WHAT READERS SAY

“I feel so strongly about the message that I went out and bought a copy
each for my daughter and son. Your book will have
a positive
influence on many people…NICE JOB. Your book was magnificent.”

Mike Shields.

“The book is inspirational and very exciting reading. You legitimized

my lifelong quest for ‘quality’ in a very profound way.”

Pelle Sederholm

“The book was the very best book I have ever read.”

Jan Perkins.

“Thank you for showing me that business doesn’t have to be routine

and stagnant.”

Lee Kaufman

“The Adventure of Leadership will stay on my office desk right next to

Creativity in Business as two of the best reference manuals a creativity
seeker could ever hope to acquire.

Dave McMinn

“Thanks for sharing your experiences, your passion, and your

infectious optimism, all of which I am in the process of incorporating
into our corporate philosophy.”

Albert Magid
“Reading your book helped solidify my fanatical commitment to
building the best fresh juice company in the world.”

Brad Barnhorn

“Make the world a better place…Above all else, that basic premise is
what I believe defines a leader of people and what I
found throughout
your book. Thank you.”

Ben Meeuwsen
Conquering the North Face
An Adventure in Leadership

HAP KLOPP
with Brian Tarcy

HAP KLOPP
 
Conquering the North Face: An Adventure in Leadership

© 1991, 2003, 2012 by Hap Klopp

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or

utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval

system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

Published as an e-book January 2012 by Hap Klopp

For more information, please visit www.hapklopp.com

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-6175097-5-9

Cover Photography by Brian Biega

 

To businesses that are fun,

To adventures not yet begun.

CONTENTS
COVER
WHAT READERS SAY
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
CONTENTS
PREFACE
1: SWIMMING IN EMBALMING FLUID: The Living Death of Bad
Business
2: DIGGING BELOW THE BOTTOM LINE: The Numbers Don’t
Tell the Story
3: FINDING THE SPARK: Where Logic Meets Religion
4: TESTING THE SPARK: Eye to Eye With Those You Love
5: JUMPING OFF THE FENCE: Any Decision is Better Than No
Decision
6: STARTING IN THE WAREHOUSE: Every Decision is a
Statement
7: TAPPING THE INFINITE UPSIDE: Good Employees Know
Their Jobs
8: WRESTLING WITH GORILLAS: Obstacles to Fulfilling Your
Passion
9: IMPROVING PERFECTION: Only the Best Will Do
10: SHARING VISIONS: When Leaders Lead
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PRAISE FOR THE ADVENTURE OF LEADERSHIP
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 PREFACE
I am in love with the extraordinary. The company I founded, The North
Face of Berkeley, California, epitomized this passion.
I started the company
in 1968, two years after receiving my MBA from Stanford. From the
beginning The North Face—a maker of
quality outdoor equipment for
mountaineers, backpackers, skiers, and professional adventurers—came to
represent my vision.
For 20 years I disobeyed business conventions of
passionless management by immersing myself in my work and, more
important,
in the lives and dreams of my coworkers. I told them of my
dream, of my vision to be the best. And then I asked for their
help.
Together we grew. We brought more people in, and we shared the
vision further.
The North Face was named after the north side of any mountain, such
as Eiger Mountain or the Matterhorn in Switzerland—the
side exposed to
the harshest elements of nature. It is considered the greatest challenge for
any climber. The name was appropriate—since
we knew what we wanted
wouldn’t be easy.
But we knew one other thing—if we pulled together, we could climb
the north face of business, and it would be a hell of a
lot of fun to do it.
Mine was a fascinating business. Because we made the best equipment
in the world, I was constantly approached by professional
adventurers who
needed to be outfitted. These began as business relationships. But, as all
successful relationships do, they
evolved into much more. Through
friendships with these people as well as my business relationships, I
watched as vision became
reality and risk became reward. I was moved by
their energy. Always they helped sharpen my focus.
I brought these lessons into my business, and I shared them with my
employees. For years my evangelical crusade was focused
on my own
company and periodically speaking from podiums. Recently I sold my
company and tried to observe the world of business
from a different
perspective, that of a consultant. The perspective has changed, but my view
hasn’t.
 I see an ever-growing crisis—a critical lack of passionate leadership. It
seems everyone knows how to manage. Few know how
to lead. There is
such a fear of risk and a lack of joy in the working lives of most Americans
that it seems impossible to
expect anything but more of the same—
interminable mediocrity.
That’s why I felt compelled to write this book. The Adventures of
Leadership begins at the peak of your spiritual backbone, where a single,
raw nerve ending glows with the essence of life. I have written
this book
with precisely that part of you in mind. I want to touch the part of you that
dreams of extraordinary things.
By sharing my experiences and some of the insights I’ve been able to
glean from personal adventures both in and out of business,
I hope to offer
not merely ways of helping your bottom line but also ways to improve your
total outlook. Certainly the intellectual
cross training I have had from the
variety of activities I have done and the weird and wonderful assortment of
adventuring
and business friends I have collected have given me some
insights into what it takes to succeed against the odds in any pioneering
adventure: business, sport, education, or personal.
My hope is that this book will be a real catalyst for dynamic change. It
is a call to action for the disenchanted who are
being stifled by corporate
America and to those who are mistakenly intimidated from speaking out by
an illogical reverence
for managers and corporate shibboleths. I offer you
my experience, my knowledge, and my instincts. I offer you my heart.
 1

SWIMMING IN EMBALMING FLUID:

The Living Death of Bad Business

In 1966, I walked irreverent and happy into the middle of corporate

America. I didn’t stay long.
I had just received my MBA from Stanford University. This was back
when an MBA was actually something useful. I thought the
culture of a
major corporation might be beneficial, but as I began to interview around, I
quickly learned that irreverence
and happiness were not exactly typical or
approved corporate qualities.
I didn’t really know what I wanted, but I sure knew what I didn’t want,
and unfortunately that was all I could find. Blandness.
Fear of risk. Fear of
change. Everywhere I looked—and I interviewed at about six or seven
major corporations—I found a status
quo that wanted me to file away my
brain for a good dozen years before they’d ask my opinion.
I still laugh when I think about my interview with Proctor & Gamble.
It was a laborious process of interviewing—one hour each
with eight
different people. Finally I sat down with the director of personnel. The first
thing he asked was whether I wanted
to be known as Kenneth, my real
name, or Hap, a name I’d had since childhood. “Hap,” I said. “That’s what
all my friends call
me.”
He looked at me for a moment, kind of tugged at his tie. Rubbed his
chin. And with a deep authority in his voice that made
me know he was
making a serious, corporate-type decision, he said, “I think you’d be better
off as Kenneth.”
I bit my tongue and waited.
Then came his second question. “So, Kenneth, what’s your vision of
the future? If we were to hire you, what role would you
play in the
company in, say, five years?”
 I looked at him. He was this sad little humanoid with a Mommy’s-boy
face and just enough authority to give him a bully’s demeanor.
I could
imagine him in grade school getting thrown against his locker, pleading for
his life and offering his lunch money
for ransom. This moment, I assumed,
was his revenge. “In five years,” I said, “if I were to be here, and I
underscore the
word if, I would expect to be president. I guess that means
passing you in five minutes, and that doesn’t seem like any big deal to
me.”
Reverence to titled authority, as you can see, has never been one of my
strong points. I believe respect must be earned, and
I also believe the
primary person you should respect is yourself. After my meeting with the
personnel director at Proctor
& Gamble, I felt good about myself. It was fun
to tweak this functionary and his bullying ways. He hadn’t earned my
respect.
He wouldn’t even call me by the name I chose. I knew my own
abilities, and I knew my life wouldn’t end if the humanoid didn’t
like me.
The truth is, though, he did like me. Maybe not as a friend, but he saw
deep enough to know I could help the company. Despite
our rather pointed
conversation, he offered me a job. I declined. A company that would give
this man authority, I thought,
is a maelstrom I would prefer not to enter.
I’ve seen it a thousand times in business—rejection of an idea or a
person by virtue of corporate status. The powers that
be have authority, so
they must be right. Right? Sure, the world’s flat too. What they have is the
fraud of authority, the
power to be a bully by the virtue of their title. A title,
however, makes no one a leader.
It is usually easier to lead with a title than without. Leading without a
title is one of the most difficult and courageous
things anyone can attempt.
Often, leaders without titles arise in the midst of a crisis—a crisis like a
bully’s ego trip.
Dealing with a bully is not especially complicated or difficult. It
merely takes nerve. If you work for such a person, do
not submit. Fight for
your dignity. Bullies destroy dignity and they destroy companies. If you are
a leader, you must not
allow them to operate under you. As a leader you
should try to reform the bully—attempt to make a human connection that
explains
why people deserve respect. If this does not work, then you must
fire that person. Bullies set entirely the wrong tone for
productivity,
passion, and fun. They drain energy.
The funny thing about these tyrants is that when they lie or back stab
or threaten, they think that no one else notices. The
truth is, everyone
notices because these things get around. And so the fraud of authority
becomes transparent, a shameless
ego trip. Employees obey, but they don’t
believe. How can they share the dream of a person they privately loathe?
They can’t.
Who are these monoliths—these institutional fascists wallowing in
their muck of false glory? They come in all shapes and sizes.
All colors and
both sexes too, though in business they are usually white males. Inevitably
what makes them a universal plague
on the worker is their bald cruelty.
Some do it like smiling assassins—lying to save face while turning the
knife in your
back. Others are more honest, but just as cruel—shouting you
down like a verbal storm trooper. Either way, the mission is
to destroy
dreams. Dreams and dreamers.
Let me give you an example. Not that I need to; I know that if you
have worked a length of time for an unenlightened employer,
you know
what I am saying. You can probably remember a specific example. I bet you
can remember exact scenes, smells, words.
Allen Culver certainly can. Culver is a retail executive—a hired hand,
if you will. Although he is not a career hopper, there
is a bit of a hired-gun
quality to him. He is the man you hire in the retail business if you want
results. But this is no
Clint Eastwood. He is a fun man, an ingratiating
person—friendly and warm.
And so he was in 1984 when he was hired by a major retail drugstore
chain headquartered in the Midwest. The company, which
was in trouble,
had been acquired three years earlier by an industrial conglomerate. It
began to hide the problem of the drug
chain’s poor results inside the larger
corporate finances of the parent company.
In two years the conglomerate had fired two presidents of the drug
chain, and in 1984 it hired Allen Culver for that position.
He was told he
was taking over a very healthy company, and they showed him numbers to
support that. But what they failed to
tell him was that some of the numbers
in the financials, such as cost of goods, were not reality but rather from a
six-month-old
budget. In other words, Culver was not told that the company
had actually lost $6 million.
Over the next six months the truth began to trickle out. Actually, as
much as anything, Culver rooted it out. He learned that
the company was
not healthy and had probably been made to appear healthy to attract
someone like himself to run it. When Culver
approached the leaders of the
conglomerate for an explanation, he was told, “What’s a little lie among
friends?”
And then he was told, “It should take five years to turn the chain
around.” The CEO of the conglomerate gave Culver one of
those
supercilious John Wayne–CEO looks: the kind of look learned in third
grade, refined in ninth grade, and put to use by
every bully in America.
“But that five-year period started two years ago. You’ve got three years to
do it,” he said. After
all, he explained, “It’s been two years since we bought
the chain. So what if you were hired six months ago? You’re working
on the
last guy’s clock.”
Culver was amazed. He couldn’t believe he’d even agreed to work for
these people. He couldn’t believe how backhanded they
were. People
deserve honesty and respect, he told them. His argument fell on deaf ears.
The atmosphere repulsed him. He started noticing it everywhere, like a
foul smell that grows until it is unbearable. He didn’t
understand the CEO’s
motivation, but he knew the atmosphere it created was not right for him or
the company. He began looking
for another job.
In retrospect, he probably should have seen what was coming in his
first week. On his first day on the job he was greeted
by a member of the
public relations department, who said they needed his picture. Something
about promotional materials. Typical
PR bullshit, but necessary
nevertheless. One of those little trade-offs you make for success.
Culver went in and they snapped his picture. “I’d like input in
choosing the photo you use,” he said. They agreed.
But then a week later a business journal came out with a story on
Culver and his picture. It was a mean image—no smile, almost
a scowl on
his face. Unbeknownst to him, the company had done a full PR release on
his hiring, including the meanest no-smiling
photo of the lot.
Culver went to the CEO of the conglomerate. “I don’t really like this
image of myself. I’d like to put myself across as a
bit more pleasant, as
someone with an enlightened perspective,” he said.
“I don’t care what you want,” said the CEO. “I want you to look
tough.”
From the beginning the relationship was a false one. Everything
flowed in one direction. The CEO wouldn’t listen. He didn’t
inspire. He
dwelt on the negative. The argument over the picture was not just that it
was the wrong image for Culver, but
also that Culver’s authority must not
be co-opted by the parent company if it was to expect success. As a leader
Culver knew
he couldn’t work within the false parameters set up by a man
without empathy. Culver knew empathy between himself and the
CEO
required empathy in general from the CEO for the workers and their beliefs.
He gave it his best, but as stories like this often go, Culver and the
conglomerate eventually parted company. It was a courteous
parting, but the
waste of a very talented man. The case is so typical, it’s sad. Here is a man
more than qualified to do a
job. And he is a happy, creative, cheerful hard
worker. This is a dream employee, but what is he faced with—muck. The
muck
of false glory spewed about by an ego-bound CEO.
The bully knows everything, of course, except how to let a human
talent flourish. Instead he creates a muck—an embalming fluid
for the soul,
suffocating the employees. And the bully is like a grim mortician, pouring
gobs of cake makeup onto the faces
of the dead so that they are all lifeless
clones of his image.
Only a few—the Allen Culvers of the world—dare to swim in this
embalming fluid. It is indeed a complex, challenging mixture
the fascists
have fashioned.
The embalming fluid of business is no mere chemical concoction
dreamed up by heartless analysts. It has a more sinister quality
to it, a
duplicity that works like black magic, rendering all who don’t fight for their
life to a fate of absolute apathy.
What Culver learned was that his company could not afford to let him
do his job as he saw fit. They beat him down, or tried
to at least, by
declaring his way, his smile, his happiness to be nonproductive. They tried
to break him.
The problem is respect. The bullies have no respect because, in many
cases, they are not leaders. Some clearly have no talent.
But many do; just
no leadership talent. Classically they ride the system. They were A students
all through school but wouldn’t know the difference between a red light and
a green one when it comes to street
smarts. They test well, but they live as
if life were a series of exams instead of adventures.
They sit in their throne room of an office and look down on all
employees. These people, lower on the corporate food chain,
have been
beaten down and thus, they cower—afraid even to wear the wrong color tie
or wrong style shoes.
 This weighted system is installed with fear and with rewards—it
examines everything but talent and drive. Who was your cousin? Did you
go to Stanford? Do you have an MBA, and do you speak Flemish? Will you
do everything we say without
question?
Susan Butcher knows all about this. Butcher is a native of Cambridge,
Massachusetts—hometown of Harvard and the Eastern intellectual
elite. A
nice place, but not exactly the great outdoors for an adventurer.
Somehow Butcher found her way to Alaska and became interested in
dog sledding. The interest gave way to obsession—it would
define her. The
sport became her life.
No sport in the world had been more of a man’s domain than dog
sledding. A man and his dogs. Alone. A gun by his side and
a passion to his
stare. The gun was to fend off polar bears, wolves, moose, and other
dangerous animals. The stare was also
a tool—a necessary gait in the
attitude.
The pinnacle of dog sledding is the Iditarod Trail race, 1,150 miles of
equally intense weather and scenery. It runs from
Anchorage to Nome. The
land is spectacular in its desolation. Shades of white on white, pale skies,
and a gigantic silence.
The challenges of the Iditarod change from year to
year. The only constant is loneliness.
Usually, the weather is cold and crisp—the type that can freeze shut
the eyes of a racer. Ice constantly forms in beards and
eyebrows.
Sometimes, however, the weather is warm and the snow is soft; then sleds
and dogs break through the crust, making
it impossible to ride. Racers often
must run alongside the sled. Sometimes they have to pick up the sled and
carry it over
obstacles. A rider’s dogs can be attacked by wild animals, or
they can die of exhaustion. One year the race was held up by
the migration
of thousands of moose. Another year the fog became so dense that many
mushers got lost.
Into this world of men, in the late 1970s, walked Susan Butcher. She
wasn’t even Alaskan.
People scoffed. She had entered the land of Can’t. “You can’t,” she
was told. “It’s dangerous … You’re a woman … We’re only thinking about
your safety.”
The men were thinking about their egos. They may have had some
genuine concern about her safety; that is felt for every racer.
But their major
concern was about jeopardizing the purity of their private club. This is for
men, honey. Go home and sew something.
They had their little laughs while they toasted one another in their
local bars. But Susan Butcher went on to win the Iditarod
four times, the
most times for anyone in the history of the race. In 1990 she was voted
athlete of the year by Sports Illustrated.
Susan Butcher proved everyone wrong by sledding right around the
embalming fluid of sexism. She entered the most intense dog
race in the
world—a race that almost bubbles over with opportunities for can’t—and
she won. And then she did it again. And again. And again.
Last year, Rick Swenson won his fifth, just beating out Susan. But she
is still driven and intends to keep competing—and winning.
They are still
saying can’t—No one, not a woman or even a man, can win the Iditarod six
times. That’s what they say.
But from the beginning we at The North Face recognized her talent. I
am proud to say that we were the first company to sponsor
her. We
recognized and supported her quest and leadership long before it was
topical, and long before she ever won an Iditarod
race. Some of it was luck
(she knocked on our door), and some of it was insight. When we sponsored
someone, it was never just
for business purposes. We took a special interest
in people and their passions because we were genuinely interested.
The monoliths will always have you believe that you are in God’s
Little Waiting Room. You don’t live; you wait under their
control. Quiet
resignation is their goal for you.
They do it in so many ways. Little ways that grow big. Big ways that
can’t be ignored.
Doors. They do it with doors—barriers that suggest you are not to
come in; you are not good enough. They close the door to
their office, and
they put a gaudy brass nameplate on it that clearly says, “This person is
really important.”
They do it with labels—when they label things “executive,” such as
the executive washroom, or the executive dining room, or
the executive
parking space. What feudal crap! It’s medieval, this tier system of privilege.
It says you are nothing if you
don’t have access to these perquisites. If you
listen to this, you might even start believing it. A company that loses touch
with its employees loses everything.
 As for an executive parking space, all I can say is, get to work early if
you want a good parking space. It’s that simple.
Electronic computer access is another barrier. You can’t have
information. There it is, can’t again. Knowledge is power, and they don’t
want to give it away. This time you are not trusted. They dream up a secret
password
and then refuse to give it to you—limiting the access you have to
vital information about the company. Often it is precisely
the information
you need for timely, accurate decision making. But so vital is this
information, apparently, it is more vital
than you.
That’s how it always is, isn’t it? The employee is the least-valuable
part of the company. Just a cog in the wheel, right?
Stick ’em in the
embalming fluid of the workaday world and watch the body die.
Richard Bangs used to meet up with those people all the time. It was
Ethiopia, 1973. The Omo river. It had never been run
on a raft before.
Bangs set running the Omo as a personal goal, a life quest at age 22.
So, like anyone serious who wants to accomplish anything,
he began
studying and asking questions about the nature of his goal. He went to zoos,
museums, libraries, anywhere he could
find out about the Omo River.
Everybody told him he was insane—too young and too inexperienced
to even try. They told him about crocodiles and hippos, and
poisonous
snakes, and unpredictable diseases.
He had nightmares. His imagination ran wild. But he had been a river
guide for the five years he attended Northwestern University.
He had been a
river guide on the mighty Colorado River, taking powerful clients such as
the president of MGM, corporate lawyers,
and even movie stars on the rides
of their lives.
Of that time period Bangs told me, “It was incredible. I was in awe of
them. If I went to their offices, I couldn’t get inside
the door. But on that
raft, they relied on me.” Those four sentences describe perfectly what I am
trying to say: If leaders
respect the skill and opinions of others, they have a
lot to gain. And if they don’t respect them, they are in grave danger.
Bangs thought he was in grave danger when he listened to the experts.
He had never even undertaken an adventure outside the
United States
before. They were right, the trip did sound insane. But he never thought of
cancelling it. He just dwelt on how to solve what might go wrong. Finally
he hopped
on a plane and flew to Ethiopia. He imagined the worst. And he
prepared for it.
 As soon as he arrived, he knew he was right. The dream was not
impossible. The Omo River was doable, and his career as a writer,
professional adventurer, and head of an adventure-travel company was
launched.
The Omo River was intense. At one point a crocodile locked its jaws
on the front of Bangs’s inflatable raft and the three
passengers had to row
frantically for ten minutes until the croc finally let go.
But Richard Bangs, who has also published numerous books, was
faced with his biggest challenge a few years later when circumstances
led
even him to say can’t.
Up to then, he had had nothing but success. He named his adventure-
travel company, Sobek, after the crocodile god that rules
over the Omo
River. The company provides some of the most exciting and exhilirating
adventures for clients that you can imagine.
By the mid-1970s Bangs was,
as he said, “pushing the envelope further and further. I became too cocky.”
He did it not only in the adventure world but also in the business
world. For him, the two went hand in hand. Bangs helped
organize a run of
the Baro River, a major tributary of the White Nile in the rain forest of
southwest Ethiopia. To help pay
for the trip Bangs allowed a relative
novice, although a superb athlete—a professional soccer player—to come
on the trip.
The lure of money was strong. The soccer player sold his sports
car to come.
What happened in Ethiopia has haunted Bangs ever since. The raft
they were in capsized, and the soccer player and Bangs were
thrown off.
Bangs initially saved the soccer player’s life in the middle of the water by
cutting the boat’s stern line, which
had wrapped itself around the sports
star’s body. Bangs did this while floating and bouncing through the river
with him.
“Swim for shore!” Bangs yelled. The soccer player nodded, and Bangs
headed off to try to rescue the raft. That was the last
time anyone saw the
young soccer player. Bangs had his own close call as he bounced,
unprotected, through the rapids.
When Bangs regained consciousness after blacking out on the side of
the river, he and the others began searching. Ten days
later they gave up.
The soccer player’s body was never found.
Bangs gave up adventuring completely. He went to graduate school
and received a degree in journalism. Whenever he saw his
friends from the
adventuring world, he told them they were crazy. He told them of the
dangers.
This would be a very sad story if it weren’t for one thing: the inner
fortitude of Richard Bangs. He could only stay away
from the world’s great
adventures for so long. Eventually he was seduced back to his true love—
life as an adventurer.
Bangs has a theory about all this, and he incorporates it into his
business, which today is called Mountain Travel/Sobek.
“As I examined it,
life without risk is a passionless life—a life not worth living,” he told me.
“You know, everybody is capable
of pushing themselves beyond inner
perceived limits. If they can just take that first step, whole new worlds open
up. An enormous
number of people say at first they wouldn’t take an
adventure vacation. It’s just not part of their personality. But when
they do
take a trip, you can watch them blossom. They become overpowered by
positive feelings. When they come back from an
adventure, they apply
these changes to their lives.”
When whole new worlds open up, life becomes fun again. Joy has
overwhelming power. When joy is a by-product of work, limits
disappear.
American business has overlooked the power of fun in relation to
productivity. Fun exists as a product (for example, in the
entertainment
business) but not as a tool. It is just another example of how the embalming
fluid has soaked into the fabric
of most businesses. Fun is discouraged. The
implication is that if fun is allowed, work becomes secondary. I challenge
that.
I know better. If fun and effort are related, success in an open company
comes naturally.
During a recent economic downturn in the retail market Levi Strauss, a
fine company, unwittingly put their employees in embalming
fluid. The
company had built a wonderful new facility with beautiful terraces used for
coffee areas and lounges. It would
be great for employees to unwind on the
terraces—tell a joke, laugh a little, refuel emotionally and mentally.
But when the market turned down and people had to be laid off, Levi
found people were afraid to go into these areas. They
did not want to appear
to be loafing or having fun. They did not want to endanger their jobs. So the
terraces—built to say
to employees, we care—stood empty, like a museum
piece from a long-ago age of compassion and good economic times.
Levi solved the problem. They put common work areas, for example
those with duplicating machines and postage meters, in these
areas so
employees could enjoy the space without guilt. Levi tried to incorporate joy
into production. It was a step in the
right direction.
It still didn’t solve the problem of why people felt guilty about taking a
break, but at least it allowed them to enjoy the
new building.
At The North Face, the company I started in 1968 and built into the
industry leader for outdoor equipment, our growth gave
us a space problem
too. At the time our company was about eight years old, and we needed to
fit more employees into our building.
We knew from industry studies that our sewing-machine operators
could work in less space—28 square feet instead of 36 square
feet.
However, we had been successful because of our loyalty to our workers and
because we made their working conditions as
comfortable as possible. Each
employee had his or her own “territory,” and we didn’t want to disturb that.
But we needed the
space if we were going to grow. And we were going to
grow; no question about that.
We didn’t want to just take away their space—that would have been
demoralizing. Instead, we were honest. We said, look, we
have this
problem. We want to grow, and we know we can. It will be good for all of
us, but we know that if we do, it will
require that we take something away
from you, some of the space around your machine. It’s not our first choice,
but under
the circumstances it’s the best choice.
We then offered something back. It was not the greatest gift an
employee ever received. But they knew it came from our hearts,
so they
accepted it. It was their own personalized nameplate for their work space.
Something that identified a part of the
company as their very own. Our
message was clear: You, the employee, matter. Without you, we could not
have had the success
we have, and we wouldn’t be able to continue our
spectacular growth. By the way, none of our executives ever had their name
on their door or desk.
We took two weeks to explain this, individually, to each production
worker. Every one accepted the offer. They had something
most production
workers never have—pride, identity, and respect.
The embalming fluid of business can be so many different things. At
Levi and The North Face it was as simple as building design.
The answer is,
as it always is, honesty and compassion coupled with a dash of creativity.
Explain the problem; show you care.
 Too many companies do not care. They expect employees to have a
Muzak personality, and they run their companies with absolutely
no verve.
Too many employees let themselves get beaten down—they give in to
the monarchs in their mahogany castles. They don’t have
a let’s-do-
something-right attitude. Instead, the attitude is, I won’t piss anyone off. In
most companies the employee motto
is Cover Thy Butt. If you examine
where that attitude originated, inevitably you will find it is also the motto of
the executives.
Once I ran into a flood of embalming fluid like I’d never seen before.
It was 1975. I had been invited by a couple of outside
directors to New
York for a special board meeting of The North Face.
Our company had always operated on a foundation of exuberance and
vibrance. Quality was our forte—we prided ourselves on being
the best. We
had become the industry leader through product innovation. Our investment
was in market dominance for the long
term. It was fun to walk the high
wire, but there was no pretense in anyone.
The meeting was held in the University Club, a pretentious mid-
Manhattan monument to the Ivy League. The hanging chandeliers
sparkled
onto the hand-carved mahogany walls, which rose majestically 20 feet from
floor to ceiling. It was a hard place for
delicate emotions. The curtains were
thick velvet and blocked off all light and noise from the outside world.
Antiseptic.
At the University Club, toying with companies was entertainment.
Walking into the garish confines, one had to fight the feeling
of being a
pawn in someone else’s power game. These board members didn’t care
about people or quality, only image and control.
Their decisions were made
totally out of the context of reality. Issues like leadership, humanism,
commitment, and vision
were ignored. It was our lives, but they didn’t care.
The only thing that mattered was the game, where winning and losing
are
merely words.
I was invited to attend my own firing by a group of dissident board
members. They didn’t put it that way, but we both knew
why they had
called the meeting. They felt the company had outgrown me, that I was an
entrepreneur in a company that called
for management. It is a common, and
mistaken, venture capitalist assumption that all entrepreneurs are unable to
run companies
once they grow. They had their MBAs. I had my MBA.
They had the money. I had something better—a highly successful company.
 Four of us entered together. We were an hour late when we walked
through the marbled entrance and took the elevator to the
top floor. We had
been trying to work out an agreement to restructure the management of the
company, but we couldn’t. Basically,
I had refused. They wanted to push
me aside and eliminate the leadership, replacing me with a manager who
would acquiesce
to their demands. It was our company, everybody’s
company, and I wouldn’t sell out. Thus high drama at the University Club.
What a joke this was—I still laugh about it with my friends. Here we were,
a relatively small company operating on an austere
budget, spending
thousands just to rent the room only to satisfy the tastes and whims of a few
board members. While they talked
about results, they didn’t have a clue as
to the forced discipline it took to get results. They were spending more for
that
one get-together than our office supplies bill was for an entire month.
The room was ridiculous. It was totally out of context for a company
that made mountaineering, backpacking, and other wilderness
equipment. It
wasn’t even one room; it was three. There was a cocktail room with two
bars and servants. The second room was
the board room, with high-backed
leather chairs and a Caucasian testosterone ooze. This was an old boys’
club. The third room,
the most elaborate of them all, was for lunch.
There I was, the iconoclast. They were the icons. In all there were 12
of us at the meeting, including my management. The
junior board members
preened and postured for their elders. The senior members did the power-
word thing, and I must say they
were quite good at it. They’d dance and
balance jugular tendencies with parliamentary etiquette. It was most
impressive. They
had become masters at doing something of zero benefit to
society. They were diplomatic bullies.
The chairman of the board and I entered. We explained why we were
late, and the game began. I knew it was mine to lose, and
I saw that it could
slip away very fast. Rather than delay, I invited confrontation.
My format was simple. I would be honest. “Yes, this year’s earnings
forecast was not met,” I said. “But the North Face was
the largest and best
in the industry, and one of the best small businesses in the country.” There
was plenty of documented
evidence to prove this. I explained that one
problem was the use of aggressive forecasting to motivate employees. The
other
problem was that we had made a bad hire in the finance department.
The individual we had hired failed to set up adequate systems
to give us
operational control of our inventories. Thus the numbers he reported were
inaccurate. When we took physical inventories,
there was significant
shortfall from his reported members.
“We replaced that person,” I said. “Progress is now excellent.” I
pointed out to the board that the company had grown dramatically
in the
preceding year in both sales and earnings.
“I have a proposal,” I said. “Give the remaining management six
months to prove that we can, with this one personnel change,
not only
continue our dramatic growth but also reach our forecasts. The same
forecasts. Just give me six months. If we can’t,
my entire management will
resign without argument.”
They were silent. I assumed they had already made up their minds. But
I pressed on. If I was going out, I was going out honestly.
The chairman
finally spoke. He was complimentary. He spoke of my talent, my vision. It
was too much. And then slowly, skillfully,
he turned the corner. A dual head
to the company, he proposed.
Take it or leave. That was the proposal. Take the offer of someone to,
in effect, watch over me, or leave the company. Not
exactly those words.
He veiled it in semantics, but his intent was clear. The chairman smiled at
me and then went to work
on the board.
“A rejection of this proposal would be divisive to the board,” said the
chairman. “It could perhaps split it irreparably and
lead to the demise of
The North Face. If that happened, it would all be on Hap’s shoulders.”
It was curious to hear the chairman say my name as if he were my
friend. If it hadn’t been for the pressure of the situation,
I would’ve laughed.
“We shouldn’t let Hap risk his wealth when the problem could easily be
solved by Hap acceding to this
proposal.” There was such sincerity in his
voice. What a phony. He sat there wearing a red sash from his shoulder to
his hip
like some foreign dignitary. It was absurd.
I felt like a street fighter who had walked into an ambush. But instead
of a dark alley, I was in the midst of leather and
velvet. “I won’t accept your
proposal,” I said. I felt a lump in my throat. This was my life. My body
filled with adrenaline.
My eyeballs became huge as the whole scene
clarified. “If you want to fire me, go ahead.” I remember those words. I can
still
taste them. They weren’t bitter; they were survivalistic. “But I know
and you know,” I said, “that you are wrong!”
I needed those in that room to understand the passion that ran through
my company—the commitment I had asked of and received
from my
employees. I of course knew it was more complex than that. But I had to get
them to understand that our company wouldn’t
submit to being a faceless
pawn on their game board. They needed to know this was about people.
It worked. They backpedaled. “I don’t think we should walk headlong
into these important decisions,” said the chairman, after
a long pause. He
suggested lunch and cocktails.
We went to the next room. But even though the meeting later
continued, the confrontation was over. I had stood up to them.
I had swum
through their foul embalming fluid and lived to write about it. Six months
later The North Face had more than met
our forecasts. Our board room
solution had been to bring in a consultant to analyze the company and
report back to the board.
Six months later the consultant gave his report. He
said the company was being run very well—as well as he could imagine it
being run. And 15 years later, in 1989, I sold the company for $5.4 million.
The company’s sales at the time I sold it had
increased tenfold from those
on the day of the meeting. It was a profound change indeed.
To leaders, I say lead. Nurture talent; it is your best resource. To
employees, I say stay strong, act out, contribute. And
to all who work in
America, I say don’t just let it all be. Do something. Don’t just let global
competitors win. Take risks
and smile. Have some fun—it’s not against the
rules. At least it shouldn’t be. If you do nothing, nothing happens. If you
don’t swim through the embalming fluid, you drown.
As Richard Bangs once told me when talking about the expeditions he
leads, “The longer somebody is out there and the more
difficult the
challenge, the greater the probability that person will profoundly change.”
The same is true in business.
If you want to know if an employer is drowning its employees in
embalming fluid, just walk into the work area and see if anyone
looks at
you. See if they take their eyes off their work for even one moment to greet
you, to smile at you, to show they are
alive. If they do not, the leadership
has beaten them down. If the rules are set up to suck the life from
employees, it inevitably
will do so from all but the most determined. And
those most determined will never stick around to help the company. They
will
cut their own swath—determined to prove business does not have to be
lifeless.
 2

