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TWENTY-FOUR EPISODES ABOUT ASPIRATION – How to climb 8000er peaks in life and in business

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Follow me on a small trail to Gasherbrum II in Pakistan, right up to to a fateful decision that will change the course of events and redefines how success is achieved. This is for anyone seeking guidance on their expedition on the Baltoro Glacier towards K2, in the boardroom, or anywhere in between. 

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Life at the top

Mt. Everest (8'848 m.)

Reflections from my second 8’000er mountain expedition, sent via fragile 3G antenna from Everest Base Camp, contains learnings for the boardroom.

EV Intro - Mountaineering legends

I owe my success in high altitude mountaineering to two men who trusted me and guided me to the highest level. HT and VS do not like to be touted or named in public, although VS writes books and HT should write books. These extraordinarily wise men of the mountains happened to pick me up before I left for my first trip. HT, in a sense, saved me from organizing my own expedition in Tibet, which in retrospect would not have been courageous, but a foolish and politically dangerous attempt to combine a circuit of Mount Kailash with an ascent of Cho Oyu. HT even took over a guarantee of 500 USD that I had already transferred to a reckless person who had promised to take me there.

Following HT and VS to the Himalayas was a life-changing pilgrimage. Because of their advanced age, which did not prevent them from accomplishing breathtaking feats on the world’s highest mountains, they combine decades of experience, incredible knowledge of local conditions and weather, and deep understanding of human nature. Just talking to them is a gift. Everything I learned was possible for me because of them, and because of that, my kind of mountain experience was never a performance show or ego trip. Thank you. Thank you.

As a business person and ‘CEO whisperer’ it was particularly interesting to draw comparisons between basecamp and boardroom, to reflect on life at the top and its intricacies. Be invited into thin air.

EV01 No new enemies

You think about life and death when you do an extreme project like Everest. Not wanting to die in the death zone, almost everyone asks support from a force above or around. People bring mascots. Local Lamas perform Pujas, asking permission from the mountain to climb it.

In the face of an existential threat – self-imposed! – we all turn inwards and hope to master our fears, insecurities, doubt, misery with the support of ‘something’ bigger than ourselves.

A story, attributed to Voltaire on his deathbed, goes like this. He called for the priest, although it was well known that Voltaire is an atheist. Someone asked him why he was calling for a priest and he said: “This is not the time to make new enemies.”

Everest is definitely not a time to make new enemies. Surrounded by religious symbols of Buddhism. Endless signs of religious practice: Stupas, long rows of engraved stones with prayers and long lines of prayer wheels. We made an effort to walk along religious sites on the left-hand side because that’s what you do in Buddhism.

In business, I have seen many people who seek support in extreme situations. It is a subject rarely talked about. Their decision affect many peoples’ lives and no one I met took that really easy. With whom can you share that you feel small in the shadow of a big mountain? These are very lonely moments.

Some leaders find solace in religion and they seem to do well. Christianity, Judaism, Islam or others all provide an additional moral framework that can be helpful to balance one-sided shareholder value-oriented perspectives. Others lean towards astrology which can be used to gain new aspects of the decision’s impact or the questioner’s disposition. Tarot readings are quite common. I also met someone who got even deeper into dangerous territory, the invisible world.

I came to the conclusion that I should not make a judgment, but rather assume that what works, must be right for the person. As with all drugs, though, one has to be careful about the dosage.

EV2 - Just fake it

Welcome to the future! Life is a livestream, everyone is a hero. I see more than one ‘tourist’ climber who has brought their own cameraperson and an impressive amount of film equipment. The cameraperson is looking for the best close-up or wide-angle shots for the film of his hero’s Everest conquest. I make an effort to stay out of their picture.

It’s all just backdrops for the heroic deed: Buddhist stone symbols, load-bearing porters, flowering cherry trees. Let’s use another person for a shot of the hero in front of the horizon and change the color of the jacket in post-production. “Speak into the camera what these prayer stones here mean,” says the cameraman. “Some religious thing,” says the protagonist. “Some religious thing” is a Buddhist shrine. The next morning, the protagonist is wearing a GoPro camera on his left shoulder and a walkie-talkie on his right shoulder. It turns out that he doesn’t know how to turn on the devices. But it will look impressive and professional in the film.

During breakfast, someone tells the story of a British ornithologist who was so eager for fame that he stole bird eggs from the British Museum and later bequeathed them to the museum as an honorable donation. Anything to build his reputation as a researcher. “I’m not a fame-seeking person,” comments our fellow climber, who works hard to star in his own Everest movie. Really?

Of course, cheating is also popular in business. For example, there are CEOs who tend to “improve” their resumes. For many years, everything seems to be going well. Then someone starts digging – at the wrong moment, of course. The subsequent fall from grace is profound in this age of Internet transparency. In one case, the person wasn’t even enrolled at the university in question, and a degree in computer science was never earned. It is almost impossible to recover from these “marginal” mistakes.

EV03 Unwind!

The mud on my shoes is real, the damp guestroom at 3’400 meters is real and the charge for WIFI access (5 USD) and power (1 USD per hour and device) are real. Toilet paper per roll is 1 USD, Cheesecake 4,50 per piece. Swiss alpine pricing in the Himalayas.

Last night, I ate the wrong person’s dinner plate, slept in a wet bed due to heavy rain that leaked through the roof and couldn’t close the zipper of my sleeping bag. I pitched a book called “Breakfast with Lucian Freud” as “Lunch with Francis Bacon”. Other than that, I had a long and restful night from 10 at night until 7 the next morning which was badly needed. Unwind! UNWIND. U-N-W-I-N-D.

I must escape talks of people, there is too much talk. I hear a Sherpa and his female client going to bed. A young woman sits outside my room on the floor and is skyping with each and everyone of her family members, my ears suffer. This morning, along a beautiful trail through a pine forest, the group conversation was about the strength of junior Rugby players across different countries and the national differences in training (the best way is to train kids of the same height, not of the same age). In the afternoon, my group dominated all of the conversation in the Namche Bazaar bakery. Quiet, please.

Why do we travel to the end of the world to talk about the things we know? Although the present is wonderful we are elsewhere. Then we attend mindfulness courses to bring us back. Kind of crazy. It’s all in the head and we scare ourselves even more.

EV04 The Sixty/Fourty Rule

You should spend 40% of your energy on the ascent and 60% of your energy on the descent, someone says. Descents are far more dangerous. When you are worn out, small missteps can turn into catastrophes.

We walked faster than usual. The path went straight up from the Nepali village of Chukung at 4’800 to the mountain Chukung Ri at 5’700 meters. We did not zig-zag much. Soon I was last in a row of five climbers. It was hard for me to breathe properly and to climb at a steady pace. I followed the group at my own speed, trying to breathe through my nose, thereby controlling my speed. I arrived 15 minutes late at the top. Finally, we paused in the sun and I leaned against some stones, surrounded by prayer flags. I dozed off into a light sleep.

“The only way is up.” A common belief on the mountain and in business but nothing could be further from the truth. How many CEOs have I seen fail? A dismissal due to “differing views on the strategic direction of the company” is the easiest to get over. Missteps such as financial “creativity,” failure to pay personal taxes, private side investments along corporate lines are much more difficult. The path downwards, including loss of reputation, credibility and social standing can even lead to suicide.

I met a CEO who still had almost 60% energy at the end of his ten-year term. After a sudden departure, he took a two-month trip to New Zealand and Australia with his family. After that, he followed his wife’s suggestion to attend a three-week yoga retreat in India, alone. He returned in good spirits and was enthusiastic about some investment ideas, which he soon put into practice. Combined with two directorships, he leads a full life dominated by sailing trips and skiing excursions.

Spending only 40% of your life’s energy on your career is an unpopular idea. It may be worth considering.

EV05 The essential jobs

Today, two people were helicoptered out from Everest basecamp in emergency. A Sherpa fell into a crevasse because the ice below his feet imploded and he fell more than 25 meters. He injured his leg badly and was carried to BC on the back of one of our guides (speaking of heroes). Then our cook in Camp 2 suffered from an attack of pulmonary edema. He could barely walk anymore. Our expedition head put the paperwork for his treatment at the hospital in Kathmandu in his pocket and organized for another cook.

Today’s expeditions approximately use two-point-five support staff per climber, when everything is factored in, from helicopter pilots to load carriers, sirdars (head guides), summit Sherpa and cooks. In the Fifties, this number was close to forty to one.

Summit Sherpas: most impressive individuals. In our group, some Summit Sherpa count between twenty-three or at least fifteen 8000er summits each. One can be certain that they use their extraordinary skills to prevent catastrophes from happening. They have seen everything that can go wrong on the mountain and more.

Icefall doctors and rope-fixing sherpas: Fixed ropes, often criticized, are lifelines. Ten kilometers of rope secure four hundred climbers per year. Five tough and very experienced men who – after much of the heavy rope material is helicoptered up to Camp 2 – fixate endpoints and beginnings with heavy ice screws every 50 meters or so.

Cooks may not be forgotten. Some teams have flown in European Chefs, a funny idea because these guys have very little knowledge about preparing meals on two small propane-gas fired stone setups for 20plus people. At times, these European Chefs get sick (from altitude, food or water) and then a team of climbers cannot be fed properly. Our team has been hiring the same local chef for 15 years and we are spoiled with roasted chicken, spaghetti, herbs, vegetables, and cake.

Those who carry the water: the most important and least respected job of all. Without those who carry our water from the nearby little glacier lake, we would have no morning coffee, no washing water, no lunch soda, no night bottle for our sleeping bags.

None of the important people put their egos first or proclaim any achievements. I pay them my respect. That’s how it is in business, too, isn’t it?

EV06 Clueless?

Today, a group of climbers went into the Khumbu glacier at the bottom of Everest to practice repeat roping, repelling, use of the ascender, climbing with crampons.

You see crampons that do not fit with 8000er boots. You see harnesses that are either too tall or too small – major adjustments needed. Another issue: brand-new heating inlays in 8000er boots which hurt when walking. Some have never used an ascender.

A related business discussion: we praise startup entrepreneurs who are breaking the rules before they have mastered them – or even know them. Unskilled optimists destroy other peoples’ money. On the mountain, unskilled people may destroy their own and perhaps other peoples’ lives.

After receiving instruction from a guide, a climber turns towards a camera person and repeats the instructions as if he was an instructor (personal camera people are the new normal). Any mountain professional would see that the idiot is completely new to the field. Many professional climbers think that people should have mastered a minimum of one 8000er peak before they are allowed to climb Everest.

Why are the stories of reckless amateurs so attractive?

EV07 One's own worst enemy

It turned out that I needed nine hours to arrive at Camp 1 and another 2.5 to get within 1km to Camp 2. Our head guide used a third of the time I needed. My case has been discussed among the guides and the good news is that they will continue to support me.

I feel terrible. At night in my tent in Camp 1, I become my own worst critic; hating everything from my breathing, my climbing technique, to my handling of the rope, my nutrition, my heavy backpack, my loose-fitting 8000er shoes, my motivation, my fears, my…. everything! I am stuck. Going further up will enhance my fears and my difficulties. Going down is equally scary because of the icefall with its steep crevasses, ladders, and abseils. A miserable time seems to come up for me. A time of fear, of constant humiliation, of total physical exhaustion – and of foreseeable failure. Four more weeks of misery are on the horizon, all in the cold and storm that is blowing into our tent every two minutes.

On my walk down to basecamp, I ask the guide for an additional break, I eat half a package of sweets and drink more than before. But still, I can barely walk when we arrive at BC. Do I need a different strategy? Should I simply pay more attention to detail like my cap that constantly falls into my eyes? Should I simply keep going, undeterred by my psychological issues?

What are aspiring people doing in these moments of depression where a high-flying goal seems the more out of reach the closer you get towards it?

EV09 I need a miracle

During our descent from Everest Camp 2 to Camp 1, we bumped into the famous, media-savvy and daring mountain guide K. Exuding the vibe of a super-hero ‘Mountain man’, he aired self-confidence, chewing-gum, open chest.  After some talk, we wished him goodbye and good luck with his current client who had ‘bought’ into an Everest summit success. “For that client I don’t need luck”, the guide said, “I need a miracle.”

In fact, we had seen his client in Camp 1 the other day – on Oxygen. What is normally used at a much higher altitude, was a means to keep him going. The client is a well-known Olympic Athlete. One would assume that he knows his body and is used to reach aspiring, extreme goals. But the athlete had also failed to summit ‘Island Peak’- a low-altitude training peak.

Live from Everest base camp, the BBC conducted a satellite interview with athlete and guide who had a broad marketing campaign running in the UK. “How do you feel?” the presenter asked. “I have a little problem with sleep at altitude”, was the response. Never say the truth?

The guide makes a living from fulfilling rich people’s aspirations to climb Everest once in their lives. From it, he buys property outside London to take care of his life afterward – if he survives this dangerous business. The BBC helps him to find more people with money who want to be ‘heroes.’ If all goes well, this currently un-Olympic story will miraculously turn into a credible success story.

Our Olympian here failed badly soon after. One piece of property less for the guide.

 

EV10 Pay attention to micro-detail

While waiting to leave Everest Camp 2 to head upwards, I asked a fellow climber if he had his sunscreen lipstick handy. “Where is yours?” asked our Sherpa. “In my backpack.” I replied. “You have to have it handy,” he said.

