Transcript
Speaker: This is a reflection from the Leaders to Me podcast. I'm Jess Yegas. Occasionally I share a story that continues to shape how I think, not because the facts have changed, but because my perspective has.
Speaker: These reflections stand on their own and they often sit behind the conversations you hear elsewhere on this podcast. Most leaders understand the importance of planning. Fewer understand what planning is actually for.
Speaker: In this reflection episode, High Noon, Full Moon, Plans Fail, Preparation Endures, I relate a story about preparation, uncertainty, and what happens when circumstances abruptly separate us from the plans we carefully constructed.
Speaker: What began as an ambitious hike through the Grand Canyon eventually became something much more meaningful, a lesson about adaptability, resilience, and the difference between having a plan and becoming prepared.
Speaker: Please enjoy.
Speaker: It was a bright, hot, blistering 117 degrees the day I severely twisted my ankle somewhere along the river at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Over the course of our long and enduring friendship, one approaching 50 years, Rick has made it his mission to ensure that asphalt and cement were not my only conduits to the earth.
Speaker: In our l L.A. suburbanite, 20-something, tight-knit group of fall adventurers, he alone had legitimate experience in the ways of hiking, hunting, fishing, boating, and camping.
Speaker: By virtue of taking many such trips with his father, Rick became the de facto leader of our most ambitious ideas for Guy's trips involving the great outdoors. In the early years, our adventures were relatively sedate.
Speaker: A fishing trip here, some water skiing there, and day hikes in some of the most beautiful parts of the country. Things became more involved as we searched for more physically challenging opportunities. Ultimately, they took the form of long, difficult hikes and backpacking trips in and around the Rockies in the Southwest.
Speaker: These more intense trips served to call our numbers, severing a away would-be explorers unable to rationalize these greater physical efforts against the pool of family and careers.
Speaker: As the group got smaller and tighter, aspirations grew bolder, stirred in a chemistry of ego, adrenaline, and a genuine appreciation of the land. The demands of these trips went beyond the physical endurance necessary to complete them.
Speaker: Alternating excursions of mountain peaks and desert canyons educated us in the grandeur of these locations. But they also all alerted us to the diverse dangers associated with not being well prepared.
Speaker: Training, studying the topography, understanding the weather, and having the right gear all require time and diligence. So, the decision to attempt a grueling one-day, 18-mile, middle-of-July hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and then back out was born of salutations with friends on Christmas Eve 2003.
Speaker: The plan was to start at the south rim of the canyon and complete the South Kaibab-Bright Angel Loop, which was an 8-mile descent and an 8-mile ascent separated by a 2-mile traverse along the banks of the Colorado River.
Speaker: Our training needed to account for some unusual circumstances. The south rim elevation is approximately 7,000 feet. Until one gets used to it, breathing at this altitude is difficult.
Speaker: Thankfully, the higher altitude can bring reasonable relief from the heat. But even at 5 a.m., m the temperature can approach 80 degrees, and it will increase by 20 to 25 degrees as you make the descent towards sea level.
Speaker: The experience is the inverse of a mountain hike. That is, moderate energy expended over many miles in the descent is rewarded with the extraordinary expending of energy over many miles to climb back out.
Speaker: Underlying all of this is water scarcity. Logistics need to account for how much to carry and where it can be replenished from either the occasional water fountain outpost or the Colorado River.
Speaker: Training regimens need to include strength training to carry provisions, extended distance runs for endurance, strenuous hikes to prepare leg muscles, and strategies for managing extreme heat.
Speaker: The proper nutrition required that every food selection and its associated weight have a payback for pushing the body past where it normally wants to go. Safety awareness was mostly about staying properly hydrated, but it also needed to account for things like a lack of shade, sunburn, blisters, broken shoelaces, and God forbid, possibilities of a snake bite.
Speaker: The ambiguity surrounding never having been to the Grand Canyon prompted a leveling up of every preparation choice. I was not sure what to expect the day of the hike. I was only sure of one thing.
Speaker: I had never been more prepared for anything in my life. We started the hike at 5 a.m. with the anticipation we would complete it by 3 p.m., about 10 hours in total.
Speaker: Things got off to a smooth start. We arrived at the river around 9 a.m. and took a 30-minute break to rest and replenish water. As we prepared to resume our trek, we spotted a dilapidated, scarecrow-like, heat-weathered structure with a note affixed to the top.
Speaker: It read, forecast, 117 degrees. This was more interesting than concerning, as all seemed to be going well, and we pressed on. The river stretch of the hike is the easiest because it is flat and provides a welcome break before the uphill climb.
Speaker: I knew my training was paying off because it felt like I was floating along the trail. My trekking poles seemed to be doing all the work, leaving me free to gaze up at the incredible shadows, colors, and contours of the majestic walls and to consider my good fortune for being in a spectacular place with individuals I care deeply about.
Speaker: The bottom of the canyon felt like the top of the world. But in an instant, my gaze went from majestic walls to brush and dust. While adjusting my pack, loaded down with water and salty snacks, I stepped awkwardly on a rock and began to tumble.
Speaker: My short stature means a fast trip to the ground, but I knew way before I landed I had severely sprained my right ankle. I was injured on the easiest and flattest part of the hike, and it felt like six months of preparation dissipated in just a couple of seconds.
Speaker: Disappointment gave way to high anxiety. We were still on the cooler side of high noon, but now every degree of heat felt like a gang of needles. My heart was racing and I felt my ankle blowing up inside my boot.
Speaker: I tried to stay calm and consider my options. It turns out there are few. My friends seemed as helpless as I was to get past any ideas that did not include burrows and helicopters, either in short supply or too expensive.
