Approach the 21st Century with a sense of 'Adventure', says climber
John Amatt has scaled the heights of Everest
and brought back a message for us as we approach the next millennium: "Anything is
possible. The only limiting factor to our achievements in life or business is our own
ignorance and fear."
Amatt, a management
consultant and qualified professional mountain guide, was business manager for the first
successful Canadian assault on Mt. Everest. A year after his return from the top of the
world in 1982, he formed One Step Beyond, a consulting firm "dedicated to the
adventure of business and the business of adventure."
The Canmore, Alberta - based
company offers keynote presentations, wilderness-based team-building seminars, and
audio-visual materials to help corporate clients develop innovative strategies to
"meet the challenges of change represented by the 1990s and the 21st century."
Amatt and colleague Sharon Wood, the first North American woman to scale Mt. Everest,
deliver more than 150 motivational keynote speeches each year to corporate high climbers
from coast to coast.
Amatt's presentations,
"Climbing Your Own Everest: What it Takes to Get to the Top" and "The
Adventure of Change: A Challenge and An Opportunity," have inspired everyone from
insurance salesmen and financiers to boy scouts and cosmeticians with the invitation to
use Mt. Everest as a metaphor for the challenges in their lives and the changes coming
with the next millennium.
Major focus of the organization
over the next few years will be what Amatt calls the "Footsteps Expeditions"
commemorating the 200th anniversary of the Sir Alexander Mackenzie expeditions across
Canada and the 500th of Christopher Columbus's discovery of the Americas.
In the Canada Sea-to-Sea project,
university students re-enact the explorations of Mackenzie, who was the first man to cross
North America linking the Atlantic with the Arctic and Pacific oceans.
"Canadians tend to lose track
of the adventurous spirit which brought us to the point where we are today," Amatt
says. "I want people to realize that we can follow in Mackenzie's footsteps in our
own lives."
"My fear is that as we become
successful, we tend to become complacent and stagnate. We must let go of the comfort we
have developed today and challenge ourselves."
Regarding the Columbus
celebrations, Amatt says: "The year 1992 will be very important for Canadians.
Columbus discovered a new world - the world in which we now live. I see that as a metaphor
for the idea that we must discover our own new worlds, both personally and in terms of new
business opportunities, as we move forward into the 21st century.
"There are great changes taking place in the
world today. We are all suffering millennium shock. We have to look back to where we came
from, get in touch with the values that built this country and use them to move ahead into
the next millennium." |
