1. Mount Everest Case Leadership, Entrepreneurship, & Learning Professor Higgins Harvard Graduate School of Education

2. Everest at Three Levels
Organization Level
System Complexity
Mt.
Everest
Tragedy
Individual Level
Cognitive Limitations
Group Level
Shared Beliefs
Source: Roberto, M. (2002). Lessons from Everest: Cognitive bias, psychological safety, and system complexity. California Management Review 45(1),

3. Cognitive Bias
Systematic biases impair the judgment and choices that individuals make
They affect experts as well as novices, and they affect individuals in a wide variety of professions
Evidence of at least three biases in this case:
Sunk cost effect
Overconfidence bias
Recency effect
Also Mike’s.
Source: Roberto, M. (2002). Lessons from Everest: Cognitive bias, psychological safety, and system complexity. California Management Review 45(1),

4. Team Effectiveness
Psychological safety: “shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking”*
Team members demonstrate a high level of trust and mutual respect for one another
Team members do not believe that the group will rebuke, marginalize, or penalize individuals for speaking up or challenging prevailing opinions
Source: Edmondson, A. “Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams.” Administrative Science Quarterly 4 (December 1999):

5. Conditions Affecting Psychological Safety
Member Status
Differences -
Leader Coaching & Support
Team Psychological Safety
Team Learning Behavior + +
Level of Familiarity/ Prior Interaction
Source: Roberto, M. (2005). Why great leaders don’t take yes for an answer: Managing for conflict and consensus. Philadelphia: Wharton School Publishing.

6. Complex Systems Two characteristics of a complex system
Complex interactions: different elements of a system interact in ways that are unexpected and difficult to perceive or comprehend
Tight coupling: time dependent processes, fairly rigid sequence of activities, one dominant path to achieving the goal, and very little slack
Breashears: “I think of an expedition as a very complex organism Rob Hall had designed a complicated system that was very rigid.”
Source: Roberto, M. (2002). Lessons from Everest: Cognitive bias, psychological safety, and system complexity. California Management Review 45(1),

7. The Myth of a Specific Cause
“To cite a specific cause would be to promote an omniscience that only gods, drunks, politicians, and dramatic writers can claim.”
- Boukreev & DeWalt, 1998
Source: Roberto, M. & Carioggia, G. Case Study: Mount Everest – HBS #

8. Back to You…
Have you been a victim of the sunk cost bias? the overconfidence bias? the recency effect?
Can you identify a situation in which some of these factors led to team failure? How might you take corrective action to prevent these from occurring in the future?
Have you ever led a group that did not feel psychologically safe? What did you do to try and help the situation? What didn’t you do?