Into the Storm (23 page)

One of the most interesting patterns to emerge from my research concerns the nature of conversation among teams that survive life-threatening situations. I've seen a similar pattern in many accounts—in teams ranging from Shackleton's
Endurance
Expedition to shipwreck survivors adrift in lifeboats, and to the Ramblers as well.

In the 1998 storm, the encouraging and optimistic banter of the Ramblers seemed to be transparently concocted. When Arthur Psaltis said, “The clouds up there are clearing,” or “I think we're getting through it,” his brother Ed was skeptical. Yet at the same time, he realized that Arthur's reassurance made things better. It felt good to hear him say that they were going to be okay. It helped. But how can words that seem to be an obvious spin make a bad situation better?

I gained some additional insight about the phenomenon a few years ago at the Explorers Club in New York. Because of my previous book on Shackleton, I had been asked to do a keynote presentation at the Club's Lowell Thomas Awards Dinner. I was looking forward to the dinner and to meeting a number of the distinguished honorees, including Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia.

At a reception before the awards dinner I found myself in a room filled with explorers, a number of whom had impressive resumes. None of the faces in the room were familiar, however, and this was not my usual social circle.

Much to my surprise, my wife, Susan, began waving at a figure across the room. I was supposed to be the writer and adventurer, but Susan—who grew up in Queens and has never been camping—seemed to know one of the honorees.

We crossed the room, and Susan was soon engaged in an animated conversation with Kenneth Kamler, a doctor with whom she had studied while a medical student at Mount Sinai. It seemed somewhat ironic that Susan was more at home at the Explorers Club than I was and that she knew the distinguished adventurer who was being honored at the awards dinner. It was my good fortune, however, because the event introduced me to Ken's work.

Ken Kamler has climbed, dived, sledded, and trekked through some of the most remote regions of the world. He was the only doctor on Everest during the 1996 expedition documented by John Krakauer's book
Into Thin Air
, and he helped treat the survivors.

As a physician, Ken's life work involves understanding how people respond to extreme conditions—how they succumb and how they prevail. And in his fascinating book—
Surviving the Extremes: A Doctor's Journey to the Limits of Human Endurance
—Ken shares his experience in places ranging from the jungle to high altitudes and even outer space.
³
One story in particular caught my attention.

Ken had volunteered to accompany an expedition to study the tectonics of Mount Everest and to measure its exact height using a laser telescope. On the second day of the expedition, a Sherpa slipped and fell while crossing an aluminum ladder placed over a crevasse in the ice. He dropped 80 feet and ended up wedged headfirst between walls of ice at the bottom of the crevasse.

Pasang, the Sherpa, spent thirty minutes hanging upside down before his fellow climbers could bring him back to the surface. The climbing party then made its way down to the base camp where Ken was waiting. At first Pasang had been conscious and walking, but he began to stumble badly and collapsed, unconscious. It took hours to lower him slowly down the mountain.

This kind of head-on collision, followed by loss of consciousness, would have likely been fatal for someone brought into Ken's emergency room in New York City. And at the Everest base camp, 17,559 feet above sea level, none of this advanced equipment was available.

Pasang had made it down alive, but just barely. His respiration and pulse were slowing, and less oxygen was getting to his brain. Pasang's body was about to shut down, but something was keeping him alive.

Gathered round the injured climber were fellow Sherpas who had come to pray. They were facing toward him, and their lips were moving in a monotonous chant. Outside the tent there was more chanting—a chorus arising from tents around the camp where other Sherpas were keeping vigil. As Ken describes it, “In the stillness of the night the effect was powerful, primal, and unnerving: a quadraphonic rumble emanating from within the mountain itself.”

The sound was calming and hypnotizing, engulfing both the doctor and the injured climber. Ken administered oxygen through a face mask and fluids through an IV line. He performed some of his medical tasks without conscious effort. Was it possible, Ken wondered, that the Sherpas had evolved a method for matching the pitch of their chanting with the vibration of brain waves—that they could create a harmonic that was helping reverse Pasang's brain shutdown?

There was no course in medical school that showed Ken a protocol for treating a subdural hematoma in below-zero temperatures using a combination of oxygen, IV fluids, and Tibetan chants. But there on the mountain in the dark, Ken would not dismiss the possibility that the chants were helping Pasang recover from this traumatic event.

