10
Tenacious Creativity

Without a sea anchor, the boat bobbed and squirmed and shipped plenty of green water. The compass glass was broken, but repaired with sticking plaster from the medicine chest.¹

—Frank A. Worsley

Finding creative solutions to daunting problems is a difficult task under the best of circumstances. It is even more challenging at The Edge. Fear, physical exhaustion, and psychological weariness are integral parts of the journey faced by those at the limits of survival—or by organizations striving to achieve the highest possible levels of performance. Yet it is precisely in these stressful situations that the ability to solve problems becomes most critical and that the need for innovation is the greatest. This chapter explores tactics for approaching this formidable challenge.

Encourage Relentless Creativity at The Edge

The survival accounts in this book have emphasized teamwork under adversity. Self-leadership, however, is an important element in leading others, and there are numerous accounts of individuals who have demonstrated exceptional resourcefulness. One of the most colorful stories I have encountered involved a Texan who was bitten by a poisonous coral snake. He saved himself by biting off the snake’s head, slitting its body lengthwise, and using the skin for a tourniquet until help arrived.

Less bizarre than the coral snake story, the adventure of Steven Callahan is an individual journey that exemplifies tenacious creativity in the face of enormous challenge. Callahan was sailing his small sloop, the Napoleon Solo, from the Canary Islands bound for the Caribbean when the boat sank during a heavy gale. Apparently rammed by a whale, the Solo went under in a matter of minutes. Callahan escaped in a small inflatable raft, the Rubber Ducky III, and embarked on a remarkable 1,800-mile journey that lasted seventy-six days.²

Each day of the ordeal that followed was a continuing fight for survival. The solar stills intended to produce freshwater malfunctioned. Sharks attacked the small, five-and-a-half-foot raft, rubbing their backs against the floor and biting at the ballast pockets underneath. Ship after ship—nine in all—passed by without seeing the sailor in distress.

Short of water and slowly starving to death, Callahan finally managed to spear a triggerfish, and its nourishment brought him back to life. His equipment continued to deteriorate, however, and waves crashed into the small craft. Every day was a delicate balancing act:

I must work harder and longer each day to weave a world in which I can live. Survival is the play and I want the leading role. The script sounds simple enough: hang on, ration food and water, fish, and tend the still. But each little nuance of my role takes on profound significance. If I keep watch too closely, I will tire and be no good for fishing, tending the still, or other essential tasks. Yet at every moment that I don’t have my eyes on the horizon is a moment when a ship may pass me. If I use both stills now, I may be able to quench my thirst and be in better shape for keeping watch and doing jobs, but if they both wear out I will die of thirst. … It is a constant struggle to keep control, self-discipline, to maintain a course of action that will best ensure survival, because I can’t be sure what the course is … all I can tell myself is, “You’re doing the best you can.”³

On day twenty-three, Callahan lost the power strap to his speargun while attempting to capture a dorado, a powerful fish that reaches sixty pounds. This one, skewered in the tail, thrashed through the water dragging the raft until it finally broke free.

The speargun was Callahan’s only means of gathering food and was thus essential to his survival. Lashing the arrow to the shaft with cod line, he created a jerry-rigged weapon now powered only by his arms. This new limitation demanded what seemed like endless, motionless waiting—like “an ancient bronze statue of a bowless archer”—until his prey reappeared.

Lacking sugars, starches, and vitamins, Callahan’s body withered. Saltwater sores began as small boils and soon burst, leaving dozens of open sores. Remarkably, he forced himself to perform yoga exercises in the early morning, at dusk, and at night. The routine was slow and painful: It took an hour and a half to do what could normally be accomplished in a half hour. Through sheer force of will, however, he did what he could to maintain his strength.

After forty days at sea, Callahan noted ironically that he had reached the maximum amount of time that his raft was guaranteed by the manufacturer. Nevertheless, he had cause for celebration. Callahan estimated that he had, by that time, drifted more than halfway toward the Caribbean. He had also managed to seal the leaking distillation stills and—by acting as a “human bellows”—to keep them inflated. He had also improved his rainwater collection system. Callahan used the awl of his knife—a Cub Scout model he had found when he was twelve—to bore holes in a Tupperware box he mounted on top of the raft.

