Conquering the North Face

by Hap Klopp

  WHAT READERS SAY

  “I feel so strongly about the message that I went out and bought a copy each for my daughter and son. Your book will have a positive influence on many people…NICE JOB. Your book was magnificent.”

  Mike Shields.

  “The book is inspirational and very exciting reading. You legitimized my lifelong quest for ‘quality’ in a very profound way.”

  Pelle Sederholm

  “The book was the very best book I have ever read.”

  Jan Perkins.

  “Thank you for showing me that business doesn’t have to be routine and stagnant.”

  Lee Kaufman

  “The Adventure of Leadership will stay on my office desk right next to Creativity in Business as two of the best reference manuals a creativity seeker could ever hope to acquire.

  Dave McMinn

  “Thanks for sharing your experiences, your passion, and your infectious optimism, all of which I am in the process of incorporating into our corporate philosophy.”

  Albert Magid

  “Reading your book helped solidify my fanatical commitment to building the best fresh juice company in the world.”

  Brad Barnhorn

  “Make the world a better place…Above all else, that basic premise is what I believe defines a leader of people and what I found throughout your book. Thank you.”

  Ben Meeuwsen

  Conquering the North Face

  An Adventure in Leadership

  HAP KLOPP

  with Brian Tarcy

  HAP KLOPP

  Conquering the North Face: An Adventure in Leadership

  © 1991, 2003, 2012 by Hap Klopp

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or

  utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

  photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval

  system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  Published as an e-book January 2012 by Hap Klopp

  For more information, please visit www.hapklopp.com

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-6175097-5-9

  Cover Photography by Brian Biega

  To businesses that are fun,

  To adventures not yet begun.

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  WHAT READERS SAY

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  CONTENTS

  PREFACE

  1: SWIMMING IN EMBALMING FLUID: The Living Death of Bad Business

  2: DIGGING BELOW THE BOTTOM LINE: The Numbers Don’t Tell the Story

  3: FINDING THE SPARK: Where Logic Meets Religion

  4: TESTING THE SPARK: Eye to Eye With Those You Love

  5: JUMPING OFF THE FENCE: Any Decision is Better Than No Decision

  6: STARTING IN THE WAREHOUSE: Every Decision is a Statement

  7: TAPPING THE INFINITE UPSIDE: Good Employees Know Their Jobs

  8: WRESTLING WITH GORILLAS: Obstacles to Fulfilling Your Passion

  9: IMPROVING PERFECTION: Only the Best Will Do

  10: SHARING VISIONS: When Leaders Lead

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PRAISE FOR THE ADVENTURE OF LEADERSHIP

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PREFACE

  I am in love with the extraordinary. The company I founded, The North Face of Berkeley, California, epitomized this passion. I started the company in 1968, two years after receiving my MBA from Stanford. From the beginning The North Face—a maker of quality outdoor equipment for mountaineers, backpackers, skiers, and professional adventurers—came to represent my vision. For 20 years I disobeyed business conventions of passionless management by immersing myself in my work and, more important, in the lives and dreams of my coworkers. I told them of my dream, of my vision to be the best. And then I asked for their help.

  Together we grew. We brought more people in, and we shared the vision further.

  The North Face was named after the north side of any mountain, such as Eiger Mountain or the Matterhorn in Switzerland—the side exposed to the harshest elements of nature. It is considered the greatest challenge for any climber. The name was appropriate—since we knew what we wanted wouldn’t be easy.

  But we knew one other thing—if we pulled together, we could climb the north face of business, and it would be a hell of a lot of fun to do it.

  Mine was a fascinating business. Because we made the best equipment in the world, I was constantly approached by professional adventurers who needed to be outfitted. These began as business relationships. But, as all successful relationships do, they evolved into much more. Through friendships with these people as well as my business relationships, I watched as vision became reality and risk became reward. I was moved by their energy. Always they helped sharpen my focus.

  I brought these lessons into my business, and I shared them with my employees. For years my evangelical crusade was focused on my own company and periodically speaking from podiums. Recently I sold my company and tried to observe the world of business from a different perspective, that of a consultant. The perspective has changed, but my view hasn’t.

  I see an ever-growing crisis—a critical lack of passionate leadership. It seems everyone knows how to manage. Few know how to lead. There is such a fear of risk and a lack of joy in the working lives of most Americans that it seems impossible to expect anything but more of the same—interminable mediocrity.

  That’s why I felt compelled to write this book. The Adventures of Leadership begins at the peak of your spiritual backbone, where a single, raw nerve ending glows with the essence of life. I have written this book with precisely that part of you in mind. I want to touch the part of you that dreams of extraordinary things.

  By sharing my experiences and some of the insights I’ve been able to glean from personal adventures both in and out of business, I hope to offer not merely ways of helping your bottom line but also ways to improve your total outlook. Certainly the intellectual cross training I have had from the variety of activities I have done and the weird and wonderful assortment of adventuring and business friends I have collected have given me some insights into what it takes to succeed against the odds in any pioneering adventure: business, sport, education, or personal.

