Who won the race to the South Pole?
In Oct 1911, Robert Falcon Scott from England and Roald Amundsen from Norway raced to the South Pole. Each leader approached their task in radically different ways, stemming from their different goals, experiences, and temperaments. Amundsen’s team arrived in good health at the South Pole—33 days before Scott’s malnourished and exhausted team arrived and found that Amundsen had beaten them. Amundsen’s team returned home without losing a single life. Tragically, all five men in Scott’s polar party died on the ice returning from the pole.
Roald Amundsen won, according to Morten Hansen’s Great at Work, because he practiced the principle of “Do less, then obsess.”
Here’s a brief comparison of their differing approaches:
Captain Scott commanded three times the men and twice the budget. He used five forms of transportation: dogs, motor-sledges, Siberian ponies, skis, and man-hauling. If one failed, he had backups. Unfortunately, because Scott was so busy arranging for these five transportation methods, he couldn’t focus on any of them. Rather than venturing to Siberia to secure ponies, he sent his aide, Cecil Meares. But Meares didn’t know about ponies—he was a dog expert. So Scott’s team ended up with twenty ill-suited ponies, which slowed the team down. In addition, the man who designed the motor sledges didn’t come to Antarctica.
Amundsen, on the other hand, carefully chose only one form of transportation: dogs. Had they failed, his quest would have ended. But Amundsen’s dogs didn’t fail. They performed.
Why?
Amundsen did less and then obsessed. Amundsen concentrated only on dogs and eschewed backup options. He also spent two winters apprenticing with Inuits who had mastered dog sledging, learning how to urge dogs to run, how to drive sledges and how to pace himself. Amundsen then obsessed over obtaining superior dogs.
The story of the race to the South Pole challenges two common beliefs about work.
- The first misconception is that we should increase the scope of our activities, pursuing multiple responsibilities and options. We believe that by taking on more tasks, we accomplish more and improve our performance.
- The second misconception concerns the idea of focus. Many have argued that people can only perform at their best if they select a few items to work on and say no to others. This view is incomplete, according to Hansen.
Picking a few priorities is only half the equation. The other half is the harsh requirement that you must obsess over your chosen area of focus to excel.
Source: Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better and Achieve More
Learn More about the Race and why one leader succeeded and the other failed.
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Are you doing less and then obsessing more to be Great at the Work you do?