Case Analysis: Mount Everest - 1996 Group No.

3
Group Members
Abhinav Boria 18A1HP005 Myank Yadav 18A2HP447
Ekta Singh 18A1HP060 Chitralekh Barve 18A3HP605
Damini Raichandani 18A1HP085 Anurup Chakraborty 18A3HP630
Manish Khiyani 18A2HP405 --- ---

Summary:

This case is about the expedition to Mount Everest and learning the management lessons
from it. There were two groups who went for the expedition on May 1996. The first group
was headed by Rob Hall named Adventure Consultant and the second group was Mountain
Madness led by Scott Fischer. The group was consisting of the members from different
location of the world and had no major prior experience of climbing mountain, the Sherpas,
who lived at the high-altitude region and helped the climbers to carry the necessary items
were also a part of the group. The case rotates around the adventure of the groups beginning
from Kathmandu, Nepal and then the Base Camp, Camp I, Camp II, Camp III, Camp IV and
few other halts followed by the Everest summit which is at 8848m. The case says about the
problems and nemesis which they faced like the inexperienced clients, shortage of ropes,
shortage of oxygen cylinders, lack of planning, the leadership skills of Hall and Fischer and
how they ascended to the summit and there disastrous descend to the Base Camp. The leaders
of both the groups and 13 others had died on that day. Overall 15 members of the group died.
The case tells us how much a leader is required to do a task. How the factors like team
efficacy, climate of trust, integrity and other factors plays a factor in the success of the team.

Q1.) Why did this tragedy occur and what is the root cause of this disaster?

Answer. There were numerous factors that lead to the tragedy of Mount Everest which
include human error, bad weather and other natural forces. One of the survivors Boukreev
also additionally recognizes that it would be exceptionally hard to decide one single reason
for the tragedy. One would also argue that the tragedy occurred because unfit individuals
made the trek, a poor execution of strategic and logistics arrangement, poor interests in
innovation and technology, vague definition and duty to necessary rules and guidelines and
absence of capable administration for the benefit of the two leaders. Nonetheless, a nitty
gritty take a gander at the case recommend that various components beginning from poor
strategic and indecisive authority, pomposity, absence of group cohesiveness were
responsible for this disaster.

 Over-confidence: Overconfidence prompts terrible decision making and can lead the
individuals to settle on awful choices and to pass up circumstances. Analysing both
the leaders Fischer and Hall, it ended up apparent that the two of them were very
over-confident about the campaign and didn't put much worry to the components that
should be analysed each time instead of relying upon the past experiences.
Additionally, the tragedy revealed that the reason of failure is the over-confidence and
arrogance showed by the pioneers. Over Confidence is additionally the reason
towards poor basic leadership and denies pioneers to break down the circumstance
more obviously and abstain from analysing the situation rather than depending on
their aptitudes, capacities, skills and fortunes before taking any step.
 Hostile and unfriendly Group Environment: The group was not by any stretch of
the imagination a group because they lacked trust, understanding and do not rely on
each other. Each group member questioned entire group's capacity to achieve the
summit which was a major reason for this disaster. It was a "group of complete
strangers" and a "team only by name" because of which they did not have the bond
that a group must show. Also, it was more of an autocratic system as the decision of
the leader was binding and official and the say of the others regarding the problems
was discouraged.
 Unwillingness to cut one's losses: Leaders were reluctant to turn around, even with
potential dangers emerging. Also, the leaders did not considered others concern and
problems and continued climbing. Everyone believed in their ability to avert the
problems and challenges, regardless of setbacks. Example" Hansen continued with the
Summit despite of frozen larynx and frostbite, which showed that they were not
willing to lose at any point though risking their lives.
 Lack of Communication: The team members lacked coordination not just because
they were stranger to each other but also because they lacked trust on each other.
Communication was utmost importance to climb this summit as explained by the
people who have already experienced it. Therefore, their motto "Proceed at all risk"
took the prior position than the safety of the members and lead to this disaster.

Q2.) Are tragedies like these inevitable in a place like Mount Everest?

Climbing the Everest has always been a difficult task but it is not impossible to do it. With
the right amount of planning and preparation it is achievable. The year 1996 was a dark age
for every expedition and climbers as out of 96 people who tried climbing the mountain 15 of
them died doing so. It included 5 of the total climbers carried by Rob Hall and Scott Fisher
itself and became the highest number of recorded death on the mountain.
If we look back in the history, we can say that there have been many successful expeditions
and the success ratio still remains high and the number of deaths on the mountains decreases
every year because of the advancement of technology and equipments. Thus, it can be said
that it can be achieved and it’s not impossible to do so.