  • I had to switch from walking gloves to workman’s gloves for the rope work when at the glacier.
  • I fixed my security carabiner in the upper rope, instead of putting it below the figure-of-8 for abseiling.
  • I forgot to close my backpack flaps after a short drinking break, causing the cover to shake against my head as we ascended a huge ice element.
  • On the return crampon point, one of my crampons could not be reduced in size for packing (after use).
  • On the final stretch to basecamp, I slipped over some small stones and fell on my butt, hurting my elbow a little bit.

Although my mistakes seemed small, think of adverse conditions like nighttime, high winds, pressure from behind on the rope. This is not a holiday and we do not want any juvenile, adventurous play with risk. Not in the slightest detail.

All this reminds me of a business friend who prepared for the IPO of his firm. He did not leave any detail to chance. For example, he had hired a woman to forward the text on the teleprompter for his investor speech. She could do that precisely in the speed that matched his speech. He took her on business trips throughout the world for the investor speeches, and also practiced with her on the road. He had a sizable entourage, which came with equally sizable costs; the speechwriter, the financial analyst, the investor relations person, the trainer and the Powerpoint artist were all part of the traveling team.

The result of the microdetail way to an exceptional peak: a wildly successful IPO.

EV11 Friends' shit

What would you do if your reading glasses fell into the deep hole of a windy, cold, shit tent on Everest’s base camp at 5400 meters? You would not be able to read for another couple of weeks … all those lonely nights … New reading glasses could be helicoptered in from Kathmandu at a high cost on some days though … Would you kneel down and reach out to retrieve your reading glasses from the shit can?

This unfortunate event actually happened to one of our team members, who bent down and recovered his glasses from the unsanitary abyss. He told us the story and said: “I could only do it because I thought it is my friends’ shit.” – He is happily back to reading!

I have to say, though – that it was not his friends’ shit.

Like in business, this group of people who aim to reach for the top of Everest is not a group of friends, but rather a community of individuals with a common goal. We are very diverse in our approach to Everest; we walk and climb at very different speeds, we each have our own our mental and physical condition, our age lies between 35 and 68, we each have our own nationality, family background, and reason to climb.

Our expedition head does not attempt to form a team from these individuals. Despite undergoing all the activities that are normally seen as team-building; the walking together, the card games, the tent-sharing, the meals in the mess tent – we are colleagues, not friends.

And it is great that way. We are aligned! We just don’t talk about it.

 

In business, this setup is the order of the day. As head of a division, you have your own leadership approach and organizational setup. Your colleagues in the executive management group see things differently and act in ways that you may or may not agree with, and you learn to live and cooperate with someone who you would not consider a friend.

Here in the mountains, as in the boardroom, strategic discussions are held between sub-teams; some want to go  to the summit as soon as possible, others suggest calm and patience. Frictions, personal differences are short-lived and not wiped under the table. All in all, it is a good community aiming for the best chances that everyone reaches the top.

So if you reach out into the shit, it may just be shit, not friends’ shit. The important thing is to retrieve your reading glasses!

EV 12 Summit push

What is worse than climbing the icefall from BC to C2 all alone because you are slightly trailing behind team members? It is not just crossing the bridges and ladders alone, it is crossing the bridges and ladders alone with massive winds!

This is how I started my Everest summit push from BC, – moving up the Khumbu at dark, around three in the morning, always lucky to find a helping hand of another team’s Sherpa, reaching out to me when crossing a large crevasse. But the three part ladder in high winds was almost too much. Not just the balancing act of crossing, but the intermittent blows of the wind from the left.

I was certain that I would break down crying at the other end of these ladders, but then I walked across, collected my security carabiner and moved on.

When my head finally emerged on top of “the wall” above C1, I heard one of our head Sherpa (he just summited Everest for the 27th time) say: “Good job.” And with that, he disappeared into the direction of C2, again leaving me behind, marching on against the winds. I was glad about my crampons, their points keeping me in place. It was May 12, one of my favorite days in the year, in normal life. I smiled to myself; normal life was very far away.

All was forgotten when I arrived in C2, where I met my colleagues and our formidable guides. Food, shelter, my sleeping bag, tea – the world was alright and we were finally on our move up. The adventure was now real. Sleeping early, rising early to avoid the baking sun of the Western Cwm, that was all very welcome. I looked forward to climbing the Lhotse face. While it was still very, very windy, we set out for the ascent to C3 – I was no longer slow any more.

Before we even started the climb up the Lhotse face, a very strange, siren-like sound alerted us to look up – only to see an oxygen cylinder spiral down towards us in astonishing speed, luckily racing through in between my colleagues, – followed by an equally fast backpack and then, finally, a pair of sunglasses. Apparently, an anchor had loosed up there. Twenty minutes later the second incident occured: my colleague kindly alerted me to a rescue situation where someone was dragged down on his back, like a bag of potatoes in a yellow down suit. Hands thrown up in the air. A case of frostbite, we heard.

I realized that things were getting serious now, we were on the Lhotse face, at around 6800 meters. A third incident occured as a man with skisticks was guided down and although I tried to avoid looking at the situation, I nevertheless saw that he had no feet, but two different steel prosthetics instead. Welcome to the world above 7000 meters, where in the coming days two climbers would be found dead in their tents at C3.

In C3, we found shelter and hot tea in our partners’ tents and quickly retired to our sleeping bags, sleeping through the night on oxygen after a thin meal of soup, from 6pm to 6am – the winds  incessantly howling outside. The next morning seemed much quieter. To check, I carefully opened our tent a tiny bit and looked straight into the face of my summit Sherpa! In contrast to mine, his friendly face expressed a lot of ‘wanderlust’. Apparently, he had just arrived and seemed very eager to push me up to C4, asap. Far from being ready, I threw some essentials into my backpack and stumbled outside.

With lukewarm water and no breakfast, I began my trip to C4, crossing the famous yellow band and along the treacherous Geneva spurn. What a pain in the ass, this traverse to the left and above it that seemingly endless rocky terrain until eight hours later I finally, finally saw the tents of C4, at around 8000 meters. But the South col did not just looked cold and uninviting, it was cold and uninviting. The late afternoon sun could do nothing to color the place in a more friendly atmosphere. The used-up cooking gas, the empty oxygen cylinders, the pee around the tents,- I found it scary.

Only after a while, I allowed myself to look upwards, daring to scan the missing 848 meters of the Mount Everest massif that were now in full view. It was unclear how I would ever climb up there. The intimidating view reminded me of a climber’s words many years ago: Everest is two mountains on top of each other. One is BC to C4, the second is C4 to the top. Both are equally hard. Despite the evening winds and the fading lights, I could see the vertical slope leading up that ‘second mountain’. A ladder into the sky.

This would be it. If you are good, you climb 100 meters per hour. 848 meters make nine hours up, five hours down? I went into hiding, unfolded my sleeping bag, shared some oxygen and dozed off at minus 23 Celsius. It was May 15.

EV13 On top of the world

On May 17, 2018, at around 8.30 a.m. – after eleven hours of willingly putting one foot above the other, after innumerable good and regular breaths from my oxygen mask (four breaths per step), after having overtaken many slower and much younger climbers, after having pulled myself up meter by  meter of white and/or red fixed rope, after having climbed across steep rock steps, after having passed famous locations such as the Balcony without much of a pause… (repeat the following) after wiping my goggles clean, after grabbing a piece of grape sugar from my left pocket, after setting my mask and regulator straight, after sneezing my nose, after taking a quick glimpse into a glorious sunrise and an endlessly stretching world of white, blue and orange – after all that, I had arrived at the top of the world.

I was so ready for a quiet moment of admiration! I was so prepared to worship creation and the beauty around me, eager to say thank you for the incredible privilege to be at the absolute top. Please, let me see and feel the spin of the globe, for once. Would I ‘meet’ the Nepali goddess Miyolangsangma, the tiger-riding goddess, who resides on the top of Everest? NO.

I had arrived at a marketing event on a small, diagonal, snow-covered ice cap that was quite dangerous. Completely undeterred, twelve to fifteeen laughing and euphorical men shouted and danced against the winds.

A golden statue had been erected (!). The men were unfolding posters, banners and flags, despite the summit winds. Their collateral contained logos, brands, pictures of Asian women using certain cosmetics. The men posed for pictures, two other women and I watched them. I felt like part of an audience. No one congratulated me.

From his backpack, my Sherpa pulled out a robe, a golden hat and a sword, put it over his down suit and videotaped himself, speaking into his mobile. He was totally immersed into it. I had some difficulty in ‘waking him up’, asking for a picture with me.

It would have been smart to brush people aside and get a proper summit picture. However, the situation was so intimidating that I turned around and went down. Descending ridges above 8000 meters with frozen goggles, with upcoming fog and a slightly snow-blind right eye is not an easy feat. One climber got very angry when I asked him to pass by me.

Was I joyful, euphoric, happy on my way back? It was rather the contrary: I was sad and felt like shit, from all through the Hillary Step, the ridge, the South Summit, the cove. My mood became good again from the Balcony downwards, as I was quietly abseiling with all my attention focused towards every detail of the descent, from one anchor to the next anchor.

On the last 500 meters back into C4 I had fully recovered mentally. My overall time for the summit day was excellent (15 hours). I was no. 3 of our team and I later learned that I am now the oldest Western woman on the Everest south side summit.

EV14 Break my angle on purpose?

“Hey, give me a helicopter rescue”, I said to my colleague laughingly. “I have been thinking of breaking my angle on purpose”, she smiled. It felt too hot in the Western Kwm, and we had been descending from Everest C4 for more than seven hours – with full backpacks, open 8000er down suits, and empty water supplies. Our Sherpas were following in the distance of the Western Cwm. The mission they had give us was very, very, very simple: go to C2.

For successful Everest climbers like us, there are no free helicopter rides/rescues. However, our kitchen boys met us on the glacier with a big bottle of orange sugary water!  With that temporary relief and their friendly words, we somehow continued (or stumbled) to C2 where we were congratulated and cheered upon by our expedition head and teammates.

In camp, my next eighty steps from the mess tent down to the loo (a number of stones grouped to a knee-high wall a bit away from our tents) felt like the last steps I could possibly take on that day. Can you imagine how I felt after discovering that I had forgotten the loo paper and had to go back up to obtain it? I spare you my words. Eighty steps up was roughly four minutes – a lot of time for swearing.

Then, a plate of egg and potato chips was put in front of me and I was told to eat. Like in my childhood, I sat in front of this plate and could not bring the food down. Chip by chip, like in slow motion, I did my best. Somewhat later, a fellow climber grabbed me, took my crampons off, put me in a tent, fed me hot tea, put my sleeping bag and his down jacket over me and promised to return in thirty minutes to look after me. I was very grateful. (The man died on the North side of Everest a year later, he was such a nice chap).

Our final descent through the icefall took place the next morning. The glacier has changed tremendously over the last ten days; lakes of melted ice water have formed. The bridges are much thinner. New ladders have been installed to bridge crevasses that have emerged. My Sherpa hit his elbow badly when making a necessary jump across a strange formation of ice, from one end to the other of a pool of seracs. Looking back, the tired, tiny missteps that I made on the glacier, were all ‘small stuff’. At the same time, absolutely nothing may go wrong.

EV15 Hiding away

Every morning, shortly before six in the morning, the remainders of my Khumbu cough act up, along with some serious cries of birds in the hotel garden. The sun rises behind a building and some banana tree, but fades so quickly into the mellow smoggy sky of Kathmandu that I cannot take a picture of it. A tiny little bird with red legs visits my balcony and I decide that today I will return to my morning Yoga practices. It has been five days of doing absolutely nothing.

A fellow climber tells me about his schedule for next week: On Monday he has his first board meeting in Paris. On Tuesday/Wednesday he undergoes surgery in a Parisian hospital. Thursday/Friday is packed with meetings with his staff in London. As for the weekend, he will spend it in Paris. I don’t even ask when he is seeing his partner or his children. As he is CEO of an important division of a multinational conglomerate – his return is urgently awaited. For now, he has no time to digest the once-in-a-lifetime achievement of having climbed Everest.

His ‘busyness’ is something that I suspect he wears as a badge of honour – as do many other CEOs. With leaders being celebrated and ‘worshipped’ in popular culture, is the glorification of business a natural byproduct? Many individuals and high achievers have their own measure of success. However, for many it boils down to two variables: Money and Power. It is these two variables that often drive us to work long hours, be ‘on call’ 24/7, and put our personal lives on the back burner. However, with people ‘competing’ with each other in order to earn bragging rights for being busy, another byproduct of this is the sharp increase in burnout rates, depression and other health issues.

“Are you de-compressing over there or just relaxing?” writes a friend from the US on Messenger. “It must be de-compressing”, I respond. All my reservoirs of discipline, willpower and energy are empty. I am grateful for some more days of hiding in Kathmandu, and gladly take the time to read, write and organize my Everest pictures and video into a presentation for all my supporters: friends, family, customers. Meanwhile, I regain some weight, as well as mental strength. For once, I take the time.

EV16 A dangerous celebration

One of the VIPs in the Everest expedition business has been delivered to a Kathmandu hospital with serious head injuries. His 2018 expedition was a remarkable success, however, a year’s hard work came to an unfortunate and surprising end. All has been done: The commercial side of his organization has been settled. His climbers all safely returned to their home countries. But when he himself can fly, is now unclear. His friends met last night and were wondering how to help, as they themselves are leaving the country.