DIGGING BELOW THE BOTTOM

LINE:
The Numbers Don’t Tell the Story

“Doing things the old way,” Steve Powell told the Wall Street Journal in
1991, “is like trying to clap with one hand.”
Powell is senior adviser on human resources at British Petroleum
Exploration—the arm of BPE that is most dependent on creativity.
British
Petroleum has set out to reduce the layers of management and thus clap
with both hands. Sure, logic suggests you should
try to reduce bureaucracy.
But BPE has a deeper reason for doing this, one much closer to the core of
the decision. The company
is going to reward ingenuity and talent instead
of ladder climbing. The Wall Street Journal said this shift in philosophy
“could turn out to be a revolution in corporate culture, with far-reaching
applications in
other industries’ … and the changes at BP Exploration will
fundamentally alter the way the company is run.”
“Fundamentally alter.” “Revolution.” Big words. And you know what
—the folks at the Journal are right. Although they hid those words in a 15-
paragraph column called “International Manager,” they used all the right
words. This is a tremendous idea.
In essence it would overhaul the way employees are evaluated,
promoted, and compensated. It would reward creativity without
forcing
people into management.
Imagine getting rewarded for staying in your job and performing well.
You don’t have to move up into a job you don’t want.
There is a better way
to make good money and receive recognition. You simply have to do a good
job and keep getting better.
You are measured on how good you are, not on
how many meetings you attend. It’s staggering.
 Let’s think about bowling balls. Brunswick is the largest American
company that makes bowling balls. A few years back Brunswick
had a
dilemma. Their product was better than their warehouse equipment.
Bowling balls weigh between nine and 19 pounds each and so are
quite heavy when sent out in bulk. Brunswick had a huge warehouse.
The
problem was the overhead equipment used to move inventory. The bearings
in this equipment kept breaking down. It was a
simple problem, but the
solution was expensive.
Brunswick replaced the bearings. The bearings broke. Again and
again. They kept breaking. Brunswick put their engineers on
the problem.
The engineers tried and tried to design unbreakable bearings, but to no
avail. Finally some warehouse workers
had an idea. Brunswick, to its credit,
listened.
The workers suggested an inexpensive, ingenious, commonsense
solution. Each month, they pointed out, bowling balls were returned
to
Brunswick because they had minor flaws—usually something to do with
color.
Why not redesign the machines a bit so that they could use the rejects
as bearings? suggested the workers. Then, even if they
break down, they are
cheap to replace.
My favorite part of this story comes next. A few months later
representatives of the Japanese company that was Brunswick’s
partner
visited the United States. The Japanese saw the new bearings and were
impressed by the ingenuity of the Americans.
However, something was definitely lost in the translation. A few
months later when the Americans went to Japan, they found
the Japanese
using the same system, with one variation. Instead of rejected balls, the
Japanese were using new bowling balls.
Factory made, right there. And,
incredibly, they had even taken the time to drill the three finger holes into
each ball. That
way, explained the Japanese, they are exactly like those used
in the United States.
Apparently the Japanese never realized the holes were only in U.S.
bearings because Brunswick was using recycled product.
The Japanese
didn’t take the time to measure anything but the financial success of this
approach. The American company was
successful because it used bowling
balls as its bearings. And, thought the Japanese, it’s cheaper to make
bowling balls than
to buy designer bearings. They didn’t look any further
than the bottom line to understand the total ingenuity of the solution.
It is unusual for a Japanese company not to look below the bottom
line. Unfortunately it is all too common for an American
company. No
matter what the company, though, it is essential to expand the number of
measurements you use to determine its
health. Too many companies are
being run by professional, MBA-type managers. Many are water bugs
skimming over the waters
of commerce, more intent on their own career
paths than on learning about the intricacies of their business or the passions
of their people.
Just as blood pressure and heart rate tell only part of the story in
relation to the health of a human body, so too do profits
tell only part of the
story about any company. Unfortunately many executives are trained to
hear “get your profits up” to
mean the same as “get your blood pressure
down.” The thinking is that if you do, everything else will fall into place.
It sure is simple. One goal—short-term profits. But life is not that way.
Business certainly is not that way. Although you
need to simplify, not
complicate, your goals, you must also realize there are a vast number of
opportunities to both measure
and improve your company. There are new
ways to look at things, fresh perspectives. But you have to get beyond blood
pressure
and heart rate. You have to somehow measure the soul of your
company.
The Japanese bowling ball company, for instance, never took the time
to measure employee satisfaction at Brunswick. They never
noticed, as they
entered the Brunswick factory, that the employees were smiling, happy to
meet them, and proud of their own
work. Instead they looked at the
bearings with the three finger holes.
They never even looked, really, at the bowling balls. They never
stopped to think why the balls were better than the bearings.
Oh, sure, they
thought about the cost involved—the bottom line. If they had looked at the
bowling balls on another level,
they would have realized that drilling the
holes was a waste of time and money. And if they had examined that aspect
further,
they would have understood just what the Americans were up to—
recycling unwanted stock. But no; they saw only money.
Narrowing every business analysis to profit and loss would be like a
ski area narrowing its focus to just its hills. The Vail
Associates, Inc., under
the leadership of George Gillette, looked far beyond the hills into what was
essential for a great
skiing business—humanity. Vail is dedicated to quality
and consumer satisfaction. All Vail employees are trained to enhance
the
customer’s vacation. The training includes a study of customer psychology
and ways to satisfy the customer.
Gillette had a vision to make his a new type of ski resort—not just a
spectacular destination, but a family destination as
well. Home in the
Rockies. He and his team wanted it to be a place families would talk about
12 months a year. They wanted
Vail to be not just a destination, but the
destination.
They wanted children to talk about it. It had to be extraordinary, and it
was. They had more than hot chocolate, one instructor,
and a day-care
center. They thought it through and imagined what it would be like to be a
child on vacation on a mountain.
They put up teepees. They made a ski run go right through an Old
West fort, with 20-foot-high sentry towers on either side
of the run. Arrows
are embedded in the fort. Vail humanized the experience and connected to
the curiosity of every child.
Best of all, they connected to the concept of
letting children be children. No adults, except for instructors, are allowed
on the run.
Business is about so many things, it is foolish and inaccurate to narrow
down success to profit and loss. It is the same with
people. A sparkling
resume may be a good indicator of someone’s potential, but it may not.
There are always other things to
consider.
One of the most intelligent employees I ever hired at The North Face
was a single mother of three living on food stamps, welfare,
and her wits.
Her resume was not exactly sparkling, but I took the time to look beyond
her lack of employment.
I was impressed, you see, because she had figured out how to beat the
system—definitely my type of employee. She had an “old
man” who was
the father of one of her children. They didn’t get married because it would
cut the payments in half, and he
claimed to live elsewhere for the same
reason.
To get money to pay the rent, she baby-sat other children along with
her own for income that she didn’t have to report. At
night, when her old
man was around, she worked in the garden of a local vegetable producer
and was paid in vegetables and
other food.
 And she sold small amounts of marijuana that she grew in her
apartment. The fact that she sold marijuana didn’t thrill me,
but I learned
long ago that it is not what people are but rather who they are that counts.
The reason I got a lot of great
employees was that I took the time to look at
who they were—I got to know them. I know circumstances dictate a lot of
what
people do in life. It is how they overcome those circumstances that
identifies the difference between good employees and great
employees. I
look for the latter.
The way I met her was that she and a friend, using the friend’s truck,
used to pick up scraps from our factory in Berkeley.
She used scrap fabrics
and filling from The North Face to make stuffed toys for children, and she
also picked the trash at
other Berkeley factories to make other toys, like
marbles from glass beads. After she made the toys, she baby-sat for her
friend’s children while the friend sold the toys at flea markets.
Finally she had enough money to buy a car and pay for a baby-sitter. I
was so impressed with her background, I hired her.
At The North Face she
had a real job making constant money and she had health benefits. And
better yet, for our company, she
increased our can-do attitude. She was a
seamstress who ended up working in our warranty department. She was
excellent. When
people came in, they liked dealing with her, and it reflected
well on The North Face. I am convinced it was because her various
experiences and positive attitude enabled her to identify with those who
came in needing repairs.
The truth is, in life as in business the numbers often don’t tell the story.
In the earliest days of business everything was
based on the agrarian
calendar. Harvest-time was the ultimate measuring stick. This yearly
measure made perfect sense when
sustenance was the goal. But times have
changed, and a yearly measuring stick of profits, though important, should
not be
the end-all.
No one fact standing alone means much of anything. Just as the mere
fact of a mother being on welfare does not make her ignorant,
so it is with
money. Profits, especially short-term profits, do not equal success. Profits
are to be factored in, certainly.
But the goals of a business are now more
complex than a quarter-to-quarter, year-to-year measurement of an increase
in profits.
A truly successful company is one that inspires its employees,
one with a true sense of its role in the marketplace, and one
with far-
reaching goals that look beyond the bottom line at the end of the next
quarter toward long-term prosperity.
Adventuring, like business, is not just about who goes the highest or
the farthest. The highest mountains have already been
climbed.
Adventuring means doing things in different ways—measuring one’s self
within the parameters of individuality. Sir
Ranulf Fiennes decided his quest
was walking around the globe. Steve McKinney chose to hang glide off Mt.
Everest. Numerous
people parapent (use highly guidable parachutes) off
mountains. Jan Reynolds became the first person (and woman) to balloon
over Everest. Rheinhold Messner climbs without partners or oxygen.
Everyone defines adventure and success on his or her own
terms. In fact,
one of the happier people I’ve met is a man who became a butterfly rancher
in Guatemala.
Another satisfied adventurer is Royal Robbins, who learned through
the mistakes of others how to look at the big picture.
The first thing you
notice about Royal is his eyes, because they are intense, intelligent,
twinkling. His are active eyes,
the kind that always say, “What’s that?” in
sincere curiosity.
Royal is a gentle man, not large in stature, but strong and smart enough
to get a well-earned reputation as one of the best
rock climbers in the
history of Yosemite National Park. And he is funny. There is something
splendid about his sense of humor,
his way of making you laugh at
situations you could never imagine. His humor is like his eyes, very
engaging. A connection
comes easily with Royal.
And so it was when he told me about Dru Mountain in Switzerland.
Some had succeeded in climbing it, but many had failed. Most
of the
climbers had years of experience and months of training. They had the skill,
equipment, and desire necessary to climb
most mountains. But for the Dru,
something else was needed. Most of the failures had resulted from
becoming caught midclimb
in the volatile weather. Driving rain or snow
had pushed them back.
Royal smiled at this next part. “The problem,” he said, “was that no
one took the time to examine the weather patterns. It
was really quite easy
once I thought about it.”
The weather, though volatile, went in a predictable cycle. So Royal did
the opposite of everyone else—he started his climb
in bad weather. He
figured nature would swing back to good weather in time for the main
assault. He was right.
His is an analytical approach. If such an approach is coupled with a
healthy dose of passion, it is by far the best approach.
Royal Robbins has
the proper passion. Though he can seem pondering, he is anything but dull.
Rather he is driven—a man in
search of truth. He is not bullheaded in the
sense of blind ambition. He is logical. When logic leads him to a solution,
he
is virtually unstoppable in his quest.
What Royal did was take the time to measure more than just the goal,
the peak. He measured an obstacle, the weather, and then
thought his way
around it.
He didn’t just measure profit. He measured all the things that stood in
the way of profit, and all the things that helped
him get profit. And although
his problem didn’t deal with humanity—it dealt with a living organism, the
weather—he understood
it. He could feel it, smell it, taste it, almost absorb
it. He was in tune, and he knew what was happening—although he also
knew that the weather, like anything with energy and a will, could change in
an instant.
It is the same in business. Profit is one measurement, but so much goes
into that one measurement. There is the energy level
of the employees,
satisfaction of customers, and creativity. Can these be measured? I say yes.
Measured in terms of humanity.
An open mind can measure anything. You may not be able to quantify
it, but you can measure it. Often it is an instinctual
measurement—a
singular, honest answer to your own questions. Are my employees giving
me all they have? Do they have a reason
to put forth such effort? Am I
delivering the best possible product to my customers? Are we creative, or
do we spurn creativity?
There is another point to be made here about quantifying these things.
Profit itself is never accurately quantified. At least
not in the short term—
which is another reason to move beyond a quarter-to-quarter mentality.
Profit can always be toyed with
by a creative bookkeeper. You can set up or
reduce reserves. You can come up with another acquisition and write things
off
under restructuring costs. You can roll profit over into another
accounting period, choose different depreciation rates, and
defer or
accelerate payments or shipments. You can do so many things, legally, to
alter short-term profit that it is really
nothing more than a blood pressure
test for the business.
Sure, profit means something. It is a guide, a barometer, but not a
complete diagnostic measurement. Profit is not a bad measure;
it is simply
insufficient. It must be examined in conjunction with other factors. The
thing about a measurement is that such
a figure is not grounded without
more information. It is merely a number up in the air. To say profit was $20
million means
nothing. Profit on what, IBM or Joe’s Hot Dog Stand?
There is an equation that goes into success, and you can reach the right
answer in more than one way. Of course, the same
is true for reaching the
wrong answer. But one thing is constant. The most important part of the
equation is humanity.
What most leaders do not understand is that profits are not just for the
people at the top of the company. In many companies
there are bonuses and
stock options for a wide range of employees. People’s whole lives are riding
on the success of the company.
Not just a few bucks—lives!
Let me give you an example of a factor that leads to profits that is both
quantifiable and instinctual: energy level/satisfaction
of employees. The
easiest measure of this is employee turnover. Zero turnover is bad—it
indicates complacency and acceptance
of the status quo. High turnover is
also bad. It is a sign of disgruntled employees. Turnover should not be a
short-term measurement.
It should be continuously monitored for trends,
and corrective action should be taken when problems arise.
For a long time Sharper Image was considered a great business
because of its rapid growth and profitability. But insiders
knew better. They
were measuring something else—employee satisfaction. What they saw,
quite simply, was a turnover in excess
of 100 percent a year. That’s right, in
excess of 100 percent. In other words, someone would quit, someone else
would be hired,
and then that person would quit all in the same year. More
than 100 percent—incredible. People obviously found working for
the
company quite difficult. The owner was driving, demanding, intimidating,
and never gave employees credit for their efforts.
Suppliers were squeezed
for advertising dollars. If they didn’t spend more, the product was dropped.
Quality was not as important
as profits. The owner apparently would listen
to no one, and employees couldn’t leave fast enough. The owner didn’t care
—he
was measuring profits.
 In 1991, Sharper Image announced major financial and sales problems.
The company said it must revamp its product focus and
the internal
workings of the company. Their latest plan is an environmental focus—
claiming that as a company they want to
get more in harmony with the
world. Perhaps, but it might be better to concentrate on employee
satisfaction because they’re
the ones who will make the sales increase.
One unquantifiable measure of employee satisfaction is employee
comraderie—whether people care about one another and their
jobs. It is
tough to measure, but you can see it. If workers get together spontaneously,
it is a good sign. They like one
another. If get-togethers are farther and
farther apart, a problem is brewing.
At a good company, birthdays are celebrated in some fashion. In a
small company the entire company can celebrate. As a company
grows,
divisions can celebrate birthdays. The important thing is the human touch—
such celebrations should be encouraged, even
if the entire company cannot
attend. In addition the anniversary of the company should be celebrated, as
should new facilities
or major achievements. At The North Face we always
celebrated the company’s anniversary. If these opportunities are ignored,
the
team is drifting apart.
Creativity is also something both measurable and abstract. Creativity is
not something that should just be delegated to the
design department. The
warehouse workers at Brunswick proved that. Probably the easiest way to
measure creativity is by examining
the output of the design department—
new products. Executives at 3M have told me that 80 percent of that
company’s products
were created in the previous three years. Innovation is
a constant goal for the company. Concepts such as quality and innovation
cannot, however, be measured in just one department. They must be
measured throughout the entire company.
An easy way to measure the output of the design department is to keep
a running log of the research-and-development budget
and compare it to
profits for new products. If you keep these statistics for a three-year period,
charting them on a graph
makes it simple to spot trends. This may require a
shift in your accounting to Activity-Based Accounting, but it will be worth
it. In most businesses, R&D investments should show a return within that
three years. However, in some businesses, such as
the drug industry, the
wait is much longer—for example the seven-year waiting period necessary
for a new drug to be approved
by the Food and Drug Administration. The
parameters for a drug company are much different than for most other
companies. You
need to analyze and agree on the appropriate measures for
your firm.
But creativity, of course, is more than R&D—it is a response to a
company policy of listening, caring. No matter what the
title of the
employee—from janitor to senior researcher—each employee knows some
aspects of the company better than top management.
One of the employees in 3M’s adhesives division was also a singer in
his church choir. He could never get the pieces of paper
he marked hymns
with to stay in his hymn book. They kept falling out. He suggested to 3M
that a piece of paper with a light
adhesive might be attractive to a few
people. As it turned out, Post-Its were quite attractive to a lot of people.
Although you cannot quantify that type of creativity within a company,
you can gauge it. Are employees coming to you with
new ideas, even bad
ones? Or have they been beaten down to the point that they no longer care?
Are they drowning in embalming
fluid, or are they flourishing in freedom?
There are, of course, other, more practical ways to measure success.
Service is one easy way—turnaround time of orders in
house. L. L. Bean,
the mail-order house in Maine, does this. The company constantly measures
not only its own turnaround time
but also that of its competitors.
Compensation and promotion within L. L. Bean are based in large part on
service and turnaround
time, and there is hell to pay if they start to slip.
What I am proposing is an expanded definition of success; something
that incorporates a multitude of parameters into an always-fluid
image of
the company. This image is not only in the executive’s mind. It is also, and
more importantly, in the minds of the
employees. It will include things I’ve
talked about and things each individual dreams up. A good company can
stand up to all
fair standards. Perhaps the best standard is quality, which I
will address in Chapter 9.
There are many little measurements that when plugged into the
equation can lead to your analysis on the relative health and
happiness of
your company. One concrete measurement is market share. Japanese
companies frequently approach the world with
dominant market share as
their goal. One such company is YKK, a zipper manufacturer. In the late
1960s YKK came to the United
States with one goal—dominant market
share. By 1970 they had only a negligible share of the market. They didn’t
panic—they
remained focused on the long-term goal. Today YKK is the top
company in the U.S. zipper market. They were flexible on pricing,
hiring,
and even location of their facilities. Instead of locating in a major, high-cost
manufacturing center they went to
Macon, Georgia. This allowed YKK to
pump more money into customer service—they set up 20 service centers
across the United
States. It did not surprise me when I read in Forbes that
the Yoshida family, which owns YKK, is one of the wealthiest families in
the world.
Jack Akers, chairman of IBM, raised a major flap about market share
in the spring of 1991: “The fact that we’re losing market
share makes me
goddamn mad…. The tension level is not high enough; the business is in
crisis.” Those words appeared on the
cover—yes, the cover—of
BusinessWeek magazine.
In IBM’s case, it seems, there is more to the problem than market
share. Market share, like most things easy to measure, is
a symptom. If
market share is good, then the company is healthy. But if market share is
bad or getting worse, you need to
look for the disease. That can be deeply
rooted and a bit harder to diagnose than simply health.
Another measure is Speed To Market. Entire businesses have been
built on the premise of faster speed to market. Federal Express
is an
obvious one—proving time to be the commodity. Another is McDonald’s.
A classic is Revlon. Charles Revlon said, “To hell
with R&D.” His idea was
to monitor the competitor’s regional test-market ideas and then copy the
good ones, reaching the entire
market before the originator. Even though
Revlon didn’t invent many of its products, it often dominated the
competition because
it was faster at getting the products to market.
The Limited retail stores also have recognized the importance of Speed
To Market. That company owns a fleet of private jets
for the express
purpose of flying new products from the Far East while the fashion is still
hot. Their competitors rely on
commercial shipping lines and lag.
Two more speed-to-market stores: Pillsbury and Ford. In 1988 Grand
Metropolitan PLC acquired Pillsbury and sent in a small
guerrilla team
headed by Ian Martin to speed up Pillsbury. Martin is a no-nonsense
Scotsman. He did away with the lethargic
culture in the company. He
eliminated layers of bureaucracy and reduced the product line. More
important, he shortened the
product incubation schedule by years. Profits
went way up. Coincidentally Ford did the same thing after falling into deep
trouble in the mid-1980s. But when profits returned in the late 1980s, Ford
fell back into its old lethargic ways—celebrating
once again the committee.
Rather than continue to try to improve, Ford stayed the same while its more
aggressive foreign competition
was always improving. In crisis, Ford
focused. In success, it formed committees.
This is an example of a false summit, something very familiar to a
mountaineer. Imagine being on a mountain. The struggle
of the climb, the
effort, the pain. All along you see what you think is the peak. You figure
you have just enough energy to
make it and when you do, man, it sure will
feel great. Well, what often happens is when you reach the “peak” you
realize it
is only a step on the way to the real peak, which you see farther
away. It is then that the mountaineer must really dig deep.
A false summit
can be tremendously demoralizing.
In business, reaching a goal can be like a false summit. Although the
goal is real, it is important to immediately begin looking
beyond the goal. A
leader cannot steal away the joy employees feel for having reached the
peak. But the leader also cannot
let the energy level dissipate. It is very easy
for everyone to fall into a sort of postpartum depression. In climbing, I
have
met very few climbers who do not describe a tremendously depressed
feeling coming down from a successful climb. It is
the feeling of “Is that all
there is?”
At least in business, that is not all there is—goals continually evolve.
To dig below the bottom line is to continually reach
higher. Certainly it is
important to set attainable goals so that business does not become a never-
ending struggle to achieve
the impossible. However, setting new goals is
the only way to keep a company vibrant. In mountaineering being at the
peak
is only a small part of the joy. It is the actual struggle to get there that
makes it fun.
Measuring success is not simple. Factoring in all the aspects of a
company is the only true way to know its soul. After all,
profits are
temporal, but a soul—if it is strong—can live virtually forever.
And the bond that holds the soul of a company together is the people
who work for it. Once the measuring is done, it must
be constantly fed back
to the employees so that they know where they stand and what to expect. I
saw one of my clients try
this and fail because he used so much business
jargon and babble that he lost everyone in the linguistics. Business
communication
isn’t some scientific formula—it is the same as any other
communication. People must understand.
 It’s really that simple. When you read the numbers right, the thing you
see is that every one of them represents a person
or some people. They may
work for you or for your competitor, be a supplier or be a customer. But
they are there. Every number
has a face.
 3

FINDING THE SPARK:

