"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."
From Leading at the Edge : Leadership Lessons from the Extraordinary Saga of Shackleton Antarctic Expedition by Perkins, Dennis N. T.(Author) Saranac Lake, NY, USA: AMACOM, 2000. Page 2.
"Who in the world would volunteer for this journey?" asks Dennis Perkins. "Amazingly", he says, "thousands of would-be explorers came forward, each wanting to join Shackleton’s expedition."
But, what was exactly this expedition all about. Well, as a matter of fact a rather scary one. As shown in the map, Shackleton’s mission was the first overland crossing of the Antarctic Continent. According to his own computations, Shackleton believed that he and his team could complete the transcontinental journey in 120 days. Ice everywhere, huge crevasses, darkness, extremely low temperature, in a nutshell a trip not for 
the timids! Shackleton was already a famous explorer who had come within ninety-seven nautical miles of the South Pole before he was forced to turn back because of physical exhaustion and a shortage of food. To complete his journey Shackelton selected a ship which he named The Endurance.
To make a long story short, things did not go the way Shackleton expected them to go. The Endurance was swallowed by the ice and it took Shackelton and his team 634 days to go back to civilization. Everybody, of course, thought the whole crew had perished. I urge you to read this story. This is a truly moving story. You'll learn how Shackleton coped with this terrifying situation and how he kept to his promise to bring the whole crew back to civilization alive.
Dennis Perkins quotes Sir Edmund Hillary, the first person to climb Everest and to cross Antarctica successfully, who later wrote, ‘‘When disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.’’
This book is a must have and a must read. In particular, it should be part of the required reading list of any entrepreneur.
There is no way you are going to look at things of life the same way after reading this leadership account of Shackleton's odyssey. This is a true lesson on entrepreneuring at the edge, on making decisions in an hostile environment, on having to cope with mutiny, on managing expectations, on defeating despair, on regaining hope despite having all the odds against you.
At Cyberlibris, we also face a lot of challenges: We perspire a lot! This is precisely when Ernest Shackleton is a source of inspiration to us. We ask ourselves: What would have he done (other things being equal of course!)?
On the same topic within Cyberlibris:
The Leadership Challenge, James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, John Wiley & Sons, 2002
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