High Altitude Leadership
Busy weekend with taking Directors College Friday and Saturday then rushing to a Christmas Party Saturday night. And then today, trying to get caught up on everything.I had 2 articles "printed" this week. One in Profit Magazine about how to thrive in turbulent times. And the other one on CopyBlogger on the virtues of keeping things short. I am impressed with the readership copyblogger gets with 13 trackbacks and 62 comments already (and I did not think my topic was that controversial).
I recently read an outstanding book called, "High Altitude Leadership What the World's Most Forbidden Peaks Teach Us About Success" by Chris Warren and Don Schmincke.
The book has two story lines. One is about mountain climbing in the Himilayas interspersed with business lessons that can be learned from these mountain climbing expeditions.
Usually I am a business junky; however, I found the mountain climbing stories to be the page turner.
Mountain climbing has a lot to do with fear so there is a lot of discussion on fear and how you tame it in leadership.
Arrogance can also be death on a mountain climbing expedition and the infection of arrogance in leadership can also be death to leadership.
One of the concepts that I really liked was skilled based luck. This is essentially preparing for what might eventually happens and by being properly prepared (having the skill), it creates luck when things do happen.
I found the book to be a highly compelling and exciting page turner.
posted by Jim Estill @ 4:59 PM 
4 Comments:
Yes, and I remember an old ad for some guitar manufacturer. It had two panels: on the left an image of people at a bar having fun drinking and laughing. On the right there was an image of a guy alone in his bedroom playing guitar.
The headline: "While others were partying, you were practicing."
Continual improvement and skills enhancement creates "luck" when the opportunity arises.
Jim,
You article at Copyblogger wasn't controversial. It spurred thought which led to a conversation about whether your tips could be used in long copy as well as short copy. That led to many concluding that brevity within long copy was better than brevity in short copy. That was the controversy. In any case, your exposure on copyblogger led me to subscribe to your blog. Keep up the great insights. Love the blog.
A Basketball Coach once asked our fledgling underdog team after we messed up a drill
Does Practice make Perfect? to which we all replied more or less enthusiastically -YES!
His insightful response was - Maybe, Perfect Practice - makes perfect. Ten more laps!!
Definitely Practice helps.
Here are few of my favorites:
"The more I practice, the luckier I get." Gary Player
"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." Seneca
“Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.” John W. Gardner
"Perfection is expected - excellence will be tolerated" Alan Launder, origin unknown
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