His situation was momentarily stabilized, but disaster struck again on day forty-three. A speared dorado ran the sharp tip of the spear into the lower tube of the raft, creating a gaping hole four inches long. Huge air bubbles rushed through the hole until the tube was completely deflated. The Rubber Ducky, now kept afloat only by her top tube, floated a mere three inches above the water.

Callahan’s life now depended on repairing the lower tube. If he failed, he would not be able to spear fish, and even if he caught them, he could not dry them for food. Sleep would be impossible, and his legs would hang down as the lowest point on the craft. Harassing sharks would now attack his legs rather than the ballast tubes.

The plugs from the raft repair kit were useless—they were much too small. Thinking quickly, Callahan looked at the gaping hole in the raft as if it were an open mouth. Into the mouth he stuffed a “tongue” made of part of a foam cushion salvaged from the Solo. Holding the torn edges of the raft, he wrapped light line around the foam until he had created a seal.

This first effort was only a momentary success. Fifteen minutes after it was inflated, the tube was flat again. Callahan tried for five hours to fill the gaps in the seal, but it was still leaking badly. He calculated that 3,000 pumps a day would be required to keep the raft afloat. That amounted to about two hours of strenuous exercise—far more than he could manage.

For eight days, Callahan tried to patch the leak. It had to be repaired if he were to survive. As calmly as possible, he thought the problem through:

You’ve got to come up with something. … Go back. Identify the problem … lashings working off. I have to keep them on. What equipment have I got? Space blanket, flare gun, useless lighter, plastic bag. … What else have I got? First aid kit, bandages, scissors, twine, and line. And the stuff I’ve already used—spoon, fork, radar refl … The fork! Of course, why you stupid bloody idiot! “It’s the fork!”⁴

Energized by the hope that the fork would provide the answer, Callahan lay awake all night planning the repair. When morning came, he carefully broke the tines off the fork and inserted the fork handle through the foam tongue. Then he rewrapped the plug with lines of various sizes to create a makeshift tourniquet that sealed the leak.

In his weakened condition, Callahan was forced to rest between each stage of the operation. It was midafternoon before the repair was completed and he could begin pumping. What would normally have been a five-minute job took a half hour. After the exhausting work of pumping, the tube finally inflated, but not for long: In an hour and a half, the air was gone.

Depressed but determined, Callahan tried once more. Tightening the tourniquet and adding a second, he again painfully inflated the bottom tube. This time it worked:

Ducky gorges on air, picks herself up out of the water, and drifts forward again like a lily pad cut free from its roots. … Twelve glorious hours pass before Ducky needs another feeding. … My body hungers, thirsts, and is in constant pain. But I feel great! I have finally succeeded!⁵

The raft continued to drift—slowly, but inexorably—westward toward the Caribbean. Each day presented new problems and renewed demands for improvisation. Callahan devised a water-collection cape from part of his space blanket. He scraped the sticky gum from the back of repair tape to create a goop that would plug a hole in the solar still. He lashed three pencils together to make a “low-budget” sextant that allowed him to determine his latitude.

Sharks continued to harass the boat, and replenishing his food supply was a daily challenge. His spear, damaged by the thrashing of the dorados, needed constant repair. During one ferocious battle, a fish unscrewed the point and swam away.

Callahan repaired the tip with a thin knife from a Boy Scout utensil kit made of flat stainless steel. But the tip bent too easily, so he contrived a new spear tip by lashing the butter knife together with another small knife he had salvaged from the Solo. Both were weak, but together they provided enough strength to spear a fish when thrust at just the right angle.

The restricted diet and exposure continued to take their toll on him, but Callahan’s creativity enabled him to adjust to his surroundings:

By now the habitat in which I live, Duckyville, has become a neighborly suburb. The fish and I are so familiar I can chat with them individually … I recognize a dorado’s nudge, a trigger’s peck, or a shark’s scrape the way you recognize different neighbors’ knocks on the back door. Often I know which individual fish is whacking the raft with its tail or butting it with its head….⁶

On day seventy-five of the journey, Callahan sighted a soft glow of light, first to the south, then to the north. Then a beam of light swept the horizon—a lighthouse! Dancing up and down in the small confines of the raft, he hugged an invisible companion, shouting, “Land! Land ho!”

