On mountains and management

Mountains make an easy metaphor for management. Too easy I’d say as someone who spends time doing both. Mountains offer a single goal and metric of success that life and business rarely do. That physical clarity in our digital lives is at least part of the appeal. What mountains do give is a chance to find out what kind of leader, what kind of decision-maker, what kind of person you are. Bad choices in an office mainly mean that you lose a deal or miss a budget. Bad choices on a mountain can cost lives. Out in front, decisions are often yours alone, but the consequences are shared with the team; those decisions made not at the comfort of your desk, but more likely beset by foul weather, cold, hunger and fatigue.

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A year ago, give or take, I wrote about my (mis)adventures in Ladaq, attempting to climb too high too fast in the company of my youngest son. Hubris never visits without bringing nemesis along for the ride and that trip ended up with him at 6,300m on the summit and me in a hospital. Plenty of time for me to reflect on the poor choices that put me there.

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The lesson we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history. So last week we had a return match in Scotland. A less elevated, three day blitz of classic Glencoe scrambles – curved ridge on Buachaille Etive Mor, castle ridge on Ben Nevis, finishing with the traverse of the Aonach Eagach ridge (I’ll leave you to dig out the pronunciation if you don’t happen to be clan MacDonald). All follow spectacular lines in some of the most iconic scenery Scotland has to offer. Add to that a good dose of Scottish weather – occasional glimpses of sun between blasts of icy rain and cloud – and you have the perfect backdrop for the hero’s journey. Never much above 1,000m of altitude, but many moments where a slip would be what mountaineers call ‘consequential’.

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People on the hill come in three types - ramblers, scramblers and danglers. As so often in life and in business, it’s being caught in the middle where the greatest risk lies. Ramblers are in principle on flattish ground. Danglers know they won’t be, so go fully equipped for the possibility of a fall. Scramblers are ramblers who’re willing to push it further, often meaning vertiginous drops on loose, slippery ground, possibly with a rope in the backpack but rarely around the waist.

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To my minimal credit, recalling the previous year, I took the precaution of a professional tutor-cum-guide for the first day to knock the rust off the decades of absence. Hard to fault that bit of risk management, but done on the easiest route and sunniest day. Days two and three were unguided alone on the hill on harder ground with wetter, wilder weather. I positively noted later on the phone to my wife that it meant we had two of the most popular scrambles in Scotland entirely to ourselves, to which her flattening response was, “I wonder why”.

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Life is a series of calculated risks – when you cross a road, get into a car or invest your money, you are weighing up more or less consciously the best, or least bad, option. So despite emerging on day two into a world of heavy rain and black cloud, I figured on at least getting to the foot of the Ben’s north face. That done and the weather marginally eased, I then decided to find our ridge – not so easy alone in a mountainside of ridges. A fraught traverse over rubble got us to it, me thinking constantly about the wisdom of continuing. Only once climbing, the positivity of rock in hand, did some confidence return. And with the first of three crux moves behind us (made hard only by wet, polished rock and my own inelegance), a sense that we were the right people in the right place at the right time. Thence the payback on the summit – a relieved father, an enthused son, a cathartic run down the pony path and back to the car.

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So what do the mountains have to say to the manager?

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First, don’t be too harsh on yourself for making mistakes. Calculated risks are still risks and can go wrong however much your calculations said that they likely wouldn’t. Mountains are full of objective danger (the kind you don’t control) and plenty of subjective ones too - sloppy navigation in clouds means that an abseil sling now decorates a spindly lone tree over a cliff on the descent off the Aonach Eagach. A friend on the board of the HALO Trust, the landmine clearance charity, says that they treat near misses with the same open, no-fault enquiry as explosions. A philosophy I’ve encouraged in my team at TMF Group – first put out the fire, then figure out how it got lit so it doesn’t happen again. Accidents happen, mistakes are acceptable and treating them as a punishable offence will make sure future accidents stay hidden.

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Secondly, don’t stop taking risks. After last year’s failure, I was looking for excuses to back off – the weather, the route, my son’s well-being. In the end, the biggest barrier was me. My dragon slayed, we went for it, pushed ourselves and did what we set out to. No hubris, but base-level satisfaction in a fear overcome and a goal obtained. The most important decisions I’ve made in business, particularly at TMF Group over these last few years, were done on instinct. All the analysis that a consultant can provide only helps with the easy stuff – the what and the how. Big decisions come down to judgement and will. My introducer to the mountains decades ago was a fine fellow called Duncan Craig. I remember leading my first ice climb, with him handing me a few ice screws for protection in the unpromising porridge of soft Scottish ice. When I asked what would happen if I fell, he just said in heavy Glaswegian “a winter leader does not fall”. Wise words which turned out to be true and which spoke to a deeper truth. In the office and in the hills, you have to weigh up the odds, make your call, back yourself and, once committed, give it all you’ve got.