The Alcatraz swim, exceeding own limits - how not following others can guide you to success

In this article, Synerise Inc. President in the USA Cezary Pietrasik

Q: What was your motivation to swim this route?

Cezary Pietrasik: I've always wanted to do this swim since I first looked at Alcatraz Island from Golden Gate Bridge. It's just phenomenally beautiful, picturesque, and dramatic. I was probably inspired a long time ago when I went to Italy. There, I was thinking of swimming through Garden Lake, which I never did, but then decided that if I lived here in San Francisco, it's probably a good time actually to make it happen. So at some point, I chatted with a colleague who knew a little about this, and he suggested a company that organizes such swings, and I did it. I subscribed and decided to do it one cold morning.

Q: What are the conditions and difficulties of such a swim?

C.P.: The way it works is you swim with a well-organized group because they must close the waterway for tankers and huge ships. There are other dangers, including sharks that swim in the Bay, sea lions, and, most importantly, a strong current. The real enemy comes in two forms.

One is the water, which is cold and salty and proved to be one of the major hindrances because it just comes to your mouth, and you know you cannot wash it. And the most significant one is the current.

So, there's a very strong current. It runs from the middle of the Bay towards the outside, so towards the ocean, and it doesn't look like it's there because the waves go the other way around.

But underneath, a current immediately changes your position when you swim, which is probably the key reason.

Why did the famous stories of escape from Alcatraz always finish in a spectacular failure?

Because those people who swam from there probably didn't know about them and were washed away towards the ocean.

Q: And how did it go?

So, in terms of the swim itself, we started at 5:00 AM on the ship, just going towards the island, and were dropped into the water shortly after 6:00 AM.

It was foggy. It was cold. We couldn't really see where we were supposed to land.

They just told us that we needed to aim at the ship in the port on the other side and not even at Fort Mason, which is the intermediate goal.

And it's almost a few times about the strength of the current.

For some reason, I don't know if it was the excitement or a mistake of some beginner swimmers; the majority of the group that jumped out into the water ahead of me went straight towards the beach, where we were supposed to land. But we were told a few times not to do it.

There were at least three times we were told that we needed to aim somewhere else because of the current.?

So, jumping into the water roughly in the middle of the pack, I just realized that I was almost alone and I was trying to swim.

When we were told to swim, almost nobody was swimming there with me. Everybody else is somewhere else. And it was pretty scary at the moment because I was thinking: Here I am, Cezary, a Polish dude from small town, in the middle of water somewhere in San Francisco, surrounded by many local people who are all swimming somewhere else.

And it seems that I'm of the belief that they are all wrong and I should be swimming in a different direction, so it was a hilarious moment.

And at that point, I need to make a decision whether I swim after them or I go on my own. I just remembered all the instructions given, and I concluded that I think I'm right.

Very few people who went ahead of me started swimming according to the instructions.

And there was one person behind me, maybe 20 meters, and another person behind me, maybe 50 meters behind me.

That's what we're doing. There was only one ship within probably 300 meters of us. If something happened to me, I don't think it would come to the rescue. And all the kayaks and all the support vehicles were somewhere else.

Support boats, later on, I found out, were rescuing other people who were washed away, but I didn't know it at the time.

I had to check every few moments whether I was swimming in the right direction because the current was so strong. So after a few strokes, I would stick my head out of the water and find out that I'm swimming in the wrong direction. I needed to correct it then and correct it again and again, so it was quite a straining feeling that every time I had to fight with a strong current and every time I had to course correct the direction where I was swimming and I kept going. At some point, I saw the beach, and I just accelerated. I was just trying to pierce through the current and land there.

On the beach, I learned that there were only a few people who landed ahead of me.

I saw anybody behind me barely, so it seemed that most people landed. It was confirmed later by the organizers landing on the beach, which is more towards the West, which is Crissy Fields, about 1 kilometer away. Those kayaks and all those support boats were not there with us because they were rescuing them.

So, it was a hilarious moment to realize that it was the right decision not to follow the crowd and not to swim in a big pack group, which seems to have provided safety and camaraderie. It was difficult to swim in the cold water on your own where you're not exactly sure whether you're going in the right direction.

And only towards the end are you vindicated that you did the right thing.

Q: What do you think is the lesson you took from this experience, and how it may relate to business?

I think this lesson on intermittent goals is very telling and very universal. You cannot aim precisely where you want to be because you will end up in the wrong place. We need to find some intermittent grounds to get you to the next level. Businesses always have similar situations; it's very difficult, when doing something new like opening the U.S. market for Synerise, to assume that we will be able to go straight to what we have achieved in Poland.

Well, we are nowhere near in the U.S., nobody knows us, there's no brand recognition, and we have nobody there, so we cannot just assume that we will start working right away with the most prestigious brands, that we will be able to meet with the CEOs and C level execs there.

We must be able to navigate firstly through relationships and customers willing to experiment with us and probably only then work with famous household brand names.

Q: How do you think it may relate to the mindset of Synerise?

I think our mindset is that of a challenger; it is David versus Goliath, the challenger versus the incumbent.

It's a great story of how things are done and reinventing and revolutionizing a space; that is one of the excitements and reasons I decided to join Synerise.

It's just building something revolutionary that is original, that is unique. And so, I would say the values of this rebellious approach are very, very helpful in conquering the new market because we need to be consistent, we need to be resilient, and we need to be determined to make those changes.

Thank you, Cezary Pietrasik for being such an Inspiration!