… Our team had purpose and it aligned seamlessly with our vision (Ten Up and Ten Down) and our values. We never said, “Okay, let’s wordsmith these thoughts into a Mission Statement.” But nonetheless, our mission was as clear as the millions of stars that now dotted the sky.
On our trek, we committed to helping each other with whatever support we needed—morally or physically. Now, adventure climbing is also fraught with life’s realities, and sometimes, in order for a team to be the most successful it can be, people have to be left behind. So we came to an agreement, that, if any one of us was not capable of carrying on, the team would not make the decision to leave that person behind—the person incapable or too sick to climb would do so.
Dumbfounded by the structure and organization that, so unconsciously, had just come to life, I chuckled to myself, “All that’s missing now is a set of strategies for how all this is going to happen?” The “how” for delivering our “what”: The Vision.
No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than someone said, “How are we going to do this?” Then I got a serious case of “trout mouth” (a look similar to a fish with its mouth wide open)!
Thoughts started to flow, and before I knew it, we had four key strategies for how we were going to achieve our vision:
There it was. The model that successful businesses all over the world use was now complete. I was stunned! It dawned on me that business and leadership is really simple stuff complicated by idiots. Ten people from different backgrounds had just completed in one hour of conversation what some businesses struggle with even after going away for a “Management Team Building” meeting for three days with facilitators to craft the strategic plan!
No one assumed the leadership position. We had no power struggles—no politics and no ulterior motives. Just ten people from different walks of life with a common purpose, aligned with their values and a clear vision.
The altitude also made for an early bedtime. Because Tanzania is almost on the equator, the sun sets every day of the year at precisely 7:00 p.m. and rises at 7:00 a.m. I crawled into my sleeping bag at 8:00 that night and was out cold until our guides woke us the next morning at 6:30 by serving us tea in bed. I later mentioned to my wife, Colleen, that it would be nice to have tea in bed every morning at home. She said, “Sure, if you sleep out in the yard every night in a tent, I’ll bring you tea the next morning.”
Then it was out of the tent to a waiting pan of hot water to, as our guides would say, “Washy, washy!”
As we all, one-by-one, rolled out of our tents, we would stand and see Kilimanjaro in the distance, highlighted by the rising sun. Incredible! One-by-one, we would each take turns repeating our mantra, “Ten Up and Ten Down,” just as successful business leaders everywhere do to motivate their teams by repeatedly focusing them on the vision and where they are going. Vision is like brushing your teeth—it has to be done daily!
Breakfast would be waiting too. Every morning we would walk into the mess tent to find hot oatmeal, ham and eggs, toast, and fresh mango and melon. After breakfast, we packed up our personal belongings, loaded up with another 6 liters of water, a bag of cookies, chocolate bars and bananas, and headed off with Kilimanjaro calling in the distance. We would remind each other about our strategies, look up at Kili, and say, “She’s waiting.” We would trek off, leaving the porters behind with dirty dishes and the entire camp to take down and pack up. Life is hard in the African outback!
Five minutes into the second day, our lead guide suddenly screamed “Buffalo!” and dove 90 degrees into the bush. The ten of us stood there like deer caught in the headlights until we heard what sounded like approaching thunder bearing down the trail. When the ground started to shake, our tight pack of ten fearless adventurers started running backwards—that is, of course, until the guy at the back tripped and fell, causing a domino chain reaction! Whatever was headed our way, it was big, and luckily, it veered off into the bush before it could play ten pin bowling with the dumbfounded tourists! As the thunder rolled off into the distance, our guide rolled out of the bush, brushed himself off, and nonchalantly said, “Okay. Let’s go.” One of the Irish lads replied, “Not until I go change my shorts!”
About forty minutes later, the porters we had left behind with all the camp to clean up and break down, passed us like we were standing still. More battering to our egos!
We hiked for four hours and arrived at a lava field, where multiple large caves had been formed a million years ago from previous volcanic explosions. there we found the porters with tables set up (complete with tablecloths and napkins), water fetched and boiled, and lunch ready for us. Another three course hot meal and we were off for four more hours of hiking. And yes, forty-five minutes after leaving the lunch stop, the porters passed us again!
This became our daily routine. We steadily gained altitude. We would hike 8-11 hours and cover a total distance of 70 kilometers in six days.
