Number of words: 546
On December 5, 1914, Shackleton and a crew of twenty-seven men set out for the Weddell Sea on the Endurance, a 350-ton ship that had been constructed with funds from private donors, the British government and the Royal Geographical Society. By then, World War I was raging in Europe, and money was growing more scarce. Donations from English schoolchildren paid for the dog teams.
But the crew of the Endurance would never reach the continent of Antarctica.
Just a few days out of South Georgia Island in the southern Atlantic, the ship encountered mile after mile of pack ice, and was soon trapped as winter moved in early and with fury. Ice closed in around the ship “like an almond in a piece of toffee,” a crew member wrote. Shackleton and his crew were stranded in the Antarctic for ten months as the Endurance drifted slowly north, until the pressure of the ice floes finally crushed the ship. On November 21, 1915, the crew watched as she sank in the frigid waters of the Weddell Sea.
Stranded on the ice, the crew of the Endurance boarded their three lifeboats and landed on tiny Elephant Island. There Shackleton left behind all but five of his men and embarked on a hazardous journey across 800 miles of rough seas to find help. Which, eventually, they did.
What makes the story of the Endurance so remarkable, however, is not the expedition, it’s that throughout the whole ordeal no one died, There were no stories of people eating others and no mutiny.
This was not luck. This was because Shackleton hired good fits. He found the right men for the job. When you fill an organization with good fits, those who believe what you believe, success just happens. And how did Shackleton find this amazing crew? With a simple ad in the London Times.
Compare that to how we hire people. Like Shackleton, we run ads in the newspaper, or on the modern equivalents, Craigslist or Monster.com. Sometimes we hire a recruiter to find someone for us, but the process is largely the same. We provide a list of qualifications for the job and expect that the best candidate will be the one who meets those requirements.
The issue is how we write those ads. They are all about WHAT and not about WHY. A want ad might say, for example, “Account executive needed, minimum five years’ experience, must have working knowledge of industry. Come work for a fantastic, fast growing company with great pay and great benefits.” The ad may produce loads of applicants, but how do we know which is the right fit?
Shackleton’s ad for crew members was different. His did not say WHAT he was looking for. His ad did not say: “Men needed for expedition. Minimum five years’ experience. Must know how to hoist mainsail. Come work for a fantastic captain.”
Rather, Shackleton was looking for those with something more. He was looking for a crew that belonged on such an expedition. His actual ad ran like this: “Men wanted for Hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.”
Excerpted from Pg 91-92 of ‘Start with Why’ by Simon Sinek