Leadership in Crisis: Ernest Shackleton and the Epic Voyage of the Endurance

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Leadership in Crisis: Ernest Shackleton and the Epic Voyage of the Endurance Case Study 1 The story of Ernest Shackleton is a very interesting and fascinating one, and reading it was a great pleasure. There was a lot to analyze, but I will try to keep things short. Sir Ernest Shackleton might not be an entrepreneur in the narrow meaning of the word, i. e. he did not start a business, and most likely he didn’t even mean to start one. However, we can see that Shackleton manifested a classical “entrepreneurial mindset” in all of its glory: he had seen the opportunity, managed to gather the required resources, and pushed the venture to completion. What Shackleton truly had, was the most important component of the “entrepreneurial mindset”: ability to think creatively, and out of the box. Sense of responsibility, ability to take the risks, non-standard thinking, decisiveness, persistence - all those traits are rarely concentrated in a single personality. We can be pretty positive that if Shackleton emerged in 21st century as a CEO of any Fortune 500 company, he would certainly drive the company to the skies. And the exploration industry was not the easiest place to demonstrate one’s entrepreneurial talents. Arctic expeditions were associated with immense physical risks, and even loss of life, required exorbitant amounts of money to be invested, and needed strong backing by scientific societies and the government. The success of a venture depended on too many factors, and the overwhelming majority of those factors were critical to the success. Finally, there was probably only one payoff for a person like Shackleton: the fame and recognition. He was not a scientist; he was unlikely to share the joy of a scientific discoveries and exploration with the fellow scientists. It is fame that was the biggest thing that pushed Shackleton forward throughout his life; the fame and

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