Mountain Climbing
“Why is there an order to the twelve questions?”
To help us describe the order of these twelve questions, we ask you to picture, in your mind’s eye, a mountain. At first it is hard to make out its full shape and color, shifting from blue to gray to green as you approach. But now, standing at the base, you sense its presence. You know there is a climb ahead. You know the climb will vary, sometimes steep, sometimes gradual. You know there will be gullies to negotiate, terrain that will force you to descend before you can resume your climb. You know the dangers, too, the cold, the clouds, and the most pressing danger of all, your own fragile will. But then you think of the summit and how you will feel, so you start to climb.
You know this mountain. We all do. It is the psychological climb you make from the moment you take on a new role to the moment you feel fully engaged in that role. At the base of the mountain, perhaps you are joining a new company. Perhaps you have just been promoted to a new role within the same company. Either way you are at the start of a long climb.
At the summit of this mountain you are still in the same role — the mountain doesn’t represent a career climb — but you are loyal and productive in this role. You are the machinist who bothers to write down all the little hints and tips you have picked up so that you can present them as an informal manual to apprentice machinists just learning their craft. You are the grocery store clerk who tells the customer that the grapefruit are in aisle five but who then walks her to aisle five, explaining that the grapefruit are always stocked from the back to the front. “If you like your grapefruit really firm,” you say, “pick one from the front.” You are the manager who so loves your work that you get tears in your eyes when asked to describe how you helped so many of your people succeed.
Whatever your role, at the summit of this mountain you are good at what you do, you know the fundamental purpose of your work, and you are always looking for better ways to fulfill that mission. You are fully engaged.
How did you get there?
If a manager can answer this, he will know how to guide other employees. He will be able to help more and more individuals reach the summit. The more individuals he can help move up the mountain, one by one, the stronger the workplace. So how did you get there? How did you make the climb?
Put on your employee hat for a moment. This maybe a psychological mountain, but as with an actual mountain, you have to climb it in stages. Read in the right order, the twelve questions can tell you which stage is which and exactly what needs must be met before you can continue your climb up to the next stage.
Before we describe the stages on the climb, think back to the needs you had when you were first starting your current role. What did you want from the role? What needs were foremost in your mind at that time? Then, as time passed and you settled in, how did your needs change? And currently, what are your priorities? What do you need from your role today?
You may want to keep these thoughts in mind as we describe the stages on the climb.
Base Camp: “What do I get?”
When you first start a new role, your needs are pretty basic. You want to know what is going to be expected of you. How much are you going to earn? How long will your commute be? Will you have an office, a desk, even a phone? At this stage you are asking, “What do I get?” from this role.
Of the twelve, these two fundamental questions measure Base Camp:
1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
Camp 1: “What do I give?”
You climb a little higher. Your perspective changes. You start asking different questions. You want to know whether you are any good at the job. Are you in a role where you can excel? Do other people think you are excelling? If not, what do they think about you? Will they help you? At this stage your questions center around “What do I give?” You are focused on your individual contribution and other people’s perceptions of it.
These four questions measure Camp 1:
3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
Each of these questions helps you know not only if you feel you are doing well in the role (Q3), but also if other people value your individual performance (Q4), if they value you as a person (Q5), and if they are prepared to invest in your growth (Q6). These questions all address the issue of your individual self-esteem and worth. As we will see, if these questions remain unanswered, all of your yearnings to belong, to become part of a team, to learn and to innovate, will be undermined.
Camp 2: “Do I belong here?”
You keep climbing. By now you’ve asked some difficult questions, of yourself and of others, and the answers have, hopefully, given you strength. Your perspective widens. You look around and ask, “Do I belong here?” You may be extremely customer service oriented — is everyone else as customer driven as you? Or perhaps you define yourself by your creativity — are you surrounded by people who push the envelope, as you do? Whatever your basic value system happens to be, at this stage of the climb you really want to know if you fit.
These four questions measure Camp 2:
7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?
8. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job is important?
9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?
10. Do I have a best friend at work?
Camp 3: “How can we all grow?”
This is the most advanced stage of the climb. At this stage you are impatient for everyone to improve, asking, “How can we all grow?” You want to make things better, to learn, to grow, to innovate. This stage tells us that only after you have climbed up and through the earlier three stages can you innovate effectively. Why? Because there is a difference between “invention” and “innovation.” Invention is mere novelty — like most of us, you might have devised seventeen new ways of doing things a few weeks after starting in your new role. But these ideas didn’t carry any weight. By contrast, innovation is novelty that can be applied. And you can innovate, you can apply your new ideas, only if you are focused on the right expectations (Base Camp), if you have confidence in your own expertise (Camp 1), and if you are aware of how your new ideas will be accepted or rejected by the people around you (Camp 2). If you cannot answer positively to all these earlier questions, then you will find it almost impossible to apply all your new ideas.
These two questions measure Camp 3:
11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
12. This last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?
The Summit
If you can answer positively to all of these twelve questions, then you have reached the summit. Your focus is clear. You feel a recurring sense of achievement, as though the best of you is being called upon and the best of you responds every single day. You look around and see others who also seem to thrill to the challenge of their work. Buoyed by your mutual understanding and your shared purpose, you climbers look out and forward to the challenges marching over the horizon. It is not easy to remain at the summit for long, with the ground shifting beneath your feet and the strong winds buffeting you this way and that. But while you are there, it is quite a feeling.