  My hope is that this book will be a real catalyst for dynamic change. It is a call to action for the disenchanted who are being stifled by corporate America and to those who are mistakenly intimidated from speaking out by an illogical reverence for managers and corporate shibboleths. I offer you my experience, my knowledge, and my instincts. I offer you my heart.

  1

  SWIMMING IN EMBALMING FLUID:

  The Living Death of Bad Business

  In 1966, I walked irreverent and happy into the middle of corporate America. I didn’t stay long.

  I had just received my MBA from Stanford University. This was back when an MBA was actually something useful. I thought the culture of a major corporation might be beneficial, but as I began to interview around, I quickly learned that irreverence and happiness were not exactly typical or approved corporate qualities.

  I didn’t really know what I wanted, but I sure knew what I didn’t want, and unfortunately that was all I could find. Blandness. Fear of risk. Fear of change. Everywhere I looked—and I interviewed at about six or seven major corporations—I found a status quo that wanted me to file away my brain for a good dozen years before they’d ask my opinion.

  I still laugh when I think about my interview with Proctor & Gamble. It was a laborious process of interviewing—one hour each with eight different people. Finally I sat down with the director of personnel. The first thing he asked was whet
her I wanted to be known as Kenneth, my real name, or Hap, a name I’d had since childhood. “Hap,” I said. “That’s what all my friends call me.”

  He looked at me for a moment, kind of tugged at his tie. Rubbed his chin. And with a deep authority in his voice that made me know he was making a serious, corporate-type decision, he said, “I think you’d be better off as Kenneth.”

  I bit my tongue and waited.

  Then came his second question. “So, Kenneth, what’s your vision of the future? If we were to hire you, what role would you play in the company in, say, five years?”

  I looked at him. He was this sad little humanoid with a Mommy’s-boy face and just enough authority to give him a bully’s demeanor. I could imagine him in grade school getting thrown against his locker, pleading for his life and offering his lunch money for ransom. This moment, I assumed, was his revenge. “In five years,” I said, “if I were to be here, and I underscore the word if, I would expect to be president. I guess that means passing you in five minutes, and that doesn’t seem like any big deal to me.”

  Reverence to titled authority, as you can see, has never been one of my strong points. I believe respect must be earned, and I also believe the primary person you should respect is yourself. After my meeting with the personnel director at Proctor & Gamble, I felt good about myself. It was fun to tweak this functionary and his bullying ways. He hadn’t earned my respect. He wouldn’t even call me by the name I chose. I knew my own abilities, and I knew my life wouldn’t end if the humanoid didn’t like me.

  The truth is, though, he did like me. Maybe not as a friend, but he saw deep enough to know I could help the company. Despite our rather pointed conversation, he offered me a job. I declined. A company that would give this man authority, I thought, is a maelstrom I would prefer not to enter.

  I’ve seen it a thousand times in business—rejection of an idea or a person by virtue of corporate status. The powers that be have authority, so they must be right. Right? Sure, the world’s flat too. What they have is the fraud of authority, the power to be a bully by the virtue of their title. A title, however, makes no one a leader.

  It is usually easier to lead with a title than without. Leading without a title is one of the most difficult and courageous things anyone can attempt. Often, leaders without titles arise in the midst of a crisis—a crisis like a bully’s ego trip.

  Dealing with a bully is not especially complicated or difficult. It merely takes nerve. If you work for such a person, do not submit. Fight for your dignity. Bullies destroy dignity and they destroy companies. If you are a leader, you must not allow them to operate under you. As a leader you should try to reform the bully—attempt to make a human connection that explains why people deserve respect. If this does not work, then you must fire that person. Bullies set entirely the wrong tone for productivity, passion, and fun. They drain energy.

  The funny thing about these tyrants is that when they lie or back stab or threaten, they think that no one else notices. The truth is, everyone notices because these things get around. And so the fraud of authority becomes transparent, a shameless ego trip. Employees obey, but they don’t believe. How can they share the dream of a person they privately loathe? They can’t.

  Who are these monoliths—these institutional fascists wallowing in their muck of false glory? They come in all shapes and sizes. All colors and both sexes too, though in business they are usually white males. Inevitably what makes them a universal plague on the worker is their bald cruelty. Some do it like smiling assassins—lying to save face while turning the knife in your back. Others are more honest, but just as cruel—shouting you down like a verbal storm trooper. Either way, the mission is to destroy dreams. Dreams and dreamers.

  Let me give you an example. Not that I need to; I know that if you have worked a length of time for an unenlightened employer, you know what I am saying. You can probably remember a specific example. I bet you can remember exact scenes, smells, words.