Pasang survived the night. His pulse strengthened, the swelling in his face receded, and he opened his eyes. With the morning light, the chanting stopped. Ken felt as if he had been watching the scene from a distance, and he was certain he had witnessed a healing force—that the chanting had released an energy within Pasang, a will to live that had reversed his decline.

The recovery of Pasang the Sherpa can be explained in medical terms describing nerve impulses and chemical reactions. It can be described in religious terms as a miracle. Or it can be understood through the power of human connection—the power that comes from the strength that we draw from each other in times of crisis.

Without grasping the complexities of the human brain or the possibilities of divine intervention, one thing is certain: The power of a team to surmount adversity is extraordinary. With encouragement from others, we can overcome overwhelming odds.

1.  Does your team have absolute clarity about what it means to succeed? Do they know what it will mean to take home the Tattersall's trophy?

2.  Do all team members see a path to victory? Can they envision a scenario by which the team will win?

3.  Once the team is committed, are you able to exclude distracting thoughts and focus on the goal with
tunnel vision?

4.  Do team members speak positively and optimistically, encouraging each other? Do they support individuals who may be discouraged—helping them regain confidence and energy?

 

 

T
he very best teams develop the ability to learn from experience. They have the ability to innovate, and to generate and implement new ideas. In practice, however, these fundamental skills are difficult to develop and even harder to maintain.

My colleague Robert Shaw and I have invested a considerable amount of time trying to understand why learning and innovation are so problematic.
¹
As we looked at everything that needed to happen for a team to learn effectively, it became easier to understand why it is so challenging to create learning-friendly teams and organizations.

At a conceptual level, the steps involved in creating a learning team are relatively straightforward. Teams need to do three essential things. They need to: take action, reflect on the outcomes of their actions, and gain insights that will help them improve future performance. In a larger organization, individual teams need to disseminate their ideas and learnings to help other teams as well.

Although the concepts are simple, we found an imposing list of things that can interrupt the learning cycle.

 

  The
capacity to take action
is inhibited when organizations create risk-averse cultures that penalize failure, when teams lack the resources to experiment, when team members experience the strain of too many conflicting priorities, and when people feel powerless, resigning themselves to simply following orders.

  The
capacity to reflect and gain insight
is diminished when teams deny that problems exist, when they get complacent because of previous successes, and when they lack forums to talk about team performance.

  The
capacity to share learnings
is blocked when teams become inwardly focused and when they view other teams as competitors. For a team on a sailboat racing against other competitors, this insular view makes sense. But, as Ancona and Bresman argue, when different teams in the organization need to work together to succeed, this isolation becomes counterproductive.

 

Although many conditions must be met in order to create a learning team, we found success stories along with the failures. Here are some tactics that will help your team innovate and learn.

The expression
gung-ho
often conjures up an image of someone—maybe a football player or soldier—charging ahead with unbridled enthusiasm. But the origins of the phrase are rooted in a concept quite different from that stereotypic picture. Originally an abbreviation for Chinese industrial cooperatives, the two characters in the phrase
gung-ho
came to be translated by some Americans as “work together,” or “work in harmony.” One of those Americans was a Marine officer named Evans Carlson.

Carlson had heard the term while serving with the Chinese resistance in 1937 and 1938. In 1942, Carlson—now a Lieutenant Colonel—was placed in command of the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion.

The 2nd Raider Battalion was specifically organized and tasked with conducting guerrilla operations against the Japanese. The idea of a specialized “commando” unit was strongly supported by President Franklin Roosevelt, who was desperate to find a way to strike back against Japan. The history of
Carlson's Raiders
is rich in drama, but one of the most interesting chapters of the
Gung-Ho Battalion
concerns Colonel Carlson's approach to training and organization.

Carlson had served in both the Army and the Marine Corps, and he had been both an officer and an enlisted man—a member of the rank and file. Carlson's experience convinced him that the sharp divide between officers and the troops was counterproductive. Consequently, in the egalitarian spirit that he had observed while serving with the Chinese resistance, Carlson decided to hold weekly gung-ho meetings.

In these gung-ho assemblies, anyone—officer or enlisted—had the right to speak without fear of reprisal. Observing the Raiders in action, one news correspondent was astounded to see a corporal disagree with his captain over a maneuver they had practiced earlier. When questioned about the exchange, Colonel Carson responded simply, “I like men who think.”
²

Some questioned Carlson's unorthodox view of hierarchy and the chain of command, but the concept of gung-ho meetings, where everyone has a right to speak up, is central to the concept of learning and innovation. The ability to talk honestly about what works, what doesn't work, and what might work is critical to effective teamwork.

