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INTERVIEW with DENNIS PERKINS
The
following is an interview with Dennis Perkins, author of Leading at the
Edge: Leadership Lessons from the Extraordinary Saga of Shackleton's
Antarctic Expedition.
How did the concept of "Leading at the Edge" come about? How did
you originally come to the Shackleton story?
A major part
of my life has been spent trying to understand what it really means to be
a leader—particularly under conditions of adversity, uncertainty, and
change. My passion to understand the art of leadership began as a
midshipman at the United States
Naval Academy, and it continued after graduation when I was commissioned
as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps.
My
"postgraduate education" continued in Vietnam with the 3rd Battalion, 5th
Marines. As part of the Special Landing Force, I participated in
amphibious operations launched to relieve units in trouble near the
demilitarized zone. Later, I went "in country" and experienced the war in
other roles. As a civil affairs officer, I saw the war from the
perspective of the Vietnamese. Later, as the commanding officer of a rifle
company, I saw Vietnam
through a different set of lenses.
As a result
of all these experiences, I began to develop an understanding of the
nature of exceptional leadership. I saw how some leaders were able to
inspire exhausted, wet, tired, and discouraged Marines under the most
grueling conditions. And I learned some vital lessons about leadership and
teamwork from the things that went wrong—through mistakes and failures.
After
Vietnam, my passion to understand leadership continued in graduate
school—first, at the Harvard Business School, and later in my doctoral
studies at The University of Michigan. After graduation, I joined the
faculty of the Yale School of Management, and I began teaching courses on
leadership. At Yale, I began to view the academic research on leadership
through the lenses of my personal experience as a leader. With this
perspective, I came to believe that something was missing. It wasn't that
the academic theories were wrong. It was just that they seemed far removed
from the challenges that I had faced in Vietnam.
So, a series
of life experiences and the immediate challenge of teaching and consulting
about leadership led me to blaze a new path. I decided to look for
leadership lessons in stories of groups that have been to the outer limits
of human endurance—the place I call The Edge.
This path
has led me to the conclusion that the essence of leadership can be found
in stories of survival, the ultimate crucible of human endeavor. I am
convinced that—by understanding the things that work when survival is at
stake—we can understand how to lead under other demanding conditions. By
studying The Edge, we can learn the things needed to lead
organizations to their full potential, and we can remember these
principles when we ourselves are stretched, stressed, and challenged.
In my
research on groups at the edge of survival, the saga of Shackleton's
Trans-Antarctic Expedition stood out. While there were many other accounts
of triumph at The Edge, the story of the Endurance was
unique. Better than any other, the Shackleton saga encapsulated the
strategies that I had found to be absolutely essential for success.
Consequently, I used the story in my book as the primary vehicle for
exploring leadership at The Edge, and for illustrating key ideas
about extraordinary leadership and teamwork.
What is the
most important message that the Endurance story has for the
business world of today? And for our "Survivor"-obsessed culture?
In our
contemporary culture, survival has come to hold some rather bizarre
associations. Many people link the word survivor with so-called "reality
based" television shows in which volunteers conspire to defeat their
teammates at any cost. In fact, this television world is far-removed from
reality. The winners can succeed, but only because they are in an
artificial situation that bears little resemblance to the real world. In a
real survival situation, there would be no winners and no survivors—only
dead losers who failed to work together.
Others have
come to equate survival with the reckless pursuit of extreme adventure.
This often translates into untrained, out-of-shape, weekend warriors who
pursue dangerous sports with expensive equipment. Unfortunately, these
extreme adventures frequently end in costly rescue efforts mounted to save
the lives of the unprepared, novice explorers.
Both of
these scenarios are distracting. They trivialize the meaning of survival,
and they obscure the important learnings that can be extracted from
stories of those who have experienced the limits of human endurance. So,
to return to the question, what is the real message that business leaders
can take from the story of the Endurance?
I believe
that the key critical message to take from the Shackleton saga is that
leaders do make a difference—a critical difference. Exceptional leaders inspire a level of
teamwork that can mean the difference between success and failure in the
most demanding environments. Under conditions of physical danger, this
means the difference between life and death. In a harsh business
environment, individuals may not die, but a lack of leadership can spell
death for an organization.
Although
there are those who minimize the importance of leadership, the impact of
capable leaders was repeatedly underscored by the accounts I studied while
writing Leading at The Edge. For example, I contrasted the
Endurance story with the account of the Karluk, an expedition
that set out to explore the Arctic in 1913. Both ships, the Karluk
in the north and the Endurance in the south, soon found themselves
beset in solid pack ice. Trapped by the ice, each crew was soon engaged in
a fight for survival. But the outcomes of these two adventures—and the
ways in which the two leaders dealt with the obstacles they faced—were as
far apart as the poles each leader set out to explore.
In the
north, they crew of the Karluk found themselves transformed into a
band of self-interested, disparate individuals. Lying, cheating, and
stealing became commonplace behaviors. And the disintegration of the team
had tragic consequences for the 11 members who died in the Arctic
wasteland.
Shackleton's
expedition faced the same problems of ice, cold, and shortages of food and
supplies. But the response of his crew to these hellish conditions was, in
almost every resect, the obverse of the Karluk's. Teamwork,
self-sacrifice, and astonishing good cheer replaced lying, cheating, and
rapacious self-interest. It was as if the Endurance existed not
just in a different polar region, but in a different, parallel universe.
There were
many forces at play in these two stories, but I believe that the outcomes
reflect much more than a simple twist of fate. They underscore the hard
fact that the behavior of a leader ultimately translates into concrete,
observable outcomes. If leadership is exceptional, as in the case of the
Endurance saga, it is possible to reach extraordinary goals.
Leadership matters in business, and it matters at the survival edge.
That's the message I take from Shackleton's experience, and from all the
survival accounts I have studied.
You offer 10
strategies for businesses, taking the lead from the Shackleton story.
While your approach in the book is an integrated one, does any strategy
stand out as most important or most unique?
Let me
answer that question in two ways. First, it is true that the 10 strategies
are closely interwoven. Since I play the saxophone, a music metaphor comes
to mind. In a blues scale, the "blue" note gives the scale its distinctive
character. But the "color"—the distinctive character of this blue note—has
meaning only when combined with the other notes of the scale. By itself, a
blue note is just an isolated tone.
Leadership
is much the same, and leaders can fixate on doing just one thing while
ignoring the complexity of their role. For example, I recently interviewed
a woman whose boss had made a great show of giving up his private
underground parking space. This gesture was similar to the kinds of
behaviors that were characteristic of Ernest Shackleton. Shackleton always
made sure that he received exactly the same treatment as others. On a
freezing boat journey, he gave his mittens to a suffering comrade.
Giving up
the special parking was a memorable act that symbolized the leader's
desire to minimize status differences among his team. The problem was
this: after sacrificing his parking space, the boss disappeared. He was
seldom seen by his employees, and spent most of his time behind a closed
door or traveling. He apparently believed that, having made this grand
gesture, his job as a leader was done. But exceptional leadership involves
more than a single act. It means being visible, inspiring others,
maintaining morale, managing conflict, and promoting teamwork and
creativity. In my framework, the leader who gave up his parking space
practiced one strategy but forgot the other nine outlined in Leading at
The Edge.
With that
said, I believe that there are three of the 10 strategies that, taken
together, constitute the backbone of effective leadership. To return to my
music metaphor, these three behaviors are similar to the three notes that
define a chord. All the notes in a scale are important, but these special
notes give a scale its a fundamental color.
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