  Allen Culver certainly can. Culver is a retail executive—a hired hand, if you will. Although he is not a career hopper, there is a bit of a hired-gun quality to him. He is the man you hire in the retail business if you want results. But this is no Clint Eastwood. He is a fun man, an ingratiating person—friendly and warm.

  And so he was in 1984 when he was hired by a major retail drugstore chain headquartered in the Midwest. The company, which was in trouble, had been acquired three years earlier by an industrial conglomerate. It began to hide the problem of the drug chain’s poor results inside the larger corporate finances of the parent company.

  In two years the conglomerate had fired two presidents of the drug chain, and in 1984 it hired Allen Culver for that position. He was told he was taking over a very healthy company, and they showed him numbers to support that. But what they failed to tell him was that some of the numbers in the financials, such as cost of goods, were not reality but rather from a six-month-old budget. In other words, Culver was not told that the company had actually lost $6 million.

  Over the next six months the truth began to trickle out. Actually, as much as anything, Culver rooted it out. He learned that the company was not healthy and had probably been made to appear healthy to attract someone like himself to run it. When Culver approached the leaders of the conglomerate for an explanation, he was told, “What’s a little lie among friends?”

  And then he was told, “It should take five years to turn the chain around.” The CEO of the conglomerate gave Culver one of those supercilious John Wayne–CEO looks: the kind of look learned in third grade, refined in ninth grade, and put to use by every bully in America. “But that five-year period started two years ago. You’ve got three years to do it,” he said. After all, he explained, “It’s been two years since we bought the chain. So what if you were hired six months ago? You’re working on the last guy’s clock.”

  Culver was amazed. He couldn’t believe he’d even agreed to work for these people. He couldn’t believe how backhanded they were. People deserve honesty and respect, he told them. His argument fell on deaf ears.

  The atmosphere repulsed him. He started noticing it everywhere, like a foul smell that grows until it is unbearable. He didn’t understand the CEO’s motivation, but he knew the atmosphere it created was not right for him or the company. He began looking for another job.

  In retrospect, he probably should have seen what was coming in his first week. On his first day on the job he was greeted by a member of the public relations department, who said they needed his picture. Something about promotional materials. Typical PR bullshit, but necessary nevertheless. One of those little trade-offs you make for success.

  Culver went in and they snapped his picture. “I’d like input in choosing the photo you use,” he said. They agreed.

  But then a week later a business journal came out with a story on Culver and his picture. It was a mean image—no smile, almost a scowl on his face. Unbeknownst to him, the company had done a full PR release on his hiring, including the meanest no-smiling photo of the lot.

  Culver went to the CEO of the conglomerate. “I don’t really like this image of myself. I’d like to put myself across as a bit more pleasant, as someone with an enlightened perspective,” he said.

  “I don’t care what you want,” said the CEO. “I want you to look tough.”

  From the beginning the relationship was a false one. Everything flowed in one direction. The CEO wouldn’t listen. He didn’t inspire. He dwelt on the negative. The argument over the picture was not just that it was the wrong image for Culver, but also that Culver’s authority must not be co-opted by the parent company if it was to expect success. As a leader Culver knew he couldn’t work within the false parameters set up by a man without empathy. Culver knew empathy between himself and the CEO required empathy in general from the CEO for the workers and their beliefs.

  He gave it his best, but as stories like this often go, Culver and the conglomerate eventually parted company. It was a co
urteous parting, but the waste of a very talented man. The case is so typical, it’s sad. Here is a man more than qualified to do a job. And he is a happy, creative, cheerful hard worker. This is a dream employee, but what is he faced with—muck. The muck of false glory spewed about by an ego-bound CEO.

  The bully knows everything, of course, except how to let a human talent flourish. Instead he creates a muck—an embalming fluid for the soul, suffocating the employees. And the bully is like a grim mortician, pouring gobs of cake makeup onto the faces of the dead so that they are all lifeless clones of his image.

  Only a few—the Allen Culvers of the world—dare to swim in this embalming fluid. It is indeed a complex, challenging mixture the fascists have fashioned.

  The embalming fluid of business is no mere chemical concoction dreamed up by heartless analysts. It has a more sinister quality to it, a duplicity that works like black magic, rendering all who don’t fight for their life to a fate of absolute apathy.

  What Culver learned was that his company could not afford to let him do his job as he saw fit. They beat him down, or tried to at least, by declaring his way, his smile, his happiness to be nonproductive. They tried to break him.

  The problem is respect. The bullies have no respect because, in many cases, they are not leaders. Some clearly have no talent. But many do; just no leadership talent. Classically they ride the system. They were A students all through school but wouldn’t know the difference between a red light and a green one when it comes to street smarts. They test well, but they live as if life were a series of exams instead of adventures.

  They sit in their throne room of an office and look down on all employees. These people, lower on the corporate food chain, have been beaten down and thus, they cower—afraid even to wear the wrong color tie or wrong style shoes.