On the following day, a small white boat carrying three astounded fishermen sighted the Rubber Ducky III. After being hauled on board the rescue craft, Callahan calmly opened his water tins and drank five pints of hoarded water. He was soon safe ashore on the island of Marie Galante, near Guadeloupe. Through determination, creativity, and force of will, he became the only person in history to have survived more than a month at sea in an inflatable raft.

Draw on the Creativity of the Team

Although Shackleton’s journey was of longer duration than Callahan’s, the crew of Endurance had an advantage: Its members were able to draw from each other. This support and creativity enabled them to persist when, individually, each might have given up. The story of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition is replete with examples of tenacity, and it is impossible to look back over the journey and not be impressed by the remarkable resilience and dogged perseverance of the crew.

At each critical point in the journey, the crew could have given up—when Endurance was crushed; when the two sledge marches failed; when they found themselves marooned on Elephant Island; when they faced the glaciers of South Georgia; and when repeated attempts to rescue the castaways had failed. Each time, however, the party persisted and its members eventually found their way to safety.

The expedition’s ability to reach safety was due to more than simple persistence. The success of Shackleton’s crew also depended on the ability to stand in the face of death and think creatively about potential solutions. Interestingly, many of these out-of-the-box ideas came from the photographer, Frank Hurley, and the carpenter, McNeish, both of whom Shackleton had labeled as potential troublemakers.

As Shackleton contemplated taking the fragile James Caird through the roaring waves and gale-force winds of the Drake Passage, he called on McNeish to make the boat more seaworthy. McNeish fashioned a makeshift decking of canvas, lids of cases for equipment and supplies, and four sled runners that had been saved for overland travel.

The canvas was frozen stiff and had to be thawed out over the blubber stove before it could be sewn, nailed, and screwed into position. The nails were salvaged from packing cases, another improvisation. They were a bit short, but they did the job. Although the result was not pretty, the James Caird could never have survived the voyage without it.

Another invaluable tool was the bilge pump that Hurley had made from the Flinders bar used to adjust the ship’s compass. This iron cylinder, moving in a brass tube, was exactly what was needed to create a pumping action, but no one—other than Hurley—saw the connection.⁷

It was not surprising that Hurley was the one to come up with the idea. He was an experienced metalworker, but he also had a record of ingenuity. He had earlier, for example, constructed a superb camp stove out of the ash chute from the wreckage of Endurance. Since most of his tools had been lost, he had chipped the quarter-inch steel with a blunt chisel.⁸

As the James Caird made its way through heavy seas, the compass glass was broken. Because the instrument was critical for navigation, the loss of this essential navigational tool was potentially devastating. The problem was solved, however, with sticking plaster from the medicine chest.

The crew responded with creativity in the face of adversity throughout the remainder of the journey. After the Caird had arrived safely at South Georgia, Shackleton and his crew were still some 150 miles by sea from the safety of the whaling station at Stromness. Because of the condition of the boat, and the weakened state of several of the men, there was little alternative but to attempt an overland crossing of the island.

Shackleton believed that they could shorten the journey by sailing farther up bay, but the Caird had lost its rudder in the surf. So they contrived another rudder with an oar that had survived the passage. As they launched the James Caird once more, the lost rudder miraculously appeared floating in the water—a sign they all took as a good omen.

When the men reached their point of departure for the overland journey, they had to contend with the fact that they were wholly unprepared for a climbing expedition. Once again, McNeish’s inventiveness came in handy. The carpenter removed screws from the Caird and put eight in each boot, point down. The makeshift crampons were especially important for Shackleton. With characteristic generosity, he had given away his heavy Burberry boots and was now wearing a light leather pair in poor condition. Shackleton’s rule, as cited by Worsley, was “that deprivation should be felt by himself before anyone else.”⁹

Shackleton, Worsley, and Crean began the assault of South Georgia on Friday, May 19, 1916, at 3:00 A.M. To minimize the pain of separation from the others, the crossing party left quickly and moved out with a minimum of equipment: two compasses, fifty feet of rope, and a carpenter’s adze that would have to substitute for an ice axe. The only map they had was incomplete and showed no details of the mountains.

