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Everest
changed John Amatt's life - and now he believes his 'climb every mountain' philosophy can
change yours...
The
oddest thing about John Amatt is that he hasn’t climbed Mount Everest. Despite the
fact that so many people are now perching on the world’s highest peak that its
pioneer conqueror Sir Edmund Hilary recently remarked it must be like a permanent cocktail
party up there, it does remain a rare event, taking the world’s population as a
whole. So why, you may ask, is it strange that John Amatt hasn’t done it?
It is peculiar because many people think he has. Former
mountaineer Amatt has turned his climbing expertise and educational background into a
motivational company called One Step Beyond, and the key theme to the presentations he
gives are his experiences on the mountain Tibetans call “Mother Goddess of the
World”; though after two tragedies in three days which left four members of the team
dead, Amatt himself spent the remainder of the expedition holed up in a Kathmandu hotel
room liaising with the world’s Press — a task described in his biography as
“his own personal Everest”. The job of detailing the disasters to ghoulish
newshounds without upsetting sponsors had Amatt balanced on a knife-edge almost as
precarious as that which his fellow climbers were facing on the summit ridge of Everest
itself.
Even now, a decade
after the event, it is the stories of Everest — the horrors of the avalanche that
took the lives of three Sherpas, the ice flow that crushed the expedition’s
photographer, the final push for the top — that hold Amatt’s audiences
spellbound. Although Amatt himself did not make it to the summit, when word came through
over the expedition’s radio that companion Laurie Skreslet had finally become the
first Canadian to stand on top of the world, Amatt says: “I was probably prouder
because I had invested so much into the expedition over all those years.” It was he
who had raised more than C$1 million (US$815,000), in sponsorship in two years, and
assembled 20 tonnes of equipment and food, as well as designing special equipment and
clothing for the team.
If
this Canadian expedition was anybody’s baby it was Amatt’s, though he himself
would reject any such claims, not out of modesty but because one of the lessons he learned
from Everest is that teamwork has to be an essential ingredient of any project, whether
climbing the world’s highest mountain or plotting the year’s sales figures in a
business environment.
The snowy,
treacherous peaks of the Himalayas are a long way from Amatt’s childhood home in
Eccles in the north of England. The journey in his case was not just a physical one: as a
schoolboy he was so shy he refused to ask a stranger the way when his parents became lost
on a family outing. He puts this metamorphosis down simply to one thing: mountains. It
was his love of climbing that turned this diffident youngster into a young man who stunned
the climbing world with an ascent on an “impossible” Norwegian rock face, and
into an older one capable of addressing an audience of 6,000 at Radio City Music Hall in
New York.
“My entire
personality, I believe, has developed through my experiences in the mountains,” says
Amatt in his deep, rich voice, a hint of gruff northern English faintly detectable beneath
the North American twang. He started with the small peaks around his home, but by the age
of 19 he was sufficiently confident (if woefully lacking inexperience) to tackle the
formidable Troll Wall in Norway with three friends.
Some of the
world’s greatest climbers said it couldn’t be done, but John and his pals earned
the respect of the likes of Chris Bonington and Joe Brown for the six days they spent
clinging to the sides of the cold, barren, wet, 5,000-foot overhanging rock, roped to each
other, and sleeping, trussed up, on ledges just inches wide. They finally made it to the
top at the second attempt.
Although Amatt
himself says that the name of his company, One Step Beyond, originates from his Everest
experiences (as in “where do you go once you’ve conquered the world’s
highest peak?”), it is more than likely that the seeds were sown on that inhospitable
Norwegian rock face. Central to any motivational programme, and One Step Beyond is no
exception, is its emphasis on overcoming setbacks, on never giving up on your goal.
Another key to the
path Amatt was to take after Everest lies in his attitude towards the profession he took
up upon leaving university and emigrating to Canada: teaching. “People used to ask me
‘what subjects do you teach?’ And I would answer, ‘I teach kids, not
subjects’. It sounds a little flippant, but what I’m trying to say is that I saw
my role as attempting to develop the strengths of those individual children, to find out
what they were good at, to develop a focus.” It was a lesson he was not only teaching
to the children, but learning himself. “The story of Everest was very I much a story
of acknowledging your strengths and limitations and developing a team whereby the
strengths of one would offset the limitations of another and vice versa.
In the event,
Amatt’s “two-year itch” got the better of him and he moved from teaching
elementary school to high school, and another 24 months later to an international school
of management in Banff where he developed environmental programmes for decision-makers in
business, government and public-interest groups. He readily admits to becoming quickly
bored and has learned how to channel that ennui into finding new challenges — hence
his eagerness to become involved in the Canadian Everest expedition.
