Abstract
Straight to the Top and Beyond: Nine Keys for Meeting the Challenge of Changing Times:
In Straight to the Top and Beyond, John Amatt, mountain climber and C.E.O. uses the metaphor of adventure - climbing Mount Everest - to articulate an innovative strategy for addressing the challenges of a rapidly-changing world. He believes that to succeed in the 21st century, we must learn to be risk takers; to become visionary and adventurous in dealing with the new social, political, and economic environments in which we will be forced to live. Straight to the Top and Beyond is a fascinating and inspiring account of the author's climb to the peak of Mount Everest; it is also a call to businessmen and women to become adventurers; to seek out difficulty and to stretch their potential.
Biography
For over 30 years, John Amatt has led expeditions to remote regions of Northern Norway, Peru, Nepal, China, Greenland and has explored areas of Arctic Canada on six occasions, making many first ascents of previously unclimbed peaks. At the age of 20, John spent two weeks lashed to minute ledges while making the first ever ascent of Europe's highest and steepest mountain precipice - the 5000 foot "Vertical Mile" Troll Wall in Norway. Later in 1981, he was the leader of an early mountaineering expedition to Western China, which made a lightweight ascent of a 24,757 foot mountain - the highest peak in the world to have been ascended and descended entirely on skis.
More recently, John fulfilled a lifelong dream by organizing and taking part in Canada's first successful expedition to reach the top of the world - the 29,028 foot summit of Mount Everest, the world's tallest mountain. An educator by training, John established One Step Beyond WorldWide in 1984 and he has since delivered more than 1,500 keynote presentations and seminars to total audiences of over 750,000 people in 35 countries around the world. His mission is to encourage people to push beyond their self-imposed limitations, to be more personally accountable for their own actions, and to embrace effective teamwork by valuing the contribution of others.
Skiing up Muztagata, Western China (above left) The skiing was not difficult, but at over 22,000 feet, the air is thin and the loads were heavy.
John's best-selling book, 'One Step Beyond: Rediscovering the Adventure Attitude', articulates his belief that humankind must apply the spirit of adventure to the challenges of daily life, if we are to cope with rapid change and convert it to our own advantage. In his latest book, 'Straight to the Top and Beyond', he uses the metaphor of adventure to develop a nine step approach for scaling the heights in today's unpredictable global environments.