Where Logic Meets Religion

The North Face was founded on what I call “the Scotch Principle.” In
Berkeley, 1968, scotch was not the usual principle, if
you know what I
mean. A group of us were sitting around having a 60s discussion about
what turned out to be a very 80s discipline:
making money. We were talking
of what would become of us. “Imagine”—one person laughed— “where
you’ll be in ten years.”
“Hap Klopp, more than thirty years old. That’s a scary thought,” said
another.
But it wasn’t. Not at all, and the scotch bottle started making the
rounds. “What the hell,” someone offered after emptying
his glass again.
“Let’s start a business.”
“A business?” Another laughed. “What do we know? All we know is
sports, outdoors, and having fun.”
Not long afterward I bought three stores with a great image but severe
financial problems that were called The North Face.
I closed two of them
and set out to design, produce, and market outdoor gear for the best
adventures in the world.
Scotch. A bottle of scotch in 1968 in Berkeley, California, and my
world changed completely. I am still in awe of how my company
was
dreamed up—except when I analyze it. On first glance, it seems against the
American ethic to come up with a good idea
in an intoxicated state. Just say
no, right?
Well, I said yes. I am not here to advocate drunkenness, but rather to
talk about leadership, personal freedom, and creativity.
It always amazes me
when I think of America as a place where I can go to a store and buy a
machine gun, but I cannot legally
buy one marijuana cigarette. I bet more
good ideas have arisen in people after smoking a joint than anyone has ever
had from
shooting a hundred rounds a minute at a deer.
Nevertheless, there are many means to an end, and if yours happens to
be squeezing the trigger of an AK-47, I say more power
to you—as long as
you don’t harm anyone. Despite my disagreement with your means, I still
believe you are among the lucky
ones. If you have found a way to tap into
yourself, your wants and your dreams, you should hold on to that with
everything
you have. Life is short, after all.
The world is changing at an ever-increasing pace. As a result, every
day, every hour, sometimes every minute you need another
new idea.
Obviously you can’t be wasted or shooting a machine gun all that time and
be coming up with those ideas. Really,
you can’t even pretend to be
anything but a jerk. Still, you’ve got to loosen up enough to listen to
yourself because the
real you holds the key to everything. You have to trust
your instincts and then learn on an instant, personal basis. You must
be free
within yourself. To be aware of this skill and to tap into it at will can be an
incredibly strong feeling—even a religious
experience.
Nothing happens without a vision—the mental sweat of a single
human spark. Get it where you will, but get it! Live to the
fullest, trust
yourself, and be honest. Don’t settle for anything.
I remember reading an interview with a rock star. I don’t remember the
name of the performer, but I can picture the words
as I can picture the faces
of my children. He was talking about his struggles to make it and the
“advice” he’d received from
both friends and family. The guitar is great,
they’d told him, but why don’t you take up something else? Like welding or
carpentry.
Go to college—something. Just in case, they’d said. You know,
so you have something to fall back on.
His response was simple. “If you have something to fall back on, you
will fall back.”
And so there is a spark. The world explodes like an orgasm hanging
from a dream, and there is life—a compendium of opportunity
from the
seeds of an idea. This spark is where an active imagination meets hard work
—where religion meets logic, and where
God lives in all of us. I am not
religious in a Jimmy-Swaggart-organized way, but I am religious in the
sense that I cannot
look at the ocean or mountains without thinking of
God’s majesty. And “spiritual” is the best word I can find to describe
the
spark. It is an inner dance of freedom that first admits and then proclaims,
“I am this.”
Generally vision comes from an inner need: emotional, psychological,
or financial.
One spark. The Kockleman brothers have that spark, and what a spark
it is. They are the incredible bungee brothers—real-life
siblings who lead
real-life bungee-cord adventures for profit. Bungee-cord jumping is the
sport where you jump off a bridge
with an elastic cord tied to both the
bridge and your legs. The idea is to free-fall until almost hitting bottom and
then
be snatched from the jaws of death by the cord, which stretches but
does not break.
Before the spark the Kocklemans were seemingly average Americans.
Peter, the older, was an engineer. John was a computer consultant.
But the
two had always wanted to start a business together.
Theirs was not so much a spark as a lightning bolt. According to
Outside magazine, John saw his first bungee jump on the television show
“That’s Incredible.” John, whose boyhood hero was Evel Knievel,
called his
brother in 1987 and suggested they jump off the 140-foot bridge at Don
Pedro Reservoir near Yosemite. Peter agreed
and afterward called it “the
most intense thrill I’d ever had in my life.” He told Outside, “I felt like a
spider dropping into the Grand Canyon on a thread.”
It was a 140-foot spark. Well, a little less than 140 feet—the idea, after
all, was not to hit bottom. But it was a spark,
nevertheless, and a year later
John quit his job. He thought it would be a good idea to start a bungee-
jumping business. He
called Peter. “Come on, screw security,” he told his
brother. “Screw stability and upward mobility. That’s not what you’re
on
earth for—to sit there and be calm, to sit there and die slowly.”
Peter, the cautious one, was caught. It was the die slowly part. “The
saddest thing I ever saw,” he told Outside, “was the engineers [he worked
with] who had stayed 30 years beyond the time they should have gone out
and pursued a dream,
so I decided to go for it.” He opted for personal
freedom. Bungee Adventures was born.
The sport of bungee jumping, legend has it, was invented by a woman
on Pentecost Island who tricked her abusive husband into
suicide.
According to local legend, this man chased his wife to a cliff. The woman
jumped; so did he. The man fell. The woman,
who had tied vines to her
legs, had her fall stopped at the last second. From then on, in the village of
Bunlap on Pentecost
Island, the men decided it would never happen again.
All men would learn to jump as proof of manhood and, incidentally, to
ensure a good harvest of yams. One spark, and all along it was yams.
But not for the Kockleman brothers, who used the technologically
advanced bungee cords rather than vines. Their spark was
the need for total
commitment of body, soul, and mind. They prove that even the craziest
thing, if it’s something you love,
can be quite logical. Let me explain.
Bungee jumping is actually a mechanical exercise that involves many
things, including
Peter’s engineering skills. All these things must be
factored into every jump—the height of the jump, the weight of the jumper,
the length of the cords. The Kocklemans’ image of being the best is really a
result of creative logic—primal energy harnessed
to create extraordinary
events, bungee jumps.
The Kocklemans are the kings of bungee jumping and heroes of the
famous Don’t-try-this-yourself bungee-jumping sneaker commercial
for the
Reebok Pump. In three weeks the commercial was banned.
But it was an eye-catching commercial. The idea was to show how the
Pump fits snugger than an ordinary sneaker. Both brothers
stood on a
bridge. One brother pumped his Pumps. The other brother wore another
brand—no pump. They both jumped. At the end
the commercial showed the
brother with the Pumps hanging upside down from his bungee cord. And
then it showed the other cord—empty.
What it showed me, though, was two brothers making money doing
what they love. That’s what a good spark will get you.
Someone once said, “Search the parks in all the cities and you will
never find a statue of committees.” Committees do not
create sparks; they
drown them. Only an individual spawns the vision. And that’s what the
spark is, really—a vision. Without
a vision, nothing happens. Vision is not
external but internal—a mirror holds the key.
A climber I know failed on his two greatest climbs—K2 and Mt.
Everest—because at the last minute he lost conviction in himself
and his
vision. This man seemed to have everything all good climbers do—
strength, determination, and a cerebral appreciation
of nature and man’s
minute role in it.
As a challenge beyond just climbing, he decided to organize and lead
some major climbs. This is quite an involved process.
It includes fund-
raising, procuring permits, and selecting team members. It also involves
leadership—pairing up climbers,
deciding the route, and adjusting to the
inevitable surprises that occur on a major climb. It is a very tiring role.
In both of his failures the same thing happened. He had done
everything perfectly. He was well organized, and everything went
well as
his group pushed to the last camp before the final assault on the peak. But
as is always the case, conditions were
harsh. At the last moment, when all
the pieces were in place for a fine-tuned effort by a group with a singular
goal, he wavered.
He didn’t lead. Each time there was more than one
possible route to take. Rather than deciding, the leader put it up to a
vote.
Well, some people, on thinking about it, wanted to go one way. Others
wanted to go the other way. Some were shooting
for personal firsts, others
for world recognition. People were tired, tempers were short. The air was
nearly impossible to
breathe. And the leader said, “How about a vote?”
What happened should be obvious to anyone who has been through a
crisis, business or otherwise. The team fell apart. They
split up and went
their own ways. Some went back down. Those who went forward failed to
reach the peak—without teamwork and
support they were doomed to
failure.
The point is, democracy doesn’t work at 8,000 meters, and it doesn’t
work in a crisis. Sometimes you just have to tell people
exactly what to do
and they will gladly accept it. The climber who organized these climbs was
still in the decision stage
when he should have been in the action stage. He
let the group of climbers vote on two different approaches and inevitably
ended up with dissatisfied climbers who had nothing more to give when
their route wasn’t chosen. There is a difference between
management and
leadership, and there are clear points when a leader must lead.
This just further illustrates why there are no statues of committees.
This is not to say that democracy is bad. As I will
show later, it is essential
that leaders tap into the knowledge of others to be successful. However, at
some point you have
to open up and be honest. Don’t kid yourself—leading
is not easy. You have to want to be a leader or you will find the sacrifices
required are too great. Don’t take the role of a leader for its celebrity,
because if you only rise to the bait to be liked
and adored, you probably will
never want to or be capable of making tough decisions. Leaders must make
tough decisions, long
before there is certainty. A leader scrutinizes all
doubts and then, if his conviction doesn’t waver, presses on toward the
goal.
At that point the adventure accelerates.
 Morris L. West said in The Shoes of a Fisherman, “It takes so much to
be a full human being that there are few who have the enlightenment or the
courage to pay the price….
One has to abandon altogether the search for
security and reach out to the risk of living with both arms. One has to
accept
pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness
as the cost of knowing.”
Or, as John Kockelman told his brother, “Screw stability.”
Take that next step. Bill Gates, the phenomenally successful founder of
Microsoft, described his role as president of the
company as follows: “My
job is to have a vision and communicate it.”
How simple. But of course it isn’t, or the entire world would be
successful. The reason it isn’t is not that people lack visions.
All people, if
they are honest, have some visions. But so often you are told, implicitly or
explicitly, that the vision is
impossible. “Don’t try that,” others say. And if
you do, they warn you to be sure you have something to fall back on. So
often,
someone tries to drown your vision in their embalming fluid.
But you have to dig below the day-to-day bottom line of security and
analyze your life in a linear format. You know the past.
You know the
present. The future is up to you. What is it that you really want from life?
Honestly?
There is one more question: What are you going to do about it?
Robert Noyes knew. He decided early on in his career that a
nonexistent technology could be invented, and that it would be
marketable.
Noyes is generally considered the father of the semiconductor industry.
A semiconductor is what replaced the old vacuum tubes
that were in radios
and televisions. The technology has since evolved into the computer chip
and fueled high-tech industry
around the world.
Noyes was convinced that semiconductor technology could
revolutionize electronics. Beyond that, he was convinced that he was
the
one to lead the charge. His belief was based on two things: the logic from
his academic work at Stanford University and
a near-religious belief in
himself and his vision. His vision did not so much see the future as create it.
And creating the future is the reason for the spark. What good is a
great idea that dies unborn in a risk-free and terribly
bored mind? Without
the logic to make it work, an idea is useless—an intellectual miscarriage.
Every vision does not have to be a grand one on the scale of a new
industry. Small visions are equally valid. What’s important
is not the size of
the vision but the honesty of it and the commitment to it.
One of my favorite small visions came from one person within a large
company, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance. As in most
large
companies, the employees complained about the constant ringing of their
phones. Anybody who works near a phone can relate
to this problem. Just
when you get going on something—just when you get that inner roll we all
strive for—the phone rings.
After analysis, it turned out at Northwestern Mutual Life that most of
the bothersome calls were internal. This is a humorous
irony—employees
trying to get things done were keeping other employees from getting their
work done. Certainly most of the
calls were important. Still, those doing the
calling were also complaining about being called. In essence, efficiency was
hurt by employees trying to be more efficient. An unsolvable dilemma,
right? Of course not. What Northwestern Mutual Life
did was set aside one
day a week—Thursday—for no internal phone calls. If you have a question
on Thursday, hold it. Move on
to something else. Don’t bother anyone, and
no one will bother you. It worked marvelously. People were happier, and
efficiency
went way up.
This next story is great because it shows how a little ingenuity coupled
with the good fortune of being at the right place
at the right time will reap
untold rewards for someone with foresight. I have a friend who was a ski
instructor, bartender,
and construction worker in Vail when that resort first
started to grow. One of his jobs was to build the Vail jail—not much
more
than a few holding cells for those fun-loving people who got a bit too
rowdy on a Saturday night.
As he was building the jail, my friend began to contemplate his own
Saturday-night tendencies—he, like many of my friends,
had an affinity for
good times. In other words, he thought as he was laying the bricks, it
wouldn’t hurt to plan ahead. Sure
enough, not long after the jail was built
my friend managed to get himself arrested for a little Rocky Mountain
rowdiness
at a local bar. But as I said, this story is about foresight—vision,
if you will. When my friend was building the jail, he
had left one brick
loose and hidden a key to the cell behind it. By the time the sheriff got back
to the bar where he had
arrested my friend, he found my friend already
there entertaining everybody with his tale of a “daring” jail-house escape.
Another small but effective vision was that of Glen Plake. Basically,
Plake wanted to ski for a living. The problem, obviously,
was that lots of
people would like to ski for a living. Being a instructor is not very lucrative.
He aimed higher. To start
with, he went into extreme skiing—that is, skiing
out past civilization onto mountains only accessed by hiking, climbing,
or
helicopters. But a lot of people had already gotten into extreme skiing. In
fact, some were even paying money to go extreme
skiing. Plake wanted to
be paid, rather than pay.
What he did was incredibly simple—he differentiated himself. He
went visual. Instead of assuming the clean-cut, all-American
look that most
skiers go for, Plake became a sort of Sid Vicious on snow. He cut his hair
into a spiked mohawk and colored
it orange, yellow, and blue. He began to
market himself as an image of an extreme skier with character. The ski
companies,
for example K-2, loved it. They hired him for posters.
Filmmakers also found the new image incredibly attractive. He has become
a wealthy, and happy, professional skier.
Small visions, when done for the right reasons, work. And better yet,
they lead to bigger visions.
It happened to us at The North Face. In 1972 we analyzed the
company and realized that most of our sales were in the summer.
That made
sense. People do the most outdoor activities in the summer. But we wanted
to balance our business and cash flow.
We asked ourselves: What do our customers like to do in the winter?
One obvious answer was cross-country skiing. It was a
natural for those
who like to go off into the back country. But from a business perspective it
didn’t make sense. The number
of people who cross-country skied on the
West Coast, where we were located, was just too low for a major
investment. We theorized
the low number was not because of lack of
interest—people love the outdoors summer or winter. The problem was
there was nowhere
to go—people wanted easy access to a beautiful place
with trails. But on the West Coast there were no places with prepared
trails
or instructors.
Suddenly our small vision of a better wintertime cash flow became a
lot bigger. The only way to create a demand for cross-country
skis and
clothing was to actually create the market in the western United States. The
only way to do that was to get trails
built.
I was never one to go after anything but the biggest and best, so we
aimed for Yosemite National Park. We figured we needed
a setting that was
so spectacular it would almost sell itself to potential cross-country skiers.
The thousand-foot vertical
granite walls of Yosemite were a natural enticing
backdrop for what we envisioned. All we had to do was convince the park
concessionaires to develop a cross-country-skiing program. We were
excited.
Then we met them. The concessionaires thought our idea was
“intriguing,” but they rejected it. It was another committee fiasco.
We met
again—same thing. No problem, we thought. Just persevere. And we did.
Finally they relented. “Great,” they said. “Yosemite
will be glad to go ahead
with the project. Only one thing. We’d like you to do all the work.” They
wanted us to lay out the
trails, get the equipment, find the instructors, and
help promote the program. I guess they thought that would deter us. They
thought wrong. It energized us.
I worked with Dave Harvey, one of our employees. Dave is an
energetic dreamer—the kind of person who makes vision become fact.
Dave had gone to school with Johannes von Trapp, youngest son of the von
Trapp family, around whom the story The Sound of Music had been written.
When the von Trapps came to the United States after escaping the Nazis,
they opened a chalet in Stowe,
Vermont. They offered meals, entertainment
by the family, and cross-country skiing—something they had learned in
their native
Austria. The program was a success, and Johannes became a
businessman specializing in crosscountry skiing.
Through Dave, we asked Johannes to help us. He was a lifelong cross-
country skier. He was about six feet, three inches tall,
rail thin, and a sort of
philosophic mountain man. He had intelligence, experience, business savvy,
and a perfect image for
our new endeavor. Also, he knew some unemployed
potential instructors. One of them was a young man named Ned Gillette,
who
had been a member of the 1968 U.S. Olympic ski team. Remember
that name—Ned Gillette—it will come up again before I finish
this book.
Gillette’s whole life is a metaphor for what I am trying to say.
Anyway, Johannes had more to offer than just image and names. He
knew how to lay out ski trails, and he knew what the American
cross-
country skier wanted. We listened, we learned, and we started a business.
Ultimately, in fact, the winter business for
The North Face exceeded that of
the summer.
What happens when a spark hits—as it inevitably does with every
human—is that there is a choice. Take it seriously or ignore
it. At The North
Face, we took it seriously. Why not improve winter cash flow? Why can’t
cross-country skiing become popular?
Why not lay out ski trails in
Yosemite National Park? As George Bernard Shaw once said, “You see
things and say why, but I
dream of things that never were and say, why
not.”
If you take the spark seriously, it then becomes necessary to manifest
the vision. One of my favorite songs is “Teach Your
Children,” by Crosby,
Stills, Nash & Young. It begins with these words: “You, who are on the
road, must have a code that you
can live by …” A code to live by—what a
beautiful, touching concept. But it is so difficult to keep your code—to
remain true
to yourself. It becomes so easy to make little compromises—
rationalizations, if you will—because of your fear of the consequences.
But
little compromises very quickly become big compromises if you are not
careful. Put differently, if you have something
to fall back on (a little
compromise), you will fall back on it (a huge compromise).
And so there is, inevitably, a test of the vision. Are you tough enough
and true enough to stick with your vision?
I once sailed off the Adriatic coast of Yugoslavia with a ruddy-faced
captain who told some incredible stories. His name was
Ian.
Ian loved to sail. When he was younger, he told me, he didn’t have
enough money to own a boat. But still, he dreamed. His
were not idle
daydreams—he used logic to make his goal a reality. His goal was to be a
charter captain. One day while crossing
the English Channel, he saw the
boat of his dreams—a 62-foot wooden ketch. Ian turned to his wife and
instantly told her that
someday he would own that exact boat. First he had
to find out who owned the boat. It took a while, but he eventually found
the
owner. Then he had to raise funds and convince the owner to sell that
beautiful boat. Neither was an easy task. It took
him three years to raise the
money and almost as long to convince the owner to sell the boat. “So, how
do you like her?” he
asked when he finished that story. I was riding on his
dream boat.
Ian told me another story that day. On one of his early voyages across
the Atlantic—sailing from the Caribbean to England—he
encountered a
horrendous storm, with 40- to 50-foot waves. When he was down below, he
felt the boat slide down one of those
huge waves. Suddenly he heard a loud
bang—it sounded to him as if the bottom had been torn from the boat. He
was shaken. He
had an urgent pull in his stomach, and he raced to lift up the
floorboards for a look. It was frightening—what would he find?
 What he found, incredibly, was that everything was fine. The noise he
had heard was simply the engine jump starting—it was
caused by the
propeller being spun as the boat rode down the wave.
Relieved, he went up on deck to tell his wife what had happened. She
had been at the wheel. But when Ian went on deck, his
wife was nowhere to
be found. He went into a panic—at least at first. This was the one person
who shared his dream. She did
not just share the dream; she was an integral
part of it. Without her, there was no dream. She was everything. And she
apparently
had been thrown from the boat.
It was pouring. The night was pitch black. The wind was howling, the
waves were monstrous. Ian called out her name. He screamed
it. But the
night was so loud and ominous it was to no avail. He had that same urgent
pull in his stomach—only tenfold. She
was lost somewhere in the Atlantic.
Quickly logic came to the fore. Ian executed a perfect figure-eight
rescue move that sailors are taught. Then he proceeded
directly back on the
line he believed they had taken. Thirty minutes later, miraculously, he
spotted her and pulled her aboard.
She was safe! Admittedly, she had some
broken ribs and a minor case of hypothermia. But their dream was safe.
It was ten years later when he told me that story— laughing the whole
way through it. “The point is,” he said, “she still
sails with me.” His was a
religious belief in his dream—one that said risking everything is worth the
chance to get everything.
And it was backed up by a purely logical
approach to his craft—sailing. He found out how tough it could be, and he
passed
the test.
It all comes from the spark. I had a plumber come by to fix a water
leak in my house. What he did really didn’t interest me,
but it sure
interested him. His vision may have appeared small to me. But tracking his
way through a maze of pipes was to
him a fantastic way to make money.
His wasn’t a giant spark across the sky like the Kocklemans’, but it was just
as legitimate
a spark. His took the form of a short conquest—a water heater
and a set of pipes. When I looked at the plumbing, I hadn’t
a clue. He was
the man of the moment.
These are not just stories about people who were determined to be
successful, and so they were. There is a point. The reason
people are
successful is because they work to get the spark. They are not afraid to
follow it, and they are not afraid of
asking others to follow. It does not just
magically occur in some and lie dormant in others. It is, once again, a
combination
of logic and inspiration—conveyed to others with infectious
optimism. Either one without the other is bound to fall short
of a true goal.
Logic and hard work without inspiration will lead only to a tedious
existence. On the other hand, there is
nothing more wasteful than a lazy
dreamer.
Tom and Priscilla Wrubel could easily have been lazy dreamers, and
no one would have even noticed. No one, that is, except
themselves. Tom
was an architect who owned a plant store. He had a degree in architecture,
but he wasn’t satisfied with it.
The plant store was sort of a steppingstone
for him and Priscilla—not really what they wanted, but closer to it than
architecture.
They wanted to make money showing his appreciation of
nature. And they wanted to educate others to appreciate it also.
The problem with the plant store was it didn’t really help preserve
nature, and it wasn’t unique. It was basically a cookie-cutter
occupation. So
they kept thinking. What was it? What could it be that they were looking
for? Slowly the idea began to take
shape: a store that sold gifts that
celebrated nature, optics for stargazing and bird watching, blow-up
dinosaurs, gift cards
with natural settings and materials, and fossil
reproductions. They wanted to create awareness. They wanted a nice place
to
work that they could be proud to call their own. They didn’t want to
evangelize about preserving nature; they wanted people
to enjoy themselves
as they became aware. Their overall goal was commitment.
The Nature Company is now a chain of retail stores doing in excess of
$100 million a year in sales. The stores are great—a
celebration of nature,
and of the Wrubels’ vision. Water trickles and falls throughout the stores.
The walls are a light wood.
Nature tapes of wind, and rain, and animals play
through speakers. It is a deep-forest ambience. There is even dappled light,
just as you would experience walking among tall trees on a sunny day.
It would have been easy for Tom to use his architecture degree and
maintain a nice, secure life. Or he and Priscilla could
have pretended to be
satisfied by his plant shop. But they found their spark and lived by it.
It is a wonderful thing to see the physical truth of a dream that once
existed only in someone’s mind. It is a powerful, fluid
event as the thought
process works, as something great evolves and becomes reality.
I was once told the story of a window dresser for Macy’s in New York
City. The man was very good at his craft. He had earned
a reputation for
doing the most visible, the most daring, the most eye-catching displays in
the entire city. But Macy’s continued
to challenge him. It was leadership at
its best—a great talent challenged to go the extra step, from interesting to
brilliant.
This man was to do a display of Macy’s new kitchen set—a table,
chairs, china, stemware, everything. So he did. He set a beautiful
table; the
whole nine yards. I believe it even had a realistic-looking turkey on a tray.
His boss came to look at it. “That’s
great,” he said. “I like it. Really
interesting. But you know, I’d like something more. Something different. It
has the promise
of greatness. Why don’t you do it again?”
The window dresser was dumbfounded. It seemed great, he thought.
What more could he do? But he kept thinking. What more indeed?
He went
outside and looked in at the window, analyzing the perspective of the
shopper. Thinking it out, staring. Mentally
he began putting different pieces
in different places. Suddenly, exactly like a spark, it hit him. What if, he
thought, the
entire display were glued and wired together so it could be
turned on its side—suspended in air? What if the shopper walking
down the
street could look in the window at the wall and actually be looking down on
the entire display, as if from an overhead
camera?
And so it was. The table and chairs were hung on their sides. The
china, napkins, etc., were glued to the table. And the display
was incredible.
That’s how it is where logic meets religion—hard work becomes the
stuff of genius. You don’t have to be a genius to be a genius.
You just have
to want it badly enough, and you can’t be deterred by criticism. You have to
be an 800-pound gorilla in a 100-pound
world.
One such person was Howard Head. An aircraft engineer during World
War II, Head became fascinated with skiing in 1947. It
was a fun sport, but
Head wanted more. He was frustrated by the immobility of the heavy
wooden skis, and he was certain he
could make better skis.
Aluminum! That was the answer. The spark came in an instant. The
skis took a while to design. Quite a while. He had a number
of problems
with the prototypes. But he kept thinking about aluminum skis—skiing on
aluminum skis—having all his colleagues
at such places as Tuckerman’s
Ravine test his prototype aluminum skis. The spark was ever constant.
When he finally perfected aluminum skis, Head Ski flourished.
Another one of those “overnight” successes—it took years. At
one point
Head captured more than 70 percent of the market. But sparks sometimes
fade or are replaced by other sparks, and
in Head’s case it was the latter—
the even newer spark of fiberglass skis.
Head Ski faltered, and the investors panicked. Head was edged out and
replaced by a committee, a professional management team
conspiculously
devoid of industry knowledge. A familiar story. The management team
purged the company of the knowledgeable
people Howard Head had
assembled to carry out his vision. Head Ski, under its new management, lost
more market share. Five
years later none of the new management team was
around. They were off helping other companies with the experience they
had
gained at the expense of Head. Head was sold to AMF.
What of Howard Head, who had been branded nothing more than an
entrepreneur despite meteoric success? At the age of 60 he
took up tennis
and never looked back. A new spark hit him, and a new adventure
commenced. He became determined to build a
better tennis racket and took
over Prince. He was frustrated by the shots he “just missed,” so he designed
the world’s first
oversize tennis racket. Once again he revolutionized an
industry. He became a leader again and proved his leadership skills,
which
finally culminated in a highly profitable sale of the company to
Cheeseborough-Ponds.
Sparks are not just for the young, but they are born of the energy of
youth. They are the fluid essence of adventure, and
if you follow them in
their truest state, they will lead you not just to success, but to
understanding.
 4

TESTING THE SPARK:

Eye to Eye with Those You Love

Helen Thayer imagined the crunch. It would sound like a chomp on a

frozen chocolate bar with nuts, maybe. Or perhaps there
would be more of a
hollow crackle, like large crickets squished underfoot—in an empty
gymnasium. Cccc-rrrrr-uuuuuuunch!
The bear had lain in wait behind a 30-foot mound of ice in the Arctic
Circle. Thayer was on a sled behind a dog named Charlie.
Suddenly the
bear lurched from behind the mound. It was huge—bigger than a
skyscraper, with wide, furry limbs and massive,
angry teeth. It roared.
Thayer backed away slowly. It slapped her sled. She was in awe. It just
tossed the sled over with
a wave of its paw.
“In that moment [when she first saw the bear] I realized that all I knew
meant nothing,” she told Ms. magazine. “I learned that in the face of that
magnificent, killing creature, my gun might as well have been a toothpick
and
that I was no more important than the tiniest speck of snow. I knew if
he got my head in his mouth, there’d be a very loud
crunch.”
She was on the last legs of her journey when she ran into the bear. She
was returning from becoming the first woman to ever
go solo to the
magnetic North Pole. This bear was not the first she had run into on the trip.
But it was the meanest.
She had no choice but to unleash Charlie. Charlie was a gift, a bullish,
black husky-Newfoundland mix given to her just before
she took off on the
trip. He was a brave, loyal friend—a cunning, tundra-wise scout raised on
Cornwallis Island in Canada’s
Northwest Territories by an Inuit polar bear
hunter. A dog raised by a polar bear hunter; Charlie turned out to be a most
wonderful gift.
 It was when Thayer was thinking about the crunch that Charlie made
his move. Charlie used his speed to get at the legs of
the bear. Charlie bit
and danced. The bear became confused. Charlie held on. The bear spun
around, reaching to slap Charlie
as it had the sled. But Charlie was quicker,
holding on and spinning faster. Around and around they went. Thayer stared
as
it all moved in front of her in the slow motion of urgency. Each heartbeat
seemed to take hours, yet it went so fast.
Finally the bear freed himself, and Charlie took off running. The bear,
who moments earlier had been staring at Thayer as
if she were dinner at the
Ritz, took off after Charlie.
She blinked.
They were gone. Charlie and the bear. Barking and growling and
racing over the tundra, just like two wild animals in the wilderness.
The barking and growling disappeared. Thayer waited. A minute, two.
Five minutes, ten—nothing. She stood, breathing. Thinking.
She was
forcing her will on events out of sight, beyond control. Charlie will be back.
Charlie will be back, she told herself.
A half hour later Charlie finally reappeared. He was panting. His coat
was sweaty, even in the Arctic cold. But he was happy—his
tail wagged.
Thayer knew the bear was gone, and the two of them, woman and dog,
breathed in the air like champagne.
They had transcended the barrier that divides humans from animals.
They had connected. Each had bought into the vision of
a joint quest to the
magnetic North Pole. Officially the 27-day journey over 345 miles of bleak
landscape was the first-ever
solo effort by a woman. But Thayer knows
better. Solo? Hell no; she did it with Charlie.
Friendship is not something to be taken lightly in the world of
adventuring. Likewise, connections should not be taken lightly
in the world
of business, or in any world. The friendship of a human and a dog can
accomplish great things. Imagine the potential
of a human-to-human
connection.
When I was 18, I had a 3.9 grade-point average and an opportunity to
play football on scholarship for the local Spokane community
college. I had
also been accepted at Stanford—no scholarship. At the community college I
would be a star quarterback. I knew
that. At Stanford, I could try out for the
team. I was five foot eight. I was fast, and I had a pretty good arm. But I
was
five foot eight.
 What to do? Well, accepting a scholarship was out of the question in
my proud and well-to-do family. But still, I could be
a star. From day one I
wanted to be a pro athlete. I wanted to be really good at something. I didn’t
like mediocrity. And
the easiest, clearest picture of excelling is in athletics.
One night, when I was out having some beers with a friend of mine in
the mountains around Spokane, she looked right at me
and told me the
nicest thing anyone had ever said up to that point. “You stupid shit,” she
said. “You have an opportunity
to go to Stanford, one of the best schools in
the country, and you’re thinking of throwing it away so you can be a star for
two more years.” She was one of my best friends. Not a girlfriend. A friend.
“You’re out of your mind,” she said. “You’re never going to play
football professionally, and to pass up that opportunity
is crazy.”
Generally I listen to my friends when I feel a true connection. Advice
without a friendship is not a connection. It has an
ulterior motive.
When my friends talk, it may take a while to reach me, because always
I trust my instinct first. But I’ve tried my best to
avoid a personal Vietnam
where I made a decision and followed it so blindly that I trusted no one.
When somebody you love
is telling you something from his or her own
heart and not trying to sell you a bill of goods, you hear it. You may not
agree,
but it definitely comes into play.
When I sold The North Face, the advice of friends was quite helpful.
Selling was a tremendously difficult decision. I had
spent 20 years building
it, and I felt there were hundreds of things left to accomplish. It was like
one of my children. But
finances were thin, and I needed to raise quite a bit
of money to finance the growth I planned. In addition, one of my ex-
employees,
whom I had fired, was a shareholder. This man had a personal
vendetta against me. He fabricated things about me and the company
when
talking to other shareholders. He wanted to get the company sold—
probably more for his ego than economics. He even suggested
to some that
once I was gone, he would be a perfect replacement. On that point no one
took him seriously—his subpar record
from working in the company was
well known.
But it was tumultuous. A dissident minority spearheaded by this self-
serving ex-employee wanted out of the company. It was
them or me. Either
I bought them out and financed the growth, or they would sell their shares
to someone undesirable. We held
board meetings constantly—full of
intrigue and uncertainty. But I had a narrow majority on my side, and I
arranged financing
for the buy out and for our planned growth from a
variety of sources (banks, foreign partners, personal funds, etc.). Finally
I
was in a position to execute the buy out. But the whole situation bothered
me. I was borrowing all the money. I had to guarantee
everything. If,
somehow, things didn’t work out, I would be personally bankrupt and a lot
of my friends would lose their jobs.
The risk didn’t bother me—at least no more than usual. Risk, after all,
is risk. Interest rates could go up, the economy could
go bad. The risk was
there. The challenge didn’t bother me—I was ready to take it on, and I was
ready to take on the ex-employee
with the personal vendetta. But something
was wrong. I knew it, but I wouldn’t admit it. I couldn’t put it into words.
Something,
just something.
At this point I talked to four of my directors, all personal friends. Each
approached me at different times. They said it
differently, but each had a
common theme: “You don’t look like you’re having fun anymore,” they
said. “Why bother with the
additional debt and with restructuring the
company? Why not get out and move on to something you can enjoy?”
There it was. I had always told myself I would get out when it was no
longer fun. My friends were right. The connection clarified
everything. The
fun was gone. Too many negatives had gone into the buy out, too many new
worries had been added. I thought
long and hard. In many ways it hurt to
sell the company. But I took a deep breath, and I did it. I never looked back.
I went
skiing with my family.
Listening, rather than blindly going about your own course, is
extremely important. If you are an evolving individual, you
must be
adaptable. You have to have an ego check to understand whether a goal is
more ego driven than reality driven. Ego,
after all, can be blinding. From
perspective comes knowledge, and no one has a corner on knowledge.
It is important to know the perspective of the person offering advice.
For instance, someone who went through the Depression
has a completely
different mind-set from those generations born since the 1930s. But just as
important as their life perspective
is their perspective to you. The people to
trust are those you love and those who love you. Some would say it is best
to trust
only those who have nothing to gain by giving you advice—the
people who think more about you than their image or their job.
But often it
is also important to test your ideas with those they affect most—those
whose lives are riding on your decisions.
In business it is important to test
ideas with friends completely outside the company as well as employees
and family. If
you can make a connection with those giving the advice, the
input is invaluable.
Ralph Keeney is one of the world’s foremost authorities on decision
analysis, yet when faced with a major decision affecting
his own life, he
found it very important to test the spark—to assign values to the wants,
needs, and aspirations in his life.
Keeney has taught at Harvard, Stanford,
and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has worked all over the
world. He
also does regular consulting for government and business on
critical decision making. His is a rational, reasoned approach.
And so it was when he was offered an attractive, tenured professorship
at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
At first glance it
had everything, both economic and professional rewards. But there was
another part of his life equally
important—his personal life. His wife, Janet
Beach, is a very successful marketing executive, having been in charge of
marketing
at such companies as Levi Strauss and U.S. Sprint.
When Keeney was offered the job at USC, his wife had recently
formed her own company in San Francisco, called U.S. Marketing
Services.
They also had a young son and a spectacular apartment in San Francisco
overlooking all the bridges.
What to do? Keeney treated the issue like all the other decisions he
analyzes. He put together a matrix of all the factors
affecting the decision
from his perspective and weighted them according to his values. Then he
tested the spark. He went to
Janet—who certainly had a vested interest in
his decision. He asked her to also give her input. He logically expressed it
and systematically plugged it into his matrix. She wanted to stay in San
Francisco. He wanted the job. A dilemma, right?
Not really. They talked. They weighed their lives, their individual
goals, and their shared goals. They thought about options
and came up with
a workable answer—he would accept the job, but only if he could do his
work from San Francisco. They wouldn’t
move, and he wouldn’t commute.
He had a young son he wanted to spend time with, and he didn’t want to
tear Janet away from
her business—and he liked San Francisco too. He
thought about such an arrangement from USC’s perspective and created
ways
to contribute his share to meeting the university’s goals. They
presented their conclusion to USC. Different as it was, the
school accepted
it.
 It was their friendship that made such a solution possible. If either one
had been blind to the other’s goals, it could have
caused difficulties. But
they analyzed the problem. They looked at it from the perspective of each.
And they were honest.
They recognized that they have both dual goals and
separate goals. Each was supportive on both counts.
Once I was skiing at Vail with a lot of notables from the ski industry.
Somehow I ended up in a group of former racers, downhill-speed-skiing
record holders and Olympic hopefuls. They took off down the hill, leaving
me in a swirl of powder. I was apprehensive, but
I took off after them. As I
was picking my way down the hill I noticed they had stopped about halfway
down to wait for me.
Until then I had been skiing at a relaxed pace, picking my line down
the hill, and looking for soft snow to turn on, skiing
conservatively. But
seeing them waiting for me fired my competitive juices. I hated being left
behind. I wanted to prove something.
Boy, did I. I had this vision—I was
going to show them. Instead of carefully skiing down to where they were, I
would give
it my all, let it go as it were, and fly past them as they stood
impressed by my skills. Oh, to dream.
But life is often a bit different. I took off, all right. Zoom! I was flying.
But just as I approached them, I started to
rethink it. The seven metal pins
in my left leg from a prior skiing accident flashed into my mind. I was an
adequate skier;
they were the best. Not a good idea, I thought. Slow down. I
edged my skis into the hill, turning right. I did it at the wrong
time. My
downhill ski caught on a hard mogul and I was thrown in the air. I did a flip
and, incredibly, landed upright on
my skis. I came to a stop right in front of
the group. I looked at them, acting as if I had planned the entire thing. I
thought
I had them fooled. Yeah, I thought, I can fit in with these people.
One of my friends skied up to me. He put his hand on my shoulder and
pulled me away from the group. “You’re in way over your
head,” he said,
stating the obvious. “Why don’t you just free-ski down the hill by yourself?
It will probably be best for
all of us.”
I could’ve continued the but-I-planned-the-flip act. But I didn’t. He
was being honest. He was my friend. And he was right.
Friends do not
falsely encourage you any more than they falsely discourage you. Friends
connect with you and tell you the
truth. They help you winnow fact from
fiction.
 Friends tell you when you are going wrong. When you go right, a
friend is there and supports you. Friendship is the nature
of life. An absolute
connection like that of Helen Thayer and her dog, Charlie, can create
magical moments of self-realization.
A friendship is something to test the
spark. If a friend truly has your interests at heart, nine times out of ten the
friend,
like Charlie, will affirm the vision.
It takes a tremendous understanding of reality to know when a friend
with a concern about your vision may be right. The friend
may or may not
share your vision, but the true friend always understands even if he or she
disagrees. True friends tell the
truth.
The faith, trust, and eye-to-eye honesty of friendship is an absolute
necessity for success. Concrete goals are fine, but
they must be balanced by
abstract rewards. As life moves on, you have to savor those rewards—they
are the nutrients of the
soul. They inspire you to tackle the seemingly
quixotic challenges of leadership.
These rewards are like the feeling you get when you see a baby for the
first time, or when you kiss your lover or sink a 20-foot
putt. Such a reward
is an intoxication of spirit—a joyful tattoo on the soul.
Those connections are a power source, like an electrical outlet that
works both ways—both giving and receiving energy. It
is that way for
Helen Thayer and Charlie.
It is also that way, only more so, for Thayer and her husband, Bill.
They are both adventurers. Theirs is not a one-way street.
It is not as if one
acts out dreams and the other supports those. They both go on adventures—
sometimes together, and sometimes
alone. They both dream, they both
support, they both give and take energy. It is like perpetual motion, this love
of theirs,
giving more energy than it takes away—and it takes away plenty.
Adventuring, after all, is not for the meek.
Another connection pursued by Thayer is one many adventurers
pursue. Far too few companies, however, recognize this type of
pursuit as
an enormous opportunity. It is an immeasurable loss for those that don’t
pursue these connections.
For her next expedition Thayer is planning to give something back in
the form of a huge connection. Adventurers often do give
something back,
with articles and speeches. But her next adventure, to ski to the magnetic
North Pole, will be much more.
With a satellite linkup the Thayers (both
will go on this adventure) will transmit progress of their trip daily to 100
schools
in 40 countries. They will collect samples for scientific research,
and students will be able to see the data. On their return
all expedition
equipment, in addition to slides and videos, will go into classrooms
nationwide. The couple will also lecture
at schools across the country.
The Thayers have recognized a basic truism of life: Giving is better
than receiving. Sure, it’s a cliché. But it is applicable
and proven. A huge
connection is what makes a mind-set, a symphony—a religion. It works,
especially in business. It brings
prosperity—for the wallet and the soul.
The cold-fish, impersonal training of MBAs and lawyers doesn’t work
anymore. Long revered in business circles, the detached
executive and
antiseptic style of management is obsolete. Maybe it worked for short-term
money. Maybe it worked in a fascist
system that never recognized the toll
of wasted potential and shattered lives. Over the long run it never really
worked, not
in a way that could ally itself with basic humanity.
A company must recognize that success is not about products; it’s
about people. People determine a company’s success. People,
after all,
make the products. To care for people is to care about what they do—to
understand their psyche, to move beyond
business into the realm of
humanity.
Recognizing the soul of a company is one thing. Acting on this and
making sure it is inculcated into every individual is another.
Vision equals
cause.
At The North Face in 1987 we had a problem—disposal of discounted
product and seconds. The traditional method of dealing with
such excess
was to discount it, offer it to dealers, and hope. Hope someone would take it
off our hands and that it would
not too adversely impact on our profit
margins.
My vice president of retail, Tom Applegate, came to me with a better
idea: Hold a retail sale of the excess and give all the
profits to the AIDS
cause. It was a fabulous idea, one a detached executive could never back.
Give profits away? How radical.
Giving to AIDS in 1987 was even more
radical. Homophobes even within our company fought against the sale. Plus
some employees
are always awful fearful of unorthodox thinking. Many
companies use disagreements as an excuse to do nothing. We certainly
had
disagreement, but I had to decide if the company would take a stand.
We had four goals. We wanted to raise public AIDS awareness by
advertisements, teach people that the illness could strike
virtually anyone,
increase awareness within our company, and also move merchandise to
clear out our warehouse. The cynical
would look at that last goal as our
only goal. The cynical would be wrong.
At the time AIDS was shunned by most of society as strictly a
homosexual disease, which it is not. Applegate reasoned, and
he was right,
that if the rugged image of The North Face got behind the cause of AIDS
awareness, we could accomplish all four
goals.
We sold almost $1 million worth of goods at a profit, which we
donated. But even more important, from a business standpoint,
was that we
gained the loyalty and respect of a lot of customers. It was another way of
getting people to identify with The
North Face. It was our way of
identifying with ourself. I had people at the cash registers ask if I could find
more things
for them to buy. They wanted to help out. What meant the most
to me, though, was the reaction of my employees. For numerous
reasons—
the adventures we sponsored, the quality we created, the camaraderie of the
group—our employees always identified
with our company. After the
benefit I heard my favorite words in the world: “You know, Hap,” I was
told by numerous employees,
“I’m proud to work for The North Face.”
Depending on a company’s orientation and type of business, less
controversial issues could be used as a rallying point. In
1987 the AIDS
issue was controversial. However, I felt good about taking such a stand. Not
only was it right; it gave our
company an image that made us all proud.
Controversy is not bad. It can be great if you are right. The world is
full of controversy. Remember, lots of people are on
the “wrong” side of
issues. If you don’t stand for something, you stand for nothing.
It is possible to avoid controversial issues and still get involved.
McDonald’s, for instance, has done a wonderful job with
the Special
Olympics as well as with their support of the Ronald McDonald foundation
for children with critical illnesses.
General Mills and the Rockefeller family
have put together great art collections that are shown around the country.
Mobil
and Exxon have for years sponsored public television because
executives at those companies realize that caring builds business.
People don’t want faceless companies. They want something to
identify with, and when they find a company that they relate
to, they will
gladly wear a T-shirt splashing the company’s name across the front and
back—advertising at no cost the good
deeds of that company. If people care
about what you care about and vice versa, you have made at the very least a
visceral
connection.
The public is becoming aware of issues, voting with their pocketbooks.
Just look at the environmentalist movement, which is
gaining strength
around the world. Anita Roddick, managing director of the 620-store Body
Shops, understands this. She also
understands that a company can make a
difference in the world, and she is among a growing list of entrepreneurs
who are using
their financial prowess to change things for the betterment of
society.
Although she sells cosmetics, she appeals less to her customers’ vanity
than to their concern for the environment and social
issues. Hers is a green
machine, a capitalistic engine rolling forth for causes such as Amnesty
International, the rain forest,
and recycling.
Capitalism and liberal causes can coexist, just as a business life and a
nonbusiness life can. In fact, if one is to be successful,
it is imperative to
have one life, not two.
Unfortunately many businesspeople have divided their business life
from the rest of their life. Many think of themselves as
compassionate and
caring individuals, even when the companies they lead are not. It is an
attempt at a moral separation. It
never works.
And many have also separated their private life from their business
life. Nothing is worse—it sends a message that at work
it is okay not to
care. Those who attempt to justify the dichotomy—say they split their
shoddy business practices from their
private lives so as not to poison their
home environment. But the concept of separation in reality creates a
quagmire with
no escape. It just gets deeper.
A lot of wealthy fat cats seem quite content despite their shoddy
business dealings. But you cannot somehow count only part
of your life on
your moral scorecard. It all counts—the good, the bad, and the ugly. If your
company is polluting the world
yet you recycle at home, are you really
making a difference? Yes, unfortunately you sure are.
A private and business life also must be one because each must make
sacrifices to the other. They can be nurturing partners
or cannibalistic.
From a business standpoint you must integrate your private and
business life so you can viscerally know your people and they
know you. If
you want to lead them to greatness, you must be more than a cardboard
cutout to them. Only in that way can you
make that magical connection and
deal with them on a basis of personal understanding.
Lute Jerstad was the second American to climb Mt. Everest. The story
of how he made the final assault is a testament to trust.
As he sat in the final camp before the summit, he was tired, and he
lacked oxygen. That night he tried to sleep, but it was
nearly impossible.
The wind whistled by his tent. He was cold, his bones ached like bad
weather, and he was anxious to get
to the peak. After all, this was Everest!
But the air was thin, and his movements and thinking were sluggish.
He gave up on sleep and decided to melt snow over his
gas stove for water
to stave off dehydration. He turned on the jet of his gas stove, but then his
mind wandered. Eventually
he looked back at the stove and thought to light
it.
Jerstad was lucky. He lived through the explosion of fumes that had
filled his tent. But it was a horrible explosion and he
was temporarily
blinded.
Most people would have given up the climb and just felt lucky to be
alive. Most would have sought medical help below. Not
Jerstad. This was
Everest. He had to make the top.
He pleaded with his Sherpa guide and explained he was blind but
strong. “I can make it if you can help,” he said. He let out
his soul—“this
means so much,” he said. The guide agreed, and Jerstad put his trust
completely in the Sherpa. Jerstad made
it to the top of Everest alongside
him. When they were at the peak, the Sherpa pulled out a movie camera and
he and Jerstad
filmed the view, filmed each other, and filmed the
accomplishment.
Later, after descending the mountain, Jerstad’s vision returned. He
watched the film, reveling once again in the conquest.
Trust. It’s an easy word to say, a tough thing to gain. It takes honesty.
Jerstad knew the guide was no mere employee helping
him toward a
personal goal. The guide was his ticket to a dream, and in essence the
difference between life and death.
Great things are never the result of legal contracts. Human connections
make for great things.
Debbie and Mark Ferrari do great things. In the summer she’s a
cocktail waitress. He works in a salami factory. Their connection
is to each
other and to the undersea world of South Pacific humpback whales. The
Ferraris, with no formal scientific training,
while swimming among the
gigantic whales, have gathered startling information on mother and calf
behavior, group behavior,
male aggression, and sex identification. By
following the gentle humpbacks year after year, they have stunned the
world of
marine science.
They connected with each other to work toward the goal of studying
the animals, and they connected with the whales themselves
to make their
research more insightful than mere numbers and graphs. Just like Thayer
and Charlie, the Ferraris prove a connection
can be across species.
But the greatest connection one can have is with family. Family is not
necessarily blood relations; it is soul connections.
The people you share
your life with are family. In business your family must understand and
support your passion for greatness.
They must be excited. Otherwise they
are a drag to it, and it to them.
Just as you must let your employees feel part of your family, you must
let your family feel part of your business. Balance
is the key to life.
I’m lucky. I’m in the adventuring business, and that is an easy, fun, and
exciting thing to share with my family. Rather than
tell someone you love
about what you do, it is better to let them experience a part of it. It goes
beyond the intellectual
into the physical and emotional. Even if it doesn’t
generate the same feeling for them, it’s important for them to understand
it.
My family has skied together, flown in hot-air balloons, gone white-
water rafting through the Grand Canyon, and explored ancient
ruins in the
jungles and backcountry of Peru and Guatemala.
My family also worked often at The North Face, helping out, attending
functions, and acting as a sounding board. But that
was the commercial
side. There was another side I wanted them to experience—the spirit of
adventuring.
When my children, Kelly and Matt, were in grade school (they are
now both adults), we took them to the Mayan ruins in Tikal,
deep in the
jungles of Guatemala. There was my wife, Margot, my children, myself,
and our best friends, the Deweys.
We flew in a battered old DC-3. It was an hour flight of green
monotony—a Central American jungle canopy that went on like
a great
ocean. Suddenly out of nowhere, we saw the Tikal pyramids—200 feet
high, cast of stone. Two of them. We began shouting.
The flight was rough
and noisy, but we were more so. And then it got even better. The pilot, a
Guatemalan with two-day’s growth
of beard, turned the plane almost
sideways and we flew between the two peaks. It was incredible, as if we
had just discovered
Tikal ourselves.
When we landed, one of the plane’s tires blew out. The pilot smiled
and said something like, “Still got three more.”
Dust swirled until the propellers stopped. We looked outside—bright
and oppressive, as if under a magnifying glass.
We went out, merged together into a family trying new things with the
warmth of an old movie. My family’s hotel room was small,
8 by 8 feet,
and the four of us became very close. The four Deweys had rented the other
room in the hotel. In essence, together
we had rented the whole hotel. The
entire experience had a rhythm, an easy cadence of warm familiarity. Deep
below that it
had a shout for joy—a great foundation for family.
We explored, basking in the moment. For three days we climbed ruins,
went into temples, read hieroglyphics, and solved the
mysteries of life. The
conversation was mystic, speculation on the past and the future.
We saw monkeys, birds, and trees. We saw each other. We connected.
In the plane on the flight out my daughter, Kelly, turned
to me. “That’s
incredible, what you do for a living,” she said. “That’s fun.”
 5

