CIOs Learn Lessons From Everest
Wayne Hanson
“If you have the right team and the right attitude” joked mountain climber Alison Levine, “you can absolutely get a Republican candidate elected in California.” Levine, who keynoted the CIO Academy this week in Sacramento, not only climbed McKinley and Everest, in 2003 she served as deputy finance director for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s successful gubernatorial campaign. Climbing mountains teaches lessons, she said, that travel well in government. “Nobody is going to fault you for being too enthusiastic,” she said, and with creativity and innovation, you can do most anything.
Alison Levine
“Use the tools that you do have and use them effectively,” she said. “We broke our toothbrushes off to save weight, cut tags out of our clothing.” And when the going got really tough, they went through their packs with a new appreciation of what was essential and what wasn’t. The first goal is for everyone to come back alive, like Ernest Shackleton who was marooned on the polar ice for 20 months and didn’t lose a man. The second goal is to come back with all your fingers and toes, and the third priority, she said, is to come back as friends. Lessons learned are fourth priority, and touching the top of the mountain comes in fifth.
In 2002, she was invited to serve as the team captain of the first American Women’s Everest Expedition. The scariest part of the trip, she said, was going into her boss’ office to ask for two months off work. She didn’t think she had the skills to lead an expedition, but took the challenge.
Assembling a team, Levine was looking for two qualities. They had to be experienced climbers and they had to be team players. It wouldn’t do to find oneself on the mountain with a nice person who couldn’t climb, or an expert climber who only cared about herself. All but one had some major personal obstacles. Levine herself had undergone heart surgery and was sensitive to cold. Another was a breast cancer survivor and a diabetic, one was only four foot nine inches tall and had exercise-induced asthma. But they all had the will power to do what they needed to do, said Levine.
Assembling the team was only the first step. She had to secure funding and plan a trip across the world that would start at sea level and end up at 29,000 feet — as high as an airline flight — through the so called “death zone” where a human body starts to die. “It pulls the blood out of the extremities,” she said. “You can live without hands and feet, but not without your vital organs.” If you were set down on top of Everest, she said, you’d die. Therefore, the climb must include time for acclimating the body to the altitude.
The only way to confront the monumental challenges, she said, was to break it down into manageable steps, and go through the steps one at a time. Once on the mountain, the team would acclimate by climbing from base camp to camp one, then back down, then back up to camp two, then down again, all the while eating 6,000 calories a day just to stay warm.
“No matter how good you are and how much experience you have, you have to be able to deal with a changing environment,” she said, comparing the storms that move in quickly on a mountain to the fast pace of technology evolution and political change.
Levine always talks to the other climbing parties, she said, because you need to establish a relationship before you get into trouble. Climbing over 20,000 feet, she said, is so difficult, that rescues are sometimes not even attempted.
The first part of the climb is across ladders over ice crevasses that move several feet a day, with constant danger of collapse. Not until the climber reaches camp three is he or she even on Everest itself. A climber in a party ahead of them died, falling 1,500 feet. The team considered turning back, but decided to continue, and the tragedy helped pull their team even closer together.
“Keep a positive attitude,” said Levine, “that is contagious. If you are talking about how miserable things are, that will catch on too. A smile on your face during tough times helps the people around you.”
Climbing Everest near the top means taking five to 10 breaths for every step, she said. Any movement is a waste of energy, if you drop something and have to bend over to pick it up, it may take 15 minutes to recover.
Finally, after an equipment malfunction, and a fast-approaching storm, Levine’s party turned back without reaching the top, 200 feet from the summit. It was one of the toughest decisions she ever made, she said, but it does not haunt her, even though people she talks to sometimes dismiss the climb as not having succeeded. She calculated at that altitude it would have taken the group three hours to climb the remaining 200 feet, and the storm would have hit, perhaps dooming the team. “You have to stay focused and remember what you are there to do,” she said.
She knew what the right decision was, yet it was harder to turn back than just plunge ahead. “One person’s core decision making can ruin an entire organization and destroy companies permanently. Using good judgment is not easy. There are people waiting for you to fail,” she said, “even CIOs have media scrutiny.
“I didn’t want to live with [turning back],” she said, “but I could live with that. I couldn’t live with someone dying. It’s the lessons you learn that change you, not touching the top of the mountain.”
Another lesson, she said, was that the journey is not over until you are home safely. On the way down, an icefall narrowly missed crashing down on Levine and another climber. A helicopter that picked them up from base camp crashed on its next trip killing all 12 people aboard.
Such a climb with life and death in the balance may not compare directly to a CIO’s daily responsibilities. However, the principles learned on the trail do apply in the office or in life, and the problems of climbing a mountain may make the daily problems of managing even the largest IT organization seem quite manageable by comparison.
“Technique and ability alone will not get you to the top,” she said, “willpower is the most important thing. You cannot buy it or be given it by another, it rises from your heart.”