There can be many reasons why the 1996 tragedy occurred but mainly in can be classified
into two categories i.e. human error and the act of god. Human error is something which can
be managed and reduced to the minimum but nature’s act cannot be controlled in any way
and is unpredictable.

Under human error come poor planning, wrong decision making, communication problem,
and inability of people, equipment failure and other technical difficulties. The human mistake
can be analyzed and be learnt from so that in the future the mistake is not repeated. Whereas
Act of god is represented by bad weather, sudden change in climate, strong breeze, avalanche
and other uncontrolled conditions that may lead to tragedy. Act of god is unavoidable and
people should bear in mind that this is the risk in the summit.

The tragedy could be avoided if more attention was put in on the reduction of human error
when the summit begins. Right leader plays a vital role in climbing the summit and his role
plays a vital role. So tragedies can be controlled to a certain extent by planning and right
execution.

Q3.) What is your evaluation of Scott Fischer and Rob Hall as leaders?
Did they make some poor decisions? If so why?

Answer:

Brief Evaluation of Scott Fischer & Rob Hall:

Rob Hall - (Adventure Consultant) Scott Fischer – (Mountain Madness)

 Emotional attachment to the clients &  Emotional attachment, feelings &

feelings which eventually clouded his attitude lead to his failure
judgment.  Overconfidence.
 Low authoritarian attitude.  Hypocritical as his words didn’t
 Overconfidence. match his actions.
 Hypocritical as his words didn’t match
his actions.

Poor decisions & the reasons behind it:

 Poor planning & logistics: There was an acute situation of shortage, confusion &
miscalculations about oxygen cylinder.
 Everest weather is renowned for being unpredictable. But still, they both ignored the
poor weather indications.
  They don’t have proper schedule planning which resulted in conflicts with other
teams.
 Generally speaking, teaming up with others for combing both team’s resources & skill
sets is a good thing. But because of this teaming up, some major problems came into
light such as:

 Very little team building phase (especially ‘NORMING’)

 Poor coordination between two team members
 Different personality types
 Different cultural background
 The conflict between the two Sherpas
 On Everest, every narrow climbing path is a bottleneck for the entire
process. After combining their teams, leading too many people will slow
the process & might become harmful for both teams. Two Sherpas might
not be enough for these many numbers of climbers. 3 would be a much
more suitable suggestion. As later we get to know one Sherpa fell ill & the
rest of the work fell onto another guide, which held back the entire team.

 Dependency on another team (Montenegrin) for installation of ropes

 Very small windows of opportunity of 2 Hours. No backup time for emergency
situations.
 Expected turnaround time was by 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM.

Fischer’s ‘Two O’Clock Rule’ says if you are not on top of the summit by 02:00
PM, it’s time to turn around.

But, they both failed to follow their own rule of ‘turnaround’. These types of
characteristics exhibit poor integrity, poor leadership skills & Hypocrisy as their words
didn’t match with their actions.
 They should have followed the phrase ‘lose a battle to win a war’ on another different
day. But they didn’t. Rob Hall was still waiting at 03:45 PM for one of his weak
climber (Doug Hansel).
 Scott Fischer was ill, but he ignored this condition.

Q4.) What are the lessons from this case for General Managers in business
enterprise?

Answer: After going through the case, we find that there are few lessons which a manager
can inculcate:
  Resource estimation and allocation: A manager should properly estimate the
availability of the resource and then allocate it in the efficient way i.e. by doing the
estimation the manager will be able to assess the potential of the company and then
can set the target or goal accordingly.
 No communication gap: The manager shall always try to reduce the
communication gap in the organisation. The dearth of good communication system
can increase the time delay which might lead to the delay in decision making i.e.
loss in opportunity.
 Various plans: The manager shall always be ready with at least two plans or
strategies in order to achieve the particular goal. As we know that the business
world always changing and you can never predict it. Hence, the readiness of
manager with various plans will come handy.
 Planning: The beforehand planning is the nerve of any achieving any common
goal and the manager shall always have a planning and jot down all the steps that
is to be taken in order to achieve the goal otherwise it will be very chaotic and
manager have to take decision very haphazardly.
 Role Clarity: The manager shall try to bring the role clarity in the organisation
i.e. the employee should have the idea of the work that is to be performed by him.
Otherwise the ambiguity in the roles will lead to the underperformance of
manpower and underutilisation of resource.
 Being overconfident: The manager shall never be overconfident about anything.
I.e. he should have a little amount scepticism in order to be ready for dealing with
any mishap which might take place.
 Togetherness and cohesiveness in the team: The team member should have a
sense of togetherness and a manager should always try to form the action plan in
such a way that it brings the entire organisation together and increases the feeling
of achieving the goal by working mutually.

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