Consultant and mountaineer Patrick Hollingworthâs compact book will win your attention. He explores âalpine styleâ mountaineering and relates its important lessons to managing your organization. Hollingworth shows how mountain climbers can inspire you when you have to deal with âblack swansâ and âvolatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguityâ (VUCA) situations. He encourages you to embrace complexity and ambiguity as a way to develop your leadership abilities. getAbstract recommends Hollingworthâs mountain-meets-business manifesto to current and aspiring leaders who dare to challenge the status quo so they can thrive in the 21st century.
âNordwandâ
Nordwand â German for ânorth faceâ â is a two-kilometer vertical rock and ice stretch of Switzerlandâs Eiger Mountain, which is famous for its inaccessibility and for the high death toll among those who attempt to climb it. At least 64 people have died on the Nordwand. In 1938, a group of four young men from Austria and Germany became the first climbers to reach the summit. It took them 96 hours. They came close to death â but prevailed.
In 2008, Swiss alpinist Ueli Steck embarked on a solo climb of the Nordwand. Dressed warmly but lightly and equipped with only the most essential technical equipment â a rope and a pair of ice axes â Steck applied a new technique: Climb âlight and fastâ and adapt quickly to the mountainâs challenges. He ascended the Eiger in less than three hours by applying the strategy of âextreme alpinism.â The Nordwand stands as a metaphor of todayâs business world, which is beset with avalanches, falling rocks and nasty storms. Steckâs alpinist approach can transform businesses and how they deal with âvolatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguityâ (VUCA).
âThe VUCA Worldâ
Many people use the term âVUCAâ to...
An experienced mountaineer who climbed Everest and other 8,000-meter peaks using the alpine-style approach, Patrick Hollingworth is a long-time business consultant who helps individuals, teams and companies deal with the VUCA world.
Comment on this summary or Diskussion beginnen
Contingency Theory, TQM and quality circles, lean organisation, organizational ecology, human relations, self-organisation, organisational life-cycle, Structure in Fives, freedom and responsibility-based organizational forms, ...
all these theories (and underlying research) seem to me to already handle the ingredients of flexible, human, light and fast organizations since quite a while ... without necessarily climbing mountains :-) .
Still, I will try to look at the free webinar to see if there is really something fresh & new, that I might not have been able to spot just reading the abstract.