[SELIM Column]

Steady Wins

The miracle of “marching 30km a day”

Chang-Jin Kim

The story of the rabbit and the turtle, one of Aesop's fables, which is included in Korean textbook of elementary school is well known to everyone.  This is a story about a race of a rabbit and a turtle, slowing moving turtle wins the race.  One day a fast-moving rabbit met a slow-moving turtle by chance.  A rabbit ridicules a slow-moving turtle and challenged a race and a turtle accepted challenge willingly.  A rabbit raced way ahead of the turtle and took a nap in the middle of the race as being bored.  When a rabbit awoke however, he found that his competitor, crawling slow but steadily moving turtle arrived before him.

I'd like to talk about Amundsen and Scott's story to reach the South Pole here, despite it will be a little different but a story of similar messages,

Amundsen was a Norwegian and Scott was a British, and they tried to reach the South Pole at around same time.  But for one, it has been a race of victory and a safe return home, for the other, it has been devastating defeat, reaching the Pole despite all odds but all perished and freezing to death on the way home.   

First, Amundsen analyzed the all cases of other teams which had been tried the expeditions so far and selected his crew who was good at skiing and handling dogs.  And set up marching strategy to make consistent progress, 6 hours, 15~20 miles per day, and to allocate strictly for rest and marching to sustain the pace. 

(Amundsen is recognized as the first person who has conquered the South Pole on Dec. 14, 1911)

In contrast, expedition team of Scott lacked meticulous strategies despite that he organized his team in big size of 55 members (the team of Amundsen was organized with less members of crew).  For example, team of Scott was equipped with motor sleighs and ponies, but those were not right choices as they were broken down in the bitter cold, also ponies were not able to adapt to the weather during the journey.  Also crew could not keep up their pace and take a rest enough due to the irregular marching strategy, marching hard one day and sitting down in the tent the other day depending on the weather condition.  When they reached the South Pole, all were already staggering from exhaustion, and then freezing to death on the way back. 

(Scott has arrived South Pole on Jan. 17, 1912)

It looks that there's no relation between the story of the tortoise and the hare and story of Amundsen and Scott to South Pole, but it contains the same meaning in the way of the ‘careful preparation' and ‘steady wins'.  Amundsen led his team to victory and safe return home as it was benefited from his careful preparation and consistent progress, compared to Scott.  

There are no differences in managing enterprises.  To keep up the pace, it is required to structure the organization slim and prepare for the journey carefully in advance, and march in consistent progress every day then, they can put up with any difficulties.     

I would like to introduce an editorial of ‘steady wins' which is based on the Amundsen and Scott story to the South Pole which was released in the newspaper recently.

(extracted from chosun.com)

[Source] this article is an article released in chosun.com

The catastrophe of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 production discontinued reminded me the interview I have with Jim Collins who is a famous business consultant worldwide.  I took my note of this interview in my hand and recall about it.  At that time, he brought up a question suddenly ‘who do you have in mind a conquer of the South Pole?'.  I knew that Amundsen has conquered it, but it was first time to learn the secret story behind it.       

In October 1911, Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott made their final showdown for the first conquest of the South Pole in the history of mankind.  Amundsen successfully reached the Pole on Dec. 14, 2011, and Scott on Jan. 17, 1912 a month later.  The greater tragedy was waiting for a devastating team.  Staggering from exhaustion, all crew of Scott team was freezing to death in the snow while Amundsen teams came back home safe.  

What separate these two men?  Collins concluded that it is ‘steady marching of 20 miles (about 32 km) a day'.  Scott drove his crew to exhaustion in speed battle on good weather days and even made a marching of 30 miles a day, and then sat in the tent on bad weather days.  Amundsen made 20 miles marching in good days, never going too far, also struggled desperately and made 20 miles marching in bad days.  It was of course a hard day for Scott team when the weather was bad, also a hard day when it is good weather as they tried to make the advance a little more.  But Amundsen team took a rest with confidence so as to replenish their energy for the day of snowstorm.

This story of conquering the South Pole also could be applied to the rise and fall of the enterprises these days.  The enterprises survived for more than 30 years were not a ‘nimble rushers' who grasp new opportunities and launch the hot items to the next generations in the short period of time of 1~2 years.  The enterprises like Intel, Amgen and Southwest Airlines set clear goals and keep a ‘rule of a steady advance‘.  Even in the upphase, they stick to this rule so that they could be prepared for the recession period.    

The recent situation of Samsung Note production end resembles the story of Scott at least, not Amundsen's.  Samsung Electronics was actually conscious of the iPhone 7 series and launched the Note 7 from Note 5, jumping over the step of ‘6' in order to give a message to the customers that it is such innovative products.  Internally in Samsung, people shouted “just go forward and bring down iPhone!” and now there are voices of introspecting that those have brought them to this catastrophe.

Samsung's expected loss from the Galaxy Note 7 production end is known 7 trillion won, but it is expected that it will be soaring above that amount.  Samsung has announced that, taking this as a momentum, they will thoroughly take a quality check process for all products.  And they take it as a top priority vital task to figure out the cause of the issues prior to the new product launch.  People who watching Samsung hope this could be a momentum to take the ‘Scott management style' to ‘Amundsen management'.  The epigram of marching 20 miles based on the principle will not be applied to Note 7 case only, this requires for all of us brooding over on it.   

Reporter SU Ho, Chosun Newspaper [Source] this article is an article released in chosun.com