Neville Crichton is the owner and skipper of the super maxi yacht
Alfa Romeo
. Crichton comes from a long line of adventurers—his grandfather accompanied Shackleton on an expedition in the Antarctic—and he himself is a distinguished sailor. Crichton has carried the New Zealand flag to victory in almost 200 races throughout the world, and he was honored by Queen Elizabeth II for his contributions to yachting and business.

Unlike many wealthy businesspeople, Crichton is a hands-on skipper who actually sails his boat. And in the spirit of gung-ho, he is also committed to learning as a team. As Crichton describes the team on
Alfa Romeo:

We don't have prima donnas on the boat; we just have very good sailors. We work as a team, not as prima donnas screaming at everyone else. We have a talk as a crew before the start of the race, and after the race we do a debrief and we take notes. We follow-up and we fix things that go wrong—and that applies even if I'm the skipper. If I've stuffed up the start, it's discussed and we find out why I stuffed up the start. It's not an embarrassment. We talk openly about it, we make notes on it, and we fix it for the next race.
³

The ability to talk openly about why things get “stuffed up” is a central tenet of gung-ho, and a hallmark of winning teams.

Like
AFR Midnight Rambler, Rosebud's
impressive record is based on teamwork, not individual rock stars. As Malcolm Park put it:

We aren't the big names in sailing. On some boats we sail against, every single person aboard is an America's Cup helmsman or tactician. That's just not who we are. I'm not taking anything away from how those teams function—they're incredibly competitive and they are great groups to sail against. But that's not our vision.

Our vision is much more oriented to offshore sailing. As a result we don't necessarily want an America's Cup tactician. We want people who can get along and have confidence in the rest of their team members to do their job.

When you're down below at the end of the day and it's blowing 40 knots up on deck and is miserable, you need to be able to rest and be prepared to come back on deck again in three hours. But the only way that you can do that is if you've got absolute confidence in the team that's on deck so that you can relax.

Having confidence in everyone on your team is a key to success. It's been my experience that if you have rock stars aboard, they don't necessarily function as part of the team. I'm not saying it can't happen; it just hasn't been my experience.
⁴

Park's description of the
Rosebud
team reminded me of the Ramblers. The
Rosebud
crew had worked together for a significant amount of time. They were all good sailors, but there were no
rock stars
or
jewel positions
. In addition, Park noted the consistency between his leadership as a watch captain and that of Kevin Miller, another watch leader.

The commitment to teamwork aboard
Rosebud
came as no surprise, but Park went on to describe the creativity encouraged by the owner, Roger Sturgeon. Sturgeon is a mathematician who thinks about the world in a way that invites creative thinking. To encourage ingenuity,
Rosebud
has devoted 10 percent of its total budget to invest in ideas that are “outside the realm of what is normally expected or used in the marine industry.”

All of the sailors in key spots were encouraged to come up with a new idea. And each of the individuals who had something they wanted to experiment with could have the satisfaction of seeing their idea being implemented.

Not every suggestion resulted in a workable idea. But as Park sees it:

If just one of the ideas out of that 10 percent of the budget succeeds, people will have an acknowledgment of their success and we will have a better boat for it. It could be a completely outrageous idea that nobody's tried before. I think it's important to allow that. It enhances creativity and allows people more involvement in the boat. People might come up with something that nobody else has thought of. And that's a huge upside.

I asked Park if he could recall any new ideas that were especially interesting. He responded: “Yup, I can think of three specific things right now.” When I asked him what they were, he replied, “I can't tell you. We don't think anybody else has come up with them.” I suspect he was right, and I understand why he had no interest in disseminating his innovative ideas to his competitors.

One dark night in Vietnam I was standing at the opening of my sandbagged bunker, listening to radio messages that were being broadcast on a variety of tactical frequencies. Most of the messages were routine, but the urgency I heard in the voices during one exchange caught my attention.

I had a small reel-to-reel tape recorder, and, for reasons I can't fully explain, I decided to tape the radio conversation. Three radio call signs were the most active:
Klondike
, used for a Marine observation squadron equipped with armed “Huey” helicopters;
Switch
, used by the helicopters designed for troop transport; and
Duckbill
, the call sign of a ten-man reconnaissance team.

The initial exchange that I heard was as follows:

KLONDIKE
:
Duckbill, this is Klondike, over.

DUCKBILL
:
Go ahead, Klondike.