Idea Summit

It turns out that climbing is also an integral part of Thinking Expeditions. Mike Donahue, 53, founder of the Colorado Mountain School, introduced Smith to the power of climbing in 1991: He guided Smith, along with Smith's family and partners, up Longs Peak, a 14,255-foot mountain in Colorado. Since then, Donahue and Smith have been guide partners. They complement each other perfectly. Donahue is tall and trim, with a face that looks like it's been weathered from the outdoors. Where Smith quotes Einstein, Tom Peters, and Margaret Wheatley, Donahue prefers to emphasize his points with more personal references or ancient quotes. He's particularly fond of one Himalayan saying: "When the explorer is ready, the guide will appear."

For Donahue, the power of climbing is that it's a perfect metaphor for work and life. "Climbing is an ongoing process of making decisions and moving forward," he says. "One of the easiest ways to change is simply to alter your position -- to focus on the one-inch square in front of you and put one foot in front of the other. But to go forward -- on a cliff, on a project, or in your career -- you sometimes first have to take a step sideways, or even a step back."

It's dark as the Face 2005 Team hikes back up the steep trail after hours of climbing. But everyone's elation is palpable. Some made it to the top of the cliff, others did not, and some fell off trying (luckily, everyone was protected by safety ropes). Still, everyone is pumped. Over a dinner that lasts well past midnight, Donahue and Smith are quick to capitalize on that energy, and they push team members to express what they learned from the experience. Despite groans from a blue-slip-fatigued group, Smith prompts the usual flurry with his pointed questions. One woman shares her insight: "We're conditioned to think that small steps aren't good enough. But I realize that small steps are just what you need to get to the top."

But getting to the top is just the first of two main objectives in climbing; the descent is equally important -- in real climbs as well as during a Thinking Expedition. It's also just as challenging. "It's just as far getting down a mountain as it is going up," Donahue says. On an expedition, the "long trek home," as the descent is called, represents the work required to turn the big ideas that were generated at the summit into pragmatic action items that can be implemented when the team returns. "On an expedition, the driving force is the summit," Smith explains. "Once it's reached, the focus then becomes getting back down. But this direction reversal is one of the most dangerous points of the expedition." It's during this leg of the adventure that Level Seven hypoxia (when the body's tissues are deficient of oxygen), as Smith calls it, can set in. Team members are tired, they want to get home, and worse, they stop thinking. The danger is that they return to their organization with the "high" of climbing but without the "how" of getting things done differently.

The Face 2005 Team experienced several breakthroughs (and breakdowns) during its Thinking Expedition -- not to mention a 2 AM trip to the emergency room. Tia Steele, 50, a research psychologist at P&G, reached a personal "summit" that literally pushed her over the edge. Soon after her successful climbing experience (which she had once vowed that she never would do), she felt that she could tackle anything -- including the rope swing that hung from a tall tree in the field next to the Catoctin Inn, in Buckeystown, Maryland. Steele gave new meaning to Smith's expression "fall off trying" (as a means to demonstrate that you can learn from your failures), as she swung out high on the rope but did not have the strength at 2 AM to hold on. Early the next morning, as the rest of the team was gathering for another day's adventure, Steele was sitting at her table with both rope-burned hands tightly bandaged -- but with an enormous smile on her face.

Steele's accident, like climbing, was an apt metaphor for the idea-generation process. Smith looks at his role this way: The guide is connected to each person on the expedition by an invisible rope. His job is to keep the right amount of tension on those ropes, so that everyone is right on the edge of stress. But guiding is a delicate business. "Sometimes," he says, "we'll pull the group a little too hard, and we'll have to go in and fix things."

And sometimes those ropes snap. At 11 PM on day two, the invisible rope connecting the Face 2005 Team did just that. It was late. People were grumpy. And Smith was orchestrating yet another think-fest, placing individuals at tables for an exercise. Participants at each table had to come up with a list of their strengths, and they had to determine which skills the group as a whole lacked, those that might be needed when implementing product ideas later on.