Climbing has not been an integral part of his life since he returned from Nepal. He says
he owed it to his wife and daughter (who had waited anxiously back home for news of the
name of the Canadian who had died on the slopes of Everest) to spend more time with them.
Going “one step beyond” Everest was something of a leap into the dark, a
venture into the unknown. He took the lessons of Everest and turned them into a business
by combining them with his teaching experiences and organizational abilities. “The
whole idea of mountain as metaphor has become central to my entire life,” he says.
“Even though I am not climbing the physical mountain anymore, I find the business
challenge very much as a metaphorical mountain to be climbed.”
For anyone who has
experienced a difficult physical task, be it climbing a mountain or running a marathon, it
is perhaps relatively easy to understand how to translate the qualities it takes to
overcome fear into “normal” life in the urban environment; as Amatt puts it, to
be able to take the confidence that comes from beating a physical challenge and apply it
to other fields of endeavour. Is it not though, rather too simplistic a metaphor
for those of us who view driving our car across the city as the most dangerous thing we
do? Amatt says no. His — and others’ — experiences are offering us a fast
track to the realization of what it takes to overcome fear, be it fear of change, or fear
of the unknown, or fear of failure. Mostly fear of failure.
“The
physical mountain top you can see,” he says. “It always stays there. In business
it is an ever-changing point. Every day, every year, the mountain top changes and you
can’t see it as clearly. But it is a kind of hook you can hang an idea on — for
example, sales targets. Then you can see the steps along the way. Many companies have
developed this metaphor of the sketch of a mountain on the office wall with the different
levels that have to be attained as a way of helping people understand where they are in
relation to the total goal.”
More recently, however, Amatt has focused increasingly upon the “adventure”
aspect of the metaphor, which translates more easily into a blueprint for personal life
than the mountain does. “Adventure by definition involves dealing with uncertainty,
dealing with unpredictability, and to a certain extent the unknown. It has been a very
powerful analogy for a lot of other people to enable them to see their goals more clearly.
The important thing is to transfer the physical experience into the intellectual
arena.”
It is the use of the adventure or mountain analogy which separates his philosophy from
those of other motivational programmes. “There is nothing new about what we say, but
we have packaged it around this notion of adventure. The thing that makes us unique is
that One Step Beyond only works with people [in the company] who have achieved significant
physical adventure feats.” As well as John himself, there is Sharon Wood, for
example, the first North American woman to reach Everest’s summit.
Someone who has found One Step Beyond’s approach refreshingly different to other
motivational programmes is Kingsley Smith, chairman and managing director of advertising
agency McCann Erickson in Hong Kong, who freely admits to reading “a lot of this kind
of stuff. One Step Beyond is much more practical than most others. The analogies are very
specific to life.” And it is precisely because Amatt uses analogies rather than
precise examples from working life that makes his philosophy so accessible, according to
Smith. Otherwise it is easy for the listener to switch off, thinking “this
doesn’t apply to my situation”, he says.
Since forming One Step Beyond, Amatt and his colleagues have spoken to more than 800
corporations and professional associations, from computer giants IBM to the Boy Scouts of
Canada. And he must practice what he preaches, a fact that was brought uncomfortably close
to home recently. One of his ambitions is to get his message across to children, and to
that end he decided to bring out a book, detailing the achievements of five inspirational
Canadians including Everest conquerors Wood and Skreslet, and Laurie Dexter who
skied across the frozen Arctic Ocean via the North Pole.
“People said it wouldn’t sell. A lot of Canadian publishers rejected it, they
said it was not what people wanted to read. I said it was, and I went and proved them
wrong,” he says emphatically, with a slight smile of satisfaction playing across his
lips. He is holding the book One Step Beyond in his hand as he speaks.
He recently turned his attentions to Asia — yet another mountain to conquer —
and visited Hong Kong in the search for new clients. Among those who arranged for Amatt to
speak to their staff was Thomas Axmacher, general manager of The Regent Hong Kong, who
says he found One Step Beyond to be a “motivational and inspirational concept, but a
simple recipe for success for the future”. And if anyone ever thought that a company
brought in a speaker like
Amatt to boost
flagging morale, the example of The Regent shows otherwise; it is also for those
businesses which are successful. “He tells people not to he complacent,” says
Axmacher. “He says there is always somewhere else to go, another goal to
achieve.”
Fear
of change, of the future and of failure this, says Amatt, is what holds people back and
keeps them in mundane, but safe, existences. Perhaps the problem companies may face when
they invite Amatt to talk is that he will prove too inspirational; staff will discover
that in today’s world, quitting the cozy existence of the city is perfectly possible
and physical adventure, rather than sales targets, is within their grasp. Then we will all
become mountain climbers and round-the-world sailors and the adventure metaphor will have
turned into reality. |
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