An example

Shackleton has been taught in business schools for more than fifty years. Harvard Business School made him a case study. The Pentagon cites him in the training of its officers. And the more closely you reread his story, the more you understand why. It is not only a story of courage, nor of resilience, nor even of leadership in the heroic sense. It is the story of a man who had understood, with great subtlety, how human beings work when everything goes wrong.

Ernest Shackleton was a manager, a real one. The kind who thinks long and hard about the composition of a team before thinking about equipment. The kind who knows why you keep a banjo on board when every kilo counts. Who takes care to sleep in the same tent as the resident grumbler to soften the mood. Who shares the cooking chores when he is, on board, the supreme authority.

His 1914 Antarctic expedition is, on paper, a spectacular failure. None of his objectives was reached. His ship sank. His dream collapsed. And yet twenty-eight men came home alive after twenty-two months without contact with the world, in conditions where you would have bet on zero survivors. Here is how, and above all, here is what it tells us about the art of leading.

Recruiting for character

Five thousand men wrote to Shackleton in 1913 to join the expedition. He met a few hundred, sometimes for only five minutes, sometimes for several hours. His interviews remained famous for their strangeness. He asked a physicist whether he could sing. He questioned a sailor about his sense of humour. He hired a doctor who had simply answered the question "Why do you want to come?" with this disarming sentence: "Because I think you look all right."

What Shackleton was looking for could not be read in a CV. He was looking for men able to hold up the morale of a room by their mere presence. "Operational optimists", as we would say today. He chose Frank Hurley because he had survived alone a failed Australian expedition. Tom Crean because he had been told this Irishman was simply unbreakable. Leonard Hussey, the meteorologist, because he played the banjo. He was right about all three. A large part of what would follow rests on these choices made in his office, months before departure.

Leaving when everything says to stay

On 8 August 1914, the Endurance weighs anchor. Four days earlier, the British Empire declared war on Germany. Shackleton immediately telegraphs the Admiralty to offer his crew and his ship to the war effort. Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, replies in a single word: "Proceed."

On the island of South Georgia, the last stop before the white continent, the Norwegian whalers warn: the ice of the Weddell Sea is the worst they have ever seen. It would be wise to wait for the following year. Shackleton listens, thanks them, and leaves anyway. This decision is probably the worst he made in his whole life. On 18 January 1915, just one day's sailing from the Antarctic coast, the ice closes around the ship. For the twenty-two months that follow, nothing will go as planned, and everything will depend on what this man is capable of doing.

Routine, that invisible architecture

For ten months, the Endurance drifts with the pack ice. Shackleton understands from the first week that they will probably not get out before the following spring. His very first decision is simple: he sets up a strict timetable. Breakfast at nine. Inspection of the dogs. Scientific work for some, maintenance of the ship for others. Football on the ice when the weather allows. Evening meal taken all together, the commander next to the deckhand. Reading aloud. Small banjo concerts in the evening.

This may seem anecdotal, but Shackleton had grasped something few leaders understand in prolonged crises: the enemy is not danger, it is emptiness. When there is nothing left to do, the mind wanders towards fear, and from there towards division. Routine is not a comfort, it is a genuine mental architecture. It protects the team from an inner collapse often more dangerous than the ordeal itself.

He also insisted on the equality of chores. Officers scrubbed the floors. The captain peeled the potatoes. Shackleton himself willingly took the harshest night watches, not as a demagogic posture, but out of a deep conviction. A team where the leader does not eat better than his men has no reason to mutiny. And it feels respected, which changes everything.

Handling the difficult one

The carpenter Henry McNish is the stone in the shoe of the expedition. Competent, indispensable even, but embittered, argumentative, capable of dragging others into doubt. When the ship begins to give way under the pressure of the ice, McNish refuses an order, arguing that his merchant sailor's contract no longer applies since the ship has sunk. Another commander would probably have sanctioned him. Shackleton, instead, gathers the crew, reads the contract aloud, closes the discussion in two minutes, then installs McNish in his own tent for the months that follow.

He applied the same approach to all potentially difficult elements: keep them close, not to watch them but to prevent them from contaminating the rest of the group. McNish ended up building the boat that would save Shackleton. He did it reluctantly, but he did it remarkably well. A manager does not need to like all his people to lead well. Above all, he needs to know where to place them, and to have the elegance to accept their rough edges rather than trying to belittle them.

Changing mission in a single day

On 27 October 1915, after ten months of imprisonment in the ice, the pressure becomes unbearable. The wood of the ship gives way with cracks heard for kilometres. Shackleton gives the order to abandon. On 21 November, the Endurance slides vertically into the black water and disappears in nine minutes. Shackleton writes in his diary that evening only three words: "She's gone, boys."

And this is where the manager does something remarkable: in less than twenty-four hours, he simply states the new mission: bring the twenty-eight men home alive. No displayed regret for the lost objective, no long nostalgia, no debate about what might have been. The mission has changed and the new mission is clear, back to work.

How many companies stay attached to the initial plan long after reality has decided? How many leaders confuse perseverance with stubbornness? Shackleton accomplished in a day what most executive committees take months to endorse. This ability to acknowledge the pivot without making a drama of it is one of the most precious, and rarest, qualities of the leader's craft.