Speaker: I stood up, got my balance, and tested my pain threshold. I stared at the expanse of the bright blue sky, waiting for some inspiration or a miracle.
Speaker: Ultimately, it seemed the only thing to do was to start walking and see where things went. I tightened my boot to contain the swelling and started moving. A shift of weight on the heel of my foot mildly reduced the pain in my ankle.
Speaker: With every slow and agonizing step, I wondered how long it would take to complete what should have been the final six hours of the hike out of the canyon. The answer is 12.
Speaker: I exited at 8 p.m., 15 hours after we'd begun, just as the sun was setting on the horizon. All the episodes in the Leaders Commute podcast relate the concept of an evolving context.
Speaker: That is, the knowledge, competencies, and skill sets we build at various junctures of our careers can give new context and meaning to a particular type of past experience.
Speaker: Let me explain. Immediately after this experience, you might correctly guess that any telling of the story had to end with some egotistical reference to overcoming such dire circumstances.
Speaker: After all, I was able to finish the hike without benefit of a burrow or a helicopter. But that was shallow comfort, knowing that the goal was to complete the hike in 10 hours, preferably without any long lasting damage.
Speaker: After several years and some dilution of my ego, I started to take a different look at that experience. At the end of the hike, having gotten past the immediate challenge, I had a lot of concern about how I would feel the next day.
Speaker: To accommodate the injury, I used every muscle in my body countered to the way I had trained, and I anticipated that a host of other problems would accompany the ankle sprain. But the next morning, I was pleasantly surprised.
Speaker: I had intense pain in my ankle, but the rest of my body held up very well. Looking back, I realized how fortunate I was not to have something worse happen like a broken leg.
Speaker: I now have a more holistic view of the experience, and it informs much of the work I do with leadership teams who aspire to move more easily between the 3,000-foot view of circumstances and the 30,000-foot view.
Speaker: Mizuta Masahidi said, my barn having burned down, I now have a better view of the moon. My barn had burned down. All the preparations for the hike ended unceremoniously in a spill caused by a rock no bigger than a tennis ball.
Speaker: At first, I viewed this sentiment as a Pollyannish, weak rationalization of failure, reinforced by a continual mental rehashing of everything that led to the injury.
Speaker: I came to realize my preoccupation with the circumstances I could no longer change were a product of me clinging to the map I constructed of how I expected things to go. But over the years, as I opened up the map a little more, I came to realize that I have benefited much more from what happened after the injury than before.
Speaker: Intense preparation is familiar to most leadership teams. It's about discipline and putting one foot in front of the other in a relentless drive to a goal. But when things go wrong, changes in perspective are often required to keep moving forward.
Speaker: My change in perspective involved honoring the connectedness of the entirety of my experience. On Christmas Eve 2003, my friends and I agreed to go on a difficult hike in the summer of 2004.
Speaker: Looking back, everything I did since that Christmas Eve decision led me to the moment of the accident and to my ability to overcome it. So, was I preparing for the hike?
Speaker: or for the accident. Perhaps we can leave that one to the philosophers, but the rest of the story is that in the 20 years since, I have experienced many greater personal and professional challenges than this one.
Speaker: Preparation is not a checklist of tasks, but is a building of a mindset to anchor leadership teams as they embark on important initiatives. My obsession with trying to predict every specific thing that could go wrong was superseded by the mindset that i would be prepared to deal with anything that might go wrong.
Speaker: President Eisenhower said, Plans are useless, but planning is essential. What brings this quote to life for me are the following. Number one, problems and solutions that are inherently connected evolve at the same time.
Speaker: The key is to minimize the queue time between each of these events. Number two, every decision needs to be made from a systems point of view with second and third order thinking to mitigate surprises.
Speaker: And number three, leaders must build teams that are comfortable reconciling the tension between the short and long term view of the most important initiatives of their organizations.
Speaker: Finally, I would like to address the element of time, one different from just looking backwards to get a clearer picture. This is about looking forward and affording time for things to evolve.
Speaker: Several of my projects include working as a fractional executive for private equity groups who need assistance with underperforming assets in their portfolios. Often, directives come in the form of a time-sensitive edict.
Speaker: One such edict was given to me, it being the organization must reach a self-sustaining cash position within six months or consider liquidating the investment. Many circumstances contributed to this goal not being achieved. However, some positive trends and the commitment of the leadership gave the private equity group confidence to let the team proceed for a while longer.
Speaker: The goal was finally achieved, but not because the team got smarter or more committed. It was because there was a willingness to look past the numbers and deadlines only and to weigh the likelihood of success with an investment of just a little more time.
Speaker: What I understand now, years later, is that the most important thing I brought into the canyon was not the plan itself, it was the capacity the planning process had built inside me.
Speaker: The route didn't change, but the assumptions, the timeline, and the goal changed. The experience became something entirely different from what I intended, but the preparation endured.
Speaker: Leadership works in the same way. Organizations need plans, teams need goals, strategy matters, but eventually reality introduces variables no spreadsheet, forecast, or roadmap can fully anticipate.
Speaker: And in those moments, leadership is measured less by adherence to the original plan than by the ability to adapt without losing direction. That is why Eisenhower's observation continues to resonate with me.
Speaker: Plans are useless, but planning is essential. The Leaders Community Podcast was produced by Acuity Business Consulting. Acuity demystifies the challenge of transforming talent and resources into exceptional and sustainable organizational performance by surfacing actionable clarity in the areas of strategic design, financial management, operational excellence, and leadership development.
Speaker: You can catch a new episode every couple of weeks wherever you enjoy your favorite podcasts. Thank you for your thoughtful engagement. And until next time, I'm Jess Villegas, and you have been listening to the Leaders Commute podcast.
