Reaching The Summit
John Muir once described Mt. Rainier as the noblest of all the volcanoes. Seeing it for the first time on the bow of my friend’s boat it certainly hulked over the top of Lake Washington with imposing presence at 14,410 feet tall. My opportunity to climb didn’t come for several years but the desire to get on top of that thing was immediate.
Last month I had the opportunity to plant the 3Seven flag on top of Mt. Rainier. It was almost a year to the day from our incorporation as a company, so it was a good opportunity to reflect on our journey as a company and the journey of our clients.
3Seven clients are trying to achieve new levels of revenue through transformation and maturity. Most of the time that is hard. The obstacles on our journey together can feel impossible and overwhelming. It’s one of the many reasons I’m so in awe of the executives at our clients that choose to bet on us for help. There are a lot of accountabilities for a Sherpa to bring someone to the summit. It’s not uncommon to meet a climbing ranger at 10K feet and hear frightening and cavalier vocabulary as they describe the route. “Go past the cadaver gap up into the flats. There you will see the death-from-above seracs before you get to the human bowling alley and then on to disappointment cleaver.” This year we happened to have lunch with a climber that trained all year, flew across the country, and then got crunched by the cleaver to become one of the 49% not to summit.
In business, it’s our experience and skill that drive us up the mountain, but it’s hard not to ask the question “why I am doing this? Is it worth the effort?” As you collect more summits this question seams to come up more often (this was my 5th summit and 6th attempt). My climbing partner, who has been doing this for many years, contemplated the words of his daughter, “it’s ok Dad - it’s good for you to do hard things”.
Standing on the summit with 40% less oxygen brings a lot of things into perspective. Why am I doing this? It’s a reminder of what it takes to do hard things. 3Seven Team, I’m in awe of your tenacity to rise and stand when you fall down, to get better in the heat of the furnace and your ability to reach the top. Your unrelenting purpose is clear in your authentic care for people and ability to help clients reach the summit.
“This is what we see when we look up at Rainier, the beauty, the horror, the awe the unbelievability of size that confirms our own consequence on this earth.
The mountain receives our expressions and becomes part of us; we imprint our memories upon it and trust it with our dearest divisions of our lives. Mt. Rainier does not exist under our feet. Mt. Rainier lives in our minds.”
Bruce Carcott – The Measure of a Mountain