P.A.T.H. Book Report (vol. 5)

The last book required to be read before training... and we leave tomorrow... talk about cutting it close. Well, here's the last book review, then I'm off to pack!

Don't Step on the Rope
Walter C. Wright

As I began to read this book, I found myself wondering why it had been so very difficult to acquire. It was easy to read, seemed to be well written and had a clear intent and focus. As I read through the model of teamwork presented by the author, I found why perhaps this book was not available at my local library.

I did find that the book was heavily bogged down by the metaphor presented in the title. For someone, like myself, who knows very little of the subculture that exists in the hiking and mountain climbing community, it took a long time for me to break through all of that cultural nuance before I began to feel the beat of the metaphor. The author drops a lot of names and uses a lot of rather specialized examples to convey his teamwork model, this served somewhat to illustrate his point, but ultimately muddled it (at least for me, the uninitiated). The focus becomes the concept and metaphor and not the methodology.

As books on leadership and teamwork go, this one wasn't too bad. The principles and practices presented through the metaphor of mountain climbing were relatively sensible and seemed to hold a practical wisdom that could certainly be applied. This model of leadership and teamwork will only work if the team is dedicated to the task at hand. In a ministry application it is quite likely that this would be an effective model, however in an organization where the objective of the employee is a paycheck and the objective of the owner is savings and profits it would be a difficult model to implement. Many organizations do their very best to engender a pride in their staff that will translate into an objective more in line with the company objective (profits and savings). Sometimes this is even done through profit sharing or stock options, sometimes simply by trying to draw a correlation, for the benefit of the staff, between company profits and their paychecks. This can be effective for a time, but I can see this model of 'team' and leadership being only moderately successful in that sort of environment (to quote one of my favourite movies, "that'll only make someone work hard enough not to get fired"). An example of this can be seen, somewhat broadly in the so-called 'pyramid schemes'. The leadership and teamwork is an ever expanding pyramid of invested team members focused on the goal of expanding their 'net'.

This book would certainly be highly enjoyed by someone immersed in the mountain climbing culture. I didn't find it un-enjoyable, but would recommend that you not become overly burdened with the illustrations, and focus on the leadership model being presented. And keep in mind that it is just a model being presented in a sterile environment. Working with people (especially in a leadership role) is never textbook and never clinical, it requires wisdom and discernment and although leadership books can offer a guiding principle or concept. You will ultimately need to step up.