The hard decisions, made fast and alone

Frank Hurley has six hundred glass photographic plates. Shackleton tells him he can keep one hundred and fifty. No more. The weight would kill men during the march ahead. Hurley sits down on the ice, sorts for hours in the cold, then breaks the other four hundred and fifty himself by smashing them against the ground, so as not to give in to the temptation to go back.

A few days later, Shackleton orders the killing of the dogs. Sixty-nine dogs to which the men had become deeply attached. Mrs Chippy, the carpenter's cat, is killed the same day. McNish would never forgive him this decision. Shackleton accepts this resentment without trying to defend himself. He made a cold, painful but necessary calculation: one cat and sixty-nine dogs against twenty-eight men. The calculation, in his eyes, is not up for discussion, and he owns it.

A manager who dodges unpopular decisions makes others bear them, or worse, lets them happen by default, which comes to the same thing but with less elegance. Shackleton made these decisions alone, announced them without pathos and carried alone the resentment that followed. He had understood that in a crisis, slowness is often more dangerous than imperfection.

Going where the danger is

In April 1916, after five more months on the drifting pack ice, the men finally manage to launch the boats and reach Elephant Island. For the first time in four hundred and ninety-seven days, they set foot on solid ground. The relief is immense, but the island is a dead end. No boat ever passes there. To stay would mean dying slowly, forgotten.

Shackleton then decides to go and find help himself. One thousand three hundred kilometres across the Drake Passage, probably the most dangerous sea in the world, in a seven-metre boat patched together as best he could by McNish. He chooses five men to accompany him: Worsley the navigator, Crean the indestructible, McNish (yes, him again), Vincent and McCarthy. He does not ask for volunteers. He knows, at this stage, who will be able to hold on.

And he embarks himself on the most perilous part of the whole expedition. Not out of bravado, he follows a conviction. A manager does not send his team to the front while staying in safety. For sixteen days of a raging sea, sleeping two hours at a time, permanently soaked, he holds the tiller in the worst moments. On 5 May, a monstrous wave nearly capsizes the boat. They bail for hours to stay afloat. On 10 May, at last, they sight the cliffs of South Georgia.

Delegating with trust

On Elephant Island, Shackleton had left Frank Wild in charge of the twenty-two remaining men. Wild is one of the great forgotten figures of this story, and that is a shame, because his role is essential. Without title, without glory, he held the fort during the one hundred and twenty-eight days of waiting, in a makeshift shelter made of two upturned boats. Every morning, he had each man's bag prepared for an immediate departure, and every morning he repeated the same sentence to the men: "Light your tobacco, the boss comes today." He said it one hundred and twenty-eight times.

Shackleton had chosen Wild because he knew this man would hold on. He had left him total authority, without control, without detailed instructions. Shackleton's delegation was not procedural, it was founded on trust. He had identified the man, entrusted him with the role and disappeared for four months knowing his lieutenant would do what was needed. Wild held on. It would have been terribly easy not to hold on, and that is precisely what makes his role admirable.

Leaving no one behind

After crossing South Georgia on foot (thirty-six hours without stopping, across mountains no one had ever mapped), Shackleton finally reaches the whaling station at Stromness. But the story is not over. The twenty-two men left behind must be fetched. He tries a first time with a whaler, pushed back by the ice. A second time with a Uruguayan ship, pushed back again. A third time with an English schooner, same result. The fourth attempt, at last, with a small Chilean tug named the Yelcho, succeeds on 30 August 1916.

When the Yelcho approaches Elephant Island, Shackleton counts the silhouettes on the beach. Twenty-two. All of them. None has died. He collapses on the deck and the first thing he utters is not a word of glory but a question, almost whispered: "Are they all well?" This obsession with "no one left along the way" is certainly not a sentimental character trait; one can say it is a rigorous managerial discipline. And it is no doubt what distinguishes a true leader from a mere project manager.

The model, a hundred and ten years later

Shackleton returned to England in 1917. The country was counting its dead by the hundreds of thousands and had little patience left for polar explorers. He died of a heart attack five years later, at forty-seven, aboard a new ship on its way to Antarctica, once again. None of the great geographical objectives of his life was ultimately reached, which makes his fate almost melancholy.

His management model, however, crossed the century without a wrinkle. Certainly not because it is likeable, but because it works. Select for character more than for the diploma. Impose routine to prevent inner collapse. Eat at the same table as your teams. Keep the difficult elements close rather than pushing them away. Pivot in a day when reality demands it. Make the hard decisions fast and alone, accepting the resentment they will leave. Go yourself where the danger is greatest. Delegate with total trust, or not at all. And never, under any pretext, leave anyone behind.

In March 2022, underwater drones found the wreck of the Endurance three thousand metres beneath the Weddell Sea. The wood is intact. The name is still perfectly legible on the stern. While we were talking about transformation, agility and inclusive leadership in corporate seminars, Shackleton's ship was waiting under the ice, perfectly preserved, like a lesson we have perhaps not quite finished listening to.

To go further

  • To read: Endurance by Alfred Lansing (1959), the definitive account based on the survivors' diaries. Shackleton's Way by Margot Morrell and Stephanie Capparell, which dissects the management model from primary sources.
  • To watch: Endurance (National Geographic, 2024), directed by Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, the Oscar winners of Free Solo. Available on Disney+ and Hulu.
  • To study: the Harvard Business School case "Leadership in Crisis: Ernest Shackleton and the Epic Voyage of the Endurance" (reference 803127), taught in MBAs for more than twenty years.