Dinner was reserved in a fancy rooftop restaurant above Kathmandu with great food and big bottles of Everest beer. Here was where his  accident took place. The open-air staircase is the culprit. Apparently, the famous man fell down these stairs, onto a roof, which has since been covered with a billboard. One of our group lifted the billboard and we all looked at a giant hole in the roof. It looked terrible.

Here is another story of a very unfortunate post-Everest celebration: A couple of years ago, our expedition head had contracted a young client from the Niarchos family, whom he led to success at Everest. After the rich young heir returned, he threw a big party in London to celebrate his success. As the story goes, there was cocaine for the party guests. But the cocaine had become wet. The young man put it into the microwave to dry. The stuff became hard in the oven. He licked on it – and died.

The mistake that many high achieving people make, is that they fall into a state of complacency. After a significant achievement, whether it is conquering Everest, or achieving market domination, the notion creeps into the mind that the ‘victory’ is sealed. ‘I did it’. I won. I defeated my competitors. I conquered the highest Mountain.’ This mindset fools even the most hardened veterans into letting down their guard too early. Just look at Nokia, who went from market domination, to corporate sell-off in a span less than 10 years. Better be on your tiptoes after a big success.

EV17 The deaths

“Looking at it from the outside, 2018 was a very good season”, says Billi Bierling, the custodian of the Himalayan Database. With her team, she records all summit attempts and routes to Nepal’s 8000er mountains (having taken over from Ms. Elizabeth Hawley after her death in January 2018). “Roughly 700 ascents to Everest including Sherpa, an estimated 60% summit rate, a death rate of 0.8% percent with five deaths reported. But from the inside, I don’t know.”

We are having dinner in one of the favorite spots for Westeners, “Fire&Ice”. A fellow climber and I have just returned from two scary hours of sightseeing in Pashupatina, the famous Hindu temple site where the dead are cremated. 40 to 50 people are cremated here every day, a man at location had told us. A cremation for ordinary bodies costs around ten dollars, for the nobler caste fifty meters higher up the Bagmati river the price is fifteen dollars. Incense, flowers, and other accessories for the ceremony are sold in an adjacent market.

As we walked around the site, a small white delivery van with a blue alarm on the roof approached rearwards through a narrow corridor. At the entrance, cremation pods were lined up along the dark grey Bagmata river, which almost carries no water. As the back door of the small van opened, a body under a white paper sheet could be seen on the stretcher to the right. A person was sitting next to the body, ready to jump out and carry the stretcher to the open site where preparatory rituals for the cremation were to be performed. Bodies are to be wrapped into orange sheets after the feet and the face has been washed with the holy water of the river. The final fire is set in the mouth because this is where we take our first and last breath, another man had explained to us. After maybe four hours the rest of the body is thrown into the water. Here, gold diggers search for teeth or rings.

As we shyly walked around and looked in surprise at a picnic site on the areal, we talked about a climber who had been with us on the mountain. He had died above Camp 3, apparently not from a heart attack, as was mentioned earlier, but from AMS: Acute Mountain Sickness, which is preventable. Our guides – who were neither associated with the climber, nor were they responsible for him – had heard that he was struggling. Based on camp radio reports that the man had issues with balance, orientation and movement – they had suggested to take him down immediately. Very often, affected climbers hide symptoms, are ignorant regarding advice and stubbornly follow “their dream of climbing Everest.” The body has been brought down the mountain and is flown home to Europe.

Various cognitive biases may be in play here, which also affect many business leaders. Overconfidence is a big one, found in many ambitious and high-achievers. Besides, outstanding achievements, such as running a multi-million dollar business, or climbing one the highest peaks in the world, require more confidence than most possess. While confidence may breed success, overconfidence may breed negligence due to a developed sense of ‘invincibility.’ The second bias, which probably affected this climber in particular, is the so-called ‘Sunk-cost effect.’ Many climbers push themselves to the extra mile, or are reluctant to abort ascents due to this bias. After all, they’ve come such a long way – that they could almost taste the sweet victory of conquering Everest.

Other deaths  on Everest were equally tragic as the climber afflicted with AMS. One Sherpa apparently died by falling into a crevasse when assisting with a helicopter rescue in Camp 2. He was helping a person to board a helicopter that had landed on the glacier, a dangerous operation altogether.  “More and more people are being “rescued” from C2 by helicopter. This year the number was significantly higher than in the past”, says Billi. She points towards the tip of her little finger and says, smiling ironically, that there had been a sudden increase of “frostbite” among returning climbers. We wonder. Low winds and moderate temperatures of around minus 23 Celsius on the summit – Could it be that climbers wanted to avoid the descent by foot – through an icefall that had become more difficult towards the end of the season?

“Climbing is a game that is played by individual rules defined”, says our famous guide and friend Victor Saunders.

EV18 The toughest business school

I have been attending the toughest business school in the world, Everest.

Like many other business schools it was founded in the early fifties, it admits roughly 400 people every year and costs upwards of 40k USD,  it asks for past credentials, and requires on average a year-long preparation phase.

Unlike other schools, however, it is situated in a very distant place on earth; you need to fly in via a commercial plane, continue on with an adventurous small aircraft to the world’s most dangerous airport, and from then on you need to walk for one week until you arrive. The one-week walk prepares you mentally to leave your business and daily life behind. It also teaches you to leave arrogant attitudes or feelings of superiority behind, since you are not alone on the walk up to your destination. Many people from around the world love this walk, just because the area is so beautiful.

You may bring around 45 kilos of personal belongings such as clothing, books, extra food for the two months, but there will be no cigarettes nor alcohol during the training. The accommodation is quite primitive; you live in small teams of between 4 to 12 people – business people from around the world, celebrities, Olympic athletes, entrepreneurs, and CEOs.

My program for the two months only consists of four segments. The school does not teach me how to lead people, how to conduct critical conversations, how to negotiate better or how be a passionate leader. All of this happens on the sidelines. The program works on four core strengths of a personality in such an intense way that you will automatically master all other leadership skills afterwards. My agenda is simple: I learn to reach a single, extreme goal.

Upon graduation, you will be admitted to the exclusive club of those who have mastered the program. But – the rate of failure is high, with a rate of 70.6% of all attempts failing to reach the summit between 1922 and 2006 – one of the highest globally. There are also deaths, it has to be said. ‘You have signed up for ‘hard’, not for beach, cocktails and palm trees’, we are told. Some think that it is an easy exit to be helicoptered out due to illness, but it is not a badge of honor at all.

The first segment – COURAGE – of my program takes place between Everest Base camp and the famous Khumbu icefall. It is the part of courage. Here, I am invited to revisit and to master all of my fears. There is no better training ground, I found. The Khumbu icefall is one of the largest, and certainly one of the most dangerous glaciers on earth. It is 16km long and between 500 and 800 meters wide, and lies at an altitude of 5486 meters high. Climbing it took me between six and nine hours. In the end, I accomplished a task that I would never have deemed possible. The thing is, that you do climb it many times, not just once: up and down, up and down. For any goal you pursue, this is essential. Set your goal so high that you deem it impossible. And then walk up and down this route, up and down repeatedly until all fears are familiar. Such pure courage is needed to conduct business negotiations with giants, or to make bold strategic decisions that changes people’s lives, affect a company’s bottom line, or provokes international attention.

The second segment of my program – PERSEVERANCE – takes me to the Western Khm, an endless white and deserted valley with underground crevasses where a small path meanders upwards. Hours and hours of hard-hitting sunshine beams into the valley, creating a sauna due to the high surrounding mountains.

The challenge is to walk and to walk and to walk. To breathe, to manage my body temperature and to not give up despite wobbly legs and chronically short breath.

How do I entertain my brain while walking? It is very easy to produce negative thoughts. It is also very easy to put into question all of my skills, my strengths and beliefs. The patience and perseverance needed to keep up good spirits and to continue walking is the second critical skill needed to reach extreme goals in my program. I will learn to live through periods that seem like a standstill, with no movement, no progress, except that these periods are eating deep into my energy reservoirs.

The third segment of the program – DISCIPLINE – is the Lhotse face; an near-vertical, 800 meter high ice-covered wall that leads from the Western Khm to the Everest South summit. They said: ‘The first time you sit at the bottom of the Lhotse face and look upwards, it will crush you.’ Here, I will learn discipline.

A single mistake, like a carabiner that is not firmly closed, can have deadly consequences. Keeping up discpipline for a short time is easy, exercising discipline for between four and six hours is a mental program I will have to engage in. Few of us have done this in the past years. A disciplined person looks at the very microdetail of operations within peoples’ actions because a small mistake can kill the project.

The fourth and final segment of my program – HUMILITY – deals with the unknown. The territory above 8000 meters is called the death zone – and rightly so. On the South col and upwards to the summit of Everest, we are exposed to the full forces of the universe without a shield, with all possible forces and directness. Extreme low levels of oxygen combined with extreme weather (winds and temperatures) will make me operate from my core as a living organism with perhaps some brain left. This humbling experience, the notion of being a small collection of molecules that can or cannot reflect upon what is happening, is life-changing for most.

So having run through all four steps of the program, – how will my life look like afterwards? At best, I now have a fundamental understanding of the human condition. I have seen myself and others under some of the most critical circumstances life can present itself in. If all goes well, my personal experience is so broad and so deep that I will understand ‘the human condition’ somewhat better than before. I will know how extreme goals are reached.

A total of 4833 people have climbed the highest mountain on earth for a total of 8306 summits, according to the Himalayan Database (as of May 2018). All these individuals had very different motives and ambitions to come here. For some it is to complete the Seven Summits, or the Seven Summits and both poles, they may want to become famous for a winter ascent or any other ‘first’ that they dream up. Fewer look at Everest as a nature spectacle, not all marvel at the incredible sights and forms in which nature presents itself here – although millions of pictures are taken with the most elaborate camera equipment available. It is hard to tell for how many climbers this journey is a spiritual journey. Although almost everyone carries a mascot, a blessed neckband by a lama or a shawl from a Buddhist ceremony, there is not much talk about the spiritual nature of mountains and their ascents. My perspective is forever a spiritual one.

EV19 Our conversations

What do people talk about when they spend almost every meal with each other for seven weeks? Here is a list!

The pricing structure of the drinks menu in the lodges: Why is a bottle of water more expensive than a bottle of black tea? Why is a small pot of milk more expensive than a small pot of hot chocolate?

The project to publish a book about Mont Blanc and Horace-Bénédict de Saussure:  What was mountaineering like before the advent of Alpinism and Tourism? The project would tell the story of the first ascent of Mont Blanc and how Mont Blanc became a business, particularly in London, where a show about this mountain ran for ten years.

Types of very long bridges across landmarks like in Istanbul, the Normandy bridge, the long bridge in the south of France, and the bridges that cross the Panama canals: Stayed-cable bridges versus suspension bridges, diagonal versus vertical suspensions. (We also got a pretty hand-drawing).

How the Chinese buy up property in strategic places in Western cities like London or Washington: Chinese deal-making in large scale projects, negotiations that are controlled by the party.

Wittgenstein and rules that define games: A game is defined by the rules by which it is played.

Daniel Kahnemann and the types of questions we learn to ask from him during our mountain project.

The story of the French Woman who was rescued from Nanga Parbat earlier this year and what was controversial about it, how her climbing partner died and why.

Living on a house boat in London or Paris. The story of a business tycoon who went to the Himalayas and realized that he had wasted his life on business. He then became a hippie on a house boat in London. These boats however, are long and narrow – and not that comfortable. A part of keeping a close eye on the water level, he also has to contend with some ‘discomfort’, such as being an object of interest for tourists, and dealing with rain.

Dream routes on high mountains: We discussed what projects we you want to do in our lives. Some first ascents and beautiful mountains are still out there!

Risk homeostasis: Why does wearing a ski helmet encourages you ski faster? Airbags only cover 10% of risk, but people take a much higher risk when wearing Airbags.

The woman who suddenly only saw white on the summit and how she was guided down and lightly medicated, so that she could be guided down. Talking her down every single step of the way by explaining what was at her left, her right, and right in front of her. She was brought into her tent and when she recovered, she saw everything in yellow. No one understood why that was the case. Then it became clear: her tent was yellow!

All actions on the mountain have to be primed. You develop a tunnel view when you are on your way up or down. We all had to learn about security protocols and receive training on appropriate actions to take when at risk.

The story of British scientist Meinertzhagen – who cheated in science and destroyed his reputation by stealing bird’s eggs from the British Museum.

Predictors of mortality: How does a slow summit time, low oxygen levels, or a lagging but persistent climber contribute to the increased the risk of mortality?

Vegans are en route with us and are advertising vegan nutrition. But when they are sitting in a corner, grasping for air? That is bad advertising for the vegan case!!

The vegan woman that died on her summit approach. She wanted to wait for her husband to continue to the top and then return with him together. But she died and could not be rescued.

The Everest Marathon: Starting at Base Camp you run down 42 kilometers to Lukla. We saw some guys running up from 4400 meters to practice.

How are we ageing and what happens when we have reached the middle-point in our lives? How does that encourage us to follow through with crazy projects and work hard to maintain the upwards movement of our age? Peter Pan deals with it. It is a children’s book that is actually meant to be read by the parents for their children.

