Consultants and Summitry - Into Thin Advice

For a final word on the subject, the CDU turned to Jeanne Lehman, a woman who knows everything about conquering scales. Lehman, who sings the show-stopping "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" in her role as Mother Abbess in the national tour of "The Sound of Music," has been singing and acting on and off Broadway for more than 30 years. "The song is very difficult to sing," Lehman says. "It's in three different registers, so in some ways, it's as if I have my own mountain to climb every night."

With all the ups and downs in the course of the song, Lehman's voice gets a vigorous workout. Even though she hits the high note at the end of the song, Lehman realizes that reaching the top isn't the end of the journey.

Lehman knows that's true for climbing mountains as well as for singing about them: During her childhood, she scampered over the hills of Sacramento Valley, in northern California, and recently, she visited the Swiss Alps with her husband. "When you reach the top of a mountain," she says, "you usually look out onto the horizon and take some time to enjoy the view. Then you notice all sorts of mountains that look like they'd be fun to climb as well. But you have to descend the one you're on before you can climb to the next peak -- you can't just hop from one mountaintop to another."

Without wanting to make a mountain out of a molehill, it's a lesson in business (and in singing) that consultants can take with them on their journey up to the summit -- and then back down again.