Navigating Risk and Innovation in Program Leadership — Lessons from Backcountry Skiing in Alaska

by Chris Bartram, Associate Consultant

What can decision-making during three weeks of backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering in Alaska teach you about leading programs and managing risk? More than you might expect!  

Backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering are playgrounds of uncertainty. They force even the most seasoned guides and educators to constantly weigh the risks and rewards of each decision. If you choose wisely you may be rewarded with skiing the line of your dreams in stable thigh deep powder, however, if you make a mistake, it may result in an avalanche with life altering consequences. Similarly, program leadership in education, especially within large outdoor institutions, requires navigating shifting variables with limited resources, evoking the same high stakes feelings found in backcountry skiing. Like the backcountry skier, how can we achieve our program goals amongst the uncertainty without incurring unacceptable consequences?  

The Innovation Killer: Resulting, and the Comfort of Familiarity

There’s a concept known as resulting — judging a decision based solely on its outcome. If a risky decision turns out well, we assume it was a good decision. If it fails, we assume the decision-making was flawed. In leadership, this mindset stifles innovation. As Annie Duke puts it, “If you are a leader and you are a resulter... you are telling your team, don’t ever make an unusual choice, don’t do anything innovative or unexpected, because if it fails, I will come down on you.” 

I saw this firsthand while backcountry skiing with fellow guides in Alaska. I spent hours analyzing shade lines, searching for protected north-facing slopes where cold snow might still linger. I was falling into a heuristic trap, a  subconscious mental shortcut that humans use intuitively to make choices every day.  I had been skiing cold snow all winter and found myself assuming that slopes on all other aspects would have a breakable crust; I was resulting. But a fellow guide surprised me: his group skied south-facing slopes in the sun, reaping the reward of 5,000 feet of smooth, stable "corn snow." He challenged the narrative, made a different call, and it paid off.

It was brilliant. And it was a wake-up call. I was stuck following my subconscious decision making simply because it’s worked before. But the environment had changed. He saw that. I didn’t. I had fallen into a familiarity trap; something that feels safer simply because it’s what we’ve always done. My fellow guide had taken on the relatively small amount of risk of skiing potentially lower quality snow. Encouraging small risks in your organization can spark innovation and promote effective development.

Are We Still Skiing the Same Slopes?

This isn't just a mountain metaphor. Many organizations are still “skiing the same slopes,” offering variations on the same expedition programs they’ve run since the 1960s, in the hope of replicating past success. Individuals in leadership roles are often attached to the outcomes that have been provided over the last 20 years. We want to use our blueprint for success to facilitate meaningful experiences for our students. This attachment to our previous experience leads us to falling into the same familiarity trap I fell into when choosing where to ski. We often choose to do what is familiar to us because it feels safer and validates our prior decision making. Thus at an organization we may choose to “ski the same slope” or continue offering programs that we always have in hopes of replicating our previous success. However, the dynamics have changed….

Holding onto old models is comforting, especially when the consequences of failure have real implications, whether that’s interpreting sensitivity of snow slope or staying in the black financially. But refusing to adapt is a risk in itself. When our programs become irrelevant or unresponsive to the needs of our students, we lose our edge, and eventually, our audience.

“Teamwork Makes the Dream Work” 

 You can strategize endlessly, pore over maps, analyze weather patterns, and study snowpack profiles, but as the common saying among avalanche professionals goes; “you can’t outsmart an avalanche.” However, a team of competent professionals working together in an organization that encourages honest and trust-based collaboration will almost always make a better decision than any one autonomous leader. As Ebert and Morreau argue in Safety in Numbers, this collaborative process can amplify individual expertise and knowledge, helping the group reach better decisions than any one member might on their own.

Step 1: Create a Climate Where Failing Safely is an Option

To create the teamwork described above, first and foremost, we need to create environments where people feel safe trying something new and where the outcome of a single try isn’t the only measure of success,environments where team members are supported even when their attempt does not work out. As a leader you need to create an environment where failing safely is an option and where you are leading by this example. If you don’t try to change at all you are implying that you are already sure that the existing model will be successful. This is a common heuristic trap that backcountry skiers fall prey to, the commitment trap, where you unconsciously believe that a behavior or decision is correct because it validates the similar decisions you have made. 