Traveling by moonlight, they sloshed through knee-deep snow, skirting precipices that fell hundreds of feet into blackness. The terrain was confusing in the darkness, and they often had to backtrack. Retracing their steps was exhausting and demoralizing.

At one point, they encountered a deep pit in the ice, as though made by a huge meteorite. In the fog, each feared the other had fallen into the gaping hole. Thereafter, they roped themselves together to ward off such a tragedy.

Meals were eaten while perched precariously in the snow, each man taking turns using his body to shield the Primus stove and prevent it from blowing out. When the rations were warm, they took turns scooping out a spoonful of the life-giving food. The good-natured banter that had become so much a part of the life of the expedition continued: Shackleton accused Crean of having a bigger spoon, and Crean accused Worsley of having a bigger mouth.

As the journey continued, the weary team explored one pass after another, never knowing quite what was on the other side until they reached the summit. Each time, they found themselves blocked by impassable chasms and were forced to retreat over hard-won terrain. These return trips, made in bitter cold, were horribly discouraging. After they unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate three passes, only one more remained. As they struggled to this fourth and last pass, heavy fog rolled in from the sea. It obscured everything around them and was so heavy that the climbers had difficulty seeing each other.

Their position was truly desperate. As they sat perched at the top of the fourth pass, some 4,500 feet high on the glacier, fog had cut off their retreat, and darkness cloaked the way forward. It was a steep descent, but how steep? If they waited for moonlight, they would freeze to death. Even with light, the tedious process of cutting steps with the adze would still take too long. It had taken them a half hour to descend a hundred yards, and they had thousands of feet to go.

They needed a creative solution, a way out. Sitting on a large step he had cut out on the mountain, Shackleton thought for a moment and then said:

I’ve got an idea. We must go on, no matter what is below. To try to do it this way is hopeless. We can’t cut steps down thousands of feet. … It’s a devil of a risk, but we’ve got to take it. We’ll slide.¹⁰

The prospect of sliding down the steep slope into uncertainty was indeed daunting. Anything that lay in their path—a rock, a crevasse, anything at all—would have meant the end. Yet this was the only hope for them, and for their shipmates waiting on Elephant Island. Worsley recalled thinking that “if we were killed, at least we had done everything in our power to bring help to our shipmates.” Then he recounted what happened next:

We each coiled our share of the rope until it made a pad on which we could sit to make our glissade from the mountaintop. We hurried as much as possible, being anxious to get through the ordeal. Shackleton sat on the large step he had carved, and I sat behind him, straddled my legs round him and clasped him round the neck. Crean did the same with me, so that we were locked together as one man. Then Shackleton kicked off.

We seemed to shoot into space. For a moment my hair fairly stood on end. Then quite suddenly I felt a glow, and knew that I was grinning! I was actually enjoying it. It was most exhilarating. We were shooting down the side of an almost precipitous mountain at nearly a mile a minute. I yelled with excitement, and found that Shackleton and Crean were yelling too. … To hell with the rocks!¹¹

Whether Shackleton and Crean shared Worsley’s excitement, or whether they were yelling out of sheer terror, is not entirely clear. When they reached the bottom of the steep slope, they all shook hands and the Boss remarked, “It’s not good to do that kind of thing too often.”

Nevertheless, they had successfully tobogganed some 1,500 feet down the mountain without crashing into a rock or creating an avalanche. The slide, which had taken about three minutes, provided a creative alternative to freezing to death on the mountain. And it embodied the spirit of Strategy 9 (Be willing to take the Big Risk) and Strategy 10 (Never give up—there’s always another move).

This was not, however, the last time they would need to be creative on the journey across South Georgia. As they neared the whaling station, the trio once more found itself in a precarious position on a nearly vertical ice precipice. Again, they attempted to cut steps with the adze, and again the process was too slow. The threat of a blizzard loomed large, and had they been exposed to gale-force winds on the open mountain, they would have been carried into the void.

