Lessons from the Donner's...
- Jan 6, 2016
- 2 min read
Well, it's post Holidays, and I finally just sat down last night and watched some mindless TV. But it turned out it wasn't. It was a 2 hour Docu-drama about something from our Nation's past...our expansion to the west in the mid 1800's.
Apparently, a group of Midwesterners decided to take a wagon train from Independence Missouri to almost near San Francisco. I am certain I never heard of this in school, or anywhere else for that matter. It turns out that they faced a once in a century series of snow storms that stranded them for 4 months in the Sierra Nevada's, food ran out, and at some point, (spoiler alert) they resorted to cannibalism. That might be why it wasn't in my grade school or even high school history books, at least that I can recall.
While I watched it, I realized there were a lot of good leadership lessons, and many apply to what leaders must do in our organizations on a regular basis. I ordered the most definitive work on the journey, called Desperate Passage by Ethan Rarick, and will share some of those after I have read that, but there was one striking moment in the movie that will get me started.
When they got to somewhere near The Great Salt Lake, they had a choice. They could take the old, established, known route, albeit longer, or the new, guaranteed to cut two months (or something like that...haven't read the book yet...) off your trip route. Old. New. Old. New. What to do...They took the new way, the new route. There were good reasons to...Honestly, I may have as well. Sadly, many important life lessons are only understood in retrospect. Who knows what type of calamity may have befallen them on the old route. Of course, the new route was awful, they lost time rather than gaining time...and then the snow...and then, well, mentioning it above once is probably enough.
The point? As leaders, one of the most difficult decisions you make are around old/new. The only thing that the Donner party didn't do was their homework. They relied on hearsay and one reference about the new way. They didn't think it through much, and when they did make a decision, they were under enormous pressure. Maybe that's the best take away...and also...old is not necessarily bad, and new not necessarily good.
Stay warm!
Comments