They went on through the night, walking, walking and walking. Shackleton said later:

“It might have been different if we’d had only ourselves to think about. You can get so tired in the snow, particularly if you’re hungry, that sleep seems just the best thing life has to give. And to sleep out there is to die, to die without any pain at all, like Keats’s ideal of death. But if you’re a leader, a fellow that other fellows look to, you’ve got to keep going. That was the thought, which sailed us through the hurricane and tugged us up and down those mountains.”(Morrell, 194)

At one point they did stop to rest:

“They found a little sheltered spot behind a rock and sat down, huddled together with their arms around one another for warmth. Almost at once Worsley and Crean fell asleep, and Shackleton, too, caught himself nodding. Suddenly he jerked his head upright. All the years of Antarctic experience told him that this was the danger sign –the fatal sleep that trails off into freezing death. He fought to stay awake for five long minutes, then he woke the others, telling them that they had slept for half an hour.”

(Lansing, 269)

Finally, at 7 a.m. they Shackleton heard the factory whistle at the whaling station. The three men stood, smiled and shook hands. “Let’s go down,” Shackleton said.

After making their final descent, the men entered the village. Schoolboys ran from them in horror. Noone comes in or enters the village from that direction; strangers would be coming from the docks, not the mountains. And they probably wouldn’t look like these guys looked: heavy beards, ragged clothes, black faces from the oily smoke.

Whaling Factory in South Georgia

When they finally were taken and then appeared before the factory manager, he didn’t recognize them.“Who the hell are you?” he inquired. “My name is Shackleton,” the Boss replied.

The men were treated as heroes by the whalers. They couldn’t believe the voyage and trek across the mountains they had made. They were treated to a dinner that night.

After the dinner, Worsley left on a whaler to go to the other side of the island to pick up McNeish, McCarthy and Vincent.

In less than seventy-two hours, Shackleton was off attempting to reach Elephant Island. It took him four attempts and more than three months to do it, but he did finally get through the ice on August 30,1916.

The men on the island were in the habit of getting up getting going. Wild would yell out, “Lash up and stow! The Boss may come today!” Of course, many men were beginning to doubt that.

One day, however, he did finally come. As the men were huddled around eating lunch, Marston, the artist, came running in announcing the appearance of a ship. Of course, everyone ran out of their little hut. To much cheering the ship drew closer. A small boat was lowered, and Shackleton and Crean were in it. Shackleton had already counted out all twenty-two figures on the shore through his binoculars. “Are all well?” Shackleton shouted. “YES!” came the reply.

Awaiting Rescue

Epilogue:

Ernest Shackleton’s famous journey is a brilliant example of servant leadership in action. His story and the story of his ship the Endurance, named after the Shackleton  Family Motto, is nothing short of miraculous. It teaches us about the living nature of teamwork and about the unselfish, emergent nature of leadership.  It also teaches us about astonishing possibilities that miracles do happen.

Whenever someone points out an example of a great leader, I like to compare the person to Shackelton. If there were a “gold standard” of leadership Shackleton would certainly be it. Few are not moved by his story.

May it continue to inspire us to emulate his example and change the world for the better.

Shackelton and his Crew

Don’t you want to just stand up and cheer? They made it. But it was far from over. They had landed on the side of the island that was uninhabited. They could sail around to the other side, but the ship was so battered by the storm that it was impossible to sail. After a few days of rest, Shackleton decided that he, Worsley and Crean would cross the interior of South Georgia, a journey of about 29 miles.

Now, this sounds very innocuous. After all, these guys have just crossed 800 miles of open ocean. What’s another 29 miles on land? The truth of the matter is that the interior of the island had NEVER been crossed before. The whalers thought it was impassable. No one had ever done it. Lansing describes South Georgia:

“A few of the peaks on South Georgia rise to somewhat less than 10,000 feet, which certainly is not high by mountain-climbing standards. But the interior of the island has been described by one expert as ‘a saw-tooth thrust through the tortured upheaval of mountain and glacier that falls in chaos to the northern sea.’ In short, it was impassable.”

(Lansing, 158)

Now, these guys are sailors and explorers, not mountain climbers. They didn’t have all the fancy equipment or materials. They had 90 feet of rope, an adze (which is a small ax) and some food supplies. Their clothes were worn. The carpenter put screws in the soles of the boots. That was it.They didn’t even carry sleeping bags.