JUMPING OFF THE FENCE:

Any Decision Is Better Than No Decision

There we were on the Zambezi River between Zimbabwe and Zambia. It

was a beautiful day. The sun was up, and we were in the
midst of some of
the most spectacular scenery in the world.
We were at work. Every year, rather than hire an agency to shoot the
photographs for our catalog, we would bring some employees
to an outpost
of the world and shoot it ourselves. It was a great chance to save money,
test our products, and have fun.
There were eight of us that day who were going to run the Zambezi, a
river that had only been run for the first time six months
before. My group
of four went ahead. We plotted our strategy.
First, we decided on a marker rock—something to give us a sense of
direction. We then decided on a direction. The middle of
the river looked
fairly safe, but there were some large boulders on either side that could
cause serious havoc. Off we went,
laughing and whooping giddily—gliding
and flying over waves. Our boat folded, twisted, and dropped as we crashed
forward.
This was serious. Each of us became silent, a mantra of frightened
concentration.
Warm spray slapped our faces—a real blow but nevertheless a
welcome bath in the equatorial heat. And every few seconds we
checked for
the marker rock. No problem; we were on course.
When we finished that section of the run, falling back in laughter and
satisfaction, we waited for the next group. They just
shot out. No direction.
Off they went toward the huge boulders along the side. “Stroke!” I
yelled from shore. But no. They were frozen. They were
headed straight at
disaster. They seemed paralyzed. They had failed to make a decision, and so
the river took over. It took
the raft and slammed it against a huge rock. The
raft was almost vertical, and we held our breath. For an instant we couldn’t
move, and neither could they.
And then it flipped. A most amazing sight. The raft just flew up in the
air, and people were thrown off it like play-school
figures. We instantly
mobilized.
“Rescue!” we all started yelling. “Rescue!” We shoved off and started
to row toward the center of the river.
For a moment the only thing visible was the bottom of the raft. Heads
popped up, but then we couldn’t see them.
We cut across the river, fighting the current. The current brought the
other boat to us. Frantically we tried to count the
swimmers. “There’s one!
There’s another! I got him, I got him! Hold on!”
And then, “There are two missing!” Screaming, cursing, praying.
“Even if the river sucked them down, they should be up by
now!” someone
yelled.
Finally it hit us. The raft. “Look under the raft!”
We dove in. And, thankfully, there they were. Safe, in a little cover of
oxygen, under the raft.
When we finally reached shore, we realized what had just happened—
life at its purest. We sat back, popped open some cold beers,
and lit up a big
old joint of Mountain Thunder, which is what they call the marijuana down
there—for good reason, I might
add—and just savored existence. For all of
its terror, that experience made the trip worth it. There is something about
flirting
with death that I have always loved. You feel the nerves on the
outside of your body. You tingle.
In an odd way, I suppose, that is why we do these things. In retrospect
I would rather my friends had chosen the same line
we did—in fact, any
line was better than letting the river dictate to them as it did. The Zambezi,
after all, is exciting
enough without mistakes. But sometimes you just have
to make mistakes. You have to make a decision and then react from there.
You have to jump.
Even if you don’t make a decision, you’ve made a decision. Just
because you stand still doesn’t mean the world does—time,
like the river
above, marches on at its ever-steady pace. And as specific events unfold,
time sometimes seems to pick up speed.
This acceleration of time is relative
to the amount of stress associated with any particular upcoming event. If a
deadline
is approaching and your mind is stuck in the vapor lock of
indecision, time seems to move even faster. If a crisis occurs,
there is no
time to analyze. It is time for action, particularly if you are the leader. To
those stuck on the fence the paralysis
is painful in its clarity.
Rick LeMoine could have been stuck on the fence. The truth was, he
was stuck in a hurricane. Rick is the owner of Kenyon’s
Market, a
convenience store on Cape Cod. In August 1991, at the height of the tourist
season—and with the national senior
Babe Ruth World Series taking place
in Rick’s hometown, Falmouth (thus even more tourists than usual)—
Hurricane Bob took a
nasty turn north from the Caribbean on a dead-eye
path for Cape Cod.
Traditionally most hurricanes, as Cape Codders know, begin off the
coast of Africa and then sputter harmlessly around the
Atlantic Ocean.
Occasionally they slam into the islands of the Caribbean. At worst they hit
the southeastern United States—no
farther north than the Carolinas. Bob
knew nothing of tradition.
And so on Saturday, two days before the hurricane hit, Rick first heard
of its existence and the probability that it was coming
north. So did every
other store owner.
On Sunday, Rick did what everyone did. He taped up his windows to
protect the glass from shattering in the expected high winds.
News of the
hurricane also caused panic buying from the customers.
On Monday morning, when it was apparent that the hurricane was on a
direct course for the Cape, Rick knew it was time to mobilize.
This was a
crisis. He talked to his partner, who owned another store nearby, about
buying a generator. The cost was $1,200.
His partner told him he was crazy
to spend that kind of money when there was no guarantee the power would
even go off. But
Rick had a hunch.
He made a decision and bought the generator, and he bought and filled
nine gas cans. Then he gave an electrician friend a
case of beer, and the
friend wired the generator into Rick’s lights. It was a small generator—it
couldn’t handle his beer,
ice cream, or milk coolers, but it could light three
aisles in his store. Those lights would allow him to remain open.
The hurricane hit as scheduled, packing winds of up to 110 miles per
hour. Trees were downed everywhere. Water swelled. One
sailboat even
slammed into the front porch of someone’s waterfront house. And, of
course, the power went out.
 Rick’s biggest concern was the perishable items in the store—ice
cream, frozen meat, and so on. At noon on Monday, at the
height of the
hurricane, he took all the ice cream from his store to one of the local
schools, which was being used as a shelter.
While other stores were
watching their ice cream melt, Rick was making points with the community.
Unlike most other stores, Rick’s store closed for only two hours—just
so that Rick could check on the status of his own home.
When the hurricane
passed at about 5 p.m., Rick called a local ice company. He knew that
power was out, meaning refrigerators
weren’t working. Thus, ice. He made
a decision, asking the ice company to bring all the ice they had to his store.
He was
told the ice company had plenty of ice, but not enough gas for their
trucks to make it to his store and back. Rick made another
decision. He was
friends with the owner of a local construction firm that had a generator to
run their gas pumps. He arranged
to fuel up the ice trucks at the
construction firm.
The ice truck stayed in his parking lot, running its internal freezer. At
one point Monday evening 150 people were in the
Kenyon’s parking lot
waiting to buy ice. That night he sold 3,800 bags of ice. On a busy day in
the summer he averages 300
bags.
He did another thing too. Unlike the owners of many stores that
somehow managed to get ice, he left his price the same. There
were so
many people without power that in some locations, Rick heard, people were
paying 50 cents just for a small scoop of
ice. Even the ice company told
him to raise his price. But he figured he was still making a profit; there was
no reason to
gouge. He knew he was in the grocery business, and the
community, for the long haul.
When it was over, despite closing for two hours, the store had had its
most profitable day. At the same time it had made a
mark as one that
doesn’t gouge and is responsible to the community.
Tuesday was even better. With all of his frozen hot dogs, hamburger,
and sausages thawing quickly, Rick made another decision.
He brought the
gas grill from home and put it right outside his store. Initially it was to feed
his employees. But as soon
as he fired it up, a line of customers formed. It
didn’t end until all of his frozen meats were sold.
The milk company on Cape Code traditionally makes its biggest run of
the week on Tuesday. But the Tuesday after the hurricane
the milk truck
couldn’t sell any milk because the power was out to run any store coolers.
The truck arrived at Kenyon’s Market
hours earlier than normal. Kenyon’s
was the last stop of the day, and the driver told Rick no one had bought
anything from
him. He expected Rick to say the same. But Rick had a better
idea.
“Let me have your whole truck,” Rick said.
The driver didn’t understand. Rick explained. “Let me keep your truck
on my lot and we can sell milk right out of it. After
all, you have nowhere
to go and your truck is refrigerated.” Rick had to call the executives of the
milk company, and they
agreed.
Rick made another decision. He called the local radio station, which by
Tuesday was the Cape’s only link with the world. The
station was into full
hurricane coverage. It was so detailed, in fact, that hardly anybody in
Falmouth knew anything about
the short-lived coup in the Soviet Union,
which was occurring the same week. So Rick told the station that he had a
milk truck
in his lot. The station, ignoring the Soviet coup, told its listeners
about the Kenyon’s milk truck numerous times on Tuesday.
It was yet
another coup—a public relations coup.
Tuesday was even busier than Monday. In a crisis, with most
competitors shut down and losing perishables, Rick LeMoine flourished.
Sure, Rick lost some goods too. But not half of what he could have lost if
he hadn’t made some quick decisions. And even with
some of the losses—
for example, the ice cream—the image of the store profited. And the tills of
the store profited too—it
was the most profitable two days in the history of
the store. Rick showed why, especially in crisis, any decision is better
than
no decision.
Three days after the hurricane some men from the power company
were working near Kenyon’s to get the power restored. As it
turned out,
some areas of the Cape lost power for seven days. But it was not to be for
Rick. He walked out to talk to the
men, who were packing up to go
elsewhere. There was still no power at Kenyon’s. “Where are you going?”
asked Rick.
To another part of town, he was told. They had been called by
management. There was something more urgent.
“But how long would it take to get power on at Kenyon’s?” he asked.
About a half hour, he was told. They started to walk to the truck.
“How about a case of beer for each man if you do it now?” he asked.
Rick pleaded his case. Ten minutes later the power at
Kenyon’s was on, and
he gave each of them a case of beer.
The first thing Rick did after that was drive to his partner’s store to
loan him the generator.
Vapor lock is caused by fear. Fear of failure. Fear of the unknown.
Fear of the known. But decisiveness is the mark of a leader.
By creating
action where there is inaction, a leader leads rather than wallows. A leader
radiates confidence, and confidence
is decisive.
There is a saying: Lead, follow, or get out of the way. It’s a good
saying. Make a decision. What’s it going to be—yes or
no? Even worse
than the word “no” is no decision. Leaders need to say “yes” more, but even
a “no,” if done quickly, can be
a motivator. The absence of decision is
always negative—it reeks of fear.
Goethe said, “What you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness
has a genius, power, and magic in it.” Boldness. Urgency.
You cannot take
1,000 steps without taking the first one.
Fear of failure is in essence fear of risk. John Lennon wrote, “Life is
what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”
If you are always
planning, you are never doing. At some point you have to jump.
In some things, especially in the realm of adventuring, risk can appear
to be no more than educated lunacy. Climbing Mt. Everest,
for instance,
may seem so, but climbers know what they’re doing. It’s still risky, but if
the spark of genius hits you and
you have tested it, you have to follow it. Or
you have to let it go and move on to something else. One of the two—no
middle
ground.
The anxiety and agitation of tense muscles and even tenser brain tissue
can only hold for so long. At some point with indecision
it all explodes, and
you cease being human with human emotions.
The consequence of indecision can be enormous. Worst of all, it is not
a sudden catastrophe but rather a slow death, decades
of misery
contemplating what might have been, like the punch-drunk ex-fighter
continually claiming, “I coulda been a contender.”
Dugald Stermer could have been that way. Stermer is a world-
renowned illustrator—a one-man award-winning, politically influential
artist. He has illustrated literally hundreds of editorial and advertising
pages, including Time magazine covers, environmental posters, and the
1984 Olympic medals. When he was a young man at a career crossroad,
Stermer
didn’t hesitate. He didn’t have any example, any paradigm; he just
followed his instinct. He figured he could create his own
career path, one to
make him happy.
He was attending art school, but art school for Stermer was too
restrictive. He once said, “I would feel very uncomfortable
if there wasn’t
political or editorial content in much of my work.” So he quit art school and
moved on to UCLA, where he meshed
his political and artistic instincts into
a freelance career as designer, illustrator, and writer. He made a decision
and
he jumped. There were times when it was all a maddening struggle with
periods of grave uncertainty. But he made up his mind
and forged ahead,
convinced his quest was correct.
Stermer aims to educate. His latest books have dealt with extinction of
plants and animals. Before his book Vanishing Flora came out he said,
“Most of what we know about medicine, nutrition, and food has been
derived from plants. And sadly, by the
time the book comes out, 15 or 30 of
the flowers in it will be extinct. We’re losing up to three species a day …
even as the
Amazon rain forest is destroyed. Gone before we’ve even had a
chance to identify or to ever understand their qualities.
“The lesson is, finally, that a species may disappear from the earth, but
it leaves behind an ecological void forever, and
too often the man-made
causes for its extinction also remain … a threat to every other living
creature … including ourselves.”
If Stermer had not been strong enough to make a decision and stick
with it, he might never have been able to work toward preserving
nature, his
passion. That would have been sad. The world would have been a lesser
place for it. After all, as noted above,
Stermer is no mere illustrator—he is a
historian, recording our world as it may never be again.
You have to go at a goal like a fish attacks a fish ladder—one step at a
time, without discouragement. You must have an inner
confidence in order
to radiate it, because expectation of failure almost guarantees it.
It happened to Karl Wallenda, patriarch of the great tightrope-walking
family. For years and years his act was incredibly
successful—he toured the
world and thrilled thousands with his daring. But then one day something
happened. Wallenda, before
he was due to walk the high wire, became edgy.
He wanted to know the wind currents, and he checked the wire himself—
something
he rarely did. He checked over and over. He was wary.
It was a time he should have said no. He should have realized what
was wrong with his mental makeup that day. For the first
time ever he
lacked confidence. That day, Karl Wallenda fell to his death.
Unless you are undertaking a life-threatening adventure like Karl
Wallenda, the world doesn’t end with failure. Rather, lessons
are learned.
Failure is often the inability to properly assess risk. What comes from
failure is an education. A leader learns
where the error was and doesn’t
make it again. If you are not deterred by the loss, you will be smarter and
more efficient.
The people who are afraid of failure just don’t get it. Failure is closer
to success than it is to mediocrity. Failure isn’t
bad; it’s good. It shouldn’t
crush; it should inspire. Easy words, I know, but none are more true. Every
great person has
experienced failure in some fashion. It is the mark of a
great person to be able to deal with failure—it often leads to success.
The great thing about coming out of failure is that you learn about
yourself in ways that no other experience can teach. You
learn about
resilience and survival. Risk becomes easier. You are smarter and better
able to assess risk. You have a depth
of knowledge about your toughness in
crisis. To go again and again is the key to your success—both as an
individual and as
a leader.
David Lloyd George said, “Don’t be afraid to take a big step when one
is indicated. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.”
Although it is
never wise to make decisions blindly, it is also true that risk-averse
pensiveness is often the riskiest of
all actions.
Boeing proved the wisdom of a quick decision in a crisis following the
crash of a Japan Airlines jet into a mountain in Japan.
It was a horrible
tragedy—hundreds of Japanese citizens died. Two days after the wreck the
president of Boeing claimed full
responsibility for the crash. In America
this would have been a major mistake—the normal way in such tragedies is
to let the
courts decide responsibility. But the president of Boeing knew
Japanese culture was much different. He knew about leadership.
Despite his
lawyer’s advice the president of Boeing took full responsibility, in the
media, without the benefits of a full
inquiry. The crash could have been the
pilot’s fault, or a result of wind shear or any number of possible causes. But
Boeing
took responsibility, and the Japanese respected that. It was
honorable, and it was clear that Boeing was run by responsible
leadership.
Weeks later Boeing sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of planes to
another airline based in Japan. That
airline had seen and approved of
Boeing’s actions.
 An opposite example is Exxon’s handling of the Exxon Valdez crisis,
in which their tanker hit an iceberg and spilled millions
of gallons of oil into
pristine Prince William Sound in Alaska. Exxon followed the classic MBA-
lawyer approach to crisis.
Deny everything. Duck responsibility. Hope it
will go away and talk about a historical success record. They hired a public
relations firm from Houston to talk to the media, but the PR people didn’t
even visit Alaska until more than two weeks after
the spill. The PR people
chose to stay in their offices in Houston issuing communiques trying to
logically explain away the
undermanned, single-hulled tankers Exxon was
using, despite Exxon’s being continually urged to upgrade their staff and to
use stronger ships.
To justify its efforts in Alaska, Exxon had paid lip service to the
concept of being a leader in conservation and environmental
issues. At a
time when Exxon was showing what many described as obscene profits, it
severely tarnished its image by not even
sending a high-ranking
representative to Alaska to show it cared. Exxon just waited for things to
play out rather than make
a quick decision. It was the classic ostrich
mentality—head in the sand.
A quick decision in the Exxon Valdez case would certainly have
helped. Granted, it was a no-win situation. But rather than
wait and run
from responsibility, Exxon should have moved forward to accept it and be
the leader—even if it was in the cleanup
process. Instead the company
waited for the courts to dictate and to impose the cost of the spill. When
anyone pays after
being ordered to do so by a court, no one gives them any
credit. People see them as only paying after being dragged kicking
and
screaming into court. Crisis is an opportunity to display leadership or shirk
from it.
A decision is a wonderful thing because it implies action. Even if a
decision is no, it can be a positive force because it
means a leader is
confident in his abilities.
Risk aversion is all about failure and fear of failure. One major cause
of failure is expectation of failure. Conversely,
one major cause of success
is the expectation of such.
Positive visualizion works. It has been proven. Professional athletes
universally rely on visualization for improving technique.
Even medical
patients have found attitude a key ingredient to improving their health.
 In a study of basketball free-throw shooters the players were divided
equally, based on talent, into three groups. One group
shot zero free throws
for a month. The second group shot 50 free throws a day for a month. The
third group visualized shooting
50 perfect free throws every day for a
month.
At the end of the month the three groups had a shoot off. The lowest
score was posted by those who didn’t practice. The highest
was by the
group doing the visualization. The lesson is clear: the group visualizing the
perfect shots did not have the negative
feedback of the practicing group (the
group practicing missed a lot of shots). As a result the group doing the
visualizing
had a more positive attitude and better results.
In reality, of course, it was not a group that was visualizing, but
individuals. Decisions that motivate are always made by
individuals.
Individuals can make quick decisions. Committees, on the other hand, are
by their nature stifling. They operate
on the basis of consensus building in a
world of compromise and institutional memory. Individuality is lost to the
greater
good of the group, and self-interests are beholden to others for
potential future assistance. As time goes on the committee
mentality
intensifies and a risk-averse paralysis sets in.
Just look at government—a world of committees. The backslapping
and consensus building that often may be necessary to run
a government is
one reason very little ever gets done. There is always an unspoken fear that
someone may have to take responsibility
for a failure, and so no one tries
anything.
It is the same in business. If a committee is set up, it should have a
sunset provision in its charter—mandating its extinction
at a certain, set
time. If a committee is not set up with a specific purpose in mind, its goal
soon becomes preservation of
the committee. And committees stifle
decisiveness.
The reason committees stifle decisiveness is because they overpower
individuality, and thus audacity. If there is a strong
leader, unimpeded by a
committee, the audacity to make strong decisions will filter down into the
rest of the company. Audacity
in hiring, decision making, and especially in
goal setting is inspiring internally and can frequently be the difference
between
two firms competing for the same customer. A strong decision is
one in which the individual making it believes in his or her
own strength of
character as a force that will not be stopped.
 In 1975, The North Face was faced with an enormous problem that I
could have easily ignored and blamed on outside forces.
The quality and
quantity of goose down in the market was below the standards acceptable to
us. As availability dried up, importers
and middlemen began to “cut” the
product by inserting dust, feathers, used down, and anything else that would
increase the
weight. (Down is sold on the basis of weight.)
By this time our reputation for making the best had been established.
Much of our quality and leadership image was predicated
on our goose
down jackets—the best in the world. If we went along with what the goose
down market offered, it would destroy
that image and in essence kill the
company.
It was time to jump off the fence. I had to do something. Some
suggested capitulating to the market conditions. Some suggested
forming a
committee to study the problem.
But I jumped farther, as far as I could. I decided to visit the People’s
Republic of China. That country represented 60 percent
of the world’s raw
goose down market. Some people even said it was 80 percent. In China the
down was sold to middlemen from
around the world who then processed it
and sold it to manufacturers such as ourselves. But as I said, the middlemen
were “cutting”
it to give them higher profits and false levels of success. It
was a major problem.
There was another problem. It was shortly after President Nixon first
visited China. After 25 years of the two countries’
arguing, hardly anyone
was going from the United States to China, and doing business with China
was very complex—requiring
the use of intermediary banks and antiquated
communication systems. At one point China would not even honor
traveler’s check
from the United States. Doing business with China took
audacity—it was a battle with decades of political and cultural ill
will
behind it. My audacity was one born of desperation.
It also took flexibility. I couldn’t accomplish this on my own. I needed
help, someone who knew about China. Enter Frank Chang,
a friend of one
of the 60 or so Chinese employees at The North Face. “Give me your
passport and I’ll get you an invitation,”
Chang said. “I’ll send the invitation
along with your passport to Washington, and you’ll get a visa.” I was wary.
It was my
passport—a most valuable item. But this was an opportunity. I
jumped.
 Three weeks later one of my vice presidents and I were on our way to
Canton, China. We were on a mission to buy Chinese goose
down and save
the company.
I knew virtually nothing of the worldwide goose down market. I didn’t
have much need to—until the opportunity to go to China
arose. Before the
trip I began to ask around. And I took out some books on the goose down
industry from the library. Airplane
reading—this was not so much a jump as
a free-fall into a decision. Our hand was forced, since to do nothing would
be to fail.
We had heard China didn’t have enough down for the world market
and therefore would sell only to “old friends.” We weren’t
old friends. We
weren’t even friends. Not yet, anyway.
There were other problems. Processing down is a cumbersome
procedure that requires lots of machinery and space. The machinery
is
expensive, and the space is needed to handle the voluminous nature of the
down. Purchasing directly meant we would be competing
with our suppliers
—a potentially touchy situation. Finally we estimated it would cost more
than $100,000—a significant chunk
of our cash flow—to buy the down we
needed. This was not going to be easy, but the alternative of lower quality
was absolutely
unacceptable.
I made a decision, and off we went on another adventure. I started out
logically. I analyzed the problems, and our sales pitch,
on the plane to
China. Our legitimate need for down was a selling point, even though we
were not old friends. I knew that
if our suppliers were so greedy as to
debase the product for profit, they would probably also process it for us—
even though
they didn’t like our competition. I knew I could come up with
the cash because the market demand was greatly exceeding supply,
so retail
prices would surely go up. The investment made so much sense that I was
convinced even our bankers would agree.
The Canton Trade Fair was incredible—a huge fairgrounds of
socialistic celebration. There were tremendous pictures of Mao
and Chou
En-lai hung everywhere. Martial music played continually on the outdoor
speakers. It was ungodly hot in this city
on the Pearl River—90 degrees
Farenheit and 90 percent humidity.
We stayed in the Tung Fang Hotel, a clean, spartan establishment
famous for its proximity to the Canton Trade Fair; its mosquito
netting over
the beds; and the steel-wool, rough blankets on top of them. On the only
table in my room there was a large rotating
fan—“the people’s fan,” we
called it. The room had all the comforts of modern Chinese technology;
there were no capitalistic
excesses.
The first night, after an exotic and excessive dinner, we went to the top
floor of the hotel—a nightclub of sorts. It was
very strange, not like any
nightclub we had ever seen. There was bare neon tube lighting in a stark,
cement-walled room. Humidity
ran down the walls and in some places
formed puddles on the floor. There were people from everywhere, of every
commercial
persuasion, though most were from the socialist part of the
world. At one point, like a scene from a grainy black-and-white
film, two
apparent Arabs in long, flowing robes got into an argument. They wrestled
each other to the floor, rolling in the
muddy water. It was utterly comical,
quite disorienting, and an unsettling prelude to the negotiations for Chinese
goose down.
The next morning was just as comical. When we got to the fair, we had
to go to a starting line, which all who weren’t “old
friends” had to do before
the fair began. In an egalitarian, socialistic way meetings for newcomers
were truly on a first-come,
first-serve basis.
We got to the starting line first. A ribbon was strung across it. The day
was already hot, and it was damp and slippery. People
began to crowd
around us and the martial music played on, with the pictures of Mao and
Chou En-lai sitting in approval. The
bell signaling the start of the fair
sounded. The ribbon in front of us dropped, and everyone started running.
We did. We
laughed too, for this was almost slapstick—a United Nations’
representation practically, and we were all running in our native
dress for
the opportunity to buy Chinese exports.
When the bell had sounded, some people just out of the starting gate
fell on the slippery, muddy floor. But we survived—through
force of will
and lots of luck. I presume it was also our American athletic prowess. We
were the first to arrive at the Animal
By-product Import and Export
Corporation, the one that sold all the down. They had a monopoly. We
arrived in dark suits, dripping
wet from our mad dash in the heat and
looking nothing like international business leaders. Still, I was really
charged up.
At the table, there were three of us—my vice president, our translator,
and myself. And fourteen of them. They were all dressed
alike in ill-fitting
blue jackets and white shirts, all except the head of the delegation, who
appeared to have a better tailor,
though the same blue jacket and white shirt.
The outfit appeared to be a Chinese version of the American business suit.
Conformity
has no cultural bounds—there’s embalming fluid everywhere.
The head of the committee stared at me. He asked me to explain to him
the world goose down market. He gave off an air of fraudulent
authority,
that he was better than me by virtue of his power. He tested me.
“You know better than I, but if you want my version, I’ll be glad to tell
you,” I said. I gave him facts. I gave him figures.
And I told him how the
middlemen were destroying the quality image of China by cutting the
down.
“You are wrong,” he said. “Wrong, wrong, wrong.”
He looked at us in silence. His comrades did too.
I decided to jump once again. “You say no,” I repeated. I looked him
right in the eye as I said the words I knew he needed
translated. “But my
research and experience tells me what I’m saying is true.” I called his bluff.
I knew, or at least I thought
I knew, that my facts were correct. I really
didn’t have another choice.
He smiled a wry smile. I looked across the table to a man next to him.
That person was busy writing. I looked again. He was
copying my notes, in
English, upside down from across the table. It was incredible—this man had
never spoken any English or
even indicated any knowledge of my language.
The head of the delegation told us there was no down for sale. My
heart sank. I was on the other side of the world and my
worst nightmare
was happening—I was failing in my quest. Our company was threatened.
My employees were threatened.
I did the only thing left to do. I started talking, and so did my vice
president. We went into overdrive—holding out our naked
spark for them
all to see.
“We’re not here to exploit China,” I said. “We are valid users. It’s the
middlemen who are dishonest. You know, the ones you’ve
been selling to.
We want to maintain quality. We are good for China’s image. The
middlemen are harming your image. I had to
come here to tell you this and
make something different happen.
“Don’t you see?” I asked. “We are your friends in America. We have
60 loyal Chinese workers. One of them helped me to come
here. If you turn
me down, they will be out of a job, we will be out of business, and you will
have missed the best long-term
opportunity you’ll see in a long time. We’re
here to give you flexibility and to establish a long-term relationship.”
I finished. I looked at him—I was raw nerve at that moment. Fully
exposed with sensation to the core of my existence.
“Come back tomorrow,” he said.
The next day he asked how much down we wanted. I said, “We need
five metric tons. That’s how much we need to keep the factory
running.” It
all seemed to be going better. Perhaps we had passed his test.
He asked if we would sell to others. We said no. We just wanted the
quality and quantity that we needed for our own factory.
He told us to come
back tomorrow—maybe, just maybe we would have a contract.
We were overjoyed. The next day he did indeed have a contract for us.
But instead of five tons, it was for 500 tons. We could
not possibly use 500
tons. To use that much we would have to sell it all over the world. It was
way beyond our needs. My mind
started spinning. We didn’t have the
facilities to store even five tons—never 500 tons. If we were to buy the
down and resell
it, we would have to be dishonest with the Chinese, whom
we had told we did not intend to sell the down. Financing was a third
issue.
Now we were talking about millions of dollars, not $100,000. And finally,
we would have to change the nature of our
business from a high-quality
goose down clothing manufacturer to that of a middleman in the market.
There was a good side, a huge good side. The market for down was
sure to double in price due to the shortage, and we would
get rich in six
months.
I jumped again. I said no. “I think a mistake has been made,” I said.
“We only need five tons for our factory.”
He smiled his wry smile again. He apologized and promised to rewrite
the contract.
It was rewritten, we got the down, and our quality image prospered.
Many of our competitors did not. When it was time to jump
off the fence
and make a decision, the competition waited to see what would happen.
When they ended up with lower-quality down, some lowered the
quality of their products and told their customers. Others lowered
their
quality and didn’t tell their customers. By then, any decision for them was a
bad one. The honest companies suffered
because of their lower quality
goods. The dishonest ones suffered more. The government investigated
many of those companies
and filed actions against those that didn’t comply
with government standards.
Decisions are not always easy, but the returns are constant—immediate
feedback, more opportunities, and a greater camaraderie.
When it is time,
when you know what you stand for and what your vision is, you might as
well jump. Take a risk; you won’t
regret it.
Risk is exactly what it says, a chance. Each challenge accepted should
be a hypothesis based on two things: ability and desire.
You must have the
ability and the desire to accomplish something. Without both, risk is folly.
There is more to it than blindly and endlessly throwing your body into
the wind tunnel of risk. You must continually assess
your goals and means
of reaching them. You must have an absolute inner confidence that you can
continually tap. The spark
is always your strength—find it and jump.
 6

