November, 1999 - Volume 4, Number 2

Polar Race Offers Leadership Lessons

By Robert Gunther, Senior Writer, Wharton Leadership Digest

Late in 1911, two men set out on a roundtrip journey of 1,500 miles across the frozen Antarctic. They were racing to reach the South Pole - the last undiscovered extreme of the planet at the end of an age of discovery. Although they chose different routes, they were pursuing the same goal under roughly the same conditions. Norway's Roald Amundsen arrived first and came back with all his men in good health with supplies to spare. Britain's Robert Scott and his men perished on their return.

In The Last Place on Earth: Scott and Amundsen's Race to the South Pole, British journalist Roland Huntford draws a sharp contrast between the leadership styles of the two men. His meticulous account of the two expeditions offers an opportunity to compare two very different types of leadership and their impact under comparable conditions. Among the lessons highlighted by Huntford's account:

• Listening well: Amundsen created what he termed a "little republic" in which he sought feedback. He held frequent debriefings with his men and redesigned his tents and other equipment based on their suggestions. Scott, on the other hand, who had spent is life in the military, insisted on rigid discipline. He was openly dismissive of suggestions from his men and expected blind obedience even to the most wrongheaded order. In laying their supply depots for the return from the pole, one of Scott's men urged him to move his last depot 30 miles closer to the pole, but Scott ignored the advice - and the party would later die just 11 miles from this "one-ton" depot that would have saved their lives. Huntford writes that "The Norwegians were fired by the willpower of a leaders who understood that the human personality is an instrument to be played with a living touch. Scott saw his men as puppets on a string."
  
  
• Learning continuously: Even after more than a decade of polar exploration, Scott never learned to use skis, dogs or Eskimo clothing effectively. Although Scott knew about these methods - and the weaknesses of the traditional British use of ponies and man-hauling of equipment had been amply demonstrated - he never mastered them. By contrast, Amundsen had spent a lifetime studying the indigenous peoples in the Arctic and their methods of dog-handling and polar survival. He voraciously digested the accounts of previous explorers, looking for fresh insights on strategies for survival. Even as they were at their base camp just prior to departure for the pole, Amundsen's men were still redesigning their sledges, skis and boots to reduce weight and improve performance.
  
  
• Allowing margins of error: Amundsen prepared for the worst, carrying more than ten times the food and fuel per person than Scott and placing supplies far closer to the pole for his return. Scott expected the best and was disappointed when the unpredictable polar regions did not cooperate, and he and his men would ultimately perish from starvation when they were pinned down by an extended storm. "In a journey of four months Scott had not allowed for four days' bad weather," Huntford notes.
  
  
• Paying attention to detail: Amundsen gave meticulous thought to the smallest details because he believed that a few pounds of supplies or several minutes of warmth could mean the difference between life and death in sub-zero conditions. "It we are to win," he told his men, "not a trouser button must be missing." While Scott marked his supply depots for the return trip from the pole with a single flag - making location of them like looking for a needle in a haystack - Amundsen established a 10-mile barrier of numbered flags across his path. Even if Amundsen missed a depot, as he once did in a dense fog, he was sure to encounter one of the warning flags.
  
  
• Molding team dynamics: Amundsen devoted special attention to the dynamics of his group. As they wintered at the base camp, he created a morning game of guessing the outside temperature, offering prizes to the man who came closest. The purpose was to get the men out in the fresh air first thing in the morning, an effective antidote to the irritability that insidiously crept into camp life.
  
  
• Crafting the record: For all his strengths in leading the expedition, Amundsen underestimated the importance of the battle for superiority in public perception, an area in which Scott and his supporters were very adept. Scott's heroic efforts and colorful accounts made him a martyr and legend, while Amundsen's preparation and straightforward detachment in reporting his achievements turned his success on the ice into a defeat in public opinion. Like today's business environment, polar regions are frequently uncertain and at times unforgiving. These are the circumstances in which leadership, Huntford's comparison implies, can mean the difference between triumph or tragedy.

Source: Roland Huntford, The Last Place on Earth: Scott and Amundsen's Race to the South Pole (Modern Library, 1999; originally published in 1979 as Scott and Amundsen).

Survival Rates in Arctic Expeditions

Jonathan M. Karpoff of the University of Washington compared 35 public and 56 privately-funded expeditions to discover the North Pole or explore other parts of the arctic between 1818 and 1909. He found that the privately-financed teams survived better: The death rate of crew members for the private expeditions stood at 6.2 percent, while for public expeditions, 8.9 percent. Of the private journeys that utilized ships, the ship loss rate reached 21 percent; for public expeditions, 33 percent.

Statistical analysis reveals that the variant survival rates were not due to distinctive objectives or risk taking between the public and private expeditions. Compared with publicly-backed journeys, Karpoff finds instead that privately-sponsored expeditions were far more often led by those who had (1) initiated and organized the trips; (2) brought prior experience in arctic exploration; and (3) mastered innovative techniques for organizing expeditions. The difference, then, was not the kind of sponsorship itself but the distinctive leadership that resulted.

Source: Jonathan M. Karpoff, "Public Versus Private Initiative in Arctic Exploration: The Effects of Incentives and Organizational Form" at http://faculty.washington.edu/~karpoff/papers.htm.

Leading with Speed

The fourth annual Wharton Leadership Conference on May 18, 2000, is focusing on developing leaders for fast-moving organizations.

Business firms and public organizations are learning to move fast before their markets and publics move past them. Fast-acting leadership is increasingly essential for companies and agencies to stay ahead of the curve, and the challenge is to build leaders within and recruit them from outside who know how to make fast and accurate decisions, who can implement strategies and create change at the speed of sound if not light. A capacity to drive a fast-moving organization and to be a quick and nimble mover is an essential skill for leadership ahead.

Confirmed speakers addressing these issues include:

Lawton Burns, Professor of Health Care Systems and Management and Director of the Center for Health Management and Economics at the Wharton School, and author of many articles on the restructuring of medical centers and health systems.

John Byrne, senior writer at Business Week and author of Chainsaw: The Notorious Career of Al Dunlap In the Era of Profit-At-Any-Price (1999).

Ram Charan, co-author of Every Growth Business Is A Growth Business and co-author of "Why CEOs Fail," Fortune Magazine, June 21, 1999.

Kathleen Eisenhardt, Professor of Strategy and Organization at Stanford University and co-author of Competing on the Edge: Strategy as Structured Chaos (1998).

William Pasmore, principal at Delta Consulting Group and author of Creating Strategic Change: Designing the Flexible, High-Performing Organization (1994).

Noel Tichy, author of The Leadership Engine: How Winning Companies Build Leaders at Every Level (1997), and co-author of Every Growth Business Is A Growth Business: How Your Company Can Prosper Year After Year (1998).

Edward Zajac, Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, and author of numerous articles on strategy, leadership, and governance.

To receive additional information on the conference as it becomes available, send a message to lead@wharton.upenn.edu.

In becoming the new chief executive of AT&T, Michael Armstrong "arrived with a reputation as a change agent while chairman and CEO of Hughes Electronics Corp., and previously, as an executive at IBM. He initially made decisions at Hughes so quickly, he later recalled, that some subordinates asked in exasperation, 'Wasn't that kind of a hip shot?' And he replied, 'Hell, no.'

"'Time', he says now, 'is your enemy.'"

Source: Rebecca Blumstein and Joann S. Lublin, "Amid All the Bets, One Stands Out: AT&T Ventures into Cable." Wall Street Journal, Nov. 5, 1999, pp. A1, 8.