Reach new heights with these lofty business lessons from mountaineer, speaker, performance coach, and author Alan Mallory.
It’s said that “teamwork makes the dream work,” but for this to be true, you need a team where every member feels empowered. Create one by balancing the right procedures with enough flexibility to foster creativity. This “sweet spot” allows consistency and innovation to coexist in your team, leading to success.
Most of us will never attempt to climb Mount Everest, much less be successful in reaching its highest peak. Yet, we all face challenges every day. And while some of them seem as insurmountable as a tall, snow-saturated, crevasse-covered mountain, according to Alan Mallory, with the right mindset, they’re not.
He knows of what he speaks. In 2008, after two months of climbing, sometimes in 30-hour stretches, he and his dad, brother, and sister reached Everest’s 29,029-foot summit. Every step came with the possibility of failure, and they witnessed defeat all around them, even spending the night next to a frozen arm belonging to someone who had died during their attempt to reach the top.
And yet, by empowering each other, planning well, and digging deep to find mental and physical resilience, Mallory and his family overcame every obstacle, and their feat set the world record for a family group their size.
The experience taught Mallory what it takes to face and conquer fear, anxiety, and adversity. “There were many exciting aspects but also horrific hurdles, so there were a lot of strategic elements to our success,” he said. He shared how the lessons learned on a frozen mountain trail also apply in real-life business situations.
Top 5 Takeaways from the Top:
BE AGILE:
The teams that were successful on Everest were agile. We did two years of training, but it’s a volatile environment, so we were constantly adapting. It’s the same in business. If your mindset is too rigid, you can’t adapt. Those who win are those who look at a challenge and say, “Well, this is bad, but is there another way forward? How can we pivot?”
BE RESILIENT:
If I had to choose a single word that described what separated the teams who were successful from those who were not, it would be resilience. It’s not giving up. It’s working with your current reality and continuing to put one foot in front of the other. And you only build real resilience by going through tough times. That’s where you learn to problem solve, and you keep getting better at that. So, after surviving a problem, when you hit a new issue, you can look back at how you handled adversity and how you survived before. Even in very different situations, if you are resilient, you are always taking away valuable lessons you can apply in the future.
MANAGE RISKS:
Many climbers who perish on Everest throw money at an outfitter and think they will handle it all for them. They’re not ready to assume the responsibility of the risks they’ll face, so they’re not prepared. Taking risks seriously and taking the time to truly understand them before they materialize allows you to plan ahead and mitigate them. And mitigation strategies in any business are important. Doing a qualitative risk analysis is key; it helps you focus your risk mitigation strategies on the right places.
DEVELOP RELATIONSHIPS:
In some ways, mountaineering is an individual sport. You are in your own mind a lot. But many times, when one member of my family was so sick or so tired, almost delirious even, the others could step in and pick up the slack. We were willing and able to do that for each other because of the strong relationship we’d already established. Without the trust we had and the mutual reliance that came from that, we might not have been able to summon the energy to help each other. Because they\’re built on clear communication, healthy relationships mean you’ve got those productive lines of communication in place, and effective communication is always crucial to business success.
MAINTAIN A FUTURE-FORWARD MINDSET:
To make a climb like Everest, you have to start planning two years ahead, and every climber is shooting for this two-week window in May when the weather cooperates. If you miss anything in the whole process, you can’t just say well, we’ll wait a month. So, you have to envision what needs to happen really far ahead, carve out the time to hit all the steps, the mini goals, leading to that big goal. This is equally true in business. You must look ahead and plan ahead, and this includes documenting lessons learned in the past and applying those lessons to the future. That is continual improvement, and it is critical in mountaineering, in business, and in life.
Read Alan Mallory’s inspiring story “The Family That Conquered Everest” and find more useful tools for navigating both your professional and personal life in his book.