It was a treacherous journey. Often they had to retrace their steps as they came to crevasses, sheer faces of glaciers, etc.

Late in the afternoon, they were stuck at about 4,500 feet. They would freeze to death at night. What could they do?

Here’s the story:

“After thirty minutes, the ice-hard surface of the snow grew softer, indicating that the grade was not quite so steep. Shackleton stopped short. He seemed to realize all at once the futility of what he was doing. At the rate they were going it would take hours to make the descent. Furthermore, it was probably too late to turn back.

“He hacked out a small platform with the adz, then called to the others to come down.

“There was no need to explain the situation. Speaking rapidly, Shackleton said simply that they faced a clear-cut choice: If they stayed where they were, they would freeze –in an hour, maybe two, maybe more. They had to get lower – and with all possible haste.“

So he suggested they slide.

“Worsley and Crean were stunned – especially for such an insane solution to be coming from Shackleton. But he wasn’t joking…he wasn’t even smiling. He meant it – and they knew it.

“But what if they hit a rock, Crean wanted to know.

“Could they stay where they were, Shackleton replied, his voice rising.

“The slope, Worsley argued. What if it didn’t level off? What if there were another precipice?

“Shackleton’s patience was going. Again, he demanded – could they stay where they were?

“Obviously they could not, and Worsley and Crean reluctantly were forced to admit it. Nor was there really any other way of getting down. And so the decision was made. Shackleton said they would slide as a unit, holding on to one another. They quickly sat down and untied the rope which held them.

“Altogether it took a little more than a minute, and Shackleton did not permit any time for reflection. When they were ready, he kicked off. In the next instant their hearts stopped beating. They seemed to hang poised for a split second, then suddenly the windwas shrieking in their ears, and a white blur of snow tore past. Down…down…They screamed – not in terror necessarily, but simply because they couldn’t help it. It was squeezed out of them by the rapidly mounting pressure in their ears and against their chests. Faster and faster – down…down…down!

“Then they shot forward onto the level, and their speed began to slacken. A moment later they came to an abrupt halt in a snowbank.

“The three men picked themselves up. They were breathless and their hearts were beating wildly. But they found themselves laughing uncontrollably. What had been a terrifying prospect possibly a hundred seconds before had turned into a breath-taking triumph.

“They looked up against the darkening sky and saw the fog curling over the edge of the ridges, perhaps 2,000 feet above them – and they felt that special kind of pride of a person who in a foolish moment accepts an impossible dare – then pulls it off to perfection.(Lansing, 266-268)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Worsley also wrote:

“Looking back on this great boat journey, it seems certain that some of our men would have succumbed to the protracted strain but for Shackleton. So great was his care for his people that, to rough men, it seemed at times…even to the verge of fussiness. If a man shivered more than usual, he would plunge his hand into the heat of the spare clothes bag for the last sodden pair of socks for him.”

(Perkins, 59)

Even though Vincent and McNeish were strained, Crean and McCarthy proved invaluable. Crean and Shackleton had a special friendship:

“Tom Crean had been so long and done so much with Sir E that he had become a privileged retainer. As they turned in, a kind of wordless rumbling, muttering, growling noise could be heard issuing from the dark & gloomy lair in the bows sometimes directed at one another, sometimes at things in general, & sometimes at nothing at all. At times they were so full of quaint conceits & Crean’s remarks were so Irish that I ran risk of explosion by suppressed laughter. ‘Go to sleep Crean & don’t be clucking likean old hen.’ ‘ Boss, I can’t eat those reindeer hairs.  I’ll have an inside on me like a billy goats neck.  Let’s give ‘em to the Skipper & McCarthy. They never know what they’re eating’ & so on.”

(Alexander, 148)

McCarthy was, like Shackleton, just an out-and-out optimist:

“He is the most irrepressible optimist I’ve ever met. When I relieve him at the helm, boat iced and seas pourg:  down yr neck,  he informs me with a happy grin  ‘It’s a grandday, sir.’”  Written by Worlsey.

(Alexander, 148)

And so, even in the midst of all this danger and constant soaking, wetness and ice, they could laugh and get along.

Worsley, with all of the bad weather, and the damage done to his charts by the constant soaking, had only been able to calculate their position four times. The situation was growing dire. If Worsley had miscalculated, and they missed South Georgia, the ocean eastward is a complete void for 3,000 miles until you reach South Africa. And so, they couldn’t afford a mistake.

