Do you have too many
problems, which are too difficult to solve.
Your workers just
come to you with problems, and expect answers from you alone. They pose
difficult and complex technical problems which you thought you employed
them to deal with, but the complexity of the problems give more than
one path towards a solution.
It seems a hopeless cause, and
it’s difficult to know where to start, or if it is even
possible to finish it.
A
feeling of hopelessness
Biting cold pierced the flimsy layer of clothes that protected the
intrepid adventurers as they forged their way up through the
treacherous landscape, through waist deep snow and the threat of
blizzard the trek must have seemed quite daunting.
Their ascent was seemed quite daunting, since the previous seven had
failed, with attendant loss of life, placing the stakes quite high for
this attempt. In the back of their mind would have been the potential
for real failure as it would have seemed that this team was facing
impossible odds in their quest for success.
On
the verge of giving up?
It was 1953, and Edmund Hillary, a beekeeper from New Zealand made
their way towards the towering mountain named after the surveyor who
discovered it, Everest.
This was the culmination of years of work, in which Hillary was aware
of a high probability of failure and the prospect of the ultimate
sacrifice of his life. The problems seemed insurmountable, since at
that height there was the threat of freezing to death, becoming
engulfed with snow and dying through lack of oxygen. At this point
Hilliary might have decided to give it all up, and go back to
beekeeping. Much safer, with none of the multitude of pressures that he
would have to deal with in this venture. He could have just given up!
Planning
for the impossible
What was working in his favour was the knowledge gained from the
previous attempts.
They had better clothing than the flimsy military issue worn by those
before them. Hilliary had come up with idea of designing garments that
had layers of material to withstand the rigors of this hostile
environment. Although inadequate by today’s’
standards the outer clothes were a huge step forward for the time.
He set up camps as staging posts, which were well equipped and provided
refuge, supplies and bases from which the final ascent could be planned.
He invested in oxygen equipment to make sure that they
wouldn’t suffer from oxygen starvation, and set up two
separate parties for the final ascent. The first party took a close
circuit television, so that they could learn from the failed attempt,
and finally at 11:30 am May 29th 1953 they stood at the top of the
world.
Find
that Sherpa!
A consistent theme that comes across from my clients is one of the
hopelessness of the situation that they find themselves in, which is
most marked in Internet technologies. They feel they are struggling to
catch up, and I tell them that they are bound to struggle when learning
about new ground-breaking concepts.
What I say to them is that, just in the same way as the Everest
expedition, that the goal may seem unattainable, but by taking each
problem and solving it, you chip away at the bigger problem until there
is only one challenge left to resolve.
If your firm need help to get started, then you need a Sherpa, just
like Hilliary, and that Sherpa is me!
