When the team reached K2 base camp, they found it glum. There had been three avalanches, and all groups had turned back. No had reached the summit of K2 that year. Those who remained in base camp were stressed out and depressed.

But Nims Purja was undeterred. His grand adventure - Project Possible - required that he climb the mountain, and so that’s what he would do. First, though, he needed to break the depressed mood of the camp and convince others that it was indeed possible to reach the summit.

So he threw a party, K2-style. There was booze, music, dancing, good vibes, and letting go of fear.

Tonight we drink, tomorrow we plan! – Nims Purja

These are scenes from 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible, the documentary of Nirmal Purja’s quest to climb all 14 eight-thousander peaks within in under 7 months (as compared to the previous record of over 7 years).

The documentary is great and well worth watching, and the turnaround in the base camp of K2 was one of my favorite parts. What lessons on leadership could we draw from it, I wondered?

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Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life
by Marshall B. Rosenberg
Wikipedia | Goodreads

For a long time I resisted reading Nonviolent Communication (NVC) because I did not like the title - it seemed to implicitly accused my current communication of being violent, though obviously the author knows nothing about me.

I suppose ultimately under Marshall B. Rosenberg’s (MBR’s) definitions much of the verbal communication in which most of us engage regularly is indeed violent - especially that most “violent” of words, “should”.

Nevertheless, let me unequivocally state that I am glad I got over those reservations and read the book, and that I have since bought several more copies of the book and gifted it to others.

It is an ongoing reminder to keep our attention focused on a place where we are more likely to get what we are seeking and help others do the same.

Communication That Blocks Compassion

Before we dive into MBR’s Nonviolent Communication process, let’s look at what the opposite of that looks like - MBR refers to this as “communication that blocks compassion”. Labels and judgements are on great example, even implicit ones. When we use them, we become trapped in a world of who is what that is hard to escape. These are a matter of perspective. For example,

If my colleague is more concerned about details than I am, he is “picky and compulsive.” On the other hand, if I am more concerned about details than he is, he is “sloppy and disorganized.”

MBR believes that

all such analyses of other human beings are tragic expressions of our own values and needs. They are tragic because when we express our values and needs in this form, we increase defensiveness and resistance among the very people whose behaviors are of concern to us.

I think that is spot on.

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Stephanie and I spent our honeymoon in Greece this July. Here are a few photos the trip.

Meteora

Meteora is a striking rock formation, made much more so by the monasteries built precipitously on top of those rocks. Twenty-four monasteries were established between the 13th and 14th century, of which six remain today.

The monasteries were built designed to be inaccessible to outsiders to keep the monks safe from political upheaval and those who might do them harm, including Turkish raiders. The only access to the monasteries was via rope ladders and winches such as this one:

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Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries
by Safi Bahcall
Goodreads

In Loonshots, Safi Bahcall makes a compelling case that:

1. The most important breakthroughs come from loonshots, widely dismissed ideas whose champions are often written off as crazy.

2. Large groups of people are needed to translate those breakthroughs into technologies that win wars, products that save lives, or strategies that change industries.

3. There are practical rules any organization can follow to nurture loonshots faster and better.

The book is entertaining read, charting stories of loonshots and radical change from the scientific revolution, military R&D from World War I through World War II and modern-day DARPA, and companies in biotech (Bahcall’s bread and butter) and other industries.

Out of these stories, Bahcall extracts rules and guidelines that organizations can follow to nurture crazy, world-changing ideas. He calls them the “Bush-Vail rules”, after Vannevar Bush and Theodore Newton Vail. Bush created and led the new US Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), through which almost all US military R&D was channeled during World War II, and also pushed for the creation of the National Science Foundation and for a lot more government funding of R&D in general. Vail lead AT&T labs during 1885-1889 and 1907-1919 and greatly grew the utility of the service through pioneering research and development.

Let’s take a look at those rules.

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“A girl is crossing the street. Is she the younger or the older sister?”

Rather obviously, the question is impossible to answer using judgement. And yet this is precisely the question a student of Zen may be asked as koan - a question to test a student’s understanding of Zen.

In The Way of Zen, Alan Watts writes

“Such koan are rather more obviously “tricky”… and show the student that what are dilemmas for thought present no barriers to action… the student solves the problem of the younger or older sister by mincing across the room like a girl. For in her absolute “suchness” the girl is just that; she is only relatively “sister,” “older,” or “younger.”

One can perhaps understand why a man who had practiced za-zen for eight years told R. H. Blyth that “Zen is just a trick of words,” for… Zen is extricating people from the tangle in which they find themselves from confusing words and ideas with reality.”

Indeed. Let’s do a perhaps silly thing, and use words to define “suchness” as the true, concrete essence of things as they really are, without words or other ideas attached to them.

The “solution” of the koan as described above made me think of sign language - the language used by deaf people to communicate with each using their hands and body language.

“But wait Krystof! In that video you’re just translating words - that’s not suchness!”

‘Tis true, and that’s where classifiers come in.

Classifiers are, put in my imperfect layman’s terms, hand shapes and movements that are not based on signs assigned to specific words, but rather on the shapes and movements of the hands in an iconic fashion - i.e. as icons. For example, a horse jumping over a fence may be represented by having the stationary hand be the fence and the moving hand be the horse. See Wikipedia for some more information.

But videos are worth so much more than words, so here’s a great example from the one and only Troy Kotsur:

There are no subtitles during the classifier, and yet I bet you know exactly what Troy is talking about.

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