Lessons in Situational Awareness: Grand Canyon, Part 2

My family and I recently spent two weeks out in Grand Canyon, which included an eight-day rafting trip down the Colorado River. We were completely isolated from anything going on outside the canyon, which left plenty of time for conversation and reflection. This is my second piece sharing some of those reflections.

My family doesn’t go camping a lot. Hardly ever in fact… my wife and I last went camping about 25 years ago. And on this trip, our kids were sleeping outside for the first time in their lives. We spent seven nights sleeping on sand dunes on the side of the Colorado River, so it was a crash course for our children. The heat was intense (it got up to 110 some days), the sun was relentless, and we were forced to develop a different standard of “good hygiene.”

In my last post, I wrote about the experience of being completely cut off from the rest of the world, and the sensations that created. It allowed a great deal of mental bandwidth to be redirected. And that translated into a heightened sense of “situational awareness” of our immediate surroundings. When we have our faces buried in our phones, we miss so much. When we turn our gaze outward, lots more things come into focus.

Here are a few things I noticed during our trip, with some business lessons built in:

Lesson #1: When traveling down a river rapid, follow the smooth water as long as possible. Our guides taught us to always look for the “tongue” of the rapid, the path where the water stays smooth the longest. That usually signifies the best path through the early rocks. I saw this over and over again, in rapid after rapid. Follow the tongue as you enter the rough water.

BUT… But the next nugget of information is equally important. Once you have followed the tongue and dropped in, all that water has to do something. As you proceed downward into the rapid, the biggest waves almost always follow the tongue. So your effort to follow the smooth water through the rocks is usually the smartest play. But eventually you will have to deal with the consequences. The rough water is coming, one way or another.

In business terms, when approaching a “choppy environment,” business owners and leaders usually do well to keep things smooth and moving forward as long as possible. If you can avoid some of the early “rocks” when business gets rough, that’s great. But before your business can exit on the other side, you will always have to navigate some rough water. At some point, you just have to get through it, no matter how long you delay the difficulty. I love this metaphor. When we see a challenging period coming, it is often (but not always) best to keep things moving forward as long as possible. But you will have to deal with the problems eventually, even if you are able to delay those problems for a little while. The rough