In this untenable position, able neither to walk nor crawl, Shackleton made a discovery: The slippery ice was, in fact, covering a layer of snow that had been deposited by the winds. As Shackleton negotiated the descent, the possibility occurred to him that the heel of his boot could be used to smash through the ice crust, thereby forming a small step. He tried it, and it worked! The others followed suit, and the three weary climbers descended the mountain, literally walking on their backs!

With the factories and ships of the whaling station in sight, the exhausted travelers shouted and waved, but they were much too far away to be heard. As they stumbled onward, one last obstacle emerged: A glacial waterfall blocked their path. With nothing to secure the rope, Worsley held the line fast while Shackleton and Crean slid down the waterfall. Wedging the frayed rope into the rocks and holding his breath, Worsley followed. The rope was left dangling in the waterfall.

At 3:00 P.M. on May 20, 1916, the three exhausted explorers reached the whaling station at Stromness. Halting only to eat, and with no map to guide them, they had crossed the uncharted glaciers of South Georgia in thirty-six hours.

The men walked up to the station manager, Thoralf Srlle, who stared at the disheveled trio with disbelief. Srlle, who knew Shackleton as a friend, found him unrecognizable. “Don’t you know me?” Shackleton asked. “I know your voice,” the station manager replied. “My name is Shackleton,” the Boss responded.¹²

It is said that Srlle turned away with tears in his eyes. And at that, the three grimy, bearded “ruffians” were welcomed inside to food, hot baths, and clean clothes. Their heroic journey across South Georgia had saved their shipmates. It remains a tribute to unremitting effort—and to tenacious creativity at The Edge.

Lessons for Leaders

Chapter 3 stressed the importance of maintaining an optimistic attitude when leading organizations in challenging situations. But having an optimistic outlook does not mean creating rosy, unrealistic expectations of smooth sailing. Optimism at The Edge means believing that somehow, someway, the team will succeed—in the long run. In the short run, however, problems are inevitable.

It is somewhat paradoxical that, in everyday life, we are seldom surprised when things go wrong. Keys are lost, cars do not start, people forget appointments, and computers crash. But when organizations are at The Edge, these expectations can change. I have seen leaders become furious at the small problems and “normal accidents” that inevitably occur when people and machines are stretched to the limits.

Rather than expecting things to go right, successful leaders under these conditions should be prepared for things to go wrong. In fact, when at The Edge, a realistic expectation is that things will go wrong with greater frequency and magnitude than ever before. Once this reality is accepted, daunting problems become a normal part of the journey. Then the leadership challenge becomes one of mobilizing the collective creativity of the team to find a solution.

Steven Callahan’s journey in Rubber Ducky III took him 1,800 miles in the course of seventy-six days. Shackleton’s open boat journey in the James Caird lasted sixteen days, and he sailed over 800 miles. Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger’s journey was different. It lasted a total of six minutes, and he landed in the same city from which he departed. But all three stories share the same fundamental theme.

When Sullenberger, Captain of US Airways Flight 1549, took off from LaGuardia, he had no thought of becoming a national hero. Two minutes later, he had embarked on a journey to save the lives of his crew and 150 passengers when a “double bird strike” disabled both engines. It was, as Sully recalled, like the worst thunderstorm he’d ever heard growing up in Texas.¹³

A flock of Canada geese engulfed the plane. Some crashed into the windscreen; others were sucked into the impeller blades of the jet engines. Sully felt the impact, heard the thump, and finally smelled the odor of the birds crippling the engines.

The Airbus 320 lost all thrust at low altitude, low speed, and over one of the most densely populated cities in the world. The aircraft stopped climbing and began to stall. It was a shocking, horrifying situation. Everyone aboard could die in a matter of seconds.

Sully recovered from the shock of the strike and began the protocol for transferring control of the aircraft. He spoke to First Officer Jeff Skiles sitting beside him and said, simply, “My aircraft.” “Your aircraft,” came the response. Sully was now flying the airplane.

Sully’s career had spanned forty-two years. He had flown Air Force fighters and gliders. He was an experienced pilot. But Sullenberger knew that this flight, and the landing, was going to be like nothing he had ever seen before. He was now flying a seventy-ton jet engine glider.

