Upward Bound: Nine Original Accounts of How Business Leaders Reached Their Summits by Michael Useem & Jerry Useem & Paul Asel

Author:Michael Useem & Jerry Useem & Paul Asel
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781400051960
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2003-11-03T14:00:00+00:00

5

Scaling Up:

Ridge Walking from Silicon Valley to McKinley’s Summit

PAUL ASEL

Notice: Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success.

—Advertisement posted by Ernest Shackleton

for his last Antarctic expedition (the ad drew 5,000 applications)

JUNE 1998. A BLIZZARD RAGED ACROSS THE WINDSWEPT crest of the Kahiltna Glacier on Alaska’s Mount McKinley. Drifts leaped the eight-foot snow-block wall that encircled us, submerging our tent. For the next twenty-four hours, Doug Heroux, Fred Mauren, and I took turns shoveling snow and reinforcing our position. We battled exhaustion and cold, struggling to secure our shelter against the storm.

We rarely talked in the tent that evening, retreating instead to our own solitude as we steeled ourselves for the ordeal ahead. Both Doug and Fred had climbed McKinley before. Fred had reached the summit two years earlier in benign weather, while ten years earlier Doug had made a harrowing escape along the West Buttress after a week of gale-force winds and whiteouts at high camp had depleted food supplies and ended the expedition without a summit attempt. Now, Doug stared blankly into space, reliving that week at high camp and summoning strength for this new ascent.

The tent door zipped open, and Fred plunged into the tent. It was my turn. Back in the blizzard, I held the shovel in front of me with outstretched arms. It was barely visible. So this was McKinley at 10,000 feet. What would it offer at 20,000? During the previous week, reports from high camp at 17,200 feet rarely varied: temperatures ranging from minus twenty degrees Fahrenheit to minus thirty, and winds exceeding forty miles an hour. The mountain had already claimed three lives in the last week, and weather had forestalled all summit bids until now, early June, in the middle of the 1998 climbing season. Our commitment to complete the climb without blackening toes or friendships now seemed in jeopardy. How much were we willing to risk in a summit bid if marginal conditions prevailed? The question now seemed more pressing and the answer less resolute than when we nonchalantly signed waivers at park headquarters in Talkeetna after watching a vivid documentary portraying McKinley’s many hazards.

The challenges of mountain climbing provide a powerful metaphor for business. While investing in and advising start-ups for the past fifteen years, I have often used lessons from mountaineering experiences. Like climbing, starting a business is a risky endeavor in which the difference between success and failure is narrow and the consequences extreme. Entrepreneurs walk unconstrained by ropes, unconcerned about the danger of snow and ice disappearing underfoot, and unimpeded by layers of clothing designed for arctic conditions. Nevertheless, they guide their companies along narrow ridges, reconciling competing forces within and beyond the firm.

On a mountain or at the office, the quest for peak performance is a balancing act. Both entrepreneurs and climbers require:

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