shift.
For this entire interview as well as those of 14 additional world class experts on selling a business, please visit our Business Transition Experts “Education at Your Desktop” site at: http://www.businesstransitionexperts.com/telesummit .