Thirty seconds after the engine failure, the aircraft—call sign “Cactus 1549”—was at 3,000 feet and Sully was furiously running through the options as he alerted air traffic control of their situation: “This is Cactus 1539, hit birds, we lost thrust in both engines. We’re turning back towards LaGuardia.”¹⁴

On the ground at LaGuardia, Air Traffic Controller Patrick Harten was hyperfocused. He had dealt with a dozen or so emergencies over his ten-year career but this was his first aircraft with zero thrust.¹⁵ He knew the odds, but he spoke calmly: “OK, yeah, you need to return to La-Guardia. Turn left, heading of two-two-zero.”

Sully responded with equal composure, “Two-two-zero.” But his mind was racing. Making it back to LaGuardia would mean banking the aircraft to turn, then more banking to line up with the runway. Each maneuver would increase the risk of a stall or spin. It might be theoretically possible, but there is a reason that pilots call an attempt to turn back after engine failure “the impossible turn.” In trying to reach the LaGuardia runway, he could kill everyone on the airplane. People on the ground could die as well.

Harten thought quickly. Maybe LaGuardia runway 1-3 would work. “Cactus 1529, if we can get it to you, do you want to try to land runway 1-3?” Sully responded, “We’re unable. We may end up in the Hudson.”

Thirty-five seconds had elapsed since the report of the bird strike. Sully was now both flying the plane and working the radio, while Skiles tried to restart the engine. The aircraft was losing altitude rapidly. Sully needed another option, and Harten continued the search for an answer: “Alright, Cactus 1549, it’s going to be left traffic to runway 3-1.”

“Unable.”

“OK, what do you need to land?” Harten got no response. “Cactus 1549, runway 4 is available if you want to make left traffic to runway 4?” The tone of his question was relaxed and conversational, almost as if he were asking Sully which table he wanted at a restaurant. But Harten was anything but relaxed.

Sully discarded the option of LaGuardia but saw another possibility: “I’m not sure we can make any runway. What’s over to our right? Anything in New Jersey? Maybe Teterboro?”

“OK, yeah off to your right side is Teterboro Airport. Do you want to try to go to Teterboro?”

“Yes.”

Harten had worked with Teterboro before. He quickly coordinated with their controllers, clearing runway 1 for an emergency landing. Runway 1 was the best option: It meant that Cactus 1549 would be landing into the wind, adding lift to the crippled aircraft. Harten radioed Sully: “Turn right two-eight-zero. You can land runway 1 at Teterboro.”

“We can’t do it.”

“OK, which runway would you like at Teterboro?”

“We’re going to be in the Hudson.”

It had been one minute and fifty-two seconds since the report of the bird strike. Sully had now concluded that the only viable option was a smooth, level place large enough to land an airliner. And that place was going to be the Hudson River.

“I’m sorry, say again Cactus?” Silence. “Cactus, uh, Cactus 1549, radar contact is lost. You also got Newark Airport off your 2 o’clock and about seven miles.” No response. Another pilot answered for Sully: “I don’t know, I think he said he was going in the Hudson.”

Harten tried one more time: “Cactus 1529, you still on?” Sully’s radio was on, but he was no longer trying to land on a runway. He was focused on avoiding the fate of an Ethiopian airliner that landed in the Indian Ocean in 1996. The aircraft had broken into pieces, killing most of the passengers on board.

Avoiding a similar tragedy would not be easy. Sully needed to touch down with the wings exactly level, and with the nose slightly up. The descent rate had to be survivable—just above the minimum flying speed but not below it. And all of these things needed to happen simultaneously.

Sully scanned the water, glimpsing boats at the south end of the river. He had been trained to ditch in the water near boats, facilitating rescue, and that’s where the airplane was headed. Training and luck were converging, but Sully had to force himself to be calm. He had to concentrate.

Ninety seconds before they hit the water, Sully spoke three words over the intercom: “Brace for impact.” Ninety seconds. Long enough to let the flight attendants prepare, but short enough to minimize the agony of terrified passengers.

Seconds after Sully’s announcement, the flight attendants began their commands in unison. Over and over again, he could hear them shouting: “Heads down. Stay down. Heads down. Stay down. Heads down….” Almost a prayer chant, their words comforted Sully. He knew that if he could land the aircraft, the flight attendants could get the passengers out.

