Persistence and Perseverance
“Life can deal you an amazing hand. Do you play it steady, bluff like crazy or go all in?” ― Joe Simpson
I’m sitting outside of the boardroom where I’ve just given what I thought was a great sales pitch until the potential client told me that it was terrible (they were pretty blunt about it too).
I’m waiting for the verdict. It doesn’t look good.
The team and I have been working on this project for over a year now. It has had its ups and downs. We’ve spent a lot of money, had a few wins, invested months, made a few mistakes, and learned a lot about a field that I’ve never been exposed to before.
It has been hard, long, and a test of patience, persistence, and perseverance.
This experience reminds me of the book Touching the Void by Joe Simpson. This real story is about two climbers, Joe and Simon, who set out to summit an unclimbed peak in the middle of nowhere.
(I’m not saying that this deal was as anywhere as hard as climbing an unclimbed mountain, but the metaphor is still good. Keep reading.)
They summited successfully.
On their way down Joe slips, swings on the rope connecting them him to his buddy and smashes into an ice cliff. He shatters his knee, an ankle and breaks a few ribs. He is in awful shape.
(Again, this deal was not that hectic)
Simon doesn't leave Joe on the mountain. He digs himself an ice chair to hold himself in place, joins two long ropes together and starts lowering Joe down the mountain. At the join between the two ropes Joe would take his weight off the line so that Simon could get the knot through the belay plate (the device used to hold the rope and lower Joe down). Once they had gotten to the end of the second rope Simon would climb down to Joe and they would start again.
It was long, slow and painful work, but they were making headway. Joe and Simon were heading to safety.
Unfortunately and unknowingly, after a few ice seats and successful lowers Simon mistakenly belays Joe into a crevasse - a large hole in the glacier ice. Joe is left hanging, unable to go up or down. He is unable to take his weight off the rope so that Joe can transition over the knot.
They are stuck.
After a long time in this go-nowhere position, Simon starts slipping. His ice chair is breaking. He is going to be pulled down the mountain along with his friend.
Simon does the one thing that he can do; He cuts the rope.
The blade slices through the fibres, and Joe falls into darkness.
Simon believes that Joe is dead. No one could survive falling into a crevasse like that.
But Joe lives. By a miracle, he fell onto a ledge somewhere near to the top of the abyss.
So as Simon heads to base camp alone, Joe climbs out of the hole and starts making a slow and painful descent. Crawling and hopping in agony, he is persistent to make it down before Simon leaves camp for home.
It takes Joe 4 or 5 days to get to base camp where Simon had been recovering and mourning his friend for an extra 3 or 4 days.
Just before Simon was planning to leave for home, Joe crawled into camp.
He survived.
Here are three lessons from Touching the Void that relate to long and painful business deals.
- Just keep moving.
“The voice still urged me on…it seemed to suggest that I might as well get on with it for want of anything else to do.”- Joe Simpson
Joe could have stopped. He would have died, but he could have stopped.
In business and life, you need to keep moving.
Keep fighting for the next step.
If you stop fighting, you’ll never make it. If you keep going, you still have a shot at closing the deal. If you give up, you have no chance.
When the chances of your success outweigh the costs of persistence, it is, however, time to stop fighting.
2. Be wary of thinking that you’re closer than you are.
“I felt like screaming and I felt like swearing, but I stayed silent. If I said a word I would panic. I could feel myself teetering on the edge of it.” — Joe Simpson
In the boulder field below the glacier, the very dehydrated Joe could hear the water below the rocks. He just couldn’t get to it. He spent a night in the field without finding water. It kept him awake.
He was so close to water, but he couldn’t taste it.
Around every corner, he hoped to find a pool.
And eventually, he did.
Over the last few months, we’ve had many instances where we’ve felt so close to closing the deal and taking things to the next step. We’ve been so certain so often that it was just around the corner.
Before this pitch, I was confident that this was the last step. Now I’m not so sure.
3. Sometimes a friend needs to cut you lose (and that’s ok)
In the book, Joe answers the question of whether he blames Simon for cutting the rope. The answer is no.
There was no point in both of them dying. Simon went out of his way to save is a friend. There was a point however when going any further would have cost him his life.
In business, you rely on colleagues, partners, and friends to take you forward.
They can only get you so far. If you’re unable to go further and you’re holding them back, they need to cut you lose and you can’t hold that against them.
“You saved my life you know. It must have been terrible for you that night. I don’t blame you. You had no choice…You did all that you could have done. Thanks for getting me down.” — Joe to Simon once Joe had made it off the mountain safely.
Closing note: It turns out that we got the deal. The presentation was bad, but we were still the best option. There’s a lesson in that.
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