Then one day, a piece of kelp rolled by and then a cormorant flew over. These birds rarely fly further than fifteen miles from land. Finally, McCarthy shouted, “Land!” It was a little over ten miles away.

The men desperately needed to land. They had been without water for two days. They indeed tried to land, but couldn’t find a place to do so that was safe. They knew that after this night they would be on land. What a relief this must have been. But, true to the pattern, a storm blew them away from the coast. They were almost wrecked and killed, but somehow they were spared. The danger was so grave that, in fact, both Worsley and Shackleton have recorded their resignation and disappointment. They had made such a phenomenally extraordinary journey, and no one would ever know it.  The storm was actually a hurricane that suddenly blew up. This same storm caused a 500-ton steamer to founder. I told you God was saving this man!

Finally, finally, they got to a cove and made landfall on South Georgia.  And so providentially, right where they landed was a water source: a stream. It was May 10, 1916, 522 days after they had first left South Georgia.

Alexander explains the significance of their voyage:

“Undoubtedly they were conscious of having achieved a great journey…But at the moment they could hardly have known – or cared – that in the carefully weighed judgment of authorities yet to come, the voyage of the James Caird would be ranked as one of the greatest boat journeys ever accomplished.”

(Alexander, 153)

On Elephant Island the men had to try to find shelter. What they ended up with was the two boats overturned on top of stones with bits of moss and canvas stuck in the wholes. All twenty-two of the men lived in that!

Their days were spent discussing the Caird voyage, walking around the tiny strip of land, hunting and taking care of patients:

“Kerr developed a bad tooth and Macklin had to pull it for him. ‘And a grimy quack of a dentist I must have looked,’ wrote Macklin. ‘Not much refinement here – ‘Come outside and open your mouth’ – no cocaine or anesthesia.’“

Wordie’s hand became infected, and Holness was troubled with a sty. Rickenson was slowly recovering from the heart attack he suffered the day they landed, but the saltwater boils on his wrists stubbornly refused to heal. Greenstreet’s feet, which had been frostbitten in the boats, did not improve and he was confined to his sleeping bag.

Hudson seemed in a serious way. His hands showed definite signs of healing, but the pain in his left buttock which had begun in the boats had developed into a very large abscess which pained him constantly. Mentally, too, the scars of the boat journey apparently were still with him. Much of the time he lay in his sleeping bag for hours without speaking, and he seemed disinterested and detached from what was going on around him.

“The most serious invalid was Blackboro. His right foot appeared to be recovering, and there was hope that it might even be saved. But in the toes of his left foot gangrene had already set in…”

(Lansing, 199-200)

Eventually Blackboro’s toes all had to be amputated with the surgeons performing the surgery in that tiny hut!

Somehow, they still had that banjo!  So Hussey was still playing that for entertainment.

The men had to spend the winter on Elephant Island, and the days grew so monotonous for them.  All they could do was wait……

What, though, happened to the James Caird?

It took 16 days, but our heroes did reach their destination. The men aboard the boat were divided into two crews who took turns navigating the boat or going down below to try to sleep.

They really didn’t get to sleep that much as it was virtually impossible to do so. On this trip there would be no floes upon which to stop and even partially rest. This trip was a direct, non-stop.

What a difficult journey:

“’We were getting soaked on an average every three or four minutes,’ wrote Worsley.‘This went on day and night. The cold was intense.’ Particularly hateful was the task of working the pump,

which one man had to hold hard against the bottom of the boat with bare hands – a position that could not be endured beyond five or six minutes at a time.”

(Alexander, 146)

Sprayed by water, baling water, trying to steer, stung by the wind, chipping ice off the ship – these were all non-stop efforts. Day after day of gales and hurricanes faced by this twenty-two foot open boat.

We’ve already mentioned the rogue wave that nearly capsized the James Caird. How did theyhold up?

Here’s what faced them physically:

“The men were soaked to the bone and frostbitten. They were badly chafed by wet clothes that had not been removed for seven months, and afflicted with saltwater boils.Their wet feet and legs were a sickly white color and swollen. Their hands were black –with grime, blubber, burns from the Primus and frostbite. The least movement was excruciating.”

