When I was 16, I drove my mother’s car alone across the San Francisco Bay to a faraway warehouse where I met Bill McGinnis, owner of Whitewater Voyages. Bill authored the river runner’s bible, Whitewater Rafting, and his company was the largest commercial rafting tour outfitter in California. I was there for a job interview. Having just learned how to drive, and recently infatuated with floating on California’s thumping, remote and ridiculously beautiful wild rivers, my heart raced, for this was the first job interview in my young life.
The office smelled of Indian incense common in 1970’s northern California hippie places and the receptionist, Beth, was kind and winsome in a long-flowing tie-died dress kind of way. Bill invited me into his small office packed with books, pictures, magazines, maps, reports, brochures, and a profusion of small pre-Post-It papers taped all over the walls and bookshelves with aphorisms, to-dos, ideas, and profound sayings. The office was cave-like and despite it being a warm spring day Bill was dressed in multiple layers of wool coats, shirts, and sweaters.
“What do you want to do with your life?” he asked. This was a bold opener for a first job interview. But having no experience I took it in stride and answered as truthfully as I could. “I’m not sure, but I like rivers and traveling.” Our conversation progressed from there and concluded with Bill saying, “well then, let’s go out to the scheduling calendar and get you signed up on some trips…” without him asking anything about my experience as a raft guide. On the wall behind Beth’s puja was a massive calendar running May through September of 1977 and he proceeded to put my name next to a month’s worth of 1-to-3-day trips on the Stanislaus, American, Rouge and Merced Rivers. I was now a whitewater river guide and would follow this unusual professional path exploring rivers on four continents for the next 15 years.
Through this experience I developed deep friendships, faced my greatest fears, learned to be scrappy, and discovered leadership principles that have endured as my personal and professional life evolved away from river guiding to marriage, parenthood, entrepreneurship, and sustainability consulting for some of America’s largest corporations.
Principle 1: Plan carefully, commit fully, change fast (when needed)
The Forks of the Kern River at high water requires careful attention. California’s most challenging and remote river was flooding, and my fellow guides and I were perched on a rock above a thundering waterfall called Vortex that ran smack into a 1 mile rapid called The Gauntlet filled with wicked waves, rocks and holes that could flip a boatload of people into the freezing water. This was the edge of navigability.
We carefully planned our route and approach. I would lead through Vortex, grab the small eddy on the right and set up safety for the second boat. We would then run the other boats through and then run all five boats together through The Gauntlet. My run at Vortex went well, but I missed the eddy and entered The Gauntlet on the wrong side of the river from where I had planned to be. Now completely off plan and headed into a long-complex rapid, I had to immediately adjust. The objective hadn’t changed – to get to the bottom without losing any passengers – but everything about the well-thought-out plan had changed.
This situation, common on difficult rivers, maps well to business and life. As a consultancy, Blu Skye helps clients develop thoughtful plans to reduce their environmental footprint and increase their societal benefit. But like a river that hasn’t been run before, circumstances sometime demand that you change direction, and fast, otherwise you’ll end up in the water. The art of acting – especially in situations that you’re in for the first time – is to know when to stick with the original plan, and when to abandon it and read the current in front of you, adjusting as necessary to reach the calm pool at the bottom.
Principle 2: Follow the flow whenever possible
The Zambezi River below the mile-wide Victoria Falls compresses into a 100-foot slot canyon called the Batoka Gorge. Here is found the wildest one day rafting trip on earth. In 1984 I was part of a small group of guides who were leading the earliest commercial trips. The question wasn’t if you would flip during the 6-month rafting season, but how many times. The amount of water thundering through the 21 rapids was awesome; at some points our boats behaved like ragdolls.
It was here that I learned the art of using the river’s current to my advantage. It was futile to try and row against the surging current – the rapids were too strong, the boats too heavy, and my muscles too weak. The key to keeping upright, out of the way of crushing obstacles, and in the boat, was to use the river’s natural flow. This is especially true at the entrance to rapids which tend to have calm, but swift, moving water. Here, at the top of the rapid, you can position the boat exactly where you want it, entering the rapid best placed for success. And in Zambezi-sized rapids, it is the only time you can be exactly where you want to be for sure. I only flipped twice that year, tied for the lowest.
Similarly, Blu Skye spends an inordinate amount of time setting simple, clear, and accurate target and objectives at the start of a project, workstream, or meeting. Additionally, we try to ensure that everyone required to participate in the work is aligned and finds value in this plan before we move to action. We also pay careful attention to the culture of what engages and excites the team that needs to do the action. This is very much akin to how one successfully navigates the Zambezi. You go slow at first, make sure that everyone is clear and paddling in the same direction as you enter the chaos of collective action. Put the boat in the current that is going in the direction you want to go.
Principle 3: Choose meaningful work with people you respect
During the height of the cold war between the Soviet Union and the USA I took a college senior seminar on nuclear deterrence theory. It hit like a freight train. I cried knowing that everything that I loved could disappear instantly in a poof of nuclear annihilation. I decided to act. But how? I was 22 and a student with no money or influence and couldn’t imagine a desk job. But I did know one thing: how to organize and run river trips in faraway places. And I had observed that these trips naturally built trust among strangers. So, in a bold act of cross-appropriation [1] some river guide friends and I started a non-profit called Project RAFT – Russians and Americans For Teamwork – and with hard work and luck became the first group of westerners to explore a whitewater river in the Soviet Union. This began a 9-year odyssey that brought thousands of Russians and Americans together as “citizen diplomats” on whitewater rivers all over the world as a metaphor for cooperation – we didn’t need to like each other, but we needed to paddle together for our mutual survival [2].
Navigating Siberia’s wild Katun River with ‘enemies’ we transformed a multi-day river trip into a transformative and lasting experience that played a (very) small part in lessening the nuclear tensions between our countries. Here I learned firsthand that when your profession has an authentic higher purpose that it becomes more meaningful, it attracts great people who want to participate, and makes all the ridiculously hard work fun.
Similarly, Blu Skye was founded on the understanding that the traditional skills of strategy consulting and leadership development could be applied to help companies identify new sustainable solutions that would make their business stronger, more profitable, and attract great talent. And because of Blu Skye’s competencies combined with our commitment to regenerative outcomes, I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the best people navigating some of the coolest innovation projects in the world.
It doesn’t get much better than that.
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[1] See Spinoza, Charles, et al, 1997, Disclosing New Worlds: Entrepreneurship, Democratic Action, and the Cultivation of Solidarity, MIT Press
[2] We could use this same sort of model of cooperation today! See Rios to Rivers for a modern-day version of this model focused on river conservation.
Photo: Futaleufu River. Courtesy of Bio Bio Expeditions