Paying Attention to the Small Stuff

As many of you know, I had the opportunity to give the commencement speech at the graduation ceremony for CU's Journalism School. Since giving the speech, I've been thinking a lot about what failure can teach you.

 

On New Year's Day I was reminded how little mistakes multiply quickly to create the potential for disastrous consequences. After a great day of skiing at Vail with the family at Vail, my good friend, Mike Alkaitas and I decided to ski the East Vail Chutes for the last run. We thought it would be a great way to kick off 2010.

 

While the avalanche forecast wasn't good, we both have a lot of experience in the backcountry and had all of the right equipment, training and experience to navigate the terrain safely. In such conditions, it’s about finding the safest line to ski, staying out of harms way. We knew where the safe lines were and thought we'd at least skin up out of China Bowl to check the conditions. One of the joys of skiing in the backcountry is going uphill. It’s all about earning your turns.

 

Our goal was to ski a line called Marvin’s, a line that is usually a safe bet as it gets skied almost every day. Instead, the ski soon turned into a bit of an epic. As we went out the traverse to Marvin’s I suggested that we drop into what I thought was Marvin’s but which was 100 yards short of the run. What seemed like a little mistake became big. Fast.

 

As we started to pick our way through the trees, going one by one, I traversed the first opening and kicked off a small slide. It took me for a thirty-foot ride, over a few rocks. Mike yelled as it cut loose and I was able to stay on top and jump behind a tree to avoid the worst of it.

 

We then, got rimmed out with some 20-30 ft cliffs. After some time searching for a place to exit the cliff band we finally found a 15-foot spot to jump. While it was rocky, it was the safest way to get off the rim.

 

After the cliff, Mike started to ski down to some trees when three separate slides cut out behind him. I yelled as thirty-foot high powder plumes rumbled toward him. Luckily, he heard me and was able to get into the trees as the slides stopped just short. From there it was an uneventful ski out.

 

It was pretty damn scary. It made me think about how failures of judgment, which seemed so small at the time, can lead to big consequences in business and in life, as well.

 

It’s all about paying attention to the small stuff.

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