(Alexander, 147)

The trip took a toll on Vincent who appears to have just cratered. McNeish suffered as well:

“’Two of the party at least were very close to death,’ Worsley wrote. ‘Indeed, it might be said that [Shackleton] kept a finger on each man’s pulse. Whenever he noticed that a man seemed extra cold and shivered, he would immediately order another hot drink of milk to be prepared and served to all. He never let the man know that it was on his account, lest he became nervous about himself.”

(Alexander, 147)

Before Shackleton left, he tied up all the loose ends with Wild.  He trusted Wild implicitly and knew that leaving him there was just the same as staying there himself.  He trusted him to keep morale high and to take care of the men.  The rest of the group intensely respected Wild. Wild and Shackleton reviewed what to do during the stay on Elephant Island including what to do if he did not return and numerous other issues.  Shackleton left his last instructions with Wild in a letter:

April 23rd, 1916 Elephant Island

Dear Sir

In the event of my not surviving the boat journey to South Georgia you will do your best for the rescue of the party.  You are in full command from the time the boat leaves this island, and all hands are under your orders.  On your return to England you are to communicate with the Committee.  I wish you, Lees & Hurley to write the book.  You watch my interests.  In another letter you will find the terms as agreed for lecturing you to do England Great Britain & Continent.  Hurley the U.S.A.  I have every confidence in you and always have had, May God prosper your work and your life.  You can convey my love to my people and say I tried my best.

Yours sincerely

E.H. Shackleton

So, who would you rather be?  Frank Wild staying on Elephant Island, or Ernest Shackleton, sailing to South Georgia?  Both had pretty horrendous duties, did they not?  Consider what Wild was facing:

“Wild’s responsibilities were unenviable.  He was in charge of the care of twenty-one demoralized, partially incapacitated, and perhaps rebellious men, with one man, Blackborow, gravely ill.  The deserted, barren rock on which they would have to live was, as they had slowly come to realize, daily raked by gale-force winds and blizzards.  They had insufficient clothing and no shelter.  They had no source of food or fuel except for penguins and seals, which could not be counted on to be around forever.  They were well beyond all shipping lanes.  If the James Caird was unsuccessful, there was, as Shackleton himself wrote, ‘no chance at all of any search being made…on Elephant Island.’”

(Alexander, 141)

“The island of South Georgia was 800 miles away – more than ten times the distance they had just traveled.  To reach it, a twenty-two-and-a-half-foot long open boat would have to cross the most formidable ocean on the planet, in the winter.  They could expect winds up to 80 miles an hour, and heaving waves – the notorious Cape Horn Rollers –measuring from trough to crest as much as sixty feet in height; if unlucky, they would encounter worse.  They would be navigating towards a small island, with no points of land in between, using a sextant and chronometer – under brooding skies that might not permit a single navigational sighting.  The task was not merely formidable; it was, as every sailing man of the company knew, impossible.” (Alexander, 132)

“Worsley had already distinguished himself as a navigator by landing the three boats safely on Elephant Island.  He had served for several years in the Pacific for the New Zealand Government Steamer Service, where he had become proficient in sailing small boats and navigating for landfalls on small islands.”(Alexander, 134)

“Wild wanted him to stay with him on Elephant Island; Shackleton wanted him in the Caird.  Everyone knew that this tough seaman, who had won the Albert Medal for bravery on Scott’s last expedition, would be an asset to any cause he served.  Crean was perhaps as close as one can come to being indestructible.”(Alexander, 134)

“…had never caused anyone a moment’s trouble, and he was universally liked. Shackleton picked him for no more complicated reasons than that he was an experienced seaman, and that he was built like a bull.”(Lansing, 188)

These profound words by Robert Greenleaf are coming true in the globally emerging “Society of Servant Leadership.” It is happening on college campuses. It is happening in companies and in nonprofit organizations. It is happening in customer service, supply chain projects, and performance transformation initiatives. It is happening in the sales and marketing world. It is happening in healthcare. It is happening in business schools and local communities and it is happening literally around the world.

The Servant Leadership Revolution is on. And you and me – we are fellow revolutionaries in the movement – united in pursuit of higher purpose, operations excellence, and a culture of everybody-win – the new standard of practice. Today there are approximately 250 significant organizations applying these principles and reaping the rich harvest of servant leadership – in three years will there be 2500?