Work through this together as a team, discuss the anticipated probability of success... I know many of you are thinking here…. My organization can’t afford to fail, can’t afford to be wrong…. I know this feeling well: when backcountry skiing, if we make an inaccurate assessment we have the potential for significant consequences. Choosing to ski a slope that avalanches on you or your guests is a horrifying prospect. I have been in organizations that elicit the same feeling, where financial constraints were significant and evoked a feeling of being handcuffed, but remember, our variables are constantly changing and just because it isn’t familiar, doesn’t mean it isn’t the best path forward. 

In order to broaden the range of strategies and ideas being considered, ask your team:

• How might success or failure present for each of the options you are exploring?

• What are the consequences of not trying? What are the consequences of failing?

• How can we create an environment of support that allows us to fail safely?

• What can we learn from exploring this?

Remember, choosing not to try something new is also a decision and one that assumes the current model will continue to succeed, even in a changing landscape. This mindset is hard, especially in organizations with real financial pressure. But just like in avalanche terrain, not engaging with the reality of change might be the greater risk.

Step 2: Using Margins to Absorb Uncertainty

If something doesn’t work, that doesn’t automatically mean it was the wrong call. As humans, many of us strive to categorize the world by sensemaking; rationalizing our previous experiences and drawing conclusions based on correlations.  As a leader, you must strive to combat your bias, avoid drawing conclusions, and instead model a learner's mindset by inviting your team to process together. If the outcome is known, do your best to withhold the result as it will introduce confirmation bias to the group's processing. Work together to review objective data, listen to front line employees as they analyze the impact of environmental and organizational influence, and focus on learning together. Highlighting that we are trying to be right, we’re trying to make the best decisions we can with the most complete picture possible. 

We need to normalize questioning, invite skepticism, and see disagreement as a form of care not subversion. We can achieve this through feedback coaching and training on: separating feedback from the individual; strategies for conveying feedback effectively; and tools for implementing suggestions. This is most effectively implemented in a way that circumvents hierarchy and prioritizes a multi-source feedback system at all levels of the organization. 

Probabilistic Thinking

Probabilistic thinking helps individuals communicate their level of confidence in the decision and understand where there are gaps to be explored. An example from Alaska is that we were discussing the likelihood of a particular slope being wind affected at the ridgecrest. I articulated that I was 70% sure that it would be wind affected because of the weather telemetry, aspect, and exposure. My partners felt less sure, 40%, because they had seen some similar features remain sheltered from the wind. Discussing probability helped us to identify a gap in our understanding of each other's opinion and we all learned more about each other's perspective, hopefully leading to a more informed decision… However, we should use this strategy cautiously, humans are often not the most effective at accurately determining probability. So while it may help your team identify areas of uncertainty to be explored we should avoid making decisions solely based on probability.  If you want to apply probability to your decision making it is essential that the probabilities are developed by people who are experts in the topic AND have good ability to think in statistically relevant ways. When this isn’t an option it is essential that you build in a margin to account for your uncertainty. 

Ask your team:

• What are the range of potential negative outcomes for this decision?

  • Going bankrupt? Losing $50,000? Getting caught in a large avalanche?

• What is the probability this works?

  • What info are we using to back that up? Is that info biased?

• Where is our uncertainty coming from?

• What margins can we build in to account for it?

• Are we hearing from everyone in the room — especially the voices that disagree?

This kind of thinking helps teams break out of silos. It also encourages curiosity, humility, and critical thinking. The more we ask, “What are we missing?”, the better our decisions get and the more inclusive our processes become.

When I’m skiing with a team of guides, we gather every morning to assess avalanche hazard. It’s a collaborative process. We map out the likelihood and consequence of potential avalanche problems. We open and close terrain together and do so with a shared understanding of success and through collective decision-making. Through this process we are identifying our uncertainty by closing terrain based on that day's unique hazards to build in a margin for our operation.

The simple solution might be to not engage in avalanche terrain and instead ski a lower angle pitch below tree line, this would create a large margin of safety. However, while this may seem like the easy choice, but there are also potential downsides; you may lose client trust or interest, you may be choosing to ski in snow or terrain that increases the likelihood of an injury, or you may not have access to non-avalanche terrain at all, as is the case in Alaska.  . Similar downsides exit in programs as well; you may lose interest if you don’t develop new and interesting programs, or you may lose trust from your clientele if you are not incorporating new best practices and trends in the industry. If the risk is large and/or you have a great deal of uncertainty you should consider building in larger margins; start with a pilot program that tests the market interest or budget for a 10% loss in the event the new approach is ineffective. By consistently avoiding challenging terrain, and choosing the “safe” alternative your organization could be taking on the risk of losing trust and becoming irrelevant. 