Why architecture is a fashion industry. The story of the dome in Milan and how hired craftsmen from different countries built different structures and ornaments for the dome that were fashionable in their countries.

Why a cameraman accompanying us is a problem for the group, even if he is not filming, just taking pictures (and we are even not in them).

How Red Bull films Wingsuit flyers: They fly in tandem. One of them has the camera system attached to his head; he wears a monocle that displays the camera view. The other eye must focus on the direction they take in their flight. He turns his head sideways to watch the protagonist. Three helicopters are used to film the flight, plus several camera systems on the ground.

Is Tesla a fraud or the main disruptor in the automotive industry that kicked off electric vehicles? From a factory visit one of us brought back the impression that Tesla will go down eventually. The tube project between SFO and LAX is considered fake and the question is whether people will use it. The psychology of the tube may be even more complicated than the channel tunnel train between Brussels and London.

How Brazilian Mangoes are processed for export to Europe. They are cooked for 135 minutes and then frozen for export. Mangoes meant for export are harvested three to four weeks ahead of time. The ripe mangoes remain in the country. The process of cooking and freezing is required by the EU and US and is meant to protect the health of the consumers.

Churchill is totally disliked by all the British and Scottish climbers here. They think he has done a lot of damage to Britain. They found “The Darkest Hour” a terrible film, full of mistakes and bad script writing. All the famous Churchill quotes are supposedly fake.

Waterloo – a discussion between our British and French climbers.

Life after Everest: Why you might spend your life after Everest with fishing or by opening a bar when you have actually earned a PhD, but live in DC and are fed up with the political system. You call it fun-employed … unemployed, but fine with it.

These are the topics that somehow came to mind while we were having our downtime on Everest. As in business, certain topics come to mind in their own respective fields and industries. Especially in highly competitive and high-paced industries, it is important to to stay abreast on industry developments – such as identifying arbitrage opportunities while monitoring multiple exchanges, or technological advances in order to prevent obsolescence.

Conversations allow you to identify what your clients, investors or competitors are paying attention to. What do they value? What are they worried about? Knowing the current topics allow you to develop business and marketing strategies around that. If you know what everybody is paying attention to, you may identify opportunities by looking ‘the other way.’

Furthermore, businessmen and women who keep themselves updated in their fields, become veterans. They learn the ins and outs and eventually become experts in their respective niches. This in turn allows them to build a good reputation for themselves, allowing them to attract more customers. The business world is as fickle as the weather, so it is in everybody’s interest to stay ahead of the news.

The only important news we missed in those eight weeks was the wedding of Harry and Megan!!!

 

EV20 The pills

Around 8pm, we had dessert in the mess tent. In our home away from home, at an altitude of 6300 meters on the way to Camp 2,  a couple of metal mugs with a single pineapple slice (canned) was served. We were tired, sitting on small folding chairs that were quite uncomfortable. A small gas heater stood nearby which we used to warm our feet.

Someone took an impressive collection of pills from the pocket of his down jacket and showed them around. They came in a variety of colours – red, white, beige – and came in various sizes.

“What should I take tonight?” he asked. I thought ‘None’, but kept my mouth shut. Some people never go without pills. A discussion of the pro’s and con’s began. The man described his condition and, for a while, the talk went on about ‘the usual suspects’: sleeping pills, Diamox, Ibuprofen, energy pills, Viagra (in its original application as supporting the heart) etc etc

The man made a decision for red and beige, then retired into his tent and sleeping bag. His group wanted to start out very early the next morning onto the glacier and towards Camp 3 at 7’200 meters. It was their final push for the summit, after weeks of waiting. (Our team had a rest day.)

You can imagine my surprise when I met the climber in the mess tent at our breakfast time. Wasn’t he supposed to be at the bottom of the Lhotse face by now with his peers? Well, no.

As it turned out, he had started out with his team. Two minutes into the climb, literally behind the kitchen tent, he felt absolutely terrible. He continued nevertheless for an hour with his group, but then gave up and returned.

With that, his summit attempt was history. No Everest. With his team was up on the mountain, there was no extra Sherpa available to guide him up. On top of that, the weather window was not long enough. The guy went back to base camp later in the day and was treated for light symptoms of high altitude sickness.

It would be unfair to make a connection between the pills he took and his early return. However, all ‘chemical weapons’ have effects and side-effects on the body with unknown components at altitude.

Here is an alternative: my personal list of natural and homeopathic substances that I have used repeatedly at high altitude. They are safe and free of side effects. They do not influence my system in ways that are unknown.

  1. Ginseng powder of highest quality to boost blood circulation and oxygen intake.
  2. Coca C200, a homeopathic extract of coca leaves, as used in the Andes.
  3. Caffeine, in the small Nescafé portions.
  4. Guarana, for exceptionally hard ascents.
  5. Grape sugar tablets, for fast supply of my body with sugar.
  6. Aroma therapy (Bachblüten) for times of despair and loneliness.
  7. A mix of cardamon, ginger and ginseng powder for the morning porridge.
  8. Honey as natural antibiotic.
  9. Ibuprofen against muscle pain.
  10. Tiger balm for muscles, throat, and a running nose.
  11. Charcoal for problems with digestion.

While the man preferred to rely on more conventional over-the-counter medications. Others like myself prefer to take a more natural and homeopathic approach – relying on the body’s natural strength and ability to heal its own.

Like in business, you are bound to meet people with different, and sometimes conflicting business philosophies on running a firm. For example some CEOs prefer to foster a culture characterized by strict bureaucratic protocol, while others prefer to adopt a more laissez-faire type of approach. Is one necessary better than the other? The answer, as often is the case, is – it depends. A smaller firm with a relatively young workforce may prefer a ‘Clan culture’ – characterized by a friendly and more casual atmosphere – similar to a family, whereas a larger finance corporation may adopt a ‘Market culture’ – where the emphasis is on results and getting things done.

PS: I had a small dose of Botox injections on my hairline. Botox helps people with migraine and it helped me on my high-altitude projects against headache. It worked pretty well.

EV21 What we have been reading

People have always tried to figure out the keys to success. Is intelligence? Perseverance? Creativity? Is it waking up at 5am each morning? Or having a great network? While all these things may help – we are not necessarily all adept in these factors. Some of us are morning people, while others thrive as a night owl. However, a characteristic of successful people that appears to be a strong constant, is that they read. A lot.

And its not just about how much you read that matters. Arguably more important, is what you read. Wealth creation expert Tom Corley shows that, while less successful people tend to read mostly for entertainment, those at the top tend to read educational and self-improvement books. However, there is also an argument for executives to read novels.

Research has shown that reading fiction can increase people’s emotional intelligence. Executives who only read non-fiction, tend to have a more two-dimensional perspective in their perception of other people and situations, having fewer options to call upon when solving problems or making decision.

On the other hand, research showed that reading fiction improves ones sensitivity and appreciation of complex human situations, providing the reader with a richer skillset of understanding from which to pull when making decisions and fostering relationships.

As the business world becomes more complex and fast-paced, and companies becoming less hierarchical and more dependent on our ability to support and cooperate with those around us – this kind of skillset becomes increasingly essential to our success.

Whenever I saw what people were reading – during the walk-in or at Everest basecamp, I noted the book titles. Few electronic readers were used, interestingly. It seems to me that this is a good list of books. You make careful choices about what you carry up the mountain. A good book helps you through many dark hours up there. Some of these books were discussed were not physically present, but were nevertheless equally relevant. Please enjoy this selection!

  • Paul Auster: 4-3-2-1 (Susanne, team member)
  • Hermann Buhl: Himalayan Oddyssey (unknown climber in the Lobuche lodge)
  • Brian Clegg: Big Data (Henry, expedition head)
  • Albert Camus: A Happy Death (Susanne, team member)
  • Charles Darwin: The Origin of Species (recommended by Victor, head guide)
  • Joan Didion: The Year of Magical Thinking (Oliver, American Climber)
  • Annie Dillard: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Melanie, team member)
  • The Best of A. A. Gill (recommended by Henry, expedition head)
  • Richard Flanagan: Gould’s Book of Fish (Climber from New Zealand in Chumjung lodge)
  • Ernest Hemingway: By-Line (Oliver, American Climber)
  • Jon Krakauer: Into Thin Air (Climber from the US)
  • Emma Marriott: I used to know that history (Henry, expedition head)
  • Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar (Susanne, team member)
  • Anthony Powell: A Dance to the music of Time (recommended by Henry, expedition head)
  • Jean Rolin: Le Traquet Kurde/”The Kurdish Wheatear” (Bruno, team member)
  • Philip Roth: American Pastoral (Victor Saunders, Head Guide)
  • Tomas Sedlacek: The Economics of Good and Evil (Susanne, team member)
  • Caroline Taggart: A Classical Education (Henry, expedition head)
  • John Kennedy Toole: Confederacy of Dunces (recommended by Victor, head guide)
  • Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace (recommended by Melanie, team member)
  • Unknow author: How to Sound Cultural (Lucie, team member)
  • Evelyn Waugh: Swords of Honor (recommended by Henry, expedition head)

EV22 How to communicate

Whenever you heard my voice, read my WhatsApp messages or saw my Facebook posts, it was a small miracle.

How do such miracles happen on Everest? Let’s see what expeditions need to communicate.

Two-way radios are intended for VITAL communication on the mountain. One is located at the base camp kitchen, one in Camp 2 kitchen, and another one later at Camp 4. One radio is issued per expedition leader, head guide, camp manager. Another one is issued per climbing Sherpa. Clients do NOT receive radio equipment (altitude-sick clients talk b***s and confuse everyone). The radios operate on rechargeable batteries and have a tendency to fail. Sometimes they only work one-way, other times the batteries unload; they require constant attention and maintenance. When it comes to charging, they have the top priority. More about charging in a minute.

Second in line of priority: the laptops of the expedition heads and the leaders. On it, they receive complex weather maps and long tables of weather data from three different sources around the world. Some of these machines take numerous hours to charge.

Third priority goes to Satellite phones. Their batteries, too, are complicated to manage. Three members had brought their personal sat phones with one of them was working very well, thanks to direct support from the company headquarters in Paris. Of course, the expedition head was part of the sat phone elite!

Then and only then came our laptops, tablets, GoPros, Suunto watches and mobile phones. We were asked to charge them ourselves, if possible. But in perfect sunshine my solar panel could load one device per day, at best. So we sneaked into the comms tent and kindly asked for the option to charge this or that.

Power management: The main charging station consisted of a series of solar panels feeding a car battery, a converter, some other equipment which sprouted out into in a series of power sockets. When the car battery was overloaded or under supplied with solar energy, everything needed to be unplugged and a time-out was required.

You get the message: a fully charged device meant exceptional good luck!

Now to the local network. The Khumbu region is supplied by Nepal’s national operator Ncell, with 3G antennas but large gaps in between. Most of the time, we were on 2.5G but had to find the large rock behind the shower tent to get access. In the dark and cold evenings, exactly when Europe was active due to the time difference, the walk to the rock was unpleasant and your fingers became very cold. Higher up on the mountain, no coverage. On the summit, they say, you can get China Mobile, but none of us tried.

Now WiFi. Right after Namche Bazaar all the lodges have handed over their WiFi system to a MVNO called Everest Link. They sell access cards that became more expensive the higher we got up. In basecamp we paid 30 USD for 500 MB. We bought the first cards in lodges – they were empty after ten minutes. This was due to all the smart phone features on our devices, especially the automatic online backups of all the pictures we had taken during the day. I switched all of that off, deleted my Microsoft accounts, disabled Google syncs, deleted many other apps, and essentially stripped it down to a dumb phone. When someone from home sent you a video, you knew that whatever you had received – it was something expensive.

In a way, you could say that this was how the ‘corporate communications’ worked on ‘Everest Inc’. Communications, is quite literally of vital importance here. Lives depend on accurate data such as weather conditions and the ever-changing landscape. Corporate communications in turn, serves several vital functions for an organization as well. Internal communications acts as the glue that links all of its employees together with the organization – the better the ‘glue’ the stronger the and healthier the organisation can operate. A well-functioning communication system leads to accurate and timely knowledge transfer – internally as well as externally. This in turn leads to better understanding of the state of the firm for all parties involved.

 

EV23 Looking down on people?

We looked down on the trekkers. Trekkers were asthmatic people who wore brand-new clothes with too-heavy backpacks, standing around in all the wrong places gasping for air. We made it a sport to run around them when we crossed paths. After four weeks in base camp, we climbers were so acclimatized and fit that trekkers didn’t stand a chance against us.

What we didn’t know was that the Sherpa looked down on us in much the same way: climbers like us were amateurs, stupidly fiddling around with technical gear, clogging the way through the ice-fall.

Who in turn, had reason to look down on the load-carrying Sherpa? The ice-fall doctors and the Sherpa who fixed the summit route! The latter braved the dangerous way all the way to the top. 3.5 vertical kilometers, through crevasses, seracs, avalanche sections and pure ice were secured and adjusted on a daily basis. Ten kilometers of high quality Korean rope were in their hands and responsibility.

