In the mountains, minds wander and become inspired. It's amazing how many parallels there are between climbing mountains and your work life! See these 10 lessons climbing mountains has taught about running a business.
LESSON 1: Have a Plan
Your chances of accomplishing any complex or significant task are improved if you have a plan. Everybody knows this.
Then why do so many people embark on monumental undertakings with no apparent plan? A plan requires setting goals, identifying the obstacles that stand between you and your goals, and a step-by-step roadmap for how to overcome them.
Knowing you should have a plan and doing the work to prepare one are not the same thing. The guy wearing flip-flops on the trail up Mt. Sherman probably knows how high the mountain is and has the goal of standing on top of it, but he hasn’t done the work needed to get there.
LESSON 2: A Plan Is Just a Plan
Never mistake a plan for reality. A plan is a necessary, but insufficient element of achieving your goals. You cannot anticipate everything that will happen on your way to your goals. Even if you could at a point in time, things change.
In the mountains I’ve encountered snow that made the trail impassable, avalanche tailings that erased it altogether, and storms and predators that made it deadly. You must adjust.
Your two-dimensional plan starts to come to life only once you take your first few steps up the trail toward your destination. Your plan is a map, not the trail itself. You must take new information into account as you encounter it and make needed modifications to your plan.
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