STARTING IN THE WAREHOUSE:

Every Decision Is a Statement

After I didn’t get hired by General Mills, General Electric, and General
Motors, I went to work as general manager of a company
in Berkeley called
The Ski Hut. It was my first adult job—post-MBA, pre-The North Face.
The Ski Hut was involved in something I liked—hiking and
backpacking—and it was an opportunity to grow in a job that would
challenge me. Not only that, the owner told me if I turned his business
around, I could buy it. So in I came, Johnny-with-an-MBA,
all set to turn
around The Ski Hut.
Everybody eyed me suspiciously. There were about 25 employees, and
the first assumption was that I would fire them all and
replace them with
my own people. I could sense the tension, and I was the focus of it. I could
feel every movement of mine
getting scrutinized. I could almost see the
muscles in everyone’s neck tighten whenever I walked into a room.
Because I had an MBA, everybody thought The Ski Hut would soon
become a suit-and-tie establishment with management by manipulation.
Fear was apparently a driving force in this company. Most people seemed
guided by their personal motivations, with no company
orientation
whatsoever. They were just scared, and I, as the new boss, was just another
unknown to fear.
It was not a good situation, and neither were the financials. I had been
hired to turn the company around. A cursory look
at the numbers revealed
two things: the results were abysmal, yet it was impossible to find the
cause. The numbers didn’t
tell the story.
It seemed, from an MBA, theoretical standpoint, that it would make
sense to delve into the financial status of the company
a lot further before
jumping into the maelstrom of human emotions that created those
depressing numbers.
But I knew business was about more than numbers. And I knew how
important my actions were, especially at the beginning.
The first week was the typical awkward period. An opening night is
always difficult. We put our little feelers out, trying
to get to know each
other. I walked around introducing myself, trying to put people at ease. I
looked them in the eye. I smiled
and I meant it. I asked questions, and I
took an interest in the opinions of the employees.
Contrary to popular opinion, I had no intention of firing anyone, I
explained. I wanted to find out how the company worked—who
did what,
when, and how. I also explained that my goal was to make The Ski Hut
successful—not just for the owner’s benefit,
but for everyone’s. I wanted to
learn about the people who were now my employees. I wanted to know
more than just how they
did their job. It was important that I showed I
cared, because I genuinely did. What I learned through this process was that
24 of the 25 employees were great and well suited to their jobs. One,
however, had to be fired.
He was the warehouse manager and a nice person, but not particularly
into his job. He had an idiosyncrasy that kept him from
doing some of the
work. He was a believer in Meher Baba, the religious leader. I am an open
person—believe what you want,
I thought. But then I learned a bit more
about this religion. Apparently Meher Baba doesn’t speak. And so on
Meher Baba’s
birthday, all his followers won’t speak either.
Wouldn’t you know it, on my first week on the job it was Meher
Baba’s birthday and we had a number of shipments scheduled
to go out. A
major part of a warehouse manager’s job required verbal communication.
Silence doesn’t cut it on the day of a
shipment—it requires constant
interaction. When I pointed this out to the warehouse manager, he stood
looking at me like I
was some money-grubbing blasphemer. He refused to
work. Of course, he didn’t tell me this. He wrote a note.
I really had no problem with his religion. It’s just that some people
have the wrong jobs, and our warehouse manager was one
of them. You can
be what you want to be—a Meher Baba believer, if you want. But first you
have to do your job. The key is
to have a job that fits your beliefs. The
demands of the job of a warehouse manager obviously didn’t fit this person.
His
life was out of tune.
 My action, I knew, would cause a stir. That was the idea. Everything I
did that first week was magnified. Everything I did
was a statement about
myself and my vision of the company.
I walked around and looked at the physical orientation of the facility.
Right outside the office was a warehouse. Nothing
was in order. Everything
was stacked on top of everything else. It was organizational chaos. The
books needed as much organizing
as the warehouse; without that it was
impossible to understand the flow of money and inventory. But the
warehouse had to come
first. We were missing sales because it was difficult
and sometimes impossible to find the products in it.
I made a decision. I spent two days in the warehouse. I got sweaty and
dirty with everyone else, and we physically reorganized
the warehouse so it
was easy to access and stock. I knew early on I had to set an example of my
way, and the best example
was a visual one—everybody could see it. My
actions showed many things: I wasn’t afraid of work; satisfying the
customer was
key; I believed in organization and efficiency; and most
important, I knew there was no bottom line without a top line—we
needed
sales to make a profit.
I could have reorganized the books, but no one would have seen it.
What good would that do morale? None—except, perhaps, for
that of one
sun-allergic accountant wringing his hands gleefully, alone in a corner
cubicle with a calculator and spread sheets.
I could have given a speech or written memos. But who would really
care? Actions always speak louder than words because business
is about
action, not empty promises or threats. People sensed that I cared by my
efforts to get to know them. They knew I
was serious by my firing of the
warehouse manager. And they found out I knew how business really works
by my concentration
on the warehouse before the books. I made my mark in
that first week. The troops rallied around, and we worked together toward
mutual goals.
But a year later, after we had turned The Ski Hut around and I wasn’t
needed any longer, the owner refused to live up to his
promise to sell the
company to me. So I did something symbolic at that point too. I quit.
Quitting may be the ultimate symbolic act of business. It is, of course,
more than symbolic. It’s personal. And that’s the
point. Symbolism without
depth is empty sloganeering. The reason for the symbolic act is not
Machiavellian. It is humanistic.
It is designed to touch the soul—to inspire
as the wind does a bird.
Every decision is a statement, even those decisions you don’t intend as
such. Some are statements to the masses. Some are
statements to a few. All
are statements to and about yourself.
When Stephen Wolf was hired to be CEO of Flying Tiger Airlines, his
job was simple: Turn it around. When he came to the job,
he was told a lot
had to be done—fast. The company’s finances were less than perfect, the
organization was in disarray, and
the energy level and commitment of
employees was abysmal. In many ways it looked to be a dying company—
numb, failing, and
bored.
Wolf knew he had to act fast and his actions had to be visible—
something that spoke to the heart of his people as well as
their minds. He
had to do what most in the company felt management would never do—sell
“the yacht” and fire Pierre. It was
that drastic.
“The yacht,” as most in the company called her, was a 40-foot cruiser.
It was on a mooring in Marina del Rey, California.
Wolf said the company
would also give up the ship’s mooring. In reality the savings from these two
moves were minimal. The
boat was paid for, and the cost of maintaining it
was a trifle compared to the maintenance of such things as the Flying Tiger
airplanes. The mooring cost was also financially not very significant
because of a long-term, sweetheart deal signed years
before. But getting rid
of the icons signaled to workers that the problem was serious. The
executives were cutting down; everyone
should.
At the same time that he sold the boat, Wolf closed the executive
dining room and fired the chef, Pierre. He was cutting fat,
and he wanted
everyone to know it. These actions were more symbolic than effectual
changes—on the surface. But the deeper
reality was that he often gave
speeches and talked privately to employees. Always he would remind
people how he “sold the
yacht and fired Pierre.” It was great symbolism—
especially the name “Pierre”—because it conjured up images of expensive
and
exotic French meals. The message was clear—the only thing sacred
was the mission to make the company healthy.
Wolf didn’t stop there. He was an incredibly hard worker, and he made
sure everyone knew it—first to arrive, last to leave.
The idea was to change
the work ethic. He stood for hard work. His car was well known to
employees. He always parked by the
door so everyone could see he was
there when they came, and when they left.
Hard work was his standard. He established what he called a
chairman’s conference. For weeks at a time he would fly to the
far reaches
of the world to explain to employees of Flying Tiger the need for the
turnaround—the urgency. His schedule was
posted on bulletin boards
throughout the company. Everyone followed his exhaustive itinerary. It was
obvious to anyone who
looked that the only time he had to sleep was on the
airplane between destinations. The message was always urgency and hard
work.
He even made a statement to the stockholders by his actions. He
accepted a compensation package that had only a modest cash
salary, but
significant stock options—symbolic of his long-term belief in the company
and himself.
Wolf is a leader, not just a manager. There is a huge difference.
Managers produce and direct. Leaders understand the implications,
ramifications, and complications of their actions. Managers work with
organization charts and job descriptions. Leaders work
with dreams and
defeats. Managers understand pie charts, bar graphs, and punctuation.
Leaders do too. But leaders know more.
Leaders know caring, passion, and
poetry. Leaders know people.
Although it may appear in some companies that a leader’s principal
job is to shuffle papers and referee disputes, this simply
is not true. The
reality of the job is that greatness comes only when others accomplish great
things. The biggest spark in
the world without support is just a spark—it
will die out.
Paper shuffling may thrill a few, but it won’t excite the masses. It will,
however, make a statement—that paper is more important
than people.
Every action makes a statement about priorities. The priority of a leader,
quite simply, is to lead. If the statement
says otherwise, there is a void of
leadership.
It is essential for a leader to understand the significance of his or her
actions—to realize that those symbols affect people
on a very human level.
Symbolism communicates.
A leader has to get across the message that this is more than just a job
—it is an integral part of life. The human connections
are the key.
 At The North Face, whenever we moved into a new building, we
would have a painting party. For one thing, it saved money if
we painted the
building ourselves. But more importantly, it allowed all of us to work side
by side for a day or two. It broke
down the hierarchy. It told people we were
all equal, we just had different jobs. And it allowed some in the office staff,
such as myself, to realize the quality of workers we had on the maintenance
staff, who were definitely better than we were
at the task of painting.
At one painting party, I was up on some scaffolding and happened to
be working next to the newest employee in the company,
Bob Lutz. It was
his first day. We worked side by side for about two hours, exchanging small
talk and working hard helping
each other. Eventually, Bob asked what I did
for The North Face. I didn’t want to blurt out “president.” Instead I tried to
describe my various duties. I thought I did a good job explaining it all, but
Bob just looked baffled. I went on, telling
him as best I could about all the
abstract duties I felt were mine. Finally, while we were moving the
scaffolding, he looked
at me and said, “Gosh, it doesn’t sound like you’re
very busy.”
Pride got the best of me at that point and I told him I was president. He
was embarrassed for having made light of my job.
But I was humored. On
the surface, I supposed, he was right. We talked more. I explained to him
how simply showing up and
working at a painting party was one of the
most important parts of my job. I connected with Bob that day. From then
on, we
were always able to talk.
A direct relationship, like mine with Bob, is the ideal. Symbolism and
vision are never lost because the connection is so
direct. But as a company
grows, it becomes impossible to deal directly with every individual. A
transformation takes place
at some point in a company’s growth, and it
takes an astute individual to recognize and adjust to the changes. To adapt is
to lead.
Still, the inspiration of the individual is always the ultimate goal.
Always. A human spirit is an entity unto itself with
potential so enormous it
boggles the mind. Humans want to be inspired. Every person desires
greatness, and a leader taps into
that desire. But as the transformation from
a small to a large company takes place, a leader must also make changes,
adjusting
from an individual approach to one that is broader but no less
personal. The goal is always to inspire.
 People want to be led; they want a vision to follow. In large
organizations in order for people to know what a leader is about
they look at
his or her actions. An astute leader acts accordingly.
You have to walk the walk and talk the talk. It can’t be an act, because
soon it will be transparent as such. People don’t
follow hypocrites. I
reiterate: every decision makes a statement. Every action. You cannot be
selective about what others
see—life happens, and people watch.
A man who made apparel for the ski industry learned this lesson too
late. Before getting into apparel with his company, he
was a world ski
champion. Moving into ski apparel seemed a natural progression for him.
But some of the qualities that made
him a good racer—ego, focus on self—
turned out to be his downfall.
His problem was the way he treated people. The symbolism of his acts
conveyed the message that he was not a man to be trusted.
As a result
whenever anyone had a choice, that person didn’t want to deal with him.
He was the same way with his dealers. In an interview in a major ski
publication he carefully explained how there were only
four smart people in
the entire ski business. This man, of course, was one of the four. When his
ski wear was no longer “hot,”
it was all the “dumb” people who refused to
buy from him.
His most famous gaffe came after one of his best sales representatives
died. Prior to that, this owner had already had a reputation
for treating his
reps poorly. Whenever they disagreed, he fired them. When the reps gave
advice, he turned away. He always
knew best—he was one of the four
“smart” people, after all. Just before the sales rep died, he had written some
new orders.
But obviously he couldn’t get back out to follow up. The owner
of the company had to hire someone to take his place. Clearly
the rule in
sales is the person who writes the order gets the commission. But the owner
refused to pay the salesman’s widow
the commissions. His reasoning, I
guess, was that he also had to pay the new salesman to go out and follow up
on the orders.
He was callous and cold. He didn’t care about people, only
about himself.
Due to his designs and innovation, he was, for a while, on the top of
the ski apparel business. Eventually people realized
that even his brilliance
for design couldn’t overcome his leadership shortcomings. He couldn’t hold
on to good people, and
his personal strengths—as good as they were—were
not enough to sustain the company. The company faltered. When he tried to
get others to help him out, no one would. In business, you see the same
people on the way down who you saw on the way up.
People remember.
The Man Who Skied Down Everest is a 1970 film about a Japanese
skier whose goal it was to ski down the highest peak in the world. The film
shows him skiing
down a short way, doing a few classic jump turns, and
then falling a tremendous length. He had a parachute that dragged behind
him and finally stopped his fall, a few feet short of a crevasse and certain
death. Friends of mine jokingly refer to him
as “the man who fell down
Everest.”
What the film didn’t capture, however, was the way the Japanese skier,
Yuichiro Miura, abused all around him to meet his goal.
The overall crew
was 34 people, including 10 cameramen and 27 tons of goods. To ski down
Everest, first Miura had to climb
it. He put together a team of Sherpas for
support, but he refused to listen to them. He thought that by using the film,
he
came across as a man of character and courage. The reality is much
different. While climbing, the crew came to an ice fall,
and the Sherpas
warned Miura it was dangerous to go forward. The Sherpas have a mystical,
metaphysical relationship with the
mountains—they respect them as living
deities. They do not force their will on a mountain. They knew the ice was
moving, and
even though it appeared safe, it could quickly become
perilous. Miura would hear none of it—he felt he had to press on. He
berated the Sherpas. He told them he knew what was right. The only thing
that matters, he said in essence, is my goal.
Without the Sherpas, the climb could not have proceeded. But they
needed the money, and so they accepted Miura’s demands.
In the midst of
the ice fall there was a disaster—six Sherpas died. The leader of the
Sherpas was wild with indignation and
tried to kill Miura with an ice ax for
driving the others to their death. To Miura, though, the accident was
inconsequential,
because he could still reach his goal. He put together the
remains of the team and made it up the mountain to the point where
he
could begin his descent. He made his film.
The man who skied down Everest, like the ski apparel executive, failed
to recognize the human connections that are needed
for true success. The
negative symbolism they put forth to all around them made what successes
they did have hollow.
It is easy to recognize negative symbolism because people expect to be
treated as human beings, and when they aren’t, it stands
out.
 Successful symbols are often more difficult to describe because
success is the result of many things. Failure can be the result
of one major
act. The symbolism most people take for granted is positive. People expect
others to be honest. They expect to
be treated fairly. They even expect
companies to be successful. This does not diminish the importance of
positive symbolic
acts. It is important to ratify people’s expectations.
One of the goals in any business is to have a happy and productive
work force. Again, this comes back to people’s expectations.
If you meet
those expectations, you go a long way toward ensuring that people are
happy and productive.
Even Stephen Wolf, well versed in symbolism, made a slip—a big slip.
Wolf is now CEO of United Airlines. Shortly after taking
that job, he
presented a leveraged buy-out proposal to the board as a means of helping
solve the airline’s problems. But when
the media reported it, the thing
employees noticed most was that Wolf stood to make $70 million on the
deal. The workers were
also part of the buy out, but it was predicated on
asking the workers to make concessions to allow the deal to work. Workers
were outraged at being asked to make concessions so that Wolf could make
$70 million. Of course, it wasn’t that simple, but
the workers saw it that
way. The buy out didn’t go through. For a while Wolf and the workers
weren’t talking. Finally there
was rapprochement, and the offer was
restructured so that Wolf still made a good amount of money, but nowhere
near $70 million.
He took control of United and has been quite successful.
But his story illustrates that even an apparent master of symbolism
can be
seriously hurt by one bad action.
What you do tells people about what you think. A closed door may
provide an opportunity for extra work, but it also telegraphs
the message
that some things are secret and visitors are not welcome. Limited access to
information on computers sends the
same message.
The upkeep of your facility tells a lot about the quality of your
products and your attention to detail. Things such as clean
trucks, pruned
gardens, and painted buildings, though not essential on one level, are really
symbols of how much you care
about your employees, your customers, and
your product. A child-care facility, for instance, says as much to your
employees
about how you care for them as human beings as does their
paycheck.
 Two symbols—promotions and money—are generally the most
important internal symbols. If you promote on the basis of tenure
rather
than talent, it tells those with talent that skill has nothing to do with
advancement.
Compensation is probably the strongest symbol. If inequities exist, the
workers will know. In one company I’ve worked with,
the owner devised a
complex system to calculate Christmas bonuses. The system was based on
years of service, salary, a subjective
judgment of how hard people worked,
and about four other items. It was absurd—a rationalization to screw
people. The formula
was skewed so much to the owner that he received 93
percent of the bonus—the other 24 people split the remaining 7 percent.
He
thought that because he made it so formal, everyone would think it was fair.
The reality was everyone thought he was trying
to dupe them. Ducking
reality, the owner asked one of his underlings to hand out the bonuses.
Another employee in a fit of
pique handed back his $25 bonus because, in
his words, “the owner obviously needs it more than me.”
Two other symbols—set up specifically to be symbols—are important
enough to highlight. One is a mission statement. Unfortunately
most
mission statements don’t work because they are written by committees and
read like it. They are long, they cover every
contingency, and they are
impossible to memorize. The best mission statements are the shortest. It has
to be easy to memorize,
and one that employees can state verbally with
pride. Perhaps the best ever is IBM’s: “Think.” It isn’t specific, but it covers
everything.
The other obvious symbol is the selection of a company logo—it
becomes a clear symbol of what you are. A low-cost, price-oriented
company must have a symbol that is simple, clean, and frugal. A company
selling high-cost, fashion-oriented items must have
something that puts that
image across. When you present your business card to a Japanese, you will
see that person scrutinize
it for much longer than an American would. They
believe that what you stand for is represented by the graphic on your card.
It
is often the first impression you make on your customer—its importance
transcends its cost.
But for all that logos and mission statements say about a company on
first glance, it is the actions of a company over the
long haul that make the
most important statement. Individual statements have a definitive life span.
You cannot do one symbolic
act and then assume it will last forever. You
must continually do the symbolic, and always understand that everything
you
do has symbolic implications. Life is fluid; views change.
In 1982, The North Face acquired a manufacturing firm, Black’s of
Greenock, in Scotland. The idea was to provide a local manufacturing
base
to service our European dealers from inside the European Common Market.
Black’s was a venerable name. The company had
started with sails for
clipper ships and evolved into manufacturing outdoor clothing and
products.
But Black’s had fallen on hard times. In an effort to cut costs, it
virtually stopped new product design and marketing. The
inevitable
happened—lower sales. They cut costs again, which led to even lower
sales.
When we arrived, the work force was 70 percent less than at Black’s
peak. People were demoralized and paranoid about their
future.
I assigned Bob Gorton, manager of one of our retail divisions, to be
managing director in Scotland. His enthusiasm for the
position was
infectious, and his track record at The North Face was superb.
We began by discussing how to run the company: like a typical British
firm with hierarchy and formality, or in the more casual
way we ran The
North Face in Berkeley. The decision was easy. We opted to bring the
Berkeley way to Scotland. It reflected
our personality.
A leader’s style creates the foundation for the team. I’ve seen autocrats
and delegators develop great teams. The most important
factor was that the
leaders were genuine. I prefer to delegate, but the key is for employees to
know who you are. You have
to show them you, not a cardboard cutout that
spins in the wind.
On the day we signed the final papers, Bob and I met with all the
workers and explained our vision, our demand to be the best,
and our
personal dedication to success in Scotland. We also explained our open-
door policy to the executive offices. This
was no mere change in policy; it
was revolution. The workers were skeptical. Under the old regime the only
time the workers
had gone into the executive offices was if their names
were called over the loudspeaker. “Come to the offices” meant to them
“You are about to be fired.” That day as I was addressing the employees,
one of the seamstresses turned to another and I overheard
her say, “Let’s
wait a couple of weeks and see if the cowboys from the Colonies are still
talking to us.”
 We were, and they loved it! Bob became one of the most popular
people in the company. When he resigned eight years later to
join me on my
consulting projects, people were openly sad and emotional. His humanistic
approach had touched their hearts.
But not all was smooth sailing. Some workers simply could not adjust
to our open ways. A few months after we took over Black’s,
I was back in
Scotland. The head of the sales force (a sales force, by the way, that we
were obligated to use for one year
as part of the acquisition agreement)
pulled me aside for what he called “a personal discussion.”
“You’ve got to do something about Bob,” he said. “He’s not playing by
the rules.” I was told Bob allowed workers to come into
the executive
offices. Bob even fraternized with the workers, the sales manager told me
with much consternation. “Some days
Bob doesn’t wear a tie. The next day
the workers don’t wear a tie, and Bob does. It’s more than a problem; it’s
sheer anarchy.”
I was proud of myself when he said that because I didn’t
laugh.
Most employees, though, understood the symbolism Bob was putting
across by running an open company. But it was quite difficult
to explain to
the sales manager the difference between freedom and anarchy.
There was another time, however, when the sales force’s
misinterpretation of our approach to business wasn’t quite so funny.
Once
we had the factory up and running, we decided it was time to meet potential
dealers in the United Kingdom to tell them
about our company, our
commitment to quality, and even more so, that it was nice to be their
neighbors. We wanted them to
understand us as people, not just as a
faceless company. We viewed it as a sort of house-warming, although it
wouldn’t specifically
be at our plant. We wanted to start things right, make
a statement about ourselves.
The sales force we inherited said they would set the meeting up and
take care of everything. “It will be a lovely time,” they
told us.
What we found, however, was that our own sales force really didn’t
have a clue about what we were trying to convey. Because
of cultural
differences or mere stubbornness on everyone’s part, we had somehow
failed to ingrain in the sales force the spirit
of The North Face.
They set up the meeting in the Lake District, which is beautiful—
pastoral and serene with rolling, picturesque hills. Streams
and lakes dot the
countryside, and trees abound. Driving to the meeting, I felt energized. The
scenery was perfect for our
image. But something went wrong. We turned
away from the scenery into the grounds of the Clawthorpe Hotel. It was as
if the
sales manager had searched his entire life to find the one ugly spot in
the midst of all that beauty.
I tried to stay positive as we walked inside. The display room had no
lights and no heat. The dining room, I soon found out,
operated for only two
hours—serving cold sandwiches. The sales manager had arranged for no
drinks. He thought it would save
money. I knew it would cost plenty—
plenty of sales. A cash bar was incredibly unfriendly. But I closed my eyes
and took a
deep breath. Stay in control, I told myself. It can’t be that bad.
It was worse. The sales manager who had told me “Don’t worry, I’ll
take care of everything” stood up and gave his speech.
“Welcome,” he said.
“I wish I could stay here with you, but I promised the missus I’d take her to
the symphony for her birthday.
That is tonight. So I’ll be leaving now and
turning the meeting over to Hap. Enjoy yourselves.”
I was flabbergasted. He had told me nothing of the symphony prior to
that moment. I had no prepared speech. But I knew that
my actions right
then would make a statement about The North Face for years to come. I
smiled and went on verbal automatic
pilot.
I told Bob, “Find some solutions, quick. Arrange for free drinks, good
food, and especially another place down the road where
we can put across
the image, as we know it, of The North Face—a friendly, caring company.
We must salvage this.”
I turned to the crowd of dealers and began to describe our company,
our philosophy, and our mission. I interspersed adventuring
stories with our
business tenets while I waited for Bob to return. He came through, as I
knew he would, and the meeting took
a turn for the better.
For years afterward, whenever we met with our dealers, we managed
to get a good laugh by just saying the word “Clawthorpe.”
At the time it
wasn’t funny at all, but it came to symbolize our mutual struggles.
In Scotland we managed to turn a bad experience into a humorous
symbol of early difficulties. It would have been easy to be
bitter about the
whole thing. It could have come to symbolize many things if it had been
handled differently. It certainly
could have come to symbolize our
ineptitude and lack of caring. But I had known better. I knew we were not
inept. I knew we
cared. What that meeting symbolized for me was just
another learning experience on the long road of life.
 I can laugh about it now because it is funny. Tragedies had better
become comedies, or else you’re in a lot of trouble. If a tragedy remains a
tragedy forever,
it’s a symbol of a negative force running loose in your
psyche.
It is important to be positive, to truly believe success is possible.
Symbolism as a method of leadership is incredibly effective.
But first you
must convince yourself. If you’ve got the energy, the rest is easy.
 7

TAPPING THE INFINITE UPSIDE:

