Rocky Mountain High

Rocky Mountain High

Business Lessons from Mount Everest with Scott Kress

Published: Business Niagara Magazine

On May 21st, 2008 Scott Kress became the 51st Canadian to summit Mount Everest, fulfilling a lifelong ambition that took the adventurous boy from his neighbourhood trees and rooftops to the top of the world. Along the way, the enterprising entrepreneur scaled the heights of business success, becoming president of both Summit Training and Development Ltd. in Oakville and St. Catharines based company Frontier Team Building. His experiences have made him one of the most sought after Leadership and Team Development experts in North America. Business Niagara was fortunate to obtain an interview with Mr. Kress to discuss the climb, and the skills and lessons that can be applied by leaders everywhere as they ascend the peaks of personal and professional success.

What is your biggest motivator?

Passion is a big part of my life. We can have a more fulfilling life if there’s something that we’re passionate about. Many people often start off in their youth being very passionate about certain things, but then life happens. You get busy and turn different corners and that flame starts to dwindle and in some cases it even goes out. For me, climbing is a passion that drives my life. I can see how it has a direct route to where I am today. It keeps me in shape. It gives me a reason to work out. Without that passion I just might sit on the couch and not do anything.

The climbing aspect ties in well with my business. In the business environment it’s hard to tell if you are doing well. There are so many factors coming in from all over the place it’s hard to know if you are working at the peak of your ability. Whereas in climbing, it’s a very black and white world. You can see immediately the impact of teamwork, the impact of leadership, and the impacts of change management. You make a decision and you know pretty much immediately if it was the right one or the wrong one.

How would you describe the team building dynamics involved in the Everest climb?

We had a very short time in which to create a high performance team, so we talked about the division of who we wanted to be and what did that mean as far as leadership, communications, change management and conflict resolution. We spent a lot of time getting to know each other and had team meetings every day. We made sure we were all personally accountable for the success of the team.

We started to form our own little culture and quickly got into our own ways of doing things. Then a trekking group came into our camp and stayed for three days. When you have a culture, and all of a sudden you get new team members or a merger with another team or organization, it completely throws your existing culture up in the air. In this particular case it was a negative influence. They didn’t seem to understand or care about our culture and what we were doing. They were just there and they were going to do what they were going to do. We found that those of us on the climbing expedition started spending less time in the dining area because they weren’t fitting in, and they didn’t make any attempts to fit in. It was almost like they were trying to impose their culture and their values on us and it wasn’t working.

You can certainly see how that can happen in organizations. When you merge two organizations coming from two different cultures, they’re not necessarily going to work without some influence in there; without some working around with them. You don’t notice your own culture until it’s changing on you. What’s that saying? The fish is the last to discover water. It’s just there, and unless it’s changed or gone, that’s when you notice what it was.

How did the experience and your observations of people under extreme circumstances change your perceptions or change the dynamics of how you operate your business?

I don’t think it changed any perceptions, but it helped to solidify beliefs and put things into practice. In our training courses we talk about leadership, communication and team building. This was an opportunity to really put it into play. We’re taking this brand new team –you ?can think of it as a project team– and we had to accelerate to a high rate of performance in a very short period of time.

Base Camp was a great learning laboratory to examine leadership and team dynamics. You have all these different teams and some of them are working well together and some are total disasters. You can start to see the root cause. A lot of the root cause in poorly functioning teams is leadership. It’s because they’re not being led well; it’s because the leadership style doesn’t really match with the expectations of the team. Then it’s group dynamics: people haven’t spent time getting to know each other; clarifying their goal, their vision, their values, their mission. It doesn’t matter how good you are. If you have a bunch of talented and experienced people, it doesn’t mean you’re going to have a good team if you’re not all there for the same reason and don’t share the same values and mission and purpose.

You arrived and weren’t even sure if the climb was going to proceed. Can you expand on that?

We were originally supposed to climb in Tibet on the North Side. We had our permits and everything was all set to go, but we arrived in Kathmandu and at the last minute the Chinese government cancelled all the permits and closed the borders to foreigners because they were taking the Olympic Torch to the summit. By that point there had already been challenges and protests and they didn’t want to have anybody interfering with the Olympic Torch Relay. Because there was media there they didn’t want to have anybody utilizing it as a vehicle for Free Tibet protests. The military didn’t want anybody communicating with the outside world. Anybody found doing so would be arrested and deported. The easiest way not to have interference is not to have any people. They closed the mountain and that was it. We had to scramble and get a permit to climb from the South side in Nepal. It was a very crazy world.

One of the models we look at is the Circle of Concern versus the Circle of Influence. There were certain teams on the mountain that really spent a lot of time focusing on the Circles of Concern –those are all the things that impact your world but you can’t do anything about: the military decisions, tent to tent searches, people being arrested and deported. The people that were focusing on the Circle of Concern were arguing with the military, trying to get them to change their mind and change the rules. It impacted their level of team work; their team dynamics, and ultimately their health. People were getting flu and pulmonary oedemas. That ultimately impacted their success rate.

We weren’t antagonistic. We were focusing on our Circle of Influence: ourselves, our attitudes and what we were doing. Because we were focusing on our Circle of Influence and working well with the military, things that used to be in our Circle of Concern actually started to come into our Circle of Influence. ?All of a sudden we got privileges that we didn’t have before: being allowed to make phone calls home and send out Internet dispatches provided that they were first read and approved by the military. The military actually started to ask us questions because we were seen as a bit of a leadership team within all the expeditions.

So it was a great example of where you put your energy and the results that you get because of it. The lesson from that is focus on what you can influence; don’t focus on all the other stuff because you’re not going to change it. If you focus on your Circle of Influence, you’ll be surprised by how much your influence grows. The economy is a great example right now. Focus on your job and do a good job. All that other stuff will just burn you out. That’s one of the lessons that resonates most with people.

Some of your descriptions were frightening. How does the overcoming of fear apply?

You can’t let the fear control you. Fear breeds hesitation and hesitation will make your worst nightmares come true. If you hesitate you’re not in it all the way, and that’s when you pull back or you don’t put all your energy into it and that’s when things go wrong. You can exacerbate the danger by your mental awareness or attitude. You can’t really think about the danger.

If you can control your mind then you can keep going. If you let your mind control you then you’re not going to make it. You’re going to get scared. You’re going to get stressed out. Many of the people who die on Mount Everest die after they summit; and it’s because they get to the top, they’ve achieved their goal and all of a sudden their adrenaline levels drop. They lose their focus; they lose their balance; they trip; they fall. All of a sudden they’re getting cerebral oedemas; they’re incoherent; their dexterity is gone. All of these things happen in a span of minutes because they have achieved their goal and now their body is shutting down. In our minds the goal was to make it to the top AND to get back down to the bottom again.

This is not rocket science. I didn’t invent anything here. But we get so caught up in day to day life and business that we forget where we should really be putting our focus. It’s easy to be drawn down different paths and get upset about this or that when we have no control over it. Focus on where you have control: your team; you leadership; your Circles of Influence; your personal attitude. How you approach life is what you’re going to get out of it. How you approach business is what you’re going to get out of it. Ultimately your attitude determines your altitude.