The next caste up are the seasoned Western expedition leaders and guides. Their names were/are big brands, with bookshops carrying their biographies or autobiographies: Russell Brice, Guy Cotter, Henry Todd. Wherever we arrived, trailing behind our guide Victor Saunders – people greeted him as a living legend. Henry Todd (73), who had invited us to join his last Everest expedition after 35 years on the mountain, had walked up the Khumbu by himself at an astonishing speed. His tent turned into a place where the mountain elite met. The fact that we, all eight of his climbers, made it to the summit without problems, was once more a testament of his exceptional ability “to read” the mountain –  as well as each of us.

Western leaders in turn look down on a new caste: ex Sherpa, who build their own trekking and climbing companies, after years of serving the Westerners. Their pricing is cheap and they acquire all sorts of clients with climbing ambitions. The ratio of climber to Sherpa is 1:xx, groups are very large, the share of accidents is relatively high. But as they are getting more professional and as the old guard slowly retires, there are lucrative business opportunities.

The old guard is equally critical for the next generation of Western company leaders like Adrian Ballinger and Lukas Furtenbach. Both are disrupting the expedition business with sky-high pricing, acclimatization tents for your home and the shortest time on the mountain. Guides like Tim Mosedale, Rolfe Oostra and Rob Casserley have learned from the legends and work more in their style.

However, there is another group that represents the future. The next generation of young climbers from around the world who have turned to the 8000er world in Alpine style. Climbers like Rupert Jones Warner, Jon Gupta, or Adam Booth come here at a young age with the intention to climb Everest and Lhotse. Either that, or they scale Everest from both sides in a couple of days and other creative things.

But back to the trekkers. On certain days they were visiting our campsite and had lunch in a “real expedition mess tent”- ours. Grudgingly, we stored away the dirty ketchup bottle, the leaking mustard, the smeary jar of marmelade, tea, Nescafe, crackers. They enjoyed the tent atmosphere and looked at us like animals in a zoo. We had lunch after their departure and spent time elsewhere.

Looking back, we were quite stupid. A trek to Everest base camp is an amazing accomplishment for everyone, including them! Who are we to judge and condescend on them? It would have been really nice to have bonded together and talk.

That being said, in order to become a good leader that inspires, empowers and motivates – instead of focussing on increasing your positive behavioral traits – you need to pay attention on what kind of behavior you should avoid as well. Condescending and judgement behavior should be avoided at all costs. Nobody – especially your high performing peers – can tolerate condescension.

Plenty of studies have shown that the majority of our impact come from non-verbal communication, and tone – the manner in which you speak – is a key factor in this. Sometimes we unwittingly make comments to others that may be perceived as evaluative, harsh or condescending – without the intention to do so. Other offensive non-verbal behavior may include scowling, quizzical looks (as if to say ‘are you stupid?’), rigidity and sarcasm. These behavior may seem small and trivial to the individual who acts them out – but it can create a tremendous amount of relationship damage.

At the end of the day, the ultimate goal of good leadership is to breed loyalty and followership. These are two things we cannot outright demand – but rather should cultivate through mutual respect. While malicious tactics such as instilling fear-based motivation, condescension or power play can result in short-term compliance – such tactics ultimately destroy the legacy we want to leave behind. Therefore, all leaders should be aware and evaluate what kind of behaviors they may need to refrain from in order to have a positive and enduring impact.

EV24 With gratitude

Climbing Everest is never done by a person alone.

And as discovered on my last 8000er expedition to Cho Oyu: When we do something outstanding, we are standing on the shoulders of giants.

I would like to mention a few of these giants:

  • My son Paul who encouraged me to do Everest despite all the risk involved. Without his consent and trust I could and would not have done it.
  • My brother Arndt, who supported my crazy desire to spend the equivalent of a beautiful classic Porsche 911 for a one-time adventure.
  • My brother Martin who was my reliable communication hub at all times of the day and night. He could always be reached via phone, sat phone or messaging – and distributed news.
  • My boyfriend Max who looked after all my matters at home in the time of my absence. It helped me to return home in a good mood.
  • My entrepreneurial friend Montserrat who helped me in the mid-term of the expedition to solve an urgent matter at home, saving me from endless sleepless nights.
  • My father Wolfgang who had just lost his wife, my mother, and was extremely concerned that he might lose the next woman in the family.
  • My team at work, Ksenia, Meri and Khai, who kept the business going and who did everything to move things forward.
  • All my wonderful friends who cheered me up before, during and after the mountain: Andrea, Alexandra, Amir, Anke, Billi, Caroline, Claudia, Caroline, Daniela, Dorothee, Dörte, Frettchen, Harry, Malin,  Marcel, Nadia, Paul, Sabine, Petra.
  • My fellow climbers: Bruno, Daniel, Lucie, Kevin, Melanie, Paul and Roman. Our tough summit Sherpas who were never tired and summited twice: Dorjee, Padawa, Phurtin. Last but not least the two most experienced people on the mountain who made it all a reality: Henry Todd and Victor Saunders.
  • Swisscom CEO Urs Schaeppi and his Head of Communications, Stefan Nünlist, decided to support my communications in the two months on the mountain. A lifeline not to be missed. Thank you very much, Swisscom!

Cho Oyu (8'202 m.)

The blog was written with cold fingers and solar energy in basecamp and it contains some reflections on life and aspirations – learnings for the boardroom

CHO1 On preparation for the top

“I have no idea what it means but I am absolutely certain that you will make it”, said a friend when I told her about my plan to climb the sixth-highest mountain on earth, Cho Oyu (8202m), departing to Kathmandu on August 27. We all need friends who believe in us and who don’t care about our actual abilities, but assess our potential.

If you are a CEO in the waiting, preparing for a new position to take over this fall, we have at least two things in common. One commonality is a dialogue within ourselves: am I prepared? What are good things that may happen on our way up? What are bad things that may happen? What is the key difference from my last adventure? Is my family prepared to carry the extra load of uncertainty? The other commonality is a dialogue with our environment: with whom do I share my plans? How do I manage peoples’ expectations? Will they be disappointed if I fail early? Whose advice should I listen to?

Despite months of training and years of high-altitude experience, I am clearly scared of the unknown. Climbing into thin air is never easy, be it in the wilderness of Tibet or in the more abstract wilderness of the boardroom. People who have helped me to tackle the fears and prepare better were either those who completely neglected the facts and reassure me about my potential or those who have been climbing many 8’000m peaks and give advice from a vast body of experience. People ‘in between’ – who do other sports or have been out there just once – have been weaker advisors (sorry, folks).

All this confirms my belief that a CEO advisor should have been CEO many times before. Good advisors have extensive recollections of boardroom battles, years of experience in corporate politics and a vast body of PR tricks that work well. Just like in my case, a very experienced guide checked my equipment and lent me some special gear. For example, he gave me his personal adapted Camelback system to carry below the down suit, filled with warm liquid to warm the spine. He advised me on basecamp policies and suggested that I re-check my contract with the expedition company regarding climbing support above Camp 1. Thank you!

Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner, perhaps the world’s best (female) climber, used to sit in basecamp for hours, watching the mountain over and over. She was searching the route for details, preparing for each step and assessing its difficulty, mentally. To see the art of mental preparation in action, watch this clip of the Ski worldcup finals.  As incoming CEO, you may consider yourself as a professional athlete and mentally train for your onboarding.

CHO2 Power Communications

As soon as we arrived in Kathmandu, we tried to get online. Our loved ones wanted to know about safe arrivals. How did we like the expedition team? The team was made up of people from all over the world. We are to spend six important weeks in our lives as a group and we did not know each other from before. The team mates will learn about our strengths and weaknesses in hours of defeat and victory more than many others who have known us for years.

First impressions stay with you, like who arrives at the reception desk in full gear (8’000m boots) and who walks in with flip-flops. Who asks your name and who walks by. What do you talk about during dinner, a civilized affair (still), other than past accomplishments? Of course, some people set the record straight from the beginning. “Oh, were you on Everest with Peter in 2015? Wasn’t that the year when …” and so on. This is pretty frigthening if you have never been on Everest and probably never will. The war stories for such an adventure are much more entertaining than those told on low-skill trekking trips, I have to admit.

I was seriously impressed by the ease with which one person told a story where three people had climbed up and two came back down. Sure, they had to remove the dead body. That seemed quite normal. And it is normal for people in the Himalayas. There were other stories about plane crashes, car accidents on the way to basecamp, shootings on a smuggler’s pass across the border and more.

“Go big or go home,” one fellow climber said. Hmm, I thought. Am I going big? The way you communicate as incoming CEO with a team of fellow ‘climbers’, aka direct reports, is equally important as here.

Power communication is very important. As a leader, you must scare people with past adventures, you must appear a hero. It builds respect and trust. Your team will understand that you are going the extra mile to their rescue. Should these stories be passed on? As tempting as it may seem, I promised to keep them off record. And again, this is much the same in the corporate environment. Passing on the war stories to the outside is suicide. You will not survive as a leading member of the team, and people will let you down when you need them most.

CHO3 Budgeting for risk

Commercial high-altitude expeditions are like enterprise projects, however, with very risky budgeting aspects. In our case, for example, the return road to Kathmandu has been closed by the Chinese authorities which requires a costly flight back via Lhasa for 13 people. Other examples include expensive equipment that gets buried by an avalanche, or the ham and cheese for 30 days and 40 people (including Sherpas) banned from entering the country.

The biggest risk is to fulfill the paying client’s desire to reach the top. Commercial clients like us contribute considerable amounts of time and money;we have trained for months and most of us have jobs that do not allow for an expedition per year. We are doctors, teachers, journalists, civil servants or entrepreneurs. So what wonder is it that we would like to achieve the utmost possible? This aspect makes us a dangerous category of climbers. None of us would like to return after 46 days with nothing achieved.

Just like you can hedge for business risks but not prevent them, you can take certain provisions against bad weather or risk of avalanches, but not avoid them. That makes the role of the expedition leader difficult. The perhaps 50-70 high-altitude leaders from all over the world know/watch/cooperate with each other but also compare themselves by the number of clients they guide to the top and bring back to basecamp healthily.

Of course, they feel the pressure of their clients’ expectations. But not all fall prone to it. A very good leader summarized it here with a sense of super dry humor: “Better an angry client than a dead client. Too much paperwork!”

CHO4 Fear of going slowly

It is the first time our team is going up a hill, from 4’300 meters to 4’700 meters. It is an acclimatization practice and the idea is to go very slowly. The first guide leads, one of us follows, then the second. I go third. The second guide goes last. His pace is even slower. I decide to fall back and to join him.

Doubt rises. What do my fellows think? I am the oldest group member, will they doubt my ability to keep pace? I am tested in an unusual way: to go even more slowly than before. Then we pause. Then we continue to walk slowly.

After an endless snail trail, we arrive at the top of the hill and spend a lot of time here to acclimatize even more. I become very impatient and hungry but decide to stay. We return after five endless hours to our small village and I have food and a nap.

It was Steve Jobs who prided himself in being able to do something very quickly. He was convinced that the concept of fast is morally better than the concept of slow. We have adopted the idea. In the Internet economy not the big beat the small, but the fast beat the slow. We feel bad when an email is answered the next day. News must be commented upon instantaneously, with no time to sleep things over. Am I getting old and do I romanticize the past?

There is a new kind of expedition company in the Himalayas. They provide a maximum of comfort (aka helicopters, oxygen, Nespresso machines, fixed ropes, load carrying) and advertise running the trips in 50% of the time but for up to 50% to 100% more money. So you can do Everest efficiently, put it on your resume and return to your fast-paced life.

There is a little difference, though. It seems that the success rate for the fast lane is low. Is human nature in the way?

CHO5 On success

Dinner conversations among high-altitude climbers are often about other climbers. The professionals and semi-professionals form a small community of some hundred individuals from across the globe. Who has achieved what goal? Summit photoshopping is a total no-go, but seems not unusual, especially among amateurs. One man found his personal summit picture used as a background for a man and a woman who had inserted themselves and had taken him out of his own picture.

Many different types of personalities seek success at high-altitude and an interesting question is: what group is most likely to succeed? The most likely group to succeed seems to be people who have failed a lot. They genuinely love mountains, altitude and adventure, otherwise they would not do it. They have returned many times and know about the intricacies of weather, tactics, routes and everything that can go wrong. They are familiar with expeditions, equipment, techniques and are quite humble facing the upcoming challenge.

More often than not, athletes who have achieved certain credentials in other sports fail. Their superior fitness and expectation levels seem to create a tunnel view that is extremely focused on summiting. Much of the joy of climbing as such gets lost and thus may lead to failure.

At the moment we are still acclimatizing at 3’600 meters and I feel quite relieved when my fellows admit that climbing the hotel staircase makes them tired, too. I am very happy to take naps and am somewhat concerned about a 2-3 hour walk tomorrow. It seems that the idea of the summit as such (4’600 meters higher than we are now) is very distant. Summits stand for orientation and aspiration.

But even if I should reach the top, my goal is a different one: to bring stories back to all those who have supported me in an unprecedented way. I am deeply grateful for their encouragement and tolerance.

CHO6 Being first - then and now

“I get this email from a woman from the UK with a 21 year old son who asks me about the youngest Brit on Everest. The youngest Brit was 16, I tell her. Her son is 21 and she desperately wants him to do a ‘first’ on Everest. Could he probably be the youngest Brit with a speed ascent? (A speed ascent means climbing in one go from base camp to summit and back.) The woman will send her child off with an expedition company called Alpenglow who charges between 100’000 and 130’000 USD for Everest. But Alpenglow doesn’t do speed ascents, it only reduces the time for the trip as such, from 7 to 4 weeks. To acclimatize, you buy yourself a hypoxic tent to sleep in at home. Then you are helicoptered to basecamp and moved up the hill. I had to disappoint the woman.”

