Endurance

50 plus years old, this is a story that more than stands the test of time. Sir Ernest Shackleton makes his daring attempt to cross Antarctic continent but his crew and boat are trapped in the ice flows. What follows are 600 days of harrowing survival, first from the elements, then from hunger, then from the sea as he makes a daring attempt in a small lifeboat to reach land 650 miles away, then again as he struggles over land and mountains to bring relief to his men. And when he finally arrives with it, Shackleton simply boards them on the boat and returns home as if nothing had happened. He was an immensely brave man in the midst of terrible adversity and we see this so clearly in a book based on the remarkable diaries of his men. He never quit, never seemed to despair. This book (and his life) were living proof of his family motto: “Fortitudine vincimus” (By endurance we conquer).

I think that there are some biographies, the Doris Kearns Goodwin type stuff, the Walter Isaacson classic biographies. I recently read Shackleton’s Endurance story. [...] Which, obviously, relates to my thinking these days, which is just a phenomenal story. And there’s so many interesting leadership lessons of counterintuitive things that he did that help you understand difficult decisions that have to be made.

Truly inspiring story of determination, grit and beating all odds.

Endurance is the best example of how far people can be pushed when the stakes are high.