The Light and Fast Organisation. Hollingworth Patrick

an 8000-metre mountain in Tibet, in a record time of 10.5 hours, and in 2013 he soloed the south face of 8091-metre Annapurna, the world's tenth highest mountain, in a record time of 28 hours; it takes most parties at least one week to reach the summit after months of acclimatising).

      In his book Outliers journalist Malcolm Gladwell popularised the work of Dr Anders Ericsson, a Swedish psychologist whose research revealed that natural ability requires ten years, or 10 000 hours of practice, to be made manifest. Steck is the perfect example of the ‘10 000 hours rule', his lifetime spent in the mountains in preparation for the day that he could turn the sport of mountaineering on its head.

      And that's what he did on that clear blue day in February 2008.

      What can we learn?

      So what does all of this mean? It's an inspiring story, yes, but what else can we make of this? What relevance does this story have for us all?

      As described earlier, the North Face of the Eiger can be a metaphor for the world in which we are living today, complete with storms, rockfalls and avalanches, and we have no choice but to climb it.

      The concave nature of the North Face serves to amplify the magnitude of the storms that strike her. Similarly, the interconnectedness of our world today serves to amplify the storms that strike us, and, as you will read in the following pages, there is a perfect storm of a magnitude never before seen that is just starting to reach us.

      The purpose of this book is to provide a manifesto for improving the way in which you and the organisation you work for can adapt to the changes and challenges facing us all. This has been tested and proved in the alpine world, and now you can use it as the storm descends around us.

       Regardless of the forthcoming storm, we have a choice as to how we tackle the climb ahead.

      We can choose to continue to do things like we have always done, and climb the face in a traditional manner (it's called expedition style, it's heavy and slow, and we'll learn more about it later). We may still get to the top, but it will take us a long time, and we probably won't survive the storm.

      Or, we can choose to flip conventional thinking on its head and, following Steck's lead, take a new approach and climb light and fast to help us get through the maelstrom. If we do choose to take this approach (and to be honest, we don't have any other option), there will be difficult times ahead, complete with much discomfort and doubt. We will have to face our fears.

      So let us get to work. Onward and upward we must go!

      PART I

      The landscape

      CHAPTER 1

      The perfect storm?

      In this chapter, we'll try to understand change through:

      • the VUCA framework

      • the three factors of people, places and technology that can combine to create the perfect storm

      • the three-stage framework.

      In his classic nonfiction book The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger tells the story of the fishing boat the Andrea Gail and her crew. Lost at sea in 1991, they were caught off the north-east coast of the USA in a super-storm created by an incredibly rare combination of three weather systems. At its peak, the storm had wind strengths in excess of 120 kilometres per hour, and it generated some of the largest waves ever recorded.

      Few people took the weather warnings from the National Weather Service seriously. It was only once the true magnitude of the storm became apparent that people started reacting, with thousands along the eastern seaboard evacuating their homes.

       Other than a few small pieces of debris, no trace of the Andrea Gail or her six crewmen was ever found.

      This ‘perfect storm' killed another seven people and created widespread destruction on much of the eastern coastline, causing an estimated damage bill of $200 million.

      It may seem strange to call something so destructive perfect but, in weather terms, this combination of conditions is so rare it has to be seen as miraculous. Sure, two weather systems occasionally merge together to create powerful storms, but three systems merging together? It was unprecedented. Negativity does not necessarily diminish perfection.

      The three forces

      Today a similar perfect storm, albeit a metaphorical one, is brewing. Just like the real perfect storm that took the Andrea Gail and her crew to a watery grave, a never-before-seen combination of three forces is occurring to create a perfect storm, the likes of which the world has never seen before.

      What are these three forces? We will get to them in a minute. But first, it is crucial to understand that the impact of this perfect storm will be felt all over the globe. The old world of business will never be the same again.

      Instead, the storm is giving birth to a new world order.

      Speaking about the post–World War II era, cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead once wrote, ‘All of us who grew up before the war are immigrants in time, immigrants from an earlier world, living in an age essentially different from anything we knew before'. We are again immigrants in time, as our perfect storm is reshaping society, business and institutional thinking.

      Everything from how we play and how we learn to how we work and how we govern – in other words, how we live our lives – is being profoundly changed.

      The three forces that have combined to form this perfect storm are:

      1. people

      2. places

      3. technology.

      The capacity for people to connect with one another to communicate, share, learn and trade is increasing quickly and easily. This is happening in both virtual and real places through technology's rapid growth.

      What does this mean?

      It means the world has become flatter, more transparent and more accessible than ever before. It also means that there are more opportunities for cultural misunderstanding, misalignment and clashes that would not have happened when isolation was more prevalent. And it means that many of the organisations that supply society's daily needs are in danger of disruption and failure. We are seeing increasing evidence of this misunderstanding and misalignment of cultures, and the disruptive impacts on business, on a daily basis.

      So when did this perfect storm start?

      It's been brewing for quite some time, but the signals were too weak for our business and societal radars to pick up. 9/11 is a perfect example of what we thought of as an isolated incident; but then came the Bali Bombings, followed by similar events in Madrid, London, Mumbai and Paris. The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008 seemed like a once-in-a-century financial crash – and yet nearly a decade later we are still dealing with its fallout, and talk of another, even larger, debt-caused crisis persists.

      These events all involved people, places and technology rapidly moving together to create a sense of unease and urgency, sending us racing for metaphorical cover.

      Like thunderclouds, these events were early indicators of the approaching perfect storm.

      Storm outriders

      In the mountains, we call early indicators of unrest storm outriders. Days before any other sign of approaching weather, clear blue skies gradually become streaked with thin, wispy strands of white or grey cirrus cloud, which are formed by very strong winds blowing up high. Those of us who have been around the mountains for long enough know these storm outriders are a sign of things to come: the weather will start deteriorating within the next 24 to 48 hours.

      Simply put, they are a warning:

       Get off the mountain, and get off fast, or the weather will take its own measures to remove you.

      What