Billi Bierling is precise in her assessment. She maintains the largest and most comprehensive database of mountaineers who have climbed expedition peaks in the Himalayas since the beginning of high-altitude climbing in the sixties. This journalist, who lives in Kathmandu most of the year, has summited five 8000m peaks herself, so she clearly knows what she is speaking about. “Everything has been done, it is no longer special to climb Mount Everest”, says Billi. “I get weird emails from people desperately trying to be first. Can you check for me, am I the first vegan, the first vet?”

This is clearly not how it all began. The Himalayan Database was started by an American journalist, Elizabeth Hawley, who, after travelling the world, decided to settle in Kathmandu in the sixties. There, she covered the first ascent of a US team on Everest in 1963 for Reuters. Hawley developed a unique hobby: she would go the airport and look at the boots of the passengers to spot the climbers. She took the climbers’ details and recorded all expedition attempts and successes from the beginning.

Over time, she became an authority although she never claimed to be one. In 2004 her database was published in digital format; data entry and related discussions had taken around ten years. Hawley did it all on her own. The current database contains tens of thousands of records: all people, all attempts, all of the approx. 350 expedition peaks in Nepal, such as Everest, Makalu, Lhotse, Cho Oyu. Per climber, the personal data is recorded, the expedition, the route, the sherpas, oxygen or not, accidents, deaths, and – in newer times, ‘aviation assistance’.

Miss Hawley had started the record- keeping with 6 Everest summiters in 1963 (with a success rate of 29.4%, excluding Sherpa) . Billi Bierling recorded 588 summiters in Spring 2016 (420 from the south side, 168 from the north, 74.5% success rate excluding Sherpa). Billi is happy to report a dramatically lower death rate between then and now (5.8% to1.2%).

How did she get involved with the Himalayan database? Billi met Hawley in 2001 when she attempted Baruntse with her boyfriend and visited the then 78 year old lady to be included into the database herself. One day, Billi decided to live in Kathmandu and wrote a letter to Miss Hawley: “Do you need help?” Hawley took her on as an assistant for 12 years, and when she stopped working at age 92 last year, Billi took over. Although she recognizes the power of data and the value of this historic account, she wants to keep the personal aspect. The Himalayan Database is not meant to be an anonymous online recording site.

“I want to meet all these people. 30 years ago we talked to real mountaineers. Today we talk to people who do speed ascents. I want to take the historic value of the data into the future. What will always fascinate me is the people. For example, until now only six women have summited Everest without supplemental oxygen but this year alone we had two summiting without ‘o’. They are two lovely women, and I had the privilege of meeting them all personally. I meet the best of the world.”

CHO7 The Importance of Rituals

Tomorrow will be the day of the “Puja”, when the Sherpa prepare a traditional ceremony that asks the mountain for permission to be climbed. Is it a tourist attraction that is performed for us because travel books routinely describe it? At the moment it is hard to tell, a small ‘altar’ has already been built above our tents from stone. From the tent right behind me monotonous mantra music has been played from a smart phone since last night. It seems to be the tent of the guy who is kitchen boy on the one hand but Lama on the other hand. He was humming along and it made me so nervous that I fled into the glacier this morning for a walk. This afternoon the music has changed to a version of Nepali Pop, not much better.

I ask my fellow climbers about Pujas. To my surprise, they all take it very seriously. “Could we please all refrain from swearing on the day of the Puja?” asks one Western guide.

The ceremony takes a lot of preparation and when it finally takes place – all in Nepali – I am almost crying. Dry cedar burns, the stone altar is beautifully decorated with deeds to the mountain, from handmade dough figures to apples and Bounty bars. Rows of typical Tibetan flags span into five directions. Our kitchen boy is the respected Lama, sitting in front of the altar, singing mantras from a very old handwritten book that is covered with coloured cloth. We must drink a small portion of Rum, throw dough into the air all together and bring some of our gear to be blessed, like ice axes, crampons or gloves. The ceremony ends and the kitchen boy hurries to prepare lunch. Now we may approach the mountain.

I wonder if it would make a difference if we would hold a small “Puja” in our office at the start of a project. Of course, I am not thinking of a Tibetan-style ceremony, but of another form of informal celebration, like sharing a special kind of tea and cake. We usually start and end projects without a moment of emotional reflection at the beginning or celebration at the end. A short pause is always good. Sending colleagues off to a project would be much nicer if they saw that our thoughts are with them. I would also hope that our clients feel more honoured.

CHO8 Sit there and let it happen

The expedition team has arrived at Advanced Basecamp (5’700 meters). Unfortunately, the youngest climber had to return to 4’350m because of severe headache and moutain sickness. It was an unexpected incident and the 22 year old was quite embarrassed to have caused a change in logistics. If he does not recover within two days he will be sent back home.

Acclimatization is tricky, it requires a behavior we are not used to. Instead of pushing forward and spending energy, acclimatization asks for stillness and inaction. “You just sit there and let it happen”, says an experienced guide. The benefits of good acclimatization are manifold: summiting is much more likely, you avoid brain and lung damage; because of a better sense of balance, dangerous missteps don’t occur. Thinking of the business world, good acclimatization would be helpful when one reaches a new altitude level. During the first days as CEO of a company or as a newly elected board member, acclimatization would be a good thing. Typically, we do the opposite and jump right in. We try to meet as many people as possible and start speaking about the future.

When I was elected into my first board position, I tried to prove my value to the company and said stupid things during that first board meeting. I had almost no context and no real knowledge of previous initiatives or the circumstances I was commenting upon. Whom did I shoot in the knee involuntarily? Why did I take that risk? How much better would it have been to “just sit there and let it happen.”

What makes “just sitting there” quite difficult is our desire to prove ourselves to a group of people; our aspiration to be useful and proactive stands in the way. Also, first impressions count. “Just sitting there” creates an unusual first impression, to say the least. Reading about boardroom battles is a great means to acclimatizing to the world of business summiting. Three cases come to mind: AOL, Enron and HP. There is some good material available, if you would like to dig deeper: books like “The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron” by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, “Fools Rush In” by Nina Munk, and “Dear Chairman: Boardroom Battles and the Rise of Shareholder Activism” by Jeff Gramm.

CHO9 Fundamental support

The strongest man in our group suddenly goes into a kind of mental crisis. We have just returned from our first trip to Camp 1 where we spent three nights to acclimatize. We also climbed the Killer Slope and the Big Ice Wall for the first time. On our way back to Advanced Base Camp I am quite shocked how tired my body is. My legs and arms feel powerless, I get out of breath with the slightest little hill on the way down. Walking as such is tiresome and not fun at all.

Our strongest man arrives at mess tent in ABC, throws his backpack into a corner, sits down and covers his face with his hands. “Why am I doing this?” he asks. He has experienced the same body symptoms as I have, but of course as a more aggressive person and not used to feeling weak and depleted. We all speak at the table about what energizes us. Surprisingly, it is not food or liquids or sleep.

Quickly we realize that the fundamental energizer is to communicate with our loved ones at home. Parents, partners, children, siblings and friends are absolutely essential to keeping us going. I am in the fortunate situation to physically feel their support and motivation: in my sleeping bag, while climbing and in occasional Whatsapp chats. When we reach our loved ones under the dire circumstances of mobile or Internet communication at high altitude in China, it changes the entire day. My appetite returns and I feel stronger immediately.

In business, it is absolutely the same, except that the physics of communications are so much easier. But I wonder if we are aware of the presence and the support of our loved ones when we feel empty and desperate before or after an important presentation or negotiation. We might think that they just don’t understand the complexity of the business situation we are dealing with. But is that really necessary? They know us best and their loving feedback is independent from a detailed judgment of our situation. Does it matter if I feel really bad at 5’700 or 6’400 meters?

CHO10 Telling stories

As I curl up in my tent, daydreaming the bad weather away – snow and rain interchange – the endless chatter from the mess tent reaches through my earplugs. New climbers have arrived and it seems that all the heroes’ stories we have been listening to during the last ten days are now repeated in front of the new audience.

Although everyone agrees that Everest is not a ‘real’ mountain any more, people ironically and endlessly recall their attempts. Even if they have only climbed to Camp 1, they have been there. The best survival and rescue stories are told by those who were at basecamp in 2014 and 2015, the years of the avalanche and the earthquake. They are survivors. Some have written books about it and do motivational speaking. Of course, most keep their accounts to these small audiences of fellow climbers in the mess tent.

But I wonder what makes it so important to talk about past adventures. In an ideal world, the past has transformed you as a person and the ‘New You’ shines, radiates, glows without a word needed. But this is not an ideal world. We are a fairly average group of commercial climbers from around the world with a limited number of 8’000 summits in our climbing history, if at all. My stories are boring in comparison. But by telling them I justify my being here. I gain strength from telling them in front of others, it reinforces my belief that I can do these things.

By telling stories, time flies. We take ourselves out of the present and delete some of the fear and uneasiness that we share but do not confess. Storytelling is much hyped in the corporate world, for the same reasons. But of course, it is more difficult to tell corporate stories in a compelling way. Instead of avalanches, we deal with stock exchange crashes, earthquakes that destroy factories and influence delivery times. But in every business decision lies drama and behind every decision is a hero whose story should and can be told.

CHO11 Role and price of data

It is 6:38 in the morning and the world around me is still. The zipper of my tent makes noise as I pull it down to check the weather. I see snow covered stones all around and a grey sky. How good that tents are made from yellow plastic canvas. Yellow makes the inside of my little tent appear warm and sunny, a welcome illusion as I slip back into my sleeping bag.

The plan for today is to bring up gear to ‘Lake Camp’, an intermediate camp at the bottom of the ‘killer slope’ that leads to Camp 1. Will the plan change according to the snow or are we going up nevertheless, trusting that the gear will be brought up over the coming days? A very experienced climber who lives in the area tells me that the Monsoon typically returns for some days with rain and wind before a new season starts. Is that it? What are the Sherpa saying? What data can we obtain from our weather station in Bern, Switzerland?

Two independent climbers from India and Peru explain to me that the distance between weather observatories in the Himalayas is around 500 km. Everything else in between is calculated and very unreliable. In contrast, the Chinese weather forecasting system is super accurate but is totally closed to the outside world. To get tips, my informants made friends with some of the Chinese climbers who apparently have access.

So the power of big data becomes apparent at the outskirts of civilization, too. The political aspect of data – make friends with those who have access. The experiential aspect of data – rely on the locals and their historic experience. The pragmatic aspect of data – watch the target and if what you see is good, get going. The pricing aspect of data – the price range for weather data differs between zero and 1’500 USD per month and the quality does not increase with the price.

CHO12 The big question - why?

On a stroll through Advanced Base Camp with its 120 tents or so I hear a flute being played and go closer. A kid from Peru is playing, accompanied by iPhone music, his friend from New Delhi and a portable satellite hotspot close by. They lend me their hotspot to send some pictures, offer me a chair and we talk. Why are they here? Why are they attracted by 8’000ers? They laugh and say: “Look around you – isn’t this the best place on earth right now? The glaciers, the mountains, the clouds and the sunlight? We love to be here. There is no comparison with a desk in an office building.”

But, I dig deeper, isn’t this best place on earth combined with a lot of suffering? The extreme cold, the undeniable exhaustion, the remarkable limitations of comfort, the threats of nature? Again, they laugh and say: “What suffering? Suffering would be to sit at that desk in the Delhi office building from nine to five. Suffering would be to have a predefined schedule without joy and with too many chores. How can you suffer here? Look at the mountain – it is a beauty. Climbing it is so relaxing and fun.”

As the Peruvian music continues to play from the iPhone, we chat along. I am thankfully offered an anorak against the afternoon cold (“Sorry, it might be smelly.”) After quite some time we agree that it is like with love. If you were guaranteed the outcome of the ‘push and pull’ it would be boring. The uncertainty is what we seek. We all search for ‘the gold’. At the end it turns out that the kid from New Delhi is a member of the Indian Young Presidents Organization, a very prestigious club of successful young entrepreneurs around the globe.

CHO13 Age and strategy

The first time I clashed with our expedition head was when we were sitting around a beautifully colored low quadrat Tibetan restaurant table and I wanted to take a group picture. It was at the beginning of the expedition and all 12 climbers had gathered. “No pictures! Don’t do that ever. Ever again,” he shouted at me. I had seriously angered him. What was so bad about a group picture and why was I publicly humiliated? In the coming days I felt dominated by his detailed instructions, I felt handled like a kid by explanations about the way ahead of us.

We had all been members of other expeditions, please. I found the man old-style at 72, his way of moving things forward seemed extremely slow. It seemed strange that he, too, wanted to summit a Himalayan peak of 8’202 meters. “Does he really want to do it?” we asked ourselves. We looked at his outdated equipment and clothing with many patches, a huge contrast to our ultra-modern neon-colored anoraks, boots and harnesses. On acclimatization walks he forced us to move super slowly, two fellow climbers got repelled by having climbed “too high”. He seemed to ignore technology.

