October 2011

Did you know that this winter is the centenary of Scott's expedition to the South Pole?  The race to the pole between Scott and Amundsen is a gripping story in its own right, but what fascinates me is why Amundsen succeeded and Scott failed.  Although our challenges are trivial in comparison, I'm sure we can still learn lessons from what happened.

So I was struck by what the great-nephew of one of the expedition's members said recently: "The South Pole was only ever a sideshow.  They had to make getting there first the objective to raise money for the expedition, but in the words of my great uncle: 'We aim to make bagging the pole merely an item among the results'."

What's Important Is To Have One Clear Objective

The lack of a single clear objective was a fundamental failure that undermined Scott's expedition from the start.  Was the purpose of the expedition to obtain scientific data, or was it to reach the South Pole first?  The effect of these conflicting priorities is made horribly clear when you learn that, even when Scott was in a desperate race to reach safety before his food ran out, his men were still dragging 55lbs of rock samples with them.

The effect of conflicting priorities on our projects isn't so final - but it's a cause of failure just the same.

Make It Measurable

It's not enough simply to have an objective - it needs to be clear to everyone.

And we can learn from Scott and Amundsen here as well.  Amundsen had an objective he could measure - to reach the South Pole.  Everything he did was directed to that objective, and he knew when - and whether - he'd reached it.

Scott not only had more than one objective - he didn't have any way of measuring whether he'd reached his objective of collecting scientific data.  And so there was no way of deciding whether the 55lbs of samples he was dragging back from the South Pole were important or not.

It's the same for us.  Unless we can measure our objective, we won't know whether we've reached it, and we won't know whether the work we're doing is actually helping us - or whether it's wasting time and money.

Your Objective Defines The Method - Not The Other Way Round

We can learn a third lesson about objectives from Scott and Amundsen.

Scott used ponies and man-hauling to reach the South Pole because that was what he knew about.  Amundsen chose huskies and skis because he took the trouble to find out what worked in the conditions he was likely to find.

In other words, Amundsen set his objective first, and then worked out what methods he needed to employ to reach it.  Scott chose his methods - and then tried to use them to reach his objective - even though they weren't suitable.

The same goes for us.  Don't choose a technique because you know about it, or have heard about it.  Choose it because you know that it's suitable for the objective you've set yourself.

Summary

So here's this month's message.  If you want to be successful, you need to:

know where you're going and why you're going there (your objective)

know when you've got there (a measurable objective)