Good Employees Know Their Jobs

Employees are your greatest asset—the one essential for any company. It’s
so simple, yet not many executives see it, or they
ignore it if they do. Of all
the business essentials, and there are hundreds, people are by far the most
important. I’d rather
have a company with great people and no money than
the other way around. Money doesn’t guarantee good people, but good
people
will get you money. Guaranteed.
You can’t get or keep good people if you don’t treat them as such. And
even if you can get and keep them, you cannot maximize
their potential
unless you excite, involve, and nurture them.
Unfortunately the norm in business is conformity—a black, muddy
river going nowhere. And even when conformity gets daring,
it doesn’t roar
out individuality. It insults and demeans.
Let me give you an example: I was not the only one at The North Face
who didn’t fit in at Proctor & Gamble. Mike Ravizza,
a vice president of
retail, found himself to be a misfit as well.
Mike was out with his immediate supervisor one day following a
typical salesman’s day, calling on accounts.
It was 40 percent of the time driving, 40 percent sitting in the waiting
room, and 20 percent selling. Mike’s boss wasn’t
happy. Everywhere they
went, they had to wait.
In the car between calls the supervisor lectured Mike about “respect.”
To Mike it seemed a strange word to use. But to his
supervisor it was very
important—like a title. He told Mike that Proctor & Gamble was the biggest
and best in the industry.
“We deserve respect,” he said.
On the third call of the day the boss showed he was lost as to what the
word “respect” means. There were eight people in the
waiting room, sitting
in stiff plastic chairs while they paged through old Reader’s Digests and
pretended to enjoy such articles as “The Wonderful Things About Living
Alone.” They sat down, Mike and his boss. They
sat for five minutes, and
then the boss grabbed Mike’s arm and said, “Come on outside. We’ve got to
talk. I’m going to teach
you the art of selling.” They went outside and
closed the door.
“You can’t just sit there,” said the boss. “You have to make yourself
noticed.” He talked to Mike as if he were teaching him
to tie his shoes.
“Tomorrow I want you to go into town to a kids’ store and buy one of those
Mickey Mouse hats. The ones with
the ears, the cute little ears. Then I’ll tell
you what to do. Next time you’re stuck in a waiting room, you pull out your
mouse ears and put them on. Trust me. When the buyer comes out, he’ll
notice you. You’ll stand out.”
Mike said three words, “No fucking way.” He turned and walked off.
He walked 15 miles home, and the next day he walked into The North Face,
where I hired him.
Demeaning employees is no way to excite them or motivate them. No
one deserves to be treated as anything less than a thriving,
pulsing human
spirit with individual dreams, wants, and expectations. Dignity is a right.
You don’t have to be as obvious as suggesting Mickey Mouse ears to
insult an employee’s dignity. It is just as easy to ignore
their opinions. All
too often employees, though experts on their particular realm, are ignored
because their opinion conflicts
with the preconceived notions of titled
authority.
Robert Service ran into this. His parents were Baptist missionaries, and
he was raised in Shanghai. Because of this and his
raw intelligence he
became an expert on China for the State Department. He had perspective.
But he didn’t have support—he
worked for the State Department in the
early 1950s. It was the McCarthy era, and Service recommended the United
States support
Mao Tse-tung because that was who the Chinese people
supported. The U.S. government supported Chiang Kai-shek, an exploiter
and known throughout China as such. It didn’t matter; Mao was a
communist, and the United States didn’t like communists. Service
also was
labeled communist and fired.
He was undaunted. He landed a job with an East Coast electronics firm
and rose to the presidency. Years later, when the company
was sold for a
large profit, he went on to the University of California for a Ph.D. in
history. He was of an age when most
people think about retirement, but he
was back at school. It was fun for him in the classes on Chinese history—
telling firsthand
accounts to academic “experts” who had never visited the
country. It was as if Service were teaching the course.
In the early 1970s the United States finally recognized it would need to
deal with Mao if it wanted to deal with China. President
Nixon assigned
Henry Kissinger to figure a way to establish relations with the Chinese.
Kissinger contacted Service, who was
asked to do the preliminary
groundwork. It was incredible irony, working for Nixon, one of the strong
supporters of McCarthyism.
Lesser men would have quit when confronted with such obstacles—
using former put-downs as justification for giving up or holding
grudges
forever. But Service is extraordinary, an enthusiastic battler who rolls with
punches and then sets his sights on
the next conquest. He has a saying that
epitomizes his philosophy: “It’s not the mountain that wears you down, it’s
the grain
of sand in your shoes.”
Bureaucracy is an obvious grain of sand. In America there was a heady
period from World War II until the Vietnam War when
business, though
successful, became bloated, and bureaucracies increased the distance from
the top of an organization to the
bottom. Leaders lost touch with followers.
It has always amazed me that the Catholic Church has thrived for
nearly 2,000 years with only six layers of management but
General Motors
needs 14 levels. Why GM needs 14 levels eludes me. It’s a disease and a
plague.
Bureaucracy. For years leaders have cut themselves off from their
followers and relied on “organization” to provide motivation.
American
companies have become petrified. Old-boy networks are rampant while
new perspectives are shunned for fear of truth
and enlightenment. It is a
prejudiced system with the mechanisms of men’s clubs and a heavy reliance
on specific business
and law schools.
Women were excluded from the executive levels of business.
Fortunately that grave mistake is now being rectified.
Whoever was the prophet of this modern form of management should
be hung over the doors of business in much the same way Genghis
Khan
hung cheating tax collectors over their own doors. We have been cheated
out of a human form of leadership.
 We have been denied common sense and offered instead an ineffective
and inhuman science called “management.” Business has
become stratified
and bureaucratized.
It doesn’t have to be that way. With a human approach communication
can flourish across the imaginary borders of title and
authority. Some
executives would contend that the problem is that employees don’t think. I
contend the problem is they are
not allowed to think.
At The North Face we had two employees, John Kirschner and Bill
Werlin, who were downhill ski fanatics, and they both wanted
the company
to expand into downhill ski clothing. I was dead set against it.
The problem, as I saw it, was that The North Face had established a
reputation for making the very best truly functional equipment,
and
downhill skiers as a group cared more about fashion than function. I
believed downhill ski equipment by its very nature
was inconsistent with
our company image—an image based on function more than anything else.
Our equipment always did what
it was supposed to. If it looked good, that
was a bonus.
But Kirschner and Werlin weren’t convinced. Every time I turned them
down, they’d come back with even more details on why
I was wrong. Their
views were based on the market and the reasoning of people like Theodore
Levitt, the business theorist
who suggested one reason railroads went out of
business was because they didn’t see the big picture. According to Levitt,
railroad companies never saw themselves as being in the transportation
business, but rather just in railroads.
“It’s the same with us,” said Kirschner and Werlin. “We can do more
than just backpacking and mountaineering.”
“No way,” I said.
“Fine,” they said. And a couple of weeks later they were back in my
office again.
The most amazing thing is that these two were almost exact opposites.
Werlin was flamboyant, sales and marketing oriented.
Kirschner was into
detail and precision. They were not the kind to be drawn to each other.
Except, of course, for one thing—their
mutual love of skiing.
They just attacked the project, and me—in a kind way, of course. They
were determined. What they explained to me over and
over was that there
was a large market of skiers who needed equipment that worked. These
skiers, said Werlin and Kirschner,
had been abandoned by most of the
industry, which had, as I knew, gone to fashion.
Finally their intensity and logic won me over. The way I figured it,
these guys believed in the idea of expanding into downhill
ski equipment so
much that it was worth the risk to give it a try. They became our product
champions. What we created was
a ski clothing line based on something we
called Extreme Gear. The name to the public meant it was for extreme
conditions.
Our inside joke was that it was extremely expensive.
But it sold. I was wrong. Werlin and Kirschner were right, and the new
ski line sold what we called tonnage—a hell of a lot.
The uniforms were
eventually chosen for instructors at over 100 ski areas including Aspen and
Vail.
It would have been easy to remain stubborn in my refusal, basking in
the false glory of a titled ego. Many executives do just
that, certain they
know more about everything than their underlings.
It’s depressing to listen to most executives talk about business. They
use the jargon they learned in business school—phrases
such as “cost of
capital” and “internal rates of return.” They think they sound intelligent and
logical, as if their removed,
impersonal style has all the answers.
But they miss the point. It’s clear when they speak to their employees.
In the minds of many so-called leaders, success has
nothing to do with
people. They see all the profits, machinery, and plans as essential, but they
view their work force as
a burden. It’s so sad.
The truth is people are the greatest asset of any company—the only
one with an infinite upside. Machines and facilities wear
down. They
depreciate. And as time goes on, they become obsolete.
But a highly motivated, creative employee can return many times over
what he or she costs. The key, of course, is not just
to hire them but to listen
to them and empower them. If you do, the rewards are tremendous.
Teresita Perez is tremendous. She was one of my employees, a smiling
little dynamo from the Philippines—dedicated, intelligent,
and highly
skilled. Terry was one of the first people we hired, an original member of
The North Face family. In the factory
she was a sort of matriarch to the
other workers.
She was always smiling. She worked in the finishing department of
our factory, doing thread trimming and final quality inspection
of our
products. Hers was a busy job, and she was happy and proud of her work.
 One day, a few years after we hired her, she came into my office
crying. We had grown a lot—we had about 500 employees, so
I didn’t see
her every day anymore. But here she was in my office crying. She was
visibly shaken. I didn’t know what to think.
I was afraid something horrible
had happened. Something had, she told me. The down-filled jackets her
department was processing
had defects, yet almost 100 had made it past
three quality control inspectors and past her supervisor. She felt terrible.
She didn’t want to get anyone in trouble, but she knew The North Face’s
image of quality. The products weren’t up to those
standards, as she
explained it. They could destroy the image of the company. It wasn’t right,
she said. It was tearing her
up personally.
I supported her. There was nothing to that decision—if she cared so
much and had been with the company so long, her judgment
was fine by
me. The jackets were brought back and, of course, she was right.
I don’t think it’s possible for any leader to feel more proud or touched
than I did at that moment. I knew my vision of quality
had connected to her.
She knew my door was open and I wanted to hear from my employees. She
knew more about her job than I
did. All I had to do as a leader was
recognize her expertise. My job was easy.
Leadership is creating an atmosphere of trust. You have to listen to
employees, and then back up what you say. You have to
treat people like
people, not morons, and not like machines.
If all your employees are idiots, what does that say about you—the
person who hired them? Listen and reward them. Recognize
them. Every
year at The North Face we’d recognize employees by giving them little
trophies for years of service. You wouldn’t
believe how important those
were. Recognition has to be given with class and humor and absolute
sincerity. You have to be
a leader, but first you must be a partner.
One Friday after work I went out with some of my executives and we
began talking about what we saw as a discrepancy in our
company: most of
our management time and effort went toward our subpar employees, trying
to get them up to our standards.
We had unfairly overlooked our superior
performers. They were really the ones who deserved our attentions. They
deserved some
recognition.
We came up with the Golden Trimmers Award. Trimmers are the
pincerlike hand tools used in cutting threads from garments. Trimmers
are
constantly sharpened, but after extensive use they have to be replaced. We
bronzed a few discarded trimmers. We decided
to put them on a pegboard
with a tribute to the winners I wrote up and our corporate seal. It wasn’t
expensive, and it didn’t
take a long time. But it did take caring. In a formal
ceremony we acknowledged their contribution. Something like this could
easily come across as an empty gesture, but it wasn’t. It was genuine. Our
great employees deserved recognition, and this
was something from the
heart—something uniquely The North Face.
Six years later I was invited to the home of one of our employees for a
special dinner celebration. It was a major celebration—the
attainment of her
U.S. citizenship. All of the employee’s immediate family was there, as were
her cousins, nieces, nephews,
uncles, and aunts. After I had been introduced
to everyone, I happened to look on her mantel. There were photos of her
children,
a beautiful vase, and, yes, the Golden Trimmers Award. I knew
then that what we had done six years earlier mattered. It had
worked.
Rather than a huge, faceless bureaucracy that relies on rules and
authority, it is always better to have some sort of informal
network of
human contact that lets employees know they are trusted.
One way we did this was by holding our long-range planning meetings
far from the buildings of The North Face. We went to locations
that allowed
people to interact. Frequently we’d go to Trout Lake, 1,300 acres of
unspoiled paradise near Spokane, Washington.
It was my parents’ place—
it’s very special to me.
The stated goal was to come up with a plan. The parallel goal was to
have fun. It was a retreat, a gathering of minds—a chance
to connect much
deeper than was possible in the hectic world of business. We played games,
we fished, we mountain biked, we
had contests, and we gathered in groups.
We talked, drank beer, and got to know one another better. It was work.
Yeah, right.
It was fun. Sure, we accomplished a lot. But what we
accomplished even more than an agreement on our plan was a renewed
enthusiasm—a
rebirth of the collective spirit. We were rejuvenated.
We focused on people. We rejoiced at individuality—as long as it was
focused on common goals. Everything was done with thoughts
of family,
opportunity, freedom. The goals were always quality, energy, creativity.
Differences were more than tolerated;
they were celebrated.
The North Face was the ultimate melting pot—at any one time we had
14 different languages spoken in our company, five used
regularly in our
written communication. We had employees from every part of the globe—
Asia, Europe, South America, the United
States, you name it.
One day the mayor of Berkeley brought a group of visiting Soviets to
see our factory. The Soviets were mostly impressed and
asked incisive
questions. But there was one who didn’t fit in with the rest. At first I
noticed his clothes—better tailored
and higher-quality fabric. Soon I figured
out he was the Communist party representative, since none of the others
talked to
him. When I told them about the variety of people who worked for
us, most of the Soviets were impressed by the open culture
in our company.
But not the one who stood alone. He asked, “Is the real reason that you hire
all these immigrants to exploit
them for low wages?”
“No,” I explained, “our employees are paid better by us than our
competitors. The real reason we hire anyone is because we
think they can
produce quality. Quality is not something that has geographic barriers or
definitions.”
The idea in all personnel decisions is to foster community—eliminate
the toxic envy that plagues many companies. The way to
do this is to let
people be themselves.
Employees look to leaders for how a job should be done. They will
emulate or approximate that style as long as they can do
it within the
boundaries of their own personality. It’s a fine line to walk, but it’s easy if
you know how. Employees want
guidelines and vision, but then they want
to be left alone to flourish as they see fit. They want constant access to you,
but they don’t want you leaning over their shoulder. They really want you
out of the way so they can take over and perform.
They want vision,
control, and creativity.
W. L. Gore is a company that offers all of this. Gore makes a number
of products, but the best known is a waterproof, breathable
fabric, Gore-tex.
It revolutionized the outdoor apparel market. The company was founded by
William Gore, who had previously
worked for E. I. du Pont. It was at Du
Pont that Gore began to think about a new way of motivating people. When
he founded
his own company, he put it into effect. He called it the lattice
work system.
At Gore everyone is described as an “associate” and treated as an
equal. They use the analogy of a boat on the water to explain
what level of
decisions can be risked by employees. They described decision making as
drilling holes in the side of the boat.
Any holes drilled below the waterline
must be reviewed by others. In other words, risk is good, but don’t risk
everything.
If a decision is large enough to affect the health of the whole
organization, then the whole organization should be brought
into the
decision-making process. But small mistakes won’t significantly wound the
company, and the reward of small mistakes
is that the employees will learn.
And Gore, using this philosophy, has become phenomenally successful.
Every time employees learn, they improve. To constantly leave
decisions in the hands of superiors kills motivation and may
cost you
expertise. After all, someone doing a job eight hours a day usually knows
more about that particular activity than
his or her boss. Authority does not
equal knowledge.
A few years ago I decided I would try the sport of ultralight airplane
flying, and I saw firsthand why one should not blindly
trust anyone putting
himself off as an authority.
Flying these tiny planes looked like fun, and it required no pilot’s
license. It offered a chance to get into the back-country
quickly, and I could
land the plane virtually anywhere.
The salesman was all hype, a vision in polyester—he liked me from
the instant he saw me, or so he said. “It’s simple,” he
explained. “These are
the safest planes around because they are incredibly sturdy and their light
weight makes the glide ratio
so good.” I was skeptical. The plane looked
flimsy—just a skeleton and a propeller.
But still, it did look like a hell of a lot of fun. I like fun. He explained
to me I could master flying the plane in one
day, and without a license I
could be flying solo the next day.
I grilled him a bit. I asked how difficult the planes were to maintain.
“I’m not very mechanically inclined,” I said. “How
can I be sure everything
is as it ought to be?”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I know all about these planes. Everything’s
perfect. I’ve only been flying these a short time myself.
But they’re so easy,
I learned it all in one day, just like you will.”
I was ready to go for it. What the hell—life is short, have dessert first
and all of that.
He collected my money, and we began to push the ultralight to the
takeoff area. Another man came and helped. The second man’s
hands were
greasy—I presumed he was a mechanic. As we were pushing, the mechanic
made small talk. But then, after pushing
a short way, he stopped and turned
to the salesman. From easy conversation, his face had become serious.
“Where is the wing
nut?” asked the mechanic. “The one that bolts the right
wing down?”
The salesman responded, “What wing nut? I’ve never seen one on that
bolt and I’ve been flying this thing for weeks.”
“The wing can be wrenched off without it,” said the mechanic. He
fished a wing nut from his pocket and installed it. “You’re
damn lucky.”
I was flabbergasted. But the mechanic assured me everything was fine
now, so I decided to try it.
The flight was exhilarating. But I was wary—what else was there
about the plane that the salesman didn’t know? I never did
buy the plane,
though admittedly it was lots of fun. I wasn’t going to have a mechanic
around, and I knew what I didn’t know.
The salesman obviously didn’t. I
wasn’t an expert on the planes, and neither was my supposed teacher. His
authority proved
false.
If you want the truth, go for knowledge, not authority. And if you want
your employees to have knowledge, you have to reward
it with trust and
honesty—a willingness to involve them in decisions that affect their own
job. Employees must be allowed
to grow. They have to be excited and
motivated.
Al Hildebrand understands this. He is a large man, a onetime draft pick
of the Houston Oilers. He never made the team, but
he used his football
bonus money to pay his way through business school. He had a successful
25-year career with Spectra-Physics,
a San Francisco Bay area company
specializing in laser beams.
He retired at 49, well off and happy. At a business school reunion on
the day he retired, I asked him what satisfied him most
about his career at
the company. It wasn’t the wealth, he said. It wasn’t the title of vice
president.
Rather, it was two things. The first was that he put his physics training
to good use by inventing six items that received
patents. The second gave
him even more satisfaction, he said. “I led, managed, and encouraged
eleven subordinates who later
became CEOs of Silicon Valley companies.”
He was most proud, he said, that the people under him flourished.
When leaders recognize that individual growth leads to organizational
growth, they have found the key to the kingdom. A company
such as
Spectra-Physics that loses 11 employees to their own dreams is much
stronger than a company that never loses anyone
to personal ambition. It is
essential to feed and nurture personal ambition. Sure, you’ll lose a few
people to their own dreams.
But is it really a loss? When a child grows up,
do you lose that child?
Of course not. As Hildebrand said, nothing gave him more pride. The
two most important things to offer any child, any employee,
are roots and
wings. Roots to grow, and wings to fly. With both, potential is virtually
limitless.
 8

WRESTLING WITH GORILLAS:

