The Story Behind Shackleton's Way

"A first rate business primer." 

Publisher's Weekly

"An important addition to any leader's library."

The Seattle Times

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"Even though the target market is leaders and managers, Shackleton's Way has much broader appeal and application."

The Boston Globe

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In early 1997, I was at my desk at Fidelity Investments in Millburn, New Jersey, when the phone rang. It was Stephanie Capparell from the Wall Street Journal who wanted to talk to me about my eccentric hobby, Sir Ernest Shackleton's leadership practices. 

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By 9 a.m. the morning Stephanie's article appeared prominently in the Journal, my phone was ringing with calls from literary agents and publishers asking if I wanted to do a book on the subject. I asked, "How do you write a book?"

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The day Stephanie's article appeared, she headed off to Turkey for four months. Listening to her voicemail, I didn't bother to leave a message but that December, after giving my first-ever speech on Shackleton's leadership for an audience of entrepreneurs at The Explorers Club in New York, I called Stephanie to say, "Hey, you're not going to believe what's happened because of your article." Stephanie suggested we get together. Over dinner we agreed to partner on a book about Shackleton's leadership skills.

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From there, things moved fast. We met with a literary agent who arranged meetings with leading publishing firms. Stephanie and I hunkered down and spent two weekends drafting a 36-page outline that, as Stephanie put it, "served as a road map" for the book. The project went everywhere with me - to dentist's offices, oil changes, and on New Jersey transit. For the next year, Stephanie and I worked through weekends and holidays. I couldn't have asked for a better or more dedicated partner to tell Shackleton's story.​​

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I'm often asked why I found Shackleton's story so fascinating. From the first book I read in 1984, Frank Worsley's Shackleton's Boat Journey, for me this story has been about how do you deal with the challenges that every single one of us face in life. How do you coach yourself, and others, through life's inevitable ordeals, through change, through career turbulence, through difficult diagnoses? I hope you will find some useful tools in Shackleton's Way.