If you look into nature, into these places of community, you will find an amazing degree of alignment; there is a beautiful, symmetrical pattern. No friction, no member out of alignment—the flow is seamless. These organisms all behave intelligently, even though their members are unaware of the big picture and there is no “central controller” to guide them. According to futurist and complexity author Kevin Kelly, they are out of control—a state he describes as “distributed being.” Since this is the preferred operating mode of complex biological forms that have thrived for millions of years, Kelly suggests that our own increasingly complex organizations will inevitably follow the same pattern. In the simplest terms, they solve problems by drawing on masses of relatively simple and locally autonomous agents, rather than a single, super-intelligent executive branch. They are bottom-up, self-organizing systems. In the language of complexity science, they are complex adaptive systems (CAS) displaying emergent features.

For organizations, reaching anywhere close to this level of performance is only possible in a decentralized environment. But decentralization of decision rights requires corresponding levels of personal responsibility.

Agile project teams are an excellent example.

George: “Birds flocking, fish schooling, bees swarming, all move effortlessly in the same direction, it is a more efficient way to forage and travel, the whole uses less energy to operate in this way. Somehow great teams and great organizations are able to operate as something approaching this ‘frictionless’ state. There is something extra–something invisible at work.

“Some companies become fossilized by centralizing all authority. This is suboptimal. Decisions have to be made as close to the customer as possible, at the lowest level of knowledge and skill. Organizations are patterns of relationships. Conversations are the heart and soul of organizational life. Conversations shape commitment to the organization and create a sense of what is possible. Like Buckminster Fuller’s trimtab on the rudder of a ship, conversations seem insignificant, but have tremendous hidden power. Conversations characterize everyday work life and negotiations between people in the organization and their customers. They determine the quality of service and the overall effectiveness of the company. In many organizations, conversations are negative and blocked or fall into otherwise destructive loops.

“Change cannot be imposed or controlled from the top or from the outside. It is better to work with people at all company levels to help them discover for themselves what is possible and what can be done better. This helps to facilitate new conversations, which often cross boundaries within organizations. By focusing on those conversations at the core of the organization, the greatest leverage can be created, for executives working on strategy, teams working on projects, the whole organization working on its next transformation, or any other critical business function. Systems, structures and processes all help the effective organization, but they count for little if the conversations and relationships are not real. Imposing command-and-control solutions to business problems, especially around knowledge work, has proven to be almost completely ineffective.”

A life science of management and leadership exposes the obsolete industrial age Taylor paradigm that still to this day is limiting so much individual and organizational performance. The Taylor model is based on Descartes’ 400 year old clockwork universe and does not  integrate new science discoveries of the last 100 years, especially quantum mechanics and complexity science. By recasting organizations as  living, complex-adaptive systems, an organization’s full capacity for Superperformance can finally be unleashed.

The traditional view of organization—woven together through a systematic framework of production, decision support,  knowledge, and information systems— is based on the model of a well-oiled machine engineered to deliver maximum performance derived from pre-defined parameters and specifications. This industrial age model considers performance a derivative of external controls defined by the designers of organizational systems. They have given only marginal importance to the self-adaptive and emergent nature of organizational systems and the dynamic environments they inhabit. In other words, they are still far from operating with an immune system of distributed decision rights and with management and leadership capacity distributed everywhere, to the very edge of organizations. These bottom-up, agile characteristics of living, complex adaptive systems are precisely what is needed during times of rapid changing operating and knowledge environments, such as those that exist today.

Nested Hierarchies are Natural

From Organism View the self-referencing fractal pattern of system inside of system is apparent. The parts and their environments are continually co-evolving. From this view there is perfect parallel between organization and organism, which present as a set of nested structures, each inside of the next, like Russian dolls.

Organization                                 Organism

Economy                                             Ecosystem
↓
Industry                                              Species
↓
Organization                                       Organism
↓
Function                                              Organ
↓
Department                                         Tissue
↓
Work Team                                        Cell
↓
Individual                                           Organelle

From Organism View the entire global economy can be seen as a gigantic ecology of interdependent and continually interacting (work) cells, organs, and organizations engaged in the production, buying and selling of goods and services. And like any ecology it is self-organizing, not centrally controlled or coordinated.

Regardless of scale or level of complexity, there is a corresponding compartment at every tier of the organization/organism hierarchy. This is not just a novel coincidence—it is the natural expression of order that pervades all of life, from ecosystem to economy. It is simply the most efficient way to organize.

In fact, throughout the entire text of  Darwin’s Origin of Species, the only illustration called for was the picture of a nested hierarchy.

Nested Hierarchy from Darwin's Origin of Species