Having assumed his role was that of Chairman or Head of a Supervisory Board, he had appointed two co-CEOs who were leading small teams of 4 to 6 people. Over the coming days, we watched him refraining from the other team members, preferring to talk to his CEOs in private. He received them in his tent and did not share meals with the group. The CEOs communicated the order of the day(s), and it looked like the Board of Directors was executing a strategy and preparing things in the background like the gear and tent transport to high camps. By now, as he had observed and assessed our strengths and technical skills, he focused on other things.

Over the last days I realized that our group stood out in the following way: we had lost zero climbers; we were climbing independently but in a coordinated way; we had amazing Sherpa support regarding tents, fuel and food; we had zero discussion about strategy; we trusted our leader; we had fantastic CEOs. Plus, we were not slower than other groups! On the contrary, we were a bit ahead of other expeditions time-wise. One sunny rest day morning I met the Chairman in the kitchen tent drinking Chai and chatting with the Sherpas (some of them had worked for him more than 20 years).

I was allowed to ask the Chairman one question per day (!). So my question that day was: “What does age/experience add to strategy?” His immediate answer: “Lateral thinking. The reason I was not friendly with you in the beginning was that I know you are used to being in command. I had to stop that. I have been here ten times. I look at every detail through a lens of years of experience and think it through laterally, talking only to some selected people. My executive plan is very flexible, it may change every day depending on your condition, on the weather or on the supply chain.”

Lesson learned! But I could not help to add a second question,- what about the ban of group pictures? As it turns out, group pictures should only be done after a successful return. More often than not, the group is decimated due to illnesses, accidents or even deaths. Another lesson learned.

CHO14 Sleeping yourself to the top

Tonight I was sitting in a plane that had to land on water, found the dream apartment, had my handbag stolen in a pub and witnessed a helicopter landing in a garden with apple trees to investigate some kids. Having been on this expedition for 21 nights, you can imagine how lively my nightly entertainment program during the other 20 nights has been so far. This morning the head Sherpa said: “If you go into your sleeping bag with good thoughts, you sleep very well. If you think of problems, you toss and turn every ten minutes and stay awake all night.” Well, so far I have had only one night of choppy sleep.

Sleep is important out here, it may be the primary factor to stay healthy and to recover from a day’s challenges. Dreams are very intense and one is more likely to remember them. Two other things have helped me in the past on other expeditions.

The first: go to bed after dinner. That is around 7:30 pm; I use a hot water bottle to warm up the sleeping bag, read or write a bit with my headtorch; then I switch the light off and dream along. I wake up at around 6 am and daydream until the sun rises and warms my tent a bit. Ten hours of sleep on a hard isolation mat is a cure, seriously. My head gets emptier, ‘cleaner’ by the day.

The second thing that helps is the digital detox forced upon us. No digital information reaches me at the moment to fill the empty head. Not easy, I have to admit. But I brought two non-fiction books on the intersection of economics, philosophy and religion. At the moment, there is nothing better than to watch a sky full of stars (how long has it been that you have watched the Milky Way under no time pressure?), to slip into my tent, warm up and read about the old Egyptians’ ideas on accounting.

Imagine that you are a CEO who sleeps/dreams ten hours per night without any digital clutter.

PS: I just had the worst night ever! Maybe the full moon?

CHO15 Dealing with adversities

Today was not my day – it was supposed to be a rest day. First, my sunglasses got lost. Then, after lunch we had a sobering conversation about oxygen masks for summit day; we talked about experiencing more than minus 20 degrees up there, frozen water bottles and a guy who ended up without fingers. Not encouraging! Then, part of a filling in one of my upper right teeth fell out when I was chewing a sweet. Also not good! In the afternoon we watched an impressive, but depressing film about a drone strike in Somalia. On top of everything a slight diarrhea hit me. It is now snowing and my tent is covered with snow. So I am quite happy to finish the day, retreat to the tent.

I find it difficult not to let these incidents influence my perception about my strength to reach the summit. The number of obstacles clouds my self-perception. As if every detail could undermine my ability to reach my goal, I tend to take these things personally and start thinking about the goal as such. Am I qualified? Are these signals? Am I prepared and experienced enough? And so on.

Things look much easier when everything goes my way. But there is a general fault in my thinking: I take incidents personally, as if I were the center of the world and things would happen relative to me. This is false thinking. In business, it is quite the same. More often than not, an important contract negotiation coincides with bad quarterly numbers, with the defection of a key sales team, with a sick child at home. The ultimate responsibility lies with the CEO; this is the time when people ask question after question and expect instant solutions. Is this what they call leadership? Probably.

What business leaders can learn from top athletes is how to put the past behind and move on in obstacle-loaden situations. Think of a biathlete who misses a target, gets up and skates on. If the biathlete would analyze the last shot while skating and question her ability to win, nothing would be gained. The key difference between Olympic gold medal winners and also-runs is the ability to mentally let go of obstacles immediately. Something happens and instead of rationalizing it, the gold medalist deals with the fact, then brushes it aside forcefully.

The main point is to avoid creating a downward spiral or cluster of incidents (for example, letting a glove fall because thoughts are elsewhere; or in business: forgeting your assistant’s birthday and not stopping at the red light, deep in thoughts). Stop it. Count positive things. Concentrate.

I count good things: my tent is warm. My tooth does not hurt. I have an idea where to find my sunglasses. My broken pole was repaired, I am happy that the rock broke the pole and not my leg. I was able to send ten emails with blog entries. There is no storm outside. It is another rest day tomorrow. I have people around me who are thoughtful and interesting.

CHO16 Into trouble ...

A Chinese climber who was dressed for a light trekking (sneakers and anorak), tried to climb the 100m vertical Ice Wall yesterday without ice axe and other technical gear. After several unsuccessful attempts, he walked into Camp 1 and asked various people if he could sleep in their tent. Ultimately, he spent the night in a crevasse. The next morning, a number of Sherpa escorted him back down the mountain to ABC where he was received by Chinese military. He seemed to have no climbing permit (roughly 5,000 USD). The same day, an independent Swedish climber who had been treated for High Altitude Sickness some days ago was spotted with a huge backpack on the ‘killler slope’, desperately trying to reach Camp 1. ‘A walking dead’, says one of our guides. We did not hear if he is well or what happened to him.

The effort to rescue climbers who underestimate the mountains is extraordinarily high. Especially here, on the Himalayan North side, helicopter rescues are impossible. How far would you go to help someone who has not listened to doctors’ advice or who does not play by the rules? The hard line is: “Get yourself into trouble, get yourself out of trouble.” The soft line is “If I have free resources, I will lend a hand.” The American line seems to be “If you pay me 5,000 USD now, I will take you out of here professionally.”

As Group CEO of an enterprise, comparable scenarios come to mind. There are always independent subsidiaries who get themselves into trouble because they have fancy business plans and lofty ideas. Should they get themselves out of trouble independently? It will take time and they may not be capable of it. The problem is that their results affect your bottom line. Basically, subsidiaries spend other people’s money. Their management’s ‘skin in the game’ is very limited.

Here in the mountains, these crazy guys described above do have ‘skin in the game’, they effectively risk their lives. But it does not prevent them from seeking fame in a very dangerous way, plus involving others for their rescue. So it seems that we touch traits that are inherent in individuals on both sides of the rescue: the desire for fame and human compassion on the side of the risk takers. The rescuers on the other side feel abused because they have to clean up the mess. Doing too many rescues for free unfortunately encourages people to risk more. That turns rescuers into cynics.

CHO17 Summits and silos

“I don’t like how the Chinese put their garbage everywhere. They bring up this giant tent for around 50 people to Camp 1 and when they leave, the place looks like a disaster.” We have just arrived at camp. A minute later, the Chinese expedition head brings a 10-litre Thermos with super hot water and refills our bottles. This is totally unexpected and very very welcome. I realize that the Chinese Thermos is beautifully colored.

There are many more expeditions on Cho Oyu this fall 2016, it is a true global summit. Mountaineers from China, India, Chechnya, the US, Italy, France, Austria, Switzerland, Peru and, of course, from England (they ‘invented mountaineering’) share a goal which is pursued individually and in very different ways.

Working together in global companies is a bit like this. You are organized separately, share some but not all information about your plans and visit each other occasionally. In fact, we have been encouraged not to invite visitors into our camp and in no way to share information about our weather info or the final ascent strategy (ABC to Camp 1 on day 1, Camp 1 to Camp 2 on day 2, sleep until 10 pm, start at 11 pm from Camp 2 to summit on day 3, return to Camp 2 immediately and spend the night, descend from Camp 2 to ABC in one long descent.)

These strategies vary widely, and I think it is good that they vary and are linked to the expedition’s nationality and culture. Two people from the US booked their flights from California to Lhasa only after they found the perfect weather window, arrived in ABC on day 1, went up on Oxygen from ABC to Camp 2 on day 2, summited the next day and skied down immediately, returned to ABC on the same day and had a Jeep waiting in Noodle Camp on day 4, flying back to the US on day 5. For me, this approach has nothing to do with experiencing this particular mountain or Tibet and the Himalayas. It can only be done with Oxygen and has a lot to do with the small number of vacation days in the US. The Italians are friendly and relaxed. The French’s attitude of superiority isolates them. The guy from Peru brings his flute and played in the afternoon. The Austrians offer the best coffee.

Of course, these observations are just mine. The level of cooperation between expedition heads was very selective and limited. There was one meeting among the Sherpa from all teams who organized a joint effort to install the fixed ropes (indispensable to define and install the way up and down). That was essential. Within global organizations, information sharing and joint initiatives in corporations is widely sought (“Break down the silos!”) and I wonder whether this is realistic. It may be enough to share a common goal and to do some ‘rope fixing’.

CHO18 Women in a man's world

First, I wondered what these motionless figures were doing up on the hill, looking down on our camp and tents. Chinese policemen watching our camp life? After some days it became clear. These were ordinary climbers, peeing into the landscape. Their toilet tents were ten meters away but they did not care. The same happened in Camp 2. When I opened the zipper to a beautiful sunny early morning, a man was standing in front, doing his thing. Two very big toilet holes had been built the other day in close proximity.

Cho Oyu is a mountain without strict rules for garbage and personal relief, unfortunately. People even defecate on the summit, which I find extraordinary tasteless because for some the summit is a religious place. A church is to be kept free of this. Like in the boardroom, the more women participate in the life at the top, the more cultural conventions must change. Another example is the telling of extraordinary sexist jokes in our ABC tent after dinner. During the long wait for the weather window the after dinner conversation deteriorated by the day. Our expedition could have made a real difference, since we were 5 women out of 11 climbers, but we, women, calmed down and said nothing. Let the guys have their fun (at our expense). That was a huge mistake and I truly regret not to have raised my voice. I did not want to be the old spoilsport, obviously.

Women at the top have a clear responsibility to moderate cultural changes (these are just two examples). We should also raise our voice for better equipment. We need backpacks that are suited for smaller waists and backs, but can carry heavy loads as well. We need longer down jackets to protect our kidneys and hips, but with the same amount of downs per inch like the men to keep us warm. We need expedition boots that do not destroy our finger nails when opening or closing. The list is longer, but you get the point.

CHO19 A loss of energy

The longer we wait for a weather window in Advanced Basecamp, the more I get scared that my good spirits and energy reservoirs will empty. It has been snowing outside my tent all day, the skies are cloudy; higher up a nasty wind is blowing. We get good food, porridge and eggs in the morning; there are salad, potatoes and baked beans for lunch, and at dinner baked chicken and vegetables are served. I sleep ten to eleven hours a night. I force myself to an hour of Yoga in my tent every day (glad that no one can see me because the tent is small and I have to adapt the postures to the size of the tent. It looks very funny, that much is certain!). I wear a cap or headband day and night; I protect my throat with a buff.

Despite all this I feel awful on my daily walks into the direction of Camp 1. Even without backpack, I am short of breath, I am slow, my arms and legs feel weakened by altitude. The curiosity and innocence of the first rotation to the Ice Wall is gone. The ascent seems longer and more tedious than ever, given that we now have heavy snow and wind. We don’t know when the day of departure for the summit will be.

For the moment, it even seems to require too much effort to apply any kind of positive thinking. Yes, it would be fantastic if I could jump up and down in the snowfall and find everything exciting. But it is a lot of work to positively ignore the adverse conditions. At the same time I wonder if it is even necessary. Conditions are what they are. The only thing I can do is to continue with my routine and not get depressed by negative thoughts about any diminished chances to reach my goal.

I decide to break the summit goal down into smaller chunks. Now, my goal is to reach Camp 1 again in the coming days and to have enough energy left to build a dry and warm place to sleep with warm food and water for myself.

Thinking of business, energy-draining situations of ‘treading water’ occur quite often. It is an art to relax and save energy while treading water. More often than not, we want to cut the Gordic Knot and break through. But with these acts of desperation we typically only hurt ourselves and weaken our position considerably. Imagine that I would decide to end the waiting game at ABC, regardless of the weather and run up the hill tomorrow morning. Laying out a path in knee-high snow would be very tiresome. The wind would test my endurance. I would arrive wet and likely quite cold. There is a small chance that I would meet the perfect weather window the next day, but I might be too exhausted then to take advantage of it.