Obstacles to Fulfilling Your Passion

There were these two guys, the Whittakers. Lou and Jim. Big guys, each
six foot five. They were twins with lumberjack arms
and the suntanned-
sunburned look of perpetual outdoorsmen. Jim was the first American ever
to scale Mt. Everest.
They were climbing on a windswept glacier with an expedition in
Alaska. It was in the middle of nowhere, a desolate ice field;
the winds
howled. A member of the team got injured. He desperately needed medical
attention. As the sun quickly began to slide
over the horizon the
temperature fell precipitously. The Whittakers knew they had to do
something, and do it fast.
They called by radio for a helicopter to evacuate the injured person.
Usually they would call in a jet helicopter to whisk
an injured climber to
safety, but there wasn’t one available. They couldn’t wait for one to become
available—the man’s condition
was worsening. So they sent for a standard
helicopter, one not well suited for high altitudes. It wasn’t pretty. The
landing
was rough. But the helicopter did get there. They had to quickly
load the climber into the helicopter because taking off in
the dark would be
impossible. They loaded him but had no time for relief. When the helicopter
tried to lift back off the glacier,
it couldn’t. The air was too thin. The wind
was blowing long, cold blasts, and the blades of the helicopter kicked out
clouds
of snow. With the light rapidly disappearing, the Whittakers knew it
could be a matter of life and death for their companion.
Pulmonary edema
was just one of the fears.
Time was running out, so the Whittakers improvised. They each
grabbed a rail of the helicopter and heaved it off the edge
of the glacial cliff.
The Whittakers watched—entranced by the object of their actions. Down it
went, like a rock through the
thin air. Finally, halfway down the blades of
the helicopter caught air and it took off toward the hospital. Talk about
audacity,
talk about confidence—they had them both.
When Lou Whittaker told me that story, we were standing with a group
of five people in the Las Vegas Hilton, the setting of
the annual ski show. It
was March, a few years ago.
Lou is a natural storyteller, a mountain man as comfortable in Las
Vegas as he is in all the story-making places he’s conquered.
Lou loves the
wild, even the wild of Las Vegas. He loves to laugh, and he loves to tell a
story.
His voice got louder at the beginning. In the middle of the story it
dropped down, and then it rose to a crescendo as the
helicopter caught air.
And unlike a lot of tall people, he didn’t stoop to talk to me. He stood firm
and erect, a bottle of
beer in his hand and a wry smile on his face.
“Whatever it takes,” he concluded with a grin and a booming laugh.
Afterward I asked him, “But what if it hadn’t worked?”
“Sometimes,” mused Lou, “you just know.”
Obstacles will inevitably pop up on the path to fulfilling your passion,
and when they do you must, like the Whittakers did,
listen to your instinct,
your intuition, that little voice deep inside that “just knows.”
Like all adventures, the adventure of leadership takes faith. Faith in
yourself, and faith in anything and anyone that helps
you maintain that
faith.
In the adventure of business, as in life, most problems revolve around
people, and their solutions demand your heart as much
as your head.
At L. L. Bean, Leon Gorman, company president and the grandson of
L. L. Bean, sits in on every product meeting. Gorman has
the final say on
what is included in the catalog. Much of it depends on market studies and
sales records—all compiled professionally.
But the final word on what goes
in is Gorman’s, and more than once he has ordered an item in, or out, of the
book just because
he felt it should be that way. He goes with his gut even
when the so-called professionals tell him it’s wrong, because he
trusts an
instinct that sits at the core of the L. L. Bean vision.
Have you ever been in a corporate boardroom? Most look like
carefully crafted works of art, with carved mahogany swirling
and angling
this way and that—all of it a red-brown ode to power. But look closer,
beyond the trappings of wealth, and see
if you can find any good reason for
such ostentatiousness. Then ask yourself, Where is the product? If it’s not
there, the
company is in trouble.
If company leaders don’t take the time to look at their organization’s
product, to feel it, to smell it, to taste it if necessary,
then those leaders are
merely along for the ride. They are enjoying the fruits without sharing the
labor. They do not deserve
respect, and they do not deserve to be called
leaders. Most likely, they lack the feel, the intuition, and the passion
necessary
to make the right decisions on corporate matters. To be a leader
you can’t be a dilettante. You have to immerse yourself and
get your hands
dirty. It takes incredible determination.
In Berkeley, California, a company created the Power Bar, a candy-
bar-type product specially formulated for athletes to eat
before competition.
It gave them energy. Standard chocolate bars did the same thing, but the
chocolate in those bars could
upset the athletes’ stomachs—a disaster in
competition.
The problem was manufacturing without chocolate. The solution was
complicated because the machines that made traditional candy
bars are
lubricated by the chocolate in the bars. If you take the chocolate out, you
take away the lubrication.
The people at Power Bar had to invent their own machinery—
machinery some experts said couldn’t be invented—that operated without
the natural lubricant of chocolate. They wanted to produce a totally
digestible, quick natural energy source. They succeeded
on all counts.
It got to the point where U.S. cycling team members—led by people
such as Davis Phinney of the 1988 Olympics— demanded Power
Bars. The
Olympic committee said no. Power Bar was not an official supplier.
The cyclers nearly revolted, proclaiming they’d get Power Bars
somehow. Within days the Olympic committee made Power Bar an
official
supplier, waving the requirement for sponsorship money. It was because the
product was so good.
The people at Power Bar knew they were right, that they were making
a substitute candy bar that was great for athletes—it
was digestible and it
enhanced their performance. And now they had proof that the market
accepted their product, since Olympic
cyclers were demanding it.
The people at Power Bar overcame two problems: the need for new
machinery and an Olympic committee that was more wedded to
the concept
of raising sponsorship money than to the cyclists’ nutrition. Instinctively
Power Bar knew they could build the
new machinery, but convincing the
Olympic committee took more than instinct. It took dogged perseverance.
Imagine this scenario. You are Power Bar within your company. Your
boss is the Olympic committee. You have invented a way
to increase quality
and efficiency in the company. But your boss says no. No way can that
work; it’s not in the company manual,
says the Boss.
What should you say?
Here’s what the people at Power Bar said: Rewrite the damn manual.
Let’s do whatever has to be done.
The determination to do whatever is required must, inevitably, be
coupled with perseverance and irrepressible optimism to
prevail.
H. Ross Perot, the head of EDS, had those attributes when two of his
employees were taken hostage in Iran in 1979. He organized
his executives
into a commando team and went to Iran to break his people free. He even
visited the jail himself, under an
assumed name, to give the hostages
confidence. Perot and his team broke them out of the jail and ran them
across the Iranian
border. That’s passion. That’s commitment. That’s an
instinct for knowing what needs to be done, and it’s the guts to do it.
It takes more than just knowing what’s right. It takes the fortitude to
stand by your passion in the face of overwhelming
obstacles.
The greatest commencement speech ever given was by Winston
Churchill after World War II. It was an overcast day at his prep
school alma
mater, Harrow—one of many places he never excelled at academically.
Churchill walked up to the podium. He looked at the crowd, all decked
out in their caps and gowns. Every eye was on him. And
he said, “Never
give up.”
He looked again at the crowd. It stirred slightly at his pause. “Never
ever give up,” he said. He paused again. And finally he said, “Never give
up.” With that thought he turned from the podium and sat back down.
It is so simple yet so damned difficult, this idea of no surrender. It
comes down to the essence of existence—a high-noon
showdown with
yourself. Do you have what it takes?
Or don’t you?
How much do you believe in your instinct? It’s easy to say, I know I’m
right. It’s another thing to go ahead and prove it.
I believe in trying to prove
my beliefs—the way I see it, the meek will inherit nothing.
 George Lowe is a climber who failed in two attempts to climb the east
face of Mt. Everest before he finally succeeded. The
east face is
tremendously challenging. If you’ve ever seen pictures, it looks basically
like a vertical rope climb at 8,000
meters. Though there certainly is nothing
easy about any side of Mt. Everest, the east face is unbelievable—it’s a real
“gorilla.”
Just to attempt climbing the east face of Mt. Everest is heroic. But to
go again, after twice failing—that takes absolute
passion, determination,
and perseverance.
When Lowe finally reached the top of Everest, he made a decision that
was a bit selfish, yet in the realm of mountaineering
completely
understandable. He hacked off his support ropes after he came back down.
He wanted others to take on the “gorilla”
of the east face on their own just
as he did. He was conquered by the passion of his sport, which was not
bagging peaks but
just plain mountaineering, with all its factors woven into
one fabric—the planning, the pain, the struggle, and all of the
luck
associated with it.
What I am saying is that to persevere like a Power Bars or a Churchill
or a George Lowe you must live life at its core, walking
on the raw nerve
where you can feel the golden terrain of existence—a gestalt on this
breathing planet. You have to take it
all in and learn and grow and come up
with something to say at the end, just in case you get asked, “Do you have
any regrets?”
My friend Nick Nichols bills himself as the Indiana Jones of
photography. He sometimes works with Bernie Krause, who collects
sounds
all over the world. Bernie, in fact, has produced very successful compact
disks using only the sounds of nature. They’re
incredible.
They went to Africa a short while after Diane Fossey died and did
some advance work for the movie Gorillas in the Mist, and for Nick’s
books on gorillas. They lived one month over there. At first the primates
thought Nick and Bernie were threatening
them. At one point the gorillas
picked the two of them up and started throwing them in the air.
In business you may not get thrown around by gorillas. But it can seem
that way. The point is, you have to stick it out. You
have to tough it out, you
have to make the sacrifices.
Nichols and Krause did. By the end they fit in with the gorillas. They
stayed there and kept acting as part of the environment,
and actually they
were.
They did what they wanted to do—they lived the fullest way they
knew. Even though it meant getting thrown around, it was fun.
The gorillas of business can be just as hostile as those in the jungle.
Your employees can be gorillas, your banker loves
to be one, your
competitors are by nature hostile gorillas, and even your customers will toss
you around the minute something
goes wrong. Every call a salesperson
makes is to a gorilla. Some are nice, but think of this: The average number
of calls
a salesperson must make on a new account before closing a sale is
five. The gorilla wins on the first four. The good salesperson
keeps going
back until eventually he, like Nichols and Krause, befriends the gorilla.
There was a businessman like this, named Karsten Solheim. Karsten
invented a great set of golf clubs, but he had to take on
two gorillas: no
money to speak of to produce them, and no testing equipment to prove his
product. He didn’t let this deter
him. Rather, he and his son hopped in his
car and went into the desert. They blasted along at up to 100 miles per hour
so
Karsten’s son could hold different clubs out the window to see which
ones caused what aerodynamic resistance. The desert wasn’t
exactly the
atmosphere of a test lab, but it didn’t matter. Karsten and the company he
founded, Ping, went on to do quite
well.
Passion requires an uncommon nerve to face failure, disaster,
shortages, and exhaustion and to stand back up and declare,
Let’s do it
again. It takes absolute dedication to the task at hand. It is not a two-minute
drill of instant ego gratification,
but rather a continuous surge of energy into
the gland that controls creativity and internal drive. Passion is a fluid vision
of the future.
Ned Gillette is an explosion of vision—like an astronaut, a cowboy,
and an engineer rolled into one human form. Gillette,
with dark shaggy hair
and wire-rim glasses, is thin, almost skinny, and in his 40s. His appearance
is deceptive, though, because
Gillette has phenomenal strength of both body
and spirit.
In 1983 Ned approached me with his plan for a rowboat trip to
Antarctica—one of the few “firsts” left in the adventuring world.
It sounded
crazy, but as I knew from my past dealings with him, Ned doesn’t do crazy
things. Oh sure, the vision started with
a crazy idea. “It usually does,” said
Ned. Rowing to Antarctica certainly stretched the traditional bounds of
sanity.
 But Ned has a multidimensional view of his adventures, and the very
first dimension he explores is that of safety. Ned’s is
never a half-cocked
light bulb of inspiration that fades into the memory of late-night
braggadocio. His was a precise, step-by-step
consideration of a problem—
rowing through the Drake Passage, called by many the roughest seas in the
world—and subsequent
development of a solution.
What appeared to the outside world to be the sexiest hell-on-wheels
adventure in the history of mankind was really a small-scale
NASA-type
project with every contingency covered. Ned spent four years planning the
trip, getting sponsors—including The North
Face—and studying the
weather patterns of the 600-mile stretch of open ocean that has been known
to launch up to 60-foot seas
and smash clipper ships like toothpicks.
What makes Ned brilliant is that he is the perfect left brain-right brain
mix. He has an almost Zen intuition about what will
work and a persevering
gut that won’t allow failure. He also has a work ethic and a dedication to
detail that manufacture
the vision of passion. A former member of the U.S.
Olympic ski team and a dropout from an MBA program, Gillette tried a
stint
at selling encyclopedias before he happened on his career as a
professional adventurer. What he did was become the best in
the world.
For years Ned planned and worked. It was staggering—designing the
boat, raising the money for the expedition, learning the
unique weather
patterns of Drake Passage. There was so much more. This was no mere
project; it was a voluntary trek through
the wild currents of a clipper ship
cemetery—through waters that never rose above 31 degrees Farenheit. For
four years he
trained for what eventually became a 21-day sojourn into
water that Sir Francis Drake in 1578 described as “the most mad seas.”
Finally he and three crew members went to Chile, to Cape Horn at the
southern tip of South America. And they waited. What
they were waiting
for was a window of opportunity. First the ice in the passage had to melt.
Then they needed to wait for
the right day, with the right wind, to launch
out into those mad seas. The right wind, if it comes at all, comes only
during
one month a year, and even then it is quite unpredictable. They knew
that once they set off for Antarctica, they wouldn’t
be able to come back. If
they stopped before Antarctica, the current would overpower and sweep
them off toward the south of
Africa—a journey of weeks or months that no
one on their vessel might survive.
 The ice never melted that year. Ned had to scrap his plan and wait for
an entire year. During that year one of Ned’s partners
took $35,000 of the
money Ned had raised to finance the trip and spent it on himself. Rather
than get discouraged by all the
bad news, Gillette kept his promise to
himself and pushed on the following year, when he and three others
successfully rowed
his bright-red ellipse of a boat—fondly named the Sea
Tomato—to Antarctica.
He persevered. And when he completed the trip, as is always the case
with Ned, he immediately displayed his professionalism
and business
acumen by keeping all the promises he’d made to all of his sponsors as
well. Keeping promises is absolutely essential.
Your reputation is only as
good as your word.
Rather than waste time and let the experience become cold in his head,
Ned immediately wrote down his thoughts. He wanted
to make his
presentations about the trip top notch. Also, he flew to Las Vegas for the
annual backpacking and mountaineering
show to speak to customers and
employees of sponsoring companies. Needless to say, the sponsors, whom
Gillette fondly thanked
during his many public presentations, were quite
impressed. Ned is truly a professional adventurer.
And he is an ingenious professional. He found his passion, and he
gutted out his adventure. He persevered. And every time
one adventure
ends for him, he ingeniously finds a way for someone to pay for him to go
on another.
Ned has been faced with a problem of his own choosing—he wants to
do things that have never been done before. This makes ingenuity
essential.
It’s the same in business—business doesn’t need historians; it needs
visionaries. The world is changing too fast
to rely on old solutions.
Ingenious decision making in an organization can ignite a spark of
excitement that redundant decision making doesn’t. Ingenuity
inspires. In
business you have to be a Ned Gillette. You have to do what hasn’t been
done before. You have to live your adventure
to the fullest and constantly
strive for better solutions.
Another adventurer is Cliff Crilly, who learned the hard way why it
was important for him to outlast a sensory-deprivation
tank before he was
allowed to go to Antarctica. Unlike Gillette, who wanted to experience
going to Antarctica, Crilly wanted
to experience living in Antarctica.
 The sensory-deprivation tank was hard enough. It was completely
dark, and the tank was filled with a thick, warm liquid that
created no
waves. The first time Crilly went in, he stayed there for what seemed to be
hours. When he finally came out, he
was told he’d been inside for one
entire minute. Sixty seconds.
The next time he went in, he counted his heartbeat. He thought he had
been inside for quite some time. But when he came out,
they said he had
stayed inside for only four minutes—which says something about the speed
of his heartbeat.
Again Crilly went into the sensory-deprivation tank. But that time the
operators of the tank had to tap on Crilly’s shoulder
3½ hours later. He had
found peace inside the tank. He was happy.
Onward to Antarctica went Crilly, who is, by the way, a good friend.
He was on a mapping expedition with one other explorer
in a mountainous
region near the South Pole. Suddenly it was as if a wall of weather came at
them, and they were overcome
by a whiteout. An absolute whiteout that
took visibility to zero. It made walking impossible. Vertigo was their daily
partner.
They could do nothing but wait out the storm.
They set up camp and went to sleep. When they awoke, it was the
same—blowing snow; swirling, gusting, blindness. They were
stuck.
But they had a small radio, and so they called out for food drops from
rescue airplanes. They found the food by walking in
concentric circles
around their tent while tethered to it so they wouldn’t get lost.
Days passed. The weather stayed the same. It got worse, if anything. It
all became a strange routine. Word games and card
games and stories and
endless hours of self-examination. At some point, I don’t care what Crilly
says, he must have thought:
What the hell am I doing here?
Thirty-one days passed. Thirty-one. All along, Crilly knew the answer
to his question. He was waiting for the weather to pass
so he could get on
with his mapping expedition.
Look at the faces of people when you walk through life. Many have a
set, comfortable, dull glare. No animation, no drive,
and no vitality. Very
few have the eyes of a Cliff Crilly, willing to endure almost anything to
achieve his goal. Instead
the look is one of settled acceptance—of someone
beaten down by fraudulent authority for so long that there is no energy to
fight on. It’s sad, so much wasted human potential.
 It doesn’t have to be that way. We as leaders can save America from
this drudgery. What it will take is an infusion of passion—the
pulsing grip
of any great vision. We must give up the security of tradition for the
surprise of passion. We are all driven
by inner needs, and not just the
survival-istic ones either. We are driven by a need to accomplish, to express
ourselves,
to succeed, and to contribute to society. Everyone, I don’t care
who, wants to do something great with his or her life. Many
never even
acknowledge that want. It becomes hidden, a source of shame.
But desire for greatness is not shameful. It is something to be
celebrated—something to be nurtured. People in business, just
like Crilly,
are willing to endure great hardship if it will bring the fruits of life—
success, recognition, and the heartbeat-by-heartbeat
thrill of existence that
comes from accomplishment.
Dreams are wonderful. But dreams alone, as Walter Mitty showed us,
are not enough. When nothing surfaces alongside the dream—when
there is
no passion—there is only the passing thought. There must be a real life
boring in—an entrenchment of the soul, if
you will, in the logistics of the
dream to make it come true. It takes the dedication of Ned Gillette with the
perseverence
of Churchill. And it takes the ingenuity of both.
Many aspiring leaders believe they must be dispassionate, but I’ll be
damned if I know why. Passion is magnetic, it draws
people to you, but
some managers are so dispassionate they won’t even own a dog. One way
to express passion is to cry, really
cry, when you lose a sale, and rejoice
when you close one. You have to care. Despite uncertainty, you have to let
your heart
lead you. It will usually be right, and it will certainly draw your
co-workers in around you. Allowing passion into your life
not only
empowers you as a leader, it also allows you to have fun. Don’t just excite,
incite.
The level of dedication of a superb leader is almost infinite. If you
have it, you exude passion. As a leader you must ask
others to dig deep.
The only way that will sell is if you, the leader, dig deeper. You have to
show a willingness to sacrifice,
a capacity for the audacious, and an instinct
for brilliance.
A leader cannot be detached or robotic. A leader must be involved,
putting emotions up front where everyone can see that the
task at hand is
more than just a way to make money. A leader must inspire, but first a
leader must be inspired.
 Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, was inspired. Back when Nike was a
small company in Oregon, Knight knew he had a great product.
But he
couldn’t get anyone to finance his concept without stealing the company
from him. He wanted to grow, and he knew a
huge market existed for his
athletic shoes if he could find the money—enough to feed explosive
growth. He didn’t just believe,
he knew there was a market for his shoes.
Knight went to Nisho Iwaii, the Japanese trading company that had
supplied him with some components. I believe it was laces
and soles, but
some people say it was even less than that.
Knight said, “I’ve got this great idea. There’s only one little thing
you’ve got to do for me—you’ve got to lend me the money
so I can
manufacture more shoes. Not only will you receive interest on the money
you lend me, but also I could buy more from
you. You could double or
triple the interest with the profit you’d make on the things you sell me.”
Nisho Iwaii understood the risk but saw the opportunity. They went
forward and helped Knight create the new-booming sneaker
industry.
Knight paid off the trading company as soon as he had sold his shoes to
retailers. But up to that point Nisho Iwaii
financed Nike, helping Knight
grow. As Knight proved, you can be pretty creative under pressure.
Like Knight, I had the usual difficulty getting financing when I first
came up with my plan for The North Face. Everyone I
went to turned me
down. It was one of the most frustrating periods of my life. I just knew I
was right. Finally, when the
last venture capital (by then I had renamed
them all “vulture capital”) firm I talked with turned me down, I looked
them right
in the eye and said, “Fine. I understand your rejection, but do me
a favor. Make me a bet. I’ll bet you $500 that in five
years The North Face
will be worth more than two-thirds of the companies in your portfolio are.”
They never did bet me. They
were, however, so intrigued that they
reconsidered and financed The North Face. Five years later I would’ve
easily won the
bet.
It was easy for me to be passionate and persevere, because my spark
was a personal one. Always I strove for more.
Although The North Face was founded on the principle of making the
best-possible products, in 1970 I decided we needed to
do even better—to
improve the best. I didn’t want to just dominate the market, I wanted to
revolutionize it. Through a friend
I contacted Buckminster Fuller, the
inventor of the geodesic dome. My idea was to get Bucky to help design a
geodesic-dome
tent. It didn’t exactly work out that way, but it did work out.
Bucky wrote back full of enthusiasm. He was convinced he knew
exactly what we needed but, unfortunately, was without time
for the project.
So without Bucky’s design, I waited. I waited more than five years. While I
waited, I began bouncing the
idea off some of my employees. I wanted,
needed really, to find some people who shared my belief that a geodesic-
dome tent
was possible and would make all the tents on the market
obsolete. I needed people who understood my premise—to evangelize
this
cause within the company. I found two people with just that vision.
The first was Bruce Hamilton, a dope-smoking hippie, graduate of the
University of Vanderbilt, and disciple of Karl Marx.
He was not your
typical corporate employee by any stretch. At times, when Karl Marx was
particularly fresh in Bruce’s mind,
we’d go around and around about the
strengths and weaknesses of capitalism and communism. These were not
mere discussions
of theory, either. Often Bruce had a problem with the
capitalistic way I ran The North Face. Through it all, though, we became
friends.
Bruce had a math degree and was somewhat of a Buckminster Fuller
groupie. He, honest to God, spent a year on the road like
a devoted
Deadhead (as in The Grateful Dead), following Fuller from city to city to
hear him speak.
When I went to Bruce with my ideas for a geodesic-dome tent, he was
more than enthralled. He was ecstatic. It was like asking
a Deadhead to tune
Jerry Garcia’s guitar.
The second person was Mark Erickson, also an iconoclast—part
hippie, part artist—who was dedicated to doing something special
with his
life. He was a graduate of Northwestern. In Berkeley the counter-culture
types seemed to flock to us. We had established
a reputation of being open
to all types. Not only did we welcome them, but for many we were a last-
ditch chance at a life
of steady employment. At The North Face we loved
this image.
Mark applied for a job with The North Face 28 times. Yes, that’s right.
No misprint—28 times. He saw himself as the epitome
of a North Face
employee. Finally we did too.
He took the only job we had—as a janitor. Of course, in our company
this didn’t limit him. We encouraged people to rise above
their daily duties
and do anything possible to help the company be the best. Mark responded.
Boy, did he.
Mark was in love with design and creation, and he immediately
identified with the project. Employees naturally self-selected
into projects
that interested them, and this was a project he relished. Mark, who had long
since risen from janitor into product
design, was perfect for the geodesic-
dome tent—he had an analytical mind, a creative disposition, and the
flexibility necessary
for the creative process. Hiring Mark was half luck and
half brilliance—our luck, his brilliance. Whatever, he quickly rose
in the
company by displaying a great visual sense—the geodesic tent is a tribute
to his aesthetic skills. Mark now owns a
design firm.
Mark and Bruce set out to design the tent that would revolutionize the
world market for backpackable tents. Soon Bucky came
along to offer his
input. Mark and Bruce were in heaven. So was I. We combined Mark’s
product design with Bruce’s mathematics,
and into the mix jumped the
legendary Buckminster Fuller, a hero to both Mark and Bruce. I knew the
geodesic-dome tent would
become what it became—the inspirational parent
to at least the next ten generations of small backpackable tents.
Mark and Bruce collected what can only be called a cult of followers,
wedded to the project and to the belief in the vision
of geodesics as
articulated by Buckminster Fuller. One of these followers, Jim Shirley,
eventually went on to work on the
world’s weather and greenhouse-effect
problems. This work was a direct result of the inspiration he received from
working
with Bucky. It was truly a magical time.
Nevertheless, there were plenty of difficulties along the way. For one
thing, the tent poles that went through the bends of
the tent were
experiencing stress-corrosion cracking—a technical way of saying they
were breaking. At one point we recalled
every pole we ever put in our
product. Making good on our warranty was our normal way of doing
business.
I’ll never forget the day we finally unveiled the original tent, designed
just for Bucky. It was October 7, 1977, our son’s
ninth birthday. Bucky
spoke at the ceremony, and then we had a well-practiced team assemble an
oversized version of our geodesic-dome
tent in ten minutes. Everyone who
participated was a part of the team.
Following the ceremony, a few of us—Bucky included—headed over
to my house. Bucky immediately took to my grandmother, who
was two
years older than he. They started talking about time, their lives—the first
car, the first airplane, and so on. The
rest of us just sat back and listened. It
was one of the most educational evenings of my life. Finally, before the
evening
was over, Bucky walked up to my son, Matt, put his arm around
Matt’s shoulder, and wished him a happy birthday. And then he
gave Matt a
book he had authored. In it Buckminster Fuller wrote: “To Matt, on his
ninth birthday—a member of the generation
who is going to change
mankind for the benefit of all humanity.” Reading that later, I thought,
We’re all part of that generation.
Buckminster Fuller was a utopian. He and those of us at The North
Face were not just trying to design a new tent—we wanted
to improve the
world. The tent was the focal point, but we were also thinking about an
eventual market of people using tents
as permanent residences instead of
houses. We thought of it as good capitalism. With good capitalism we could
change the world—allow
people to explore the wilderness, appreciate
nature, and stop the destruction of the planet.
We had created our dream and battled it out. When something didn’t
work at first, we figured out a way to make it work. We
believed in it. We
had taken our first step. It was time to start planning our next. Financially
we created a monumentally
successful project. Yet no one thought only in
terms of making money.
We thought that by striving for our best—financially, physically, and
spiritually—we would be our best. That tent was no mere product of fabric
and metal—it was a physical representation of our lives for the past five
years. Every hiker who purchased that tent was, in effect, joining us on our
incredible journey. We weren’t just selling hikers
tents. We were selling
them five very special years of our lives. We were selling them our best
friend, our pet gorilla.
 9

IMPROVING PERFECTION:
Only the Best Will Do

Chicago. There was a wrath of January wind and a swirling, throbbing

snowfall that moved like a bad headache. It was so cold
my face burned.
The sky was gone—in its place, a gray, infinite void. No moon, no stars;
only cold.
I had just left a sporting-goods show at McCormick Place on the
frozen banks of Lake Michigan. I was with my vice president
of retail, Tom
Applegate. As soon as we walked outside we expected to flag down a taxi,
but no such luck. What we flagged
down was less a taxi than a mobile
dumpster. It was grimy, with oil stains everywhere, and the floor was a
puddle. But it
was five below zero and we had already waited a half hour. It
would have to do. The cab driver had the semi-crazed look endemic
to big-
city cab drivers, along with a two-day growth of beard and a shock of
unruly hair.
When we got in, there was a problem. One of the back doors was
broken and wouldn’t stay shut. When we pointed this out to
the driver, he
told us he couldn’t take us because the broken door was too dangerous. But
we wouldn’t leave. We had been outside
so long that even my hair was
cold.
Tom and I examined the door and quickly figured that the rocker arm
on the door latch was the problem and could be easily
repaired by hand.
However, it was covered with grease and grime. It didn’t make sense to
work on it in our business clothes—we
had another meeting to attend. The
cabbie looked at us, confused. He wasn’t sure he understood our
explanation. To test it
he went to the other door and pushed down hard on
the latch on that door, replicating the malfunction of the first door. Then
he
stopped, dumbfounded.
 With that push, the problem doubled—we now had two broken doors.
I was anxious. I was cold. I had a meeting to attend, but
the cabbie was now
more insistent than ever that he couldn’t take us. My retort was that if he
had to get back to the shop
for repairs, he couldn’t get there without us. We
could help.
And we did. Sitting in the backseat, Tom and I each grabbed opposing
door handles with our hands and linked our other arms
together—
structurally linking one side of the cab to the other. This kept the doors from
flying open and us from falling out.
Using this improvised latching
technique, we helped the cabbie get to the shop. When we got there, we
finally flagged a “real”
cab to take us on to our meeting.
It’s a simple thing, to expect a cab to have doors that close and a decor
that doesn’t come from the junkyard. But so often
we find that even our
least expectations cannot be met. The problem is that so few people pay
attention to quality. In an
economic climate where quick money rules,
quality has become a joke. But the joke’s on us.
Almost every company has some sort of quality control program.
Unfortunately most are just statistical tools designed to weed
out defects,
and not even all of them. Quality control programs don’t add to quality;
they merely attempt to keep it from
dropping to the unacceptably low level
that no one will buy. That’s the problem—an American infatuation with
meeting the lowest
common denominator and the knee-jerk acceptance of
the unfounded axiom that the consumer will always take price over
performance.
I remember reading an interview with one of the astronauts upon his
return from a successful space mission. He was asked what
he was thinking
as he sat in the capsule ready to blast off. “I was thinking,” he said, “that all
the parts of the spaceship
went to the lowest bidder.”
That says it all. The lowest bidder! Not the best; the lowest. The
cheapest. Sure, he got home all right. But still—the lowest
bidder. It’s
become the American way to worry about price first and quality second.
This is not to say that quality always has to be the most expensive.
Often it is; many times it isn’t. Quality isn’t about
money, it’s about caring.
It’s about wanting to be the best because there is personal pride at stake—an
individual declaration
of identity with the product.
There is always a market for the best, all over the globe. It’s an
obvious and well-known fact that mountain climbers don’t
like to buy
discounted climbing ropes. And there’s the joke about the parachute offer
for sale—cheap, slightly irregular,
but used only once. When something is
as important as life and death—and all business decisions should be—
quality is irreplaceable.
For everyone involved, it’s a lot more fun to pursue the top of the
market than any other segment. It’s more challenging—it’s
energizing.
Making the best ensures that a company gets repeat customers while
offering an umbrella of protection against excessive competition.
Quite
simply, few companies are willing to compete at the top end of the market.
Great quality can differentiate you from all the others in your field.
There is an aura about quality—a glow you feel when
you are involved in
the event of quality. There is a common bond of satisfaction shared by those
involved with quality—a mutual
energy perpetuated by being the best.
Quality is not just a statement about products; it is the credo of a life style.
In the United States there are 500,000 brand names registered and
actively used. Every consumer sees more than 875,000 advertising
impressions each year. According to one retail study, there are enough
stores in the United States to serve 500 million people—more
than twice
the 240 million population. These staggering numbers show how difficult it
is to stand out. Yet to be successful,
you must stand out. The best way, quite
simply, is with the highest quality.
Quality will show up in the most unlikely places. Quality always
stands out. Peter Glen, the critic and author, had a quality
experience at, of
all places, a coffee shop—in a Tokyo department store.
The first thing he noticed was the impeccably groomed staff waiting to
serve him. Why? he asked. Why would a mere coffee shop
in a department
store have such well-groomed help?
The answer was pride, he was told. Pride of the manager, who
personally inspected every employee and sent them home if they
did not
look immaculate. And pride of the employees. The manager went on to
explain that all employees were required to speak
two languages.
Imagine such a requirement in the United States, where many
employees can’t handle even one language. Americans would tell
you it’s
superfluous; Japanese would tell you it’s good business.
After talking with the manager, Peter ordered coffee. He was quickly
given a hot towel to freshen himself, and it was promptly
followed by his
coffee—no ordinary cup of coffee. There was a dollop of cream on top,
shaped like a rosebud. Peter picked
up his spoon to stir, but he was asked to
wait and watch. He did, and the dollop slowly began to open, a rosebud
opening into
petals. It was service, it was unique, it was attention to detail,
it was showmanship, and it was great.
Next time you order coffee at your local greasy spoon or wait in line
more than an hour to check into even a fancy hotel,
compare your
experience to Peter’s. And while you’re comparing, think about your
customers, your employees, your boss; compare
your work to someone
else’s.
Peter often tells this story—it’s one of his favorites. That’s the thing
about customers; they love to tell other potential
customers what they think.
They often are your best salespeople.
You can be known as anything, but to be known as the best outweighs
everything else. Someone once said that if you buy the
best, you will never
be sorry. Likewise, if you produce the best, you will never be sorry. There is
always a market of people
who want the best—who are not satisfied to
settle for less.
And even those who are willing to settle will always choose quality if
given a choice. Quality works. People intrinsically
understand quality, even
though it is in essence undefinable. Quality strikes a raw nerve, like an
emotion, because quality
is from the heart. Quality is real.
My search for the highest-quality goose down brought me not only to
China, it also led me to the Hutterite colonies in Montana.
The Hutterites
are a religious sect that decades ago moved from Germany to Canada and
parts of the northern United States
to avoid religious persecution. Theirs is a
simple life, isolated from the real world by choice. They dress in clothing of
a long-ago era: the men in all black, the women in long dresses and
bonnets. Except for periodic business with the outside,
they keep to
themselves, eschewing modern-day life.
The Hutterites live a farming life, producing much of what they eat.
When a colony grows too large, a new one is set up in
a nearby area. Each
colony aims to be self-sufficient—fueled in large part by all the free labor.
They eat in communal style,
and their homes are simple bungalows. Private
property does not exist; everything is owned by the colony.
As part of their self-contained life-style, they raise geese for food. The
down is a by-product, which they sell. It is a
higher-quality product than
Chinese down because the Hutterites let the birds grow 30 to 40 percent
longer before killing
them. The feathers are a bit larger and fuller, which
make the down thicker and work as a better insulator.
I met the Hutterites through one of my relatives, who lived in Montana
and years earlier had done some business with them.
When we arrived, they were slaughtering pigs for chops, bacon,
sausage, and the like. It was very authentic—blood, innards,
the works. It
wasn’t pretty. Some of the men, all were in black, stopped their work and
came to greet me. Others continued
to work on the pigs.
It was 10 a.m. when they invited me in and we sat down. I remember
the time because that’s when they broke out the homemade
wine. It was not
a Latour, but it wasn’t bad. Just a bit early.
I was with the elders, a mostly bearded group of men who had a
penchant for speaking among themselves in a German dialect.
I tried to
follow—I know a bit of German. As soon as they saw I understood a little,
they went into a more obscure dialect.
At first I felt like an outsider, but
then they turned their attention to me. They asked in English what was my
opinion of
the world goose down situation. They were testing me as a
businessman, and—I quickly learned—as a friend.
I told them what I knew, I was honest, and slowly the obscure dialects
began to disappear. They smiled—not in general merriment,
but directly at
me. We had a few more glasses of wine, and they agreed they could sell me
some down.
It was almost mystical, like I had been dropped back in time to do
business with those from another era—on our monetary terms.
I was
drinking homemade wine with the bearded elders, and from the room next
to us I could hear women singing religious songs
in a Germanic tongue.
Though women and children were not allowed to talk to me, I saw several
peek in at me, the outsider,
before they were reprimanded and sent away.
The singing next door, I learned, was for a wedding. I was not invited,
though
I would have loved to have seen it.
The elders offered to take me on a tour of some of the colonies prior to
the afternoon discussion of prices.
It was agreed, and we undertook our tour. I drove, since they had few
cars. We went to a cafeteria in one of the other colonies.
That was where I
was pulled aside by some of the more curious young men-they wanted to
know about the San Francisco 49ers.
Though they were insulated, somehow
they still received information. They related to 49ers because the
quarterback was Joe
Montana, and they lived in Montana. When they
brought food, I expected a hearty meal—a natural food treat. Some of it
was,
but there were also Twinkies and Hostess Ding Dongs. The Hutterites
liked junk food! Despite the incongruity, it made sense.
The junk foods they
used were loaded with preservatives, and the Hutterites made few trips into
towns or cities. When they
bought food, it had to last. Thus Twinkies.
We returned later to the negotiations and had a spirited time. Quite
spirited. We finally settled on a price and terms and
celebrated with another
glass of homemade wine. This was no mere business transaction; we were
friends. I liked them, and
they liked me. We could help one another—it was
a reason to celebrate.
We kept in touch and visited periodically. It was always the same, a
gathering of friends. They even suggested that my wife
and I come live
there for a while, but we never did. I don’t look good in all black, and
Margot just isn’t the bonnet type.
But that was the beauty of it—they respected who we were, and we
respected them. Differences were celebrated even as commonality—the
down—caused us to meet.
The Hutterites to me were an adventure, the same as Mt. Everest is to
the world’s great climbers. It was a pursuit of quality—quality
down, a
quality relationship, and a disciplined focus on mutual goals.
Discipline is not a bad word. Discipline is not about some schoolmarm
with a ruler slapping your fingers, and it’s not about
the boss threatening to
fire you. Discipline is an internal art. It’s personal.
For instance, someone in the Walt Disney Company had a dedication
to quality and the discipline to carry it out. His concern
was that when light
bulbs blew out in lamp poles at Disneyland and Disney World, it would be
unsafe and did not match the
Disney image. That person’s attention to detail
and expectation of quality led to a computer monitoring system that forecast
when a light bulb had ten hours left in it. Now all the bulbs are monitored,
and when they reach the ten-hour point, they
are replaced. That’s quality
and discipline.
Quality doesn’t come easy. It is the product of absolute focus. There
must be a gripping, a tightening of the muscles in pursuit
of quality. It is a
never-ending quest.
Stanley Marcus of Neiman-Marcus fame tells the story of a friend who
knew that most people do not have enough resilience or
perseverance to
produce a quality product. The man made some of the best ice cream
imaginable. One time when Stanley was with
his friend, a handful of people
asked for the friend’s recipe and he gladly gave it away. Stanley was
incredulous and asked,
“Don’t you realize you are giving away the secret of
your success?”
The man just smiled. Finally he said, “Stanley, when they see how
costly this is and how hard it is to make, they’ll never
copy me. Never.”
This parable can be translated to apply to virtually all business today.
As soon as you start producing to price points, there is a tendency to
cut quality. When that happens, you don’t stand out.
The only way to get
noticed is to cut prices further, demanding lower costs on your part and
most likely lower quality. It’s
a downward spiral to nowhere. Sometimes
cheap is expensive, and expensive is cheap. If you want to revolutionize
your market,
design first and price later.
Don’t misunderstand me—I recognize there is a good market based on
low price points. Some companies have done quite well pursuing
that
strategy. I would argue, however, that the ones that are successful at lower
price points are those who also present
good quality and give excellent
price/value relationships—not those whose sole concern is low price.
Yes, there are limits to the size of top-quality markets. They are,
however, steady and reliable markets where there is very
little competition.
Quality is what engenders loyalty. The people who lose customers are
those who pay no attention to quality. I remember the
instant I knew I had
to change auto repair shops. I was driving along the freeway, and I
happened to glance at the side of
the road—the break-down lane. In it was
my “skilled” mechanic and his car, a Porsche. He was not working on it. He
was yelling
at it, cussing it, kicking its fenders. Hell, I could do that.
Someone who is good at what he does—someone who understands
quality—would do more than yell. He would examine, measure. Measure,
of course, below the bottom line. For the mechanic the bottom line was that
the car didn’t start. What he should have measured
was the efficiency of the
car—how it worked. In business efficiency means not only speed but also
attention to details. From
efficiency comes quality. From details comes
efficiency.
Thus, details. Jean Claude Killy knows a bit about precision, about
speed, and about attention to details. Killy, the winner
of four Olympic gold
medals in skiing, showed some friends of mine one day how a champion
pays attention to minutiae. They
were at Vail—in the back bowls, carving
through untracked powder snow. The ski patrol opened it specially for
them.
On the first part of the hill, Killy’s skiing appeared impeccable. But he
was unhappy. “Something is wrong,” he said. “Can
we try skiing on some
moguls and packed snow so I can figure out the problem?” They did. They
all flew down the mountain,
Jean Claude leading the way. At the bottom of
the run everyone was exhilarated—faces flushed, eyes aglow. Except for
Jean
Claude.
He said again, “Something is wrong.” He asked one of my friends,
“Do you have a dime?” Killy took off his right boot, took
out the leather
liner, and removed the plastic foot bed. Under the heel of the foot bed he
put the dime—raising the heel a
tiny bit. He reassembled the boot and put it
back on his foot, declaring the alteration “Perfect!”
And they went off skiing again. In the words of my friend, “You would
never have believed it, that a dime could make any difference.
But I swear it
did, because he was skiing even better than before.” Details—any little
edge.
Killy knows how to get a little edge—attention to details. He also
knows how to get a big edge—hard work. Combine the two
and a large
dose of inspiration, and you have the makings of a champion.
Quality is as much an abstract feeling as it is a quantifiable aspect of a
product. It is like a warm glow where the spinal
cord touches the brain—a
surreal yet physical feeling that says, “This is good.” As Robert M. Pirsig
wrote in Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, “Quality is not a thing.
It is an event.”
Indeed it is, and the Ruby Mountain Heli Ski Company of northern
Nevada runs some great events. It is an owner-operated company,
not some
division of another division of some conglomerate. And it is prosperous.
They fly small helicopters (they call them “ships”) up into the
mountains. There is a pilot, a guide, and three to four passengers.
The idea
is to create intimacy—a connection of experience among a small group of
friends. The intimacy is maintained when
the people go skiing, with the
same ratio between guides and skiers.
The runs are sensational—1,500 to 2,500 vertical feet through light,
knee-deep powder in the midst of the spectacular Ruby
Mountains. It is one
of those spots in the world—and there are many, if you just look—where
nature seems to be almost a temple
to perfection. Quality is certainly the
feeling given off by nature at her grandest.
But it doesn’t just happen—the Ruby people must work hard to get the
skiers on the hills. The ski runs for the paying guests
begin from 6:30 a.m.
to 7 a.m. The guides’ day begins earlier, at the first sign of light—5 a.m. or
so. They go out by helicopter
and check the safety and viability of the ski
conditions. When there is concern about potential avalanches, they ease
their
doubts by throwing explosive charges to set the avalanches off. They
scour the hills for the best and safest conditions. The
customers generally
have no idea of the two hours of preparatory activity. To them the adventure
is magic.
But the owners of Ruby Mountain Heli Ski understand what it takes to
make magic. They understand quality. In heli-skiing,
safety is the first
thing. Always. All skiers are fitted with a homing device to help find them
in case of an avalanche. And
all are trained in avalanche survival, even if
they have already been trained elsewhere.
Safety is always on the owners’ minds, but it is not the only concern.
They want to maximize the skiing for their customers—they
aim to create
great adventures. For the customer it “just happens.” But the people at
R.M.H.S. know that nothing of quality
ever just happens—it takes hard
work, dedication, and, of course, attention to details.
When the sky is not safe for flying, in fog or blizzard conditions, they
use snow cats, mechanical vehicles that can transport
people up the steep
hills in the worst of snow conditions. From a cost standpoint it is much
more costly to maintain both
helicopters and snow cats to take skiers into
the mountains. But on bad days there will be no waiting for the skies to
clear.
The skiers won’t get quite as many vertical feet of skiing in using the
snow cats, but they still get a tremendous amount
and won’t have to miss a
precious day. Of course, it more than earns back the cost to the Ruby
Mountain people because the
skiers have the adventure of their lives and
tell everyone they know about it. Positive word-of-mouth advertising is
always
the strongest advertising.
They even offer alternative lodging to satisfy different personalities.
They operate out of an old farmhouse in Lamoille,
Nevada. It’s a small
town, not near much other than the Ruby Mountains. The farmhouse is cozy
—a warm, mountain throwback to
a simpler time. When you look around,
you expect to smell an apple pie baking in the oven—it feels that way.
 Most who go heli-skiing with Ruby stay at the farmhouse and enjoy
the hearty meals and the collegial atmosphere.
Some might find too much camaraderie confining. Some wish for
some time alone during this most spectacular adventure. The
owners have
arranged it so those souls can stay at a nearby motel as an alternative. The
choice is yet another nice touch—one
of individuality. The owners of Ruby
Mountain Heli Ski understand more than just business. They understand
people.
They understand that quality is not a halfway proposition—it is a full-
time occupation. To get it requires honest effort—100
percent commitment.
Partway doesn’t cut it. You have to go all the way. When you do, the
rewards are enormous.
Quality sells. Quality works. A reputation for quality is incredibly
marketable. But of course, it doesn’t stagnate—quality,
like life, is fluid.
For quality to sell there has to be a strong subjective agreement among
your customers. For instance, I once told one of my
board members who
ran a major U.S. pizza chain that I knew how to instantly double his
business. Needless to say, he was curious.
I acknowledged his company had
superb locations, tremendous advertising, and great prices. But, I explained,
there was one
thing missing—good pizza. Customers came once because of
the MBA stuff—location, advertising, and prices. But they would only
return if the company got down to the basics of what the business was
really about—a quality product. Make a good pizza, I
said, and you’ll get
the customers to come back and buy a second pizza.
Not long thereafter he sold the company to a conglomerate for a
handsome profit—leaving the worries of quality to the new
owners.
Going all the way for quality really means exactly that. All aspects of
your business must be focused on quality. If they
aren’t, somewhere,
inevitably, there will be failings. The way a receptionist greets someone is
just as important as the way
a production worker performs. From the logo
to the company cafeteria, it all counts toward creating an aura of quality.
Somerset Maugham, in The Mixture Before, said it well: “It is a funny
thing about life. If you refuse to accept anything but the best, very often you
get it.”
At The North Face a major, ongoing discussion was whether we
should use the word “high,” “higher,” or “highest” in our business
definition of our quality. Over the course of our company history, this was
perhaps our most famous discussion. It always
came up, perhaps because I
always brought it up.
Despite its repetitive nature I encouraged the discussion every time we
held a long-range planning meeting. Some advocated
“high” or “higher”
because they wanted precise, quantifiable, and reachable goals. A few of us
always argued for “highest”
because we knew the only thing that kept us in
business was constantly having higher quality than our competition. We had
to be the best.
As a goal the highest quality represents a moving target that can never
be quantified or reached. This can be frustrating
to some. But to those with
vision it is a tremendous guiding beacon. What it says is, if a product can be
made better, it
must and will be made better by us.
This can sometimes be disruptive to continuity and short-term
efficiency. At The North Face if a new technology or new material
came
along that was better than our own, we would change. There was a short-
term cost. But the long-term reward was stability
and growth.
Our entire focus was quality. It was our religion, and we were
evangelists. We knew it was what differentiated us from our
competitors.
We wanted our dealers to know it too, so one year we put together a
seminar based solely on quality—quality of
the future. We called it Future
Q.
We invited our dealers from all over the world to come to Berkeley to
talk about quality. This was more than meeting with
dealers; it was
corporate scholarship. We felt we could learn from our dealers, and they
from us. We wanted an exchange of
information and ideas.
I saw the seminar as a chance to nourish quality. To talk about it, think
about it, dream about it, and experience it. We
knew that from the
discussion would come an improved reality.
It was wonderful—a celebration of life at its most potent. We had
meals based on the concept “Future and Quality.” We had
speakers, such as
Peter Glen and myself. We played games. We had fun.
We divided the participants into groups and sent them into San
Francisco on an “Idea Search.” They were to come back with
the best ideas
they saw in retail. They were to find ideas they could take back to their
companies, ideas that cost no more
than $25 to implement.
Our dealers came up with several wonderful ideas which we used. One
was to expand the lighting in the back of the stores.
The back of the store is
always the least well trafficked area with the lowest sales per square foot.
By increasing wattage,
changing color schemes, or using windows, retailers
were able to attract more customers to the back, and let them spend more
time pleasurably in the stores.
Another idea was to alternate the direction of hangers on the clothing
racks at the front of the store. This prevented shoplifters
from snatching an
armful of merchandise and running off.
By taking the dealers to our stores and openly discussing the facts of
our business, good and bad, we all learned and became
more imbued with
the concept of quality. There was tremendous individual growth. And there
was more; there was business growth.
Our dealer loyalty soared. Many
dealers immediately improved the visual merchandising and operations of
their stores as a
result of the seminar. This translated into greatly improved
sales and profits. And the best part was everyone had a good
time. Quality,
unquestionably, is fun.
In some companies, however, quality is not a guiding concept; it is
merely a public relations slogan. It has no meaning because
there is nothing
behind it. There is no care, no commitment. The product isn’t the best—it’s
maybe okay. The people who make
it do it solely for money. Even the
people who buy it don’t expect much. They have been beaten down by bad
products.
Eventually, though, customers change companies. Even the most timid
customers—though uncomplaining—will begin to vote with
their feet.
Everyone wants something of quality.
There is one way to tell people up front of your commitment to highest
quality. It is the best way—a full and complete warranty.
A lifetime
warranty.
For one thing, a warranty gives you an easy way to quantify quality—
just measure the returns on warranty. It’s not perfectly
accurate, but it’s a
start. An even better way to quantify quality is counting the number of
defects produced that never go
to market. Many companies believe that if
defects go down the company is improving. My experience is different. I
believe
every company produces some defects; that is the nature of
production and the nature of business. If you don’t acknowledge
the defects
and cull them out, they don’t go away. They probably go to your customers,
who will then either create returns
or, far worse, vote with their feet and
begin buying from another company.
 Yet lawyers and vulture capitalists will tell you that you are crazy to
consider a lifetime warranty on anything. They are
wrong!
A full warranty sends a profound message—it says you will back the
product forever. Not many companies use that strategy,
but those that do are
almost always successful.
Ironically, with a full warranty some of your best reputation comes
when you have major problems. People doubt quality so
much that they
never really believe what you say with your warranty until you prove it.
When you do honor your obligation
and treat your customer right, it is so
unusual that the customer becomes a vociferous spokesperson for your
company.
When Gore-tex Fabrics introduced a new waterproof, breathable
fabric, it revolutionized the business of outerwear and sports
clothing. It
was a success from the start—functional, high priced, but without
competition. For years people had been looking
for the product they
created. It was the highest known quality.
But there was a problem. A year after it was introduced, the new
material, which was laminated to standard commercial fabric,
began to
bubble and separate. In the fashion-conscious world of outdoor clothing, the
product was a loser. Even more important
from a quality point of view, the
separation caused the clothing to lose some of its function—the garment
didn’t keep its
owner as dry as before the problem started.
It was a potential disaster. But Gore immediately put its R&D people
to work and they developed what they called Generation
II Gore-tex. The
company then offered to replace every garment that failed. Every one. And
they lived up to their promise.
The customers were ecstatic. Gore-tex reached an unassailable quality
and ethical pinnacle. Even when the competition developed
similar
waterproof, breathable products at lower price points, they couldn’t
overtake Gore. The company continues to lead
the waterproof, breathable
fabric market. Their product unquestionably meets the test of being the
highest quality. And every
day they are working to improve even that.
When The North Face launched its line of ski wear in 1980, we had the
perfect plan. But what we learned is that a plan is
just a word without the
right product.
The right product for The North Face was, of course, to have the very
best outerwear in the world. We knew how to do it—we
had the technology.
But we were also naive about the difficulty of being the best in ski wear. We
knew it would be hard. We
didn’t know how hard.
We did great research and had a totally revolutionary product—ski
wear that stood up to the cold, wind, sun, and abuse. Layers
of clothing that
worked combined or alone—in different altitudes and in different kinds of
weather. Behind this, we had total
assurance from our fabric suppliers that
their materials could do what we said they could do.
Our plan was to outfit the ski instructors at Vail. It went like this:
They’d get the outfits for a nominal fee and be happy
because the product
was the best. We’d get positive publicity because all winter long skiers at
Vail would see the instructors
in The North Face ski wear—word of mouth
goes fast in such small enclaves as Vail. Good skiers in good equipment.
Great idea.
There was a problem. You see, when good-skiers-in-good-equipment
become good-skiers-in-bad-equipment, you’ve got a real problem. By the
end of the first season at Vail, all the outfits of the instructors were
deteriorating
from the sun’s ultraviolet rays on the mountain—they started
looking like cheap sharkskin suits.
You know what we had on all that equipment? We had our lifetime
warranty on all that equipment. And we had a fabric supplier
who refused
to back us up. Basically we had asked the supplier if they could make fabric
that would hold up to the sun, and
they said yes. So we went forward.
And when it didn’t work, the supplier refused any help other than an
offer of $1,000 toward an ad with their company name
in it. Hell of a guy.
I’ll never forget it.
As a result we wrote off more than $100,000 by taking every piece
back and replacing them with new, workable garments made
from fabric
from another supplier. That was a huge amount for a company our size.
And you know what? It was without a doubt one of the best things we
ever did. Vail was ecstatic with the replacement product.
The people at Vail
were so amazed that we actually lived up to our warranty that they became
vocal advocates for our company.
The North Face is now the U.S. volume leader in the market of
highest-quality functional ski-wear for serious skiers. In fact,
in 20 years the
cost of our warranty rebates for all of our products never exceeded 1
percent of our sales. Sure, we had blips
like the Vail situation. But all in all,
I can honestly say we couldn’t have afforded not to back our products with
a full
warranty.
I don’t ever want to apologize for my product, but if I have to, I will.
That is a statement of commitment.
In fact, our warranty and repair department became so famous for its
work that it broadcast the quality of the company. We
repaired sleeping
bags on which people had put hot skillets and backpacks that bears had
chewed on. The work was good, efficient,
and fair. If the fault was even
remotely ours, we would repair or replace the product for free. If it was the
customer’s fault,
we would charge only a modest fee. Our goal was to make
them happy.
One day a customer came in with a Sierra Designs sleeping bag—
ironically, a company we would later acquire. The customer said.
“I hear
you do the best and fastest repair work. I bought this at Sierra Designs, but
they tell me they can’t repair it for
three weeks. I need it now for my
vacation. Can you repair it? For free?” The customer claimed he didn’t have
any money for
the repair, since he needed it for his vacation. “Maybe you
can get the money back from Sierra Designs,” suggested the customer.
The warranty and repair department decided to do the work for free.
Their reasoning, which I totally supported when I later
learned of it, was
that the cost of the repair was minimal. The person would be so delighted
about the repair (even though
he was clearly scamming us) and so positive
about our company that he would be sure to tell everyone he knew. It would
be
infinitely more effective than any advertisement we could ever put out.
A full warranty also works on customers on a subliminal level—they
realize you can’t afford many errors like the one they
just experienced and
stay in business. A full warranty telegraphs the message that you are serious
about quality.
The concept behind a strong warranty works as well inside a company
as it does with your customers. It provides clarity, simplicity,
and focus. It
sets a clear policy for dealing with customers and a guideline for everyone,
from switchboard operators to designers.
It is a story that can be easily and
swiftly communicated to all employees: We make only the best. It is a
policy that personally
involves everyone. As a result attitudes are buoyed
and employees become positive salespeople for your company.
A full warranty says you understand quality as a goal and as an idea.
As a goal, quality is tied in to hard work, inspiration,
dedication, and fun.
As an idea quality is a harder call. Should one aim for the highest quality?
If so, isn’t it unattainable?
Is quality a final aim or one of a vital, continuous
state of being? A full warranty tells the buyer that quality is fluid—it
must
always be there.
All of these words pile up now—words such as focus and fluid and
perseverance and instinct and resilience and discipline.
On and on goes the
list. But what does it mean? What does it mean, finally, when you get past
all the verbal barriers?
Quality is joy. That’s what it means. In the midst of all the hard work
quality is laughter with a friend on the path to mutual
accomplishment.
Quality, quite simply, is the best.
 10

