Yesterday, French TV channel 5 had a great program on Sir Shackleton Antarctic expedition. It reminded me that I had written an earlier (Cyberlibris blog) post on it. Here is a slightly updated (edited) version of it
"Men wanted for Hazardous Journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success."
From Leading at the Edge : Leadership Lessons from the Extraordinary Saga of Shackleton Antarctic Expedition by Perkins, Dennis N. T.(Author) Saranac Lake, NY, USA: AMACOM, 2000. Page 2.
"Who in the world would volunteer for this journey?" asks Dennis Perkins. "Amazingly", he says, "thousands of would-be explorers came forward, each wanting to join Shackleton’s expedition."
But, what was exactly this expedition all about? Well, as a matter of fact a rather scary one. As shown in the map, Shackleton’s mission was the first overland crossing of the Antarctic Continent. According to his own computations, Shackleton believed that he and his team could complete the transcontinental journey in 120 days. Ice everywhere, huge crevasses, darkness, extremely low temperature, in a nutshell a trip not for 
the timids! Shackleton was already a famous explorer who had come within ninety-seven nautical miles of the South Pole before he was forced to turn back because of physical exhaustion and a shortage of food. To complete his journey Shackelton selected a ship which he named The Endurance.
To make a long story short, things did not go the way Shackleton expected them to go. The Endurance was swallowed by the ice and it took Shackelton and his team 634 days to go back to civilization. Everybody, of course, thought the whole crew had perished. I urge you to read this story. This is a truly moving story. You'll learn how Shackleton coped with this terrifying situation and how he kept to his promise to bring the whole crew back to civilization alive.
One of the strong messages that strikes me as a vital one is the following one: When disaster strikes, as it did when the Endurance was caught in the ice and then sank, one thing that is of the utmost importance is to give your team the sense that there is still a goal to achieve even if this goal is no longer the one that the team and you signed on at the inception of the venture. Being stubborned (anchored, or worse falling in love with your project) and/or being unable to redefine a goal in the midst of the crisis is a self-fulfilling prophecy: You fail or you die. Shackelton was able to manage each nightmarish turnpike he and his team were facing. The ultimate goal that he assigned to the whole crew was bold but more importantly crystal clear: Everybody will go back home in one piece.
Dennis Perkins quotes Sir Edmund Hillary, the first person to climb Everest and to cross Antarctica successfully, who later wrote, ‘‘When disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.’’
This book is a must have and a must read. In particular, it should be part of the required reading list of any entrepreneur.
There is no way you are going to look at things of (entrepreneurial) life the same way after reading this leadership account of Shackleton's odyssey. This is a true lesson on entrepreneuring at the edge, on making decisions in an hostile environment, on having to cope with mutiny, on managing expectations, on defeating despair, on regaining hope despite having all the odds against you.
The closest entrepreneurship example I can think of is that of Bertrand Martin and the turnaround of Sulzer. The story is told in a moving book entitled "Oser la Confiance" .
Entrepreneurs perspire a lot indeed. They face daily challenges, minor and major ones. This is precisely when Ernest Shackleton is a great source of inspiration. For instance, you can ask yourself: What would have he done (other things being equal of course!)? But don't get me wrong: There is no such thing as corporate heroes. Neither Shackelton nor Martin would define themselves as heroes. In a sense, they just did what they thought they had to do and the way they did it was credible enough to move their whole team ahead by the same token.
This begs a last question that I reserve for a later post: How do we distinguish between skill and luck? Is there such thing as a skilled entrepreneur, a skilled VC? How long does it take to be sure that skill is the causal factor and not luck, that is to be sure that the coin you're tossing is really biased? I have my own idea on the topic and that is why I tend to look at most business books on corporate heroes, entrepreneurship, smart investing and what have you as pure management pornography!
Still, let me take the risk of a reading recommendation:
A good book on Leadership:
The Leadership Challenge, James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, John Wiley & Sons, 2002
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