If this is the psychological climb you made (or failed to make) from the moment you began your current role to the moment you felt fully engaged in this role, then where are you?
Camp 1? Camp 3? The summit?
Ask yourself those twelve questions. Your answers can give you a read on where you are on the mountain. Perhaps your company is going through times of change and you find yourself languishing down at Base Camp. Change can do that to a person — you genuinely want to commit, but the uncertainty keeps pushing you down and down. (“Quit telling me how great the future is going to be. Just tell me what is expected of me today.”)
Perhaps you have just been promoted — you felt as though you were at the summit in your previous role, but now you find yourself right back down at Camp 1, with new expectations and a new manager. (“I wonder what he thinks of me. I wonder how he will define success.”) Yes, even when good things happen you can quickly find yourself at the base of a new mountain, with a long climb ahead.
Of course, the climb toward the summit is more complicated than this picture. Not only will people trade one stage off against another, but each individual will also place a slightly different value on each stage of the climb. For example, you might have taken your current role simply because it offered you the chance to learn and grow — in a sense, you flew straight in to Camp 3. And if these higher-level needs are being met, then you will probably be a little more patient in waiting for your manager to make his expectations crystal clear ( 
Base Camp). Similarly, if you feel very connected to your team members ( 
Camp 2), then you may be prepared to stick this out for a while longer, even though you feel that your role on the team doesn’t allow you to use your true talents ( Camp 1).
However, these kinds of individual trade-offs don’t deny the basic truth of the mountain — regardless of how positively you answer the questions at Camp 2 or Camp 3, the longer your lower-level needs remain unmet, the more likely it is that you will burn out, become unproductive, and leave.
In fact, if you do find yourself answering positively to Camps 2 and 3, but negatively to the questions lower down, be very careful. You are in an extremely precarious position. On the surface everything seems fine — you like your team members ( Camp 2), you are learning and growing ( Camp 3) — but deep down you are disengaged. Not only are you less productive than you could be, but you would jump ship at the first good offer.
We can give this condition a name: mountain sickness.
In the physical world, mountain sickness is brought on by the lack of oxygen at high altitudes. Starved of oxygen, your heart starts pounding. You feel breathless and disoriented. If you don’t climb down to lower altitudes, your lungs will fill with fluid and you will die. There is no way to cheat mountain sickness. There is no vaccine, no antidote. The only way to beat it is to climb down and give your body time to acclimatize.
Inexperienced climbers might suggest that if you have lots of money and not much time, you could helicopter in to Camp 3 and race to the summit. Experienced guides know that you would never make it. Mountain sickness would sap your energy and slow your progress to a crawl. These guides will tell you that to reach the summit you have to pay your dues. During your ascent you have to spend a great deal of time between Base Camp and Camp 1. The more time you spend at these lower reaches, the more stamina you will have in the thin air near the summit.
In the psychological world, their advice still applies. Base Camp and Camp 1 are the foundation. Spend time focusing on these needs, find a manager who can meet these needs, and you will have the strength necessary for the long climb ahead. Ignore these needs and you are much more likely to psychologically disengage.
AN EPIDEMIC OF MOUNTAIN SICKNESS
Now put your manager’s hat back on.
This metaphorical mountain reveals that the key to building a strong, vibrant workplace lies in meeting employees’ needs at Base Camp and Camp 1. This is where you should focus your time and energy. If your employees’ lower-level needs remain unaddressed, then everything you do for them further along the journey is almost irrelevant. But if you can meet these needs successfully, then the rest — the team building and the innovating — is so much easier.
It almost sounds obvious. But over the last fifteen years most managers have been encouraged to focus much higher up the mountain. Mission statements, diversity training, self-directed work teams — all try to help employees feel they belong (Camp 2). Total quality management, reengineering, continuous improvement, learning organizations — all address the need for employees to innovate, to challenge cozy assumptions and rebuild them afresh, every day (Camp 3).
All of these initiatives were very well-conceived. Many of them were well-executed. But almost all of them have withered. Five years ago the Baldrige Award for Quality was the most coveted business award in America — today only a few companies bother to enter. Diversity experts now bicker over the proper definition of “diversity.” Process reengineering gurus try to squeeze people back into process. And many of us snort at mission statements.
When you think about it, it is rather sad. An important kernel of truth lay at the heart of all of these initiatives, but none of them lasted.
Why? An epidemic of mountain sickness. They aimed too high, too fast.
Managers were encouraged to focus on complex initiatives like reengineering or learning organizations, without spending time on the basics. The stages on the mountain reveal that if the employee doesn’t know what is expected of him as an individual (Base Camp), then you shouldn’t ask him to get excited about playing on a team (Camp 2). If he feels as though he is in the wrong role (Camp 1), don’t pander to him by telling him how important his innovative ideas are to the company’s reengineering efforts (Camp 3). If he doesn’t know what his manager thinks of him as an individual (Camp 1), don’t confuse him by challenging him to become part of the new “learning organization” (Camp 3).
Don’t helicopter in at seventeen thousand feet, because sooner or later you and your people will die on the mountain.