What Really Works
The Best Way to Go is with a Guide
I recently made a list of the “guided” adventure recreation trips I have taken in my life. I did so because I was in the process of preparing a marketing approach for a client company that guides kayakers on the coast of Maine. I felt like a complete survey of my own experience in being guided would serve as valuable preparation for understanding their business at a more useful level. To my surprise, the list kept growing until it totaled over thirty trips, all extremely different. In addition to canoeing, kayaking, river rafting, fishing, sailing, tropical reef scuba diving and birding in the jungle of Belize, we’ve been on all sorts of mountain trips, including summiting Mt. Rainier, backpacking in the Rockies, and ice and rock climbing. My list even includes a disastrous hot air balloon trip in California that ended in a crash due to pilot error, and some painful surgery for my wife.
What stands out for me from this trip down memory lane, besides recognizing how fortunate I have been to have enjoyed all this adventure while avoiding serious tragedy, is how much common practice I recognize across this broad array of guides and adventure recreation companies. Many of the characteristics that make a guide invaluable in one setting seem just as critical in another context that is totally different. The best guides I have used all did each of the following:
1. “Set the context” for our adventure in a very conscientious way – telling us what to expect, what might be most enjoyable, what to avoid, how to perceive and think about what we were about to do in a way that made the most of the “benefits of experience.” In other words, they shortened our path to an adequate awareness of our situation because they had “been there.”
2. Firmly confronted our recognition, or naiveté, about the risks awaiting us. They each made sure we had a reasonable understanding of what could and would probably happen, and prepared us to take appropriate steps if necessary. Trained us in new skills, with a masterful awareness that the experience was for and about us, our learning, our adventure, our growth, not their opportunity to show off how much better they were than we at climbing or paddling or whatever.
3. “Told the story,” including local history, personal experiences, prior groups and trips, and helped develop meaning for us that we could take home from our adventure. They helped us become part of a new story that we could own and appreciate for years to come.
4. Helped us get clear about our mission and objectives, what we really wanted to experience or accomplish, what memories would likely matter most to us later. Focused our attention on the moment, on how special and rare and fun these type of experiences are, and how much difference they can make in our future lives, if we really gain an adequate appreciation of “what’s going on.”
5. Made it crystal clear that while they were in this business to serve us as customers, in certain regards, they were completely in charge. In short, a good guide leads as well as serves. That is a lot to ask of a person at the same time that they are physically responsible for the well-being of numerous others under challenging outdoor conditions. The ones who can do it well are a genuine inspiration to me. I proudly count among that fraternity my son Ben. As a group, the effective guides I have known have been among the most mature, enjoyable, astute, delightful and interesting people I have ever known. They make any adventure very much more worthwhile. The point of this is to tell you how much I value the role of the guide, and in what esteem I hold it. When we tell you that at MarketLeadership we offer ourselves as guides for business leaders, we know it is an extremely high standard that we adopt for our work and our selves. We know that in the adventure of business we have to perform each of the tasks listed above, and many more. We love our work as much as any adventure guide, are just as serious about certain things, and have just as much fun.
And now you know that the next time we disappear on some guided adventure, we are really just “studying the techniques of a colleague.”
Ballard Pritchett, Chief Leadership Officer, MarketLeadership