CHO 20 At the top

Just when I am ready to let go of my summit goal, a small weather windows opens. We bring up our gear to Camp 2 and go to sleep, three people per tent. At 10 pm I rise, melt snow for hot water, put heat pads on feet, back and hands, dress fully and go out with head torch, accompanied by best wishes from my tentmates. Thank you!

Fellow climbers are out, no one talks. Backpacks with Oxygen bottles ready, masks on face, harness, crampons, – go! A line forms quickly. My Sherpa Padawa is leading. After 2 minutes I step aside, exasperated, sweating, extremely embarrassed, heart pounding, mask hanging aside. Either I can make changes to my clothes or I will break down and return in the next minute. My Sherpa is angry but helps. Then he forces me to overtake all the people who have passed in the meantime in deep snow. It works.

Padawa climbs left of me, I cannot not see him. He issues commands in the dark and watches out. I progress in a straight line upwards, following other climbers identified by the brand of their shoes or harness in the light of the head torches. All I focus upon is my breath. One foot upwards = four counts of breath. Can I recover with this pattern? Good.

I go from fixed rope to fixed rope. The rock band is easy to climb. Then I see Orion right above me. I am now following Orion, my favorite star sign, into the sky. Sunset on the left hand side and the first mountain top bathed in sunlight on the right hand side. A quick picture, please! “Go, go, go”. Now I need five breaths per footstep. Padawa turns my oxygen supply one notch up. The steps are big and made by men for men.

“Sunglasses on!” Padawa hisses at me. Clip out of the last, clip into the next fixed rope. I start to see the way ahead, but must better watch my step. I am a machine now, can still count. One, extend Jumar on rope, breathe, three, four, foot into next big snow step, one. I may not look around. My brain is empty. The snow varies between hard and soft. Padawa gives me more oxygen.

If there is a point to give up, then now. I am getting tired. In hindsight this must have been the point where we have entered the 8,000m death zone. I know now that I will reach the top. Breathe, Jumar, two, three, four, step. Move foot. Move Jumar. It is very bright around me. Move. Breathe, one, two, three, four, move foot. “Don’t look up!” Padawa from the left.

I am on the summit plateau now. Now more fixed rope. It seems endless. Don’t fall. Move. Breathe. It is very cold. Move. “There is Everest,” says Padawa from the left. I look up and see my fellows. I have arrived.

I see Everest 20 kilometers away. We embrace. I want to get rid of the mask and take a picture. “No,” says Padawa, “I do it.” Quickly we line up. I am too slow to throw my arm up in victory. May I sit down and pause, please. No. “Go down now.”

CHO 21 The hard part

On all 8,000m summits, most people die on the return. Some have calculated their energy reserves assuming it would be easy to go down. Others fall into some sort of euphoria, make mistakes and pay a terrible price for it later. I am just simply longing for a short break. I want to take the mask off quickly to blow my nose, I want to look around, I want to take pictures, I want to eat/drink and just rest. Please.

My Sherpa Padawa turns me around and sends me down. “Go down! Go! Don’t take things off!” I turn around and go down. This is easier than going up, but now each step is heavier than the one before. We reach the rock wall, the abseiling is not nice but relatively fluid. May I sit down here? Padawa shakes his head. He draws my mask to the side and pours some water into my throat. “Go!”

I become slower and less concentrated. Wherever two fixed ropes meet, Padawa and I get into conflict. I start to make mistakes, like unclipping the security first and then attaching it to the new rope. Padawa becomes impatient and shouts at me. I must concentrate better. The route seems endless and steep. Another transition between ropes. Again I make a mistake. Padawa shouts.

Other climbers are following from higher up and hear his criticism. I feel awful. “Padawa, I am doing my best. Sorry.” My mind is getting tired. I am not interested in ropes and clipping techniques now! “Sorry” is perhaps the most used word on my way down. I go on.

After five hours of descent and sixteen hours without break in total we reach the last 100 meters above Camp 1. Clouds have come up but visibility is still good. It is pressingly hot. I can barely walk. I see faces of friends further down. I want to be with them, but my legs don’t function. I convince myself that Padawa considers me just another one of those tourists whose technical and body powers are insufficient for the 8,000m business.

Then I sit on my bottom and slide down. I am fully aware that it is incorrect and dangerous, not at the least because of the crampons on my feet. But correctness and honor I have given up on before. I slide carefully down and walk the last 20 meters in maybe 10 minutes.

Then I reach Camp 2 and my tent. I smile. Someone takes my crampons off and congratulates me. Padawa has disappeared a while earlier.

CHO 22 A mistake

After returning from the summit to Camp 2, we bring back our oxygen bottles, masks and regulators, and settle for the night (I will not say we slept, still at 7’200m). Around ten in the morning we have packed our backpacks once again and start the long, long descent to ABC. We descended in teams of three, while my Sherpa Padawa is already busy on his second summit climb with one of my colleagues (unbelievable, those guys).

Soon we reach the ice wall. A blue and a yellow rope leads downwards and we pull to see which rope is weightless and free to use. After a while it is my turn. I start to abseil and search for the ‘Z’ shaped curve in the 30+ meter of rope zigzagging down the heavily ice covered rock. Something is wrong. My harness does not distribute my hanging body weight under my body but concentrates it over my body, all around my stomach. It takes my breath away. Instead of sitting with my legs in the harness during the abseil, I feel like strangling myself at the sternum. Whenever I loosen the ATC to lower myself on the rope, it gets worse and I stumble a meter downwards. Higher up, my colleagues start to pull on the rope to test if I am finished. It further cuts into my chest, I yell ‘stop’, ‘au’ as loud as possible. Lowering myself more, my backpack suddenly rolls over and turns me on my back like an insect. I have lost the ‘Z’ track, legs in the air. Not good at all.

An Italian climber ropes up. I ask him for help. He cannot reach me, but instructs me how to roll my body back into track, including backpack. Then a colleague from below tells me step for step where to put my feet. He is very calm and reassuring. “You can do that. Come on. Here is a good step. Lower your right foot. Lower. Here. Now the left.” Thank you, thank you. It takes 30 minutes until I have released the rope for the next climber and attached myself to the following rope. Breathing again, I quickly try to catch up with my peer group. Later I see that I have attached the leg stripes of my harness over my legs instead of under my legs during a quick pee break above the ice wall. Still secure, but extremely uncomfortable in its consequences. On we go.

Soon we reach Camp 1, take on more luggage, continue to Lake Camp and arrive in full darkness at 8 pm somewhere near ABC. Other Sherpas have seen our headlamps from there. They come to guide us home, bring us a bottle of Coke into the glacier. Dorje Sherpa takes my hand and firmly guides me the last two kilometers through the snowy slippery rocks into ABC. Dinner is ready. I am back safe.

CHO 23 Back to earth

My body and mind behave like after a car crash. I have survived unharmed, but my system is under shock. Hours go by in slow motion. I need 45 minutes to empty my backpack. Without noticing it, I speak German with my English colleagues. At night, I dream bits and pieces as if my mind would do garbage collection, sleep as such is very light. My sense of balance is severely distorted and I can only walk a few steps as if I had been in the hospital and would now return to a normal environment. It is difficult to eat much and to drink much, as we have been advised. I develop what I would call ‘de-acclimatization symptoms’: Half-day diarrhea, a light cough, light nausea, gasping for air at night (symptoms I did not have at arrival).

When the first group of colleagues is heading to Lhasa in an advance group, I immediately decide to join them. I must go down. After a dreadful half-day walk we are luckily being picked up by a minibus and a driver who takes us to Lhasa in two days. The first views into a mirror are better than expected, but interestingly that changes and I loose around 6 pounds in Lhasa overnight and look absolutely terrible. We eat all day, but the low point for my body comes around day 5/6 after summit. Interestingly, I never had sour muscles or other known symptoms after mountaineering. This here is different, more of a ‘system threat’.

After a week I have the first relaxed night with deep sleep and continue to sleep well since then. Still, I find reading difficult (me, of all people). I forget numbers and don’t calculate well. Also, when things are getting more complex mentally, I want to check out of the situation and ignore it. I know there is research about these symptoms and that the brain cells build up again, but it is quite remarkable to experience it. I do hope that it holds true for my skin cells, too. Without lamenting too much, the strain is visible on my body and face, unfortunately.

People in the 8000er business experience less of these symptoms or have faster recovery routines, it seems. In the meantime, my digestive system has adapted to super spicy Asian food and I have not cravings except for Nespresso, Apples, and Pumpernickel, Swiss Cheese Fondue and a bottle of Champagne.

CHO23 Lessons learned

Valid for the thin air of the board room too!

If you fail to achieve a goal once, do not lower your ambitions. Set them higher! I had failed on Mount Aconcagua twice and normally that makes you seek your next goal at lower altitude. I did the opposite and succeeded. It is like being rejected at a job interview. If, after rejection, you select the next position at lower function and salary levels, you start a downwards spiral that can lead to despair. The rejection may have been unrelated to you, but you take it personal and lose faith into your abilities. It is technically possible to succeed on the higher level, if the preparation is accordingly.

No health compromise. Everything that takes focus from the process to reach the top is detrimental to your health. Don’t take pills to avoid mountain sickness or to boost your energy, they dilute your natural instincts. I used natural substances like ginseng, ginger, caffeine, cardamom and chili. It worked really well. Diarrhea vanishes by itself and headaches can be reduced with proper breathing. I have been using supplemental oxygen because it is natural, has no side-effects and it reduces risk to lose brain cells or fingers/toes.

If someone offers to carry part of your load, give it away. No one measures your success by the weight of your backpack. I have seen this in particular with women who are proud to carry heavy loads. Make your life easier, it is tough enough on the top. In general, ability counts. Age or gender are just mind-clogging assumptions. I hope that my example of climbing my first 8000er right after my 60th birthday inspires others to be adventurous regardless of age!

CHO24 Gratitude

Clearly, expedition success is group work.

A big thank you goes to my parents and brothers for being role models. Their examples allow me to do things at 60 that others can only dream of. My parents raised the bar for their children by being fit, healthy and sporty at the age of 86 and 92. In the last years, they did trekking in Turkey, went skiing in Switzerland and traveled to Namibia for star-gazing. They taught us the love for mountains, for snow and for the discipline to reach the top under tough conditions.

My heartfelt thanks and admiration to my son Paul who took my job in the weeks of my absence. He took over with courage and a mix of sensitivity, innovation and group spirit. He is one of the reasons that I slept well on the mountain and was not worried. Although his area of expertise is slightly different – he graduated from the LSE in Politics and Communications and is about to specialize in War Studies – his knowledge was very welcome to us and will give us a fresh view on our methodologies and business conduct.

My team at CEO Positions deserves lots of praise for taking over the firm with calmness and confidence. I have to say that this is the third time in five years for me to disappear into regions of the world where communication is impossible. Making independent decisions is essential and I am very grateful that my excellent team is so skilled, courageous and disciplined to do great work in times of my absence. Thank you!

My friends supported me with uplifting messages whenever we could push some bits and bytes over the Internet. I have been “eating” these messages like food for my mental and physical health, and they were very, very nourishing.

Paul Koller in Kitzbühel trained with me on the glacier and inspected/improved my equipment with a number of important elements that were extremely helpful under way. Claudia Werner in Murnau helped me to prepare mentally for the project. The expedition head and his guides always knew I was ‘cruising’. They knew I was on track all the time, thanks, Claudia.

My direct teammates Billi, Stefan, Thomas, Marie Krystelle and Rob were amazingly helpful and good friends, always approachable for questions, and ready for a joke or a hug. Thanks, what a pleasure!

Unfortunately, the expedition head does not want to be mentioned by name. I would like to thank him in particular.

My climbing history

Nepal (2018):

  • Mount Everest (8848m), south route

Tibet/China (2016):

  • Cho Oyu (8202m), normal route, with supplemental Oxygen from 7’200 m.

Austria (2016):

  • Grossglockner (3798m), normal route

Switzerland (2015):

  • Vincent-Pyramide (4215m), Balmenhorn (4167m), Ludwigshöhe (4341m), Signalkupppe (4500m)

Argentina/Chile (2013/2014):

  • Aconcagua to 6000m (weather), False Polish Route Aconcagua to 6500m, False Polish Route

France:

  • Mont Blanc du Tacul (4248m) Cosmic Grat (3842m, IV)

Russia (2005):

  • Elbrus (5642m)

Nepal (2005):

  • Manaslu Trek (5630m)

Tansania (2002):

  • Kilimanjaro (5895)

The Video Lectures

On Positioning and Reputation: short clips with research results and very many examples (in German)

Access our playlist with 10 minute video lectures about positioning, reputation and personal branding.

The Storytelling Initiative

“The great storytellers have an unfair competitive advantage.” Bill Gurley, Benchmark Capital

"everybody has a story to tell" is written on a wall, where a man stands, in the streets on a Tuscan town. *** The text was digitally added and a release is provided ***

For all the sophisticated methodologies in science, we have not moved beyond the story as the primary way that we make sense of our lives. Robert A. Burton, brain scientist

If there is one tool for leaders that has immediate effects, it is the story. We have prepared three articles for you as a free download from our CEO Future Communications Community CFCC.

  1. Why do we need management stories?  Great leaders use stories in times of uncertainty to provide guidance and energize their people.
  2. What makes a good management story? A quick intro to storytelling from Alexander the Great to fintech founder stories.
  3. Seven article links – amazing things about storytelling for management in text and film.

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