They hit the water. It was a hard but smooth landing, and Cactus 1549 slid along the surface of the river. The nose came down, and they started to slow. The aircraft turned slightly to the left and then it stopped. Sully and Skiles looked at each other: “Well, that wasn’t as bad as I thought.”

It was a heroic, almost comedic moment reminiscent of Shackleton’s remark after his slide down the glacier. Had Shackleton been on the airplane, his comment would have been appropriate: “It’s not good to do that kind of thing too often.”

It had been six minutes from takeoff to landing, and the plane had ditched without breaking up. But there was no time to savor the moment: The pilots and crew now shifted their focus to the challenge of getting everyone out of the aircraft alive.

The evacuation was—in view of the circumstances—relatively orderly at the front, where two flight attendants opened the cabin doors and deployed the slides. At the rear, things were different. The impact had been far more violent and the exits were below the river. As icy water filled the cabin, a terrified passenger opened the rear door and more water rushed into the aircraft.

Flight Attendant Doreen Welsh, who had gone from accepting death to seeing life, focused on getting people out, shouting at passengers to climb over the seats. At the end, Sully walked the aisle twice looking for passengers to make sure everyone was safely out before abandoning the aircraft.

Rescue boats were on the scene almost immediately. It took Fire-fighter Tom Sullivan, Captain Richard Johnson, and Helmsman John Rizzo five minutes to cover forty blocks in their fast response boat, Marine 1 Alpha. Sullivan threw life preservers to passengers huddled on the partly submerged wing of the aircraft. He helped women and children first, then others without life jackets. Beverly Waters, the first person Sullivan rescued, recalled being pulled up “like it was nothing for him.”¹⁶

The crew of Marine 1 Alpha rescued twenty passengers, leaving them at a triage center at the Circle Line terminal. In keeping with the spirit of New York and its firefighters, Sullivan looked at the survivors and wise-cracked, “Welcome to New York.”¹⁷

All 150 passengers and five crew members were rescued in what has come to be known as the “Miracle on the Hudson.” It was, in many ways, a miracle. And people did pray. Asked later if he had prayed, Captain Sullenberger said that he had not. He had concentrated on flying the aircraft, confident that people in the back were taking care of that job.

The Miracle on the Hudson may have been guided by divine intervention, but ultimate success demanded exceptional leadership and team-work. The pilots, flight attendants, air traffic controllers, and rescue workers embodied the spirit of Strategy 10: Never give up—there’s always another move. In Sully’s words:

During every minute of the flight, I was confident I could solve the next problem. My first officer, Jeff Skiles, and I did what airline pilots do: we followed our training, and our philosophy of life. We valued every life on that airplane and knew it was our responsibility to try to save each one, in spite of the sudden and complete failure of our aircraft. We never gave up.

Having a plan enabled us to keep our hope alive. Perhaps in a similar fashion, people who are in their own personal crises—a pink slip, a foreclosure—can be reminded that no matter how dire the circumstance, or how little time you have to deal with it, further action is always possible. There’s always a way out of even the tightest spot. You can survive.¹⁸

The tenacious creativity exemplified by Shackleton and Sully requires recognizing what works and what doesn’t. When a strategy fails, acknowledge it and find another one. When the obvious moves are exhausted, keep looking for new ones. Do not dismiss any idea, no matter how far-fetched, without thoroughly considering it. Think the unthinkable, and encourage others to do so as well. The unshakable belief that there is always another move will give you the energy to search for solutions, and creativity will give you the ability to find them.

Expedition Log

1. How would you characterize your core beliefs about problems and obstacles? Do they always come as unpleasant surprises, or do you expect them to occur?

2. What are your typical reactions when things go wrong? What is your tolerance level for potentially frustrating events?

3. Do you have a systematic process for identifying problems and finding solutions? Do you involve all members of the team—including your “troublemakers”—in a search for creative solutions?

4. What are the breakthroughs that would need to occur for you and your organization to reach The Edge? Have you demonstrated tenacious creativity in making them happen? What other moves would enable your expedition to reach its full potential?