Step 3: Learning in a Wicked Learning Environment

In both leadership and avalanche terrain, we often operate in what’s called a wicked learning environment. These are conditions where the feedback loops are unclear, delayed, incorrect, irrelevant, or even nonexistent.

You might ski a slope that has poor structure and is prone to avalanche, but it doesn’t actually slide. So you assume your decision-making was sound. But maybe you just got lucky. Maybe if you skied 15 feet to the left, over a buried rock, the whole slope would have slid.

There may have been luck involved and there may have been additional variables that were not considered in the decision making. These unknowns may have had just as much influence on the outcome as the decision-making. This wicked learning environment is the black box in which our outcomes are produced and understanding this should encourage program leaders to view all outcomes with a critical lens. Just because your organization was 400k in the black in 2022 does not mean that this is a trend that will continue in 2023 if you follow the same model.

In order to learn from these experiences it is essential that your team create a set of group norms in relation to decision making and personal development. Help each other make decisions by asking each other questions, disagreeing in an effort to construct the most accurate view of the world.

Reflective Questions Lead to Better Decisions

As a team, we must reflect on our successes and failures and learn from them. 

• Why did we think this had a 70% chance of success?

• What info were we using to make our decision and what might we have missed?

• Were we seeking confirmation, or challenging our assumptions?

• Did we bring in perspectives that differ from our own?

• Did our decision making actually lead to success/failure?

It is natural to avoid conflict, to want to avoid being “the devil’s advocate”, or to not want to seem like you’re pushing against the vision of a leader or the organization. However, this leads us to another heuristic, the acceptance trap, where you may adjust your behavior in a desire to be accepted by your peers. This moderation of your opinion may help you become likeable, but by withholding your perspective or information, it is not helping the team. It is weakening it. 

Consider these tools to help with facilitating discussion and reflection in your organization:

• Create a role that is explicitly tasked with playing devil's advocate. Asking; “What can be improved with our plan?” or “Why should we proceed with the plan?”

• Assign team members the task of debating the opposite position, an approach in which the winner has the best debate outcome, which is not necessarily their chosen outcome. This helps reframe the goal from your position being chosen, to a process oriented form of achievement where “winning” comes in the form of making the best decision as a team.

Final Tracks

Many outdoor programs are struggling to find their path forward in the tumultuous sociopolitical climate. Grant funding, the economy, technology, and changing student interests are just a few of the many factors leading to programs’ distress. Finding a path forward is not best done with a head down, but rather by listening, being reflective, taking risks, and learning from your team. Whether you're breaking trail in the Chugach or trying to chart a path for your program, the fundamentals are the same:

• Don’t conflate outcomes with decisions, be constantly reflective.

• Don’t let familiarity stifle innovation, there are benefits to risk.

• Create an environment that encourages learning from failure and success by:

  • Clearly defining success 

  • Encouraging disagreement

  • Reflecting on the process

  • Speaking in terms of probability

  • Being aware of individual biases

  • Asking, “Were we lucky, or were we good?” after successful trips

Are we skiing this line because it’s the best choice or just because it’s the one we’ve always skied? Let your curiosity drive you. Let your team challenge you. That’s how we move forward in the outdoor industry, one thoughtful turn at a time.

References

American Avalanche Institute. (n.d.). ALPTRUTh and FACETS: Two acronyms that can save your life. https://www.americanavalancheinstitute.com/alptruth-and-facets-two-acronyms-that-can-save-your-life/

Boilen, S. (Host), & Goldie, L. (Guest). (n.d.). Sara Boilen x Larry Goldie [Audio podcast episode]. In The Avalanche Hour Podcast. https://www.theavalanchehour.com/

Duke, A. (2018). Thinking in bets: Making smarter decisions when you don't have all the facts. Portfolio/Penguin.

Ebert, P. A., & Morreau, M. (2022). Safety in numbers: How social choice theory can inform avalanche risk management. Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning, 22(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/14729679.2021.2012216

Maxwell, J. C. (2002). Teamwork makes the dream work. J. Countryman.

McCammon, I. (2002). Evidence of heuristic traps in recreational avalanche accidents. Proceedings of the International Snow Science Workshop 2002, 244–251.

Feel free to contact us at Experiential Consulting if you have questions or concerns that we can help you with, and subscribe to receive future blog posts like this.