SHARING VISIONS:
When Leaders Lead
But then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as
I’ve been doing all my life after the people
who interest me, because the only
people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad
to be saved,
desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or
say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous
yellow roman
candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue
centerlight pop and everybody
goes, “Awww!”

—Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Dingledodies live! I’ve worked with them and I know, as Kerouac knew,
that the mad ones are the ones who buy into the dream
with the deepest
fervor. The dream of life. A leader’s job is to share his version of that same
dream and then rally the talents
and energies of everyone toward the cause.
There is nothing more energizing than talent—plugged-in talent. The
electric ones are the ones whose leadership aims to incite.
When the light is
bright enough, it can create work that is not only moving but also inspiring.
Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms had that effect on Edward Hope, a
reviewer with the New York Herald-Tribune. Hope was so moved by
Hemingway’s tale of love and war on the World War I Italian front that he
wrote: “It is one of those
things—like the Grand Canyon—that one doesn’t
care to talk about. It is so great a book that praise of it sounds like empty
babbling.”
And so it is with praise of the human spirit. It sounds like empty
babbling, but—dingledodies live!
For the last 25 years or so I have watched, dumbfounded, as much of
American business has flailed about aimlessly in the singular
pursuit of
profits. Executives disconnected themselves from everyone as they spent
every spare moment weaving their private
cocoons. It was almost funny,
almost like the fable of the emperor’s new clothes, as I watched the
business fabric of jargon,
titles, and prejudice unravel. Beyond the
pretentious audacity to employees, and in fact to the rest of the world, it
was,
simply, a disgrace.
I’m fed up with shoddy quality and service and incompetent people
doing nothing more than trying to hold on to their jobs.
I’m angry with the
lack of energy and pride. I’m tired of old excuses, and I’m bored with “new
and improved” when it means
nothing.
I’m too competitive to accept playing dead to global competition,
particularly when it is clear to me there is nothing—and
everything—
magical to running a business. It is about common sense, the ability to think
logically and emotionally. That’s all. It’s about quality, about digging past
the layers of bullshit most organizations pretend exist and
finding humanity.
It’s easy to do and more than worth the effort.
You have to look at more than profits if you want to be a leader. You
have to actually care about your company and the people
in the company.
Leading requires passionately immersing yourself in a deep vision of the
future. Leading means creating the
future, creating more light than heat.
Leading means making connections, both for yourself and your
company. You want people to identify with the company and its
mission so
that there is a bond. It is a winning, home-team attitude—like that of Harley
Davidson, with perhaps the most loyal
customers in the world.
Every company has its own culture. There are many types, but the best
revolves around fun and humor. Business, after all,
is the theater of the
absurd—a potpourri of laughter for those who connect to the vision.
Connections are always individual events, even when the leader leads
thousands. And in the increasingly global world (if that
makes sense),
leaders sometimes must communicate with three or more continents in one
day. Leaders now must make electronic
connections to the masses and yet
the goal must be the same—to touch individuals personally. It is ever more
difficult to
go beyond the mechanical connection to the human one.
True leaders revel in individuality—their own and their employees’.
They allow employees freedom within the boundaries of
fairness. Leaders
recognize and honor each human spirit they meet. They revel in the energy
and potential. They start with
themselves.
 Galen Rowell, the photographer, is famous for his pictures using
morning and evening light. He is famous for a good reason—he
takes great
photos. On one adventure he was in Tibet to take pictures of the Potalla, the
Dalai Lama’s residence. He wanted
to do it in his signature way—at sunset.
He began his arduous ascent in the late morning, hiking to locations where
he could
best photograph the Potalla. The altitude was between 12,000 and
13,000 feet— sorry-lung altitude. Certainly not the easiest
place to hike or
run.
Just as the sun was going down, it started to rain. Galen saw a rainbow.
He figured out that if he ran about a mile up and
to his left, he could take a
picture of the rainbow exactly over the Dalai Lama’s palace.
So he ran.
And he ran.
And he ran. You possibly saw the picture. It’s been published all over.
Your first reaction may have been, “What a great shot!
Was that
photographer lucky!” Lucky, yes. He’s worked so hard he’s been lucky
hundreds of times.
Galen Rowell is a leader in his field. He is among the very best
outdoor photographers in the world—meeting an internal challenge
to be a
leader to himself.
From the spark that ignites will, leadership creates a vision and shares
it with others. When the vision is accepted and shared,
a human will can
accomplish almost anything. Focus and direct—quality will come forth.
In the early 1950s Sapporo, Japan, was a cold and isolated city. On the
northernmost island of Japan, where winds whip in
from Siberia, Sapparo’s
winters were a study in monotony and depression. The economy was
depressed. There was nothing for
the residents to do but burrow themselves
in their homes. Some stewed, but others dreamed.
Every winter it was the same—isolation. The cold was a fact; the
Siberian winds to many were a curse. But the Sapporo civic
leaders in the
early 1950s had a most radical idea—to stop vilifying the weather and
celebrate it. The idea was to celebrate
in the cold and create an event unique
to Sapporo. They did this by creating the Yuki Matsuri Festival, a
celebration of snow
and ice sculpture.
It started small. At first it was a local event, designed mainly to enliven
the spirits of the locals. But it grew swiftly.
Word quickly spread that people
were having fun in the dead of winter in Sapporo. Newspapers printed
pictures of the spectacular
sculptures carved for the festival. Artists began
planning their year around the event.
It is an incredible sight, with hundreds of snow and ice sculptures—
some as large as five-story buildings. But the large sculptures
are no mere
artistic feat; they require the skills of world-class ice climbers as well as the
talent of sculptors. The sculptures
vary greatly in size and design. There are
replicas of fierce warriors, castles, mythical characters, and whatever else
the
artists’ imaginations conjure up. The festival has continued to this day.
In recent years more than two million people have visited the annual
festival—toasting the sculptures with sake and joyously
spending their
money in Sapporo.
A shared vision is a wonderful thing. It doesn’t just happen; the shared
vision emanates from an individual vision. It is
molded into a shared vision
when a leader takes action and motivates others to also take action.
In Sapporo civic leaders were faced with a depressing situation—
terrible weather, monotony, and economic doldrums. They turned
it around
because they had a vision of how to change it. With that vision they were
able to get the city to buy into their
dream of an ice festival. United, the
people of Sapporo created magic.
The start of cubism in the art world exemplifies the evolution of a
shared vision. In the early 1900s Pablo Picasso was a
Spanish artist living
in the impoverished artist colony in the Montparnasse section of Paris. It
was there that he met and
befriended French artist Georges Braque.
They made a connection. Despite their differences in nationality, they
had much in common. It was a friendship based on energy
and inspiration.
It was a friendship that would change the art world.
For countless hours the two young artists would talk—meeting at
cafés, bistros, and tabacs, observing colors, people, and
societal changes.
Picasso was enthralled with Braque. He called him “Wilbur”—a high
compliment, naming him after Wilbur Wright,
the inventor of the airplane.
From his immersion in the frenetic urban petri dish of Paris, Picasso
sensed a fundamental shift in society—from the stability
of the mid-19th
century to the frenzy of modern society. He and Braque talked endlessly
about this, both understanding that
they were in the midst of the dawning of
a new age. They agreed that art was going to reflect that change, and they
set out
to be the creators of the new form.
 Individually they painted. Collectively they talked and explored the
shifting scene in Paris. The gray-brown colors of the
world they lived in—a
world of cobblestones and smoky bars—replaced the pastel colors used by
the earlier Impressionists.
The soft, simple landscapes and still lifes dealing
with depth, light, and shading gave way to multiple impressions—
impressions
that shifted, overlapped, and relied on flat planes. Cubism
appeared to be composed of work that was almost cut and reassembled—
perhaps
a reflection of what Braque and Picasso felt modern society was
doing to the traditions of the former century.
Through this transition Braque and Picasso moved in concert. As
Braque said in describing that period, “We were like two mountaineers
roped together.” When sand was added for texture, both added it at exactly
the same time. When stenciled commercial lettering
appeared in Picasso’s
work, it also appeared in Braque’s. The colors were the same, the textures
were the same, and the angles
and techniques were the same. Theirs was a
shared vision of the highest order—an almost metaphysical union of two
very diverse
souls.
Yet it was competitive. Studies have discovered that there was a
tremendous rivalry going on, especially on the part of Picasso.
It was an
open rivalry, but fierce just the same. They shared ideas. They shared
perspective. They each had access to the
other’s studio and work in
progress. They pushed limits.
When the first cubist paintings by Picasso and Braque came out in
1910 and 1911, they looked virtually identical. Today art
museums put them
side by side for effect and you cannot tell the difference. The book Modern
Art, by Sam Hunter and John Jacobus, explains that “the artistic relationship
between Picasso and Braque [was] so close that in
the absence of signatures
—and they very rarely signed or dated their works at the time—it is almost
impossible to determine
who made which individual contribution to the
evolution of the cubist style.”
Braque and Picasso comprehended and thrived on the competition.
Although Braque early on was the more famous painter, Picasso
fairly
quickly eclipsed him. That should be the goal of business—to motivate
everyone to compete with the strength of their
individuality toward a
mutually energizing goal.
Sharing a vision with a lot of followers becomes geometrically more
difficult, but also geometrically more powerful. The importance
of the
vision, like the use of symbols, gains as the numbers grow. Vision is what
sustains the effort during the silent times
in a company.
At The North Face, where vision was the heart of our business, our
vision was one of quality. It was woven (we thought literally)
into the fabric
of our business. Above and beyond everything else, we wanted to be the
best. It was not some minor goal that
would be nice to meet—it was, as I
saw it, our reason for living.
We had no desire to make everyone in the company like our plan.
Quite the opposite. We wanted to make the plan, and the sacrifices
necessary, so clear that those who were not in tune with it would quit,
recognizing that it was time for them to move on.
In situations where employees didn’t fit but also didn’t have the
fortitude to move on, the best solution was to quietly fire
them. Just as
surgery, even radical surgery, can lead to better health, removing people
who don’t share the vision of the
company can improve the company’s
health. In such situations we helped ease their transition out of the
company. Everyone
who remained was happier, and the shared vision was
stronger.
Shared visions don’t just happen. They must be nurtured. In a
company the best way to do this is to create reasons for people
to get
together on a regular basis. The most obvious, yet probably worst way is
with meetings. They don’t work because they
are not really interactive, and
often no one listens. Meetings foster power games and hierarchy, which
undermine passion and
communication.
Informal gatherings are better. You can schedule events around
company anniversaries, picnics, corporate sporting teams, or
Friday
afternoon happy hours. The idea is to get people talking to each other—not
“onstage” for each other, but onstage together.
Sharing visions, if you will.
People have to be passionate and they have to connect.
Alice Waters had a vision, a sweeping vision. She put together a team
that turned that vision into reality—one of the best
restaurants in the United
States. Waters’s vision was to create a whole new style of cooking, and she
did so at her restaurant,
Chez Panisse, in Berkeley.
In her view food is more than sustenance—it’s pleasure. Her food
stresses the California virtues of constant farm-fresh produce,
and her
restaurants stress food that is creative, healthy, and generally without
additives. It is no longer just her vision.
It is now known throughout the
world as California Cuisine.
Instead of opening one restaurant at Chez Panisse, she opened two.
Downstairs is a formal restaurant (or as formal as one
might get in
Berkeley), serving one set dinner menu at a fixed price. Never in the 20-
plus-year history of the restaurant
has it served the same meal twice.
Upstairs she has a second restaurant—a more casual cafe with a constantly
changing, extensive
menu that includes everything from farm-fresh goat
cheese salads to nasturium-garnished pizza.
Hers was a revolutionary vision, not an evolutionary one. She has
extensive knowledge of French cooking and she certainly
pays homage to
it. But her vision is uniquely American, uniquely Californian, and uniquely
Alice and her fine team of chefs.
To effect her vision she had to break a lot of the traditions of the
restaurant business—doing things in absolutely new ways,
often risky,
which dictated a lot of extraordinary effort. And it required convincing a lot
of people to do things they had
never done before.
Waters loved the goat cheese she had tasted in France, but she couldn’t
find it fresh in the United States. No problem. She
convinced one of her
friends to share her vision and develop a goat farm north of San Francisco,
in Sonoma. The goat farm
is now a great success in its own right—serving
Chez Panisse and a myriad of California cuisine restaurants in northern
California.
Waters started Chez Panisse in a converted old, dark wooden two-story
house in a weak retail section of Berkeley. There is
no parking, and no
noticeable signage. But her vision was so strong that it worked anyway—
for the last ten years it has been
ranked in the top ten American restaurants
by virtually every reviewer in the United States. Many rank it at number
one or
two.
Her advertising is equally unique. It uses none of the standard
advertising vehicles, only a different poster each year celebrating
Chez
Panisse’s anniversary. The poster has always been designed by David Lance
Goines. At first, the story has it, Waters
traded meals for his work. But he
became as successful as she did, and his poster art is now world famous.
Their relationship
has never been based on the written contract, but rather
on the strength of their human connection. Waters compensates Goines
with
more than free meals presently, but they still work together as they did in
the early days—recognizing the magic of their
shared vision.
Her vision was a detailed one, requiring many others to commit to it.
Besides seeking a different cheese, she also required
farm-fresh produce
and meats with no pesticides or synthetic hormones. To acquire these she
convinced a number of farmers
to produce them, even if it was for her
restaurant’s singular consumption. She got her way, as even more people
shared her
vision.
Probably the most amazing part of her success is that she turned the
age-old restaurant problem of high turnover among chefs
into an asset.
Instead of trying to bind them with some form of “golden handcuffs,”
which are so traditional in the business
world, she accepted turnover as
inevitable. It was a chance for her to learn from her chefs, just as they
learned from her.
This fueled her need for constant change and encouraged
some of the world’s best chefs to come to her—chefs like Jeremiah
Tower
of STARS and Mark Miller of the Coyote Cafe who, in their own right,
have gone on to revolutionize the restaurant and
food industry.
Machievelli said, “Make no small plans … for they have not the power
to stir men’s blood.” Human passion is aroused by the
pursuit of greatness.
People will work for money—but they’ll give everything they have if they
believe. Leadership has to touch that which makes a spirit soar. Great
leadership creates not just vision,
but grand vision.
The 3,300-foot sheer rock face of Mt. Thor in Auyuittuq National Park
in Canada presented such a grand vision to Steve Holmes.
Holmes was
consumed by his vision—a deeply personal one in which he wanted to
rappel down Mt. Thor for a new world rappeling
record. And then, equally
as daring, he wanted to climb back up the sheer stone on the same rope.
The prior record for rappeling had been down the stone monolith El
Capitan in Yosemite Valley—about 700 feet less than Holmes’s
proposed
Mt. Thor attempt.
It was his passion. And it was his quest. He quit his job and sold all his
belongings to finance the trip. He was consumed
by fitness, understanding
the importance of an in-tune body to make his dream a reality. He began to
piece together a team.
Holmes’s team, it turned out, was mostly spelunkers—those who
explore caves. Spelunkers are more used to making descents than
mountaineers. Mountaineers generally think first about climbing, not
descending, so Holmes doubted they’d be properly enthused
about his plan.
Among his team was photographer Nick Nichols, the man from
Chapter 8 who got thrown around by gorillas. Holmes knew of Nichols’s
exploits. He knew Nichols had a full-blooded passion.
Holmes began selecting his team. The idea was not just to get some
people who were willing to go along on the excursion, but
to find true
believers—those who understood and shared his passion. He wanted people
who would guarantee success.
He found ten people, ten souls with a flame as bright as his own. They
began to plan as a team and expand the vision. Because
the assault on Mt.
Thor was an excursion that had never been done before, he and his team
had to dream up new equipment. Once
the vision was refined and detailed
to his satisfaction, Holmes had to share his vision even further, with the
corporate world.
In one case he needed a mile-long mountaineering rope.
He found a company to make it. He needed other equipment, things not
available on the commercial market—which he had to design himself.
Things such as special rappeling equipment and climbing
ascendors
(climbing ascendors are mechanical devices that allow climbers to climb up
the rope, but not slide down.) Each time
he had to share his vision to
convince companies to build the unique equipment he needed. In every case
the company became
excited about being involved. His passion was
contagious. I know—The North Face even designed some of the clothing to
protect
his team from the cold, damp, and variable weather of northern
Canada.
The rappel was almost like a free-fall—thrilling and frightening. The
climb back up, equivalent in distance to three World
Trade Towers in New
York City, was exhausting. Twenty-five minutes to get to the bottom, but
more than five hours to climb
back to the top. And why?
Because it was worth it, because each of the participants believed fully
that life is for living, not watching. They believed
that a grand vision was
something they wanted to share. Steve Holmes had a vision of a world
record and of the thrill of a
lifetime. He shared that vision, and it became
reality. Steve Holmes knows what it is to lead. He knows what it is to share
vision. He has proved it on the face of Mt. Thor.
To lead is to personalize, to inspire people at their core. You must get
others to share a common view—viscerally as well
as intellectually. That
sharing can be with one person or with many, but the concept is the same. A
shared vision must not
be stagnant; it must evolve. A vision that works
especially well becomes not the product of one person, but of all involved.
As the Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu said 2,500 years ago, “True leaders
inspire people to do great things and, when the work
is done, their people
proudly say, ‘We did this ourselves.’”
Vision is active, not passive. You must open your senses and your
mind to the world around you and periodically indulge your
fantasies of the
future.
Climbers know they will never make it to the peak unless they have
already been there in their minds. It is the same in business.
Commit
yourself to your people and constantly communicate with them in a simple
and honest manner. Let them know where your
heart lies—fulfill your
commitments. Set an example by committing your full body and soul to the
task you undertake. Visualize
success and communicate it. Talk and listen.
Listen and talk. If someone shares your vision, he or she can probably
improve it.
Leadership at its best is not a chore. It is a wonderful, exhilarating
adventure—a voyage fueled by human potential. It is
frantic at times,
almost manic—like a 100-yard dash rather than a stroll in the park. It is
urgent. It is about tapping into
the source of power inside each human soul
and getting it to care about something that you find important.
That is the key—you must find your vision important. Holmes did.
Everyone I have written about in this book did. I did. I
believe in the depths
of my soul that it is important to be the very best in the world. At The North
Face, I knew my vision
was about much more than making tents,
backpacks, and ski clothing. It was about measuring up—looking in the
mirror and feeling
at peace with myself. My vision was about making a
difference; that’s the measure I used. I wanted to matter in people’s lives.
And you?
What I’m calling for is a revolt—a revolt of honesty—both against
those pompous incompetents with titles and for the power
of vision. It is
time to stop the bitching and get on with the business of changing. Speak
up. Act out. If your company is
so afraid of your ideas that it won’t listen—
or worse, condescends—then you should quit and move on.
Don’t take it anymore. You don’t have to. Find a better job, one where
the company appreciates your leadership. Someone somewhere
has a vision
you can share. You just have to find it.
Or you can create it. Start your own business. Find something you love
and make it your life’s work. When an artist dies,
the artist leaves behind “a
body of work.” Do the same—begin your body of work. Find a vision and
share it with others. Don’t
just stand back and let it all be. Live. Burn.
Dance like a dingledodie.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FROM HAP KLOPP
No expedition or grand adventure succeeds without a tremendous
amount of support—support generally unseen by the outside world.
As
such, I would like to thank everyone who has given me support, training,
insights and their love in my business, personal,
writing and outdoor
adventures.
The age-old leadership question is ‘who or what inspires a leader?’ My
experience is, it is very simply answered—leaders are
inspired by those
people around them who listen, respond and grow—grow to be even better
than their leader. I’ve been very
lucky to have been surrounded by some of
the best. To all of you, I say a heartfelt thanks.

FROM BRIAN TARCY

I remember the exact moment during a previous career when I sent an
electronic message to a co-worker that said, “Walking
in this place is like
swimming in embalming fluid.” A few weeks later, Hap Klopp contacted
me wanting to write a book about
good leaders and bad leaders.
Since then I have co-written more than a dozen books, including books
with other business leaders and professional athletes,
but this is the
collaboration that resonates the most for me. I love Hap’s message. So,
thank you Hap, for teaching me that
I didn’t have to spend my lifetime
swimming through embalming fluid. My life is so much richer because I
met you.
Lots of people have influenced me: my brother Dave stands out. I have
four heroes—my children: Denim, Derek, Kayli, and Marissa.
Thanks for
letting be there for the beginning of your adventures.
 PRAISE FOR
THE ADVENTURE OF LEADERSHIP
“He hates what he calls ‘the embalming fluid’ of contemporary
corporate culture, ‘the fraud of authority, the power to be
a bully by
virtue of title.’ A title, he writes, makes no one a leader. He calls for
vision, creativity, inspired leadership
and the faith that anything,
absolutely anything is possible.”

-SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER-

“Reading ‘The Adventure Of Leadership,’ one gets the sense that Hap
Klopp walks the walk…Klopp is entertaining and readable,
and he has
something to say worth hearing.”

-ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS-

Hap Klopp was the founder and 20-year CEO of The North Face, the world
renowned mountaineering, backpacking and skiing company.
After selling
the highly successful company he set up his own global management
consulting company, and began lecturing at
leading business schools,
speaking to large businesses, and writing. Most recently he and two partners
have taken ownership
of the 100 year old global rugby company,
Canterbury of New Zealand. For fun, Klopp has rafted down the Zambezi
River, flown
hot air balloons and gliders over the Napa Valley, skied down
glaciers in Europe and explored jungle ruins in Latin America.

Brian Tarcy is a freelance journalist who has collaborated on more than a

dozen books with business leaders and professional
athletes. He has also
written for many magazines and newspapers across the country. Tarcy has a
degree in Journalism from
Ohio University, and lives in Falmouth,
Massachusetts.