Camp Two was at 3,600 meters where the vegetation changed to alpine desert.
Camp Three was at 4,200 meters in the crater of an extinct volcano where there was no vegetation—just an eerie moonscape.
Camp Four was at 4,700 meters at the foot of Kilimanjaro’s final steep ascent. As we climbed, the temperature dropped and the wind picked up. Mornings would be -5 to -20 Celsius (23 to -4 Fahrenheit), and the wind was always blowing, making it feel colder (which made middle of the night pee breaks very painful), especially since my sleeping bag was so hot that I was always sleeping in my boxers).
Every morning our unconscious leadership ritual would start. At waking and crawling out of the tent, we would each look up at the mountain and visualize what it would be like to stand on the top. At breakfast, someone would always say, “Ten Up and Ten Down.”
As we loaded our packs for the day, we would always review our four strategies. Not in a military, checklist kind of way, but by asking each other how we felt:
Do you think you drank enough yesterday?
Did you eat enough?
How much higher do you want to climb today before coming back down?
Was the pace okay yesterday?
Regular strategic plan review is how the top companies in the world execute flawlessly.
We would, again unconsciously, break down the vision into small, bite-sized pieces—baby steps so to speak, so we would not get overwhelmed by the sheer size of the task—just like world-class leaders do to inspire their teams to execute step-by-step.
Throughout the day’s climb, we would constantly check in with each other about pace, water, food, and how each of us was feeling. In business, we call this measuring and inspecting. Critical to execution!
At the end of each day, we would celebrate at dinner by recognizing each other for continuing to push on, even though some team members were starting to get very sick. It was eerily similar to how top business leaders recognize their teams for achievements and motivate them to take it to the next level.
Vision and Strategy really is a daily event!
Altitude sickness crept in very slowly. On day three when we broke through 4,000 meters, it started with a feeling like being hung-over: first, a dull headache, followed by a lack of energy. From there, the headache got more and more intense until at Camp Four, I thought my eyes were going to pop out. My ears ached. My nose bled. My pulse rate, which normally at rest is 48-50, crept up to 70-80. When I would do something strenuous, like bend over to tie up my boots, my pulse would be 120. Something really strenuous like walking and my pulse would be 160-180. Each and every beat of my heart made my head hurt even more. Others in our group became so nauseated that they started to throw up every time they ate.
On day four, where this story began, we spent eight hours hiking 10 kilometers across a flat, desolate landscape before we arrived at our last ascending camp. The wind was cold and dry—whipping lava dust at us that choked our already labored breathing and stung against any exposed skin. We sheltered each other by walking in a tight group. We talked the entire time to keep each other from thinking about the pain; we talked about what it was going to be like standing on the top, about our favorite movies, songs, and books, about the pro’s and con’s of the current U.S. president. Anything except talking about quitting.
We finally arrived at Camp Four, elevation 4,700 meters, at 4 in the afternoon. We were exhausted, cold, in pain, and sick.
Our briefing for our final assault that night on the peak was simple. Try and sleep before dinner. Get up for dinner (if you can eat) at 7:00 o’clock. Go back to bed and try to sleep. Our guides would wake us up at 11:30 p.m. with tea. We were to dress for the forecasted -20 temperature and 60 kilometer winds. At 11:50, load our packs with 6 liters of hot water (hot to keep us warm and to prevent the water from freezing), put on ski goggles, turn our head torches on, and start the final ascent at midnight. If we had waited until daylight, we would not have reached the peak until after dark the next evening; plus, we did not want to descend in the dark, since the descent would be more dangerous than the ascent.
We climbed through the night—slowly, painfully! Oh, how my head hurt! I started to lose the feeling in both of my hands and forearms (“Oh, great,” I thought! “Now if I could get the two pairs of gloves off that I was wearing, how would I know whether I was successfully picking my nose or not!”). Each breath I took was long and deep. I was working so hard to breathe that every muscle in my chest started to scream. Halfway through the night, my legs started to shake—not from cold but exhaustion.
At 5:00 a.m., we lost all four of the girls in our group. They were so severely sick that they started to collapse each time they took a step. The rest of the team tried in vain to lift their spirits and encourage them to take another step, but to no avail. They were completely spent and at risk of serious injury—so they pulled the trigger on their climb as we had all agreed on the first night. Two of the assistant guides in the group spent the next four hours getting them back down to Camp Four where they could recover in the now relatively breathable 4,700 meter air.
At 7:00 a.m., the sun started to rise. What an incredible sight! I don’t think I can remember a more beautiful sunrise! The clear, clean air. The clouds thousands of feet below us. And now, the
clearly visible curvature of the earth made it spectacular! In the new morning daylight, we also saw for the first time what we had been climbing all night. I remember thinking that I now knew why we had climbed at night. My second thought was, “How are we going to get down?”
At 8:00 a.m., what was left of our team crested over the crater of the world’s largest volcano to “Gilman’s Point” at 5,600 meters. We were all exhausted beyond anything we had ever experienced— and we had all done multiple marathons between us. We snapped some pictures, and without much fanfare, we continued on toward the peak.
At 10 a.m., we arrived at 5,895 meters or 19,160 feet—the highest point in Africa. What a feeling. We were the only ones on the peak. For a few moments, the pain went away. I remember thinking how amazing the human body is when you tell yourself what you are capable of accomplishing. How powerful a vision is when it gets you to do things that scare you—that you think impossible!
The six out of ten of us who made it to the top took turns taking each other’s picture. The Irish lads got onto a cell phone (yes, there was a signal up there) and did an interview with a radio station back in Dublin. I collected some rocks to take home. Our guide Samuel sat down, took the scarf that covered his face, and lit a cigarette—all in a day’s work for him.
We were on the peak for about twenty minutes before Samuel urged us to start down to return to breathable air. All of us were out of water and drained of energy. It had taken ten hours of non-stop climbing to get to the peak. It took three hours to get back to Camp Four. At 1:00 p.m., I collapsed into my tent with my boots and all my cold weather gear still on. In the blink of an eye, it was 2:00 p.m. and Samuel was waking us up, telling us we had to leave right away for the four-hour trek down to Camp Five or we would run out of daylight. I thought he was kidding! At 6:00 p.m., we stumbled into Camp Five at 3,700 meters, having been on our feet for seventeen of the last eighteen hours. Ah, breathable air! It felt like I was breathing pure oxygen! My headache was completely gone!
Washy, washy, dinner and in bed by 7:30 that night! I never heard a single thing or remember a single thought until 7:30 the next morning when Samuel was waking us up for the last day of our trek. Day Six was a short 21 kilometers of gentle downhill, which would take us eight hours and had the enticing promise of hot showers for the first time in six days and cold beer waiting for us!
Now we were back where we began. We got to the park gate and loaded up into Land Rovers once again for the ride back to the Kibo Hotel. When I walked into the very hotel room I had one long week ago, it was paradise! I shaved (twice) and stood in the best shower I could remember having for a very long time. Then, I went to the hotel bar, and with the Irish lads, I drank some of the coldest, best tasting beer ever until the wee hours of the morning (learning even more new words from the lads as we drank). Back in my room, the bed felt like a cloud, and apparently, the roosters never crowed the next morning.
How one week can change one’s perspective significantly! I had learned a lifetime of leadership lessons on the way to the “Roof of Africa,” and they were leadership lessons from the most unlikely sources. What I discovered mostly though is that vision, values, and purpose are in all of us—they are a part of our lives and what make life worth chasing and living to the max!
As a leader, I recommend you discover the power of a vision. Discover how a vision for the business and even for small projects can help people wrap their heads around what success looks like. And, as a leader, you need to practice visualizing that vision every day—it really is like brushing your teeth.
Do you lead everything you do with a vision of where you are going?
When you are about to lead a group, or even yourself, do you, as Stephen Covey says, “Begin with the end in mind?”
What is your personal vision? Take a few moments and write out what you want to achieve in the next five years.
Now take those thoughts and craft it into a simple statement that you are able to repeat to yourself every morning.
Robert Murray is a Vancouver, BC based Business Strategy Consultant, #1 Best Selling Author, and International Keynote Speaker. For further advice, insight and inspiration on how to unlock your inner leader, follow Robert on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
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Tags: It's Already Inside, Leadership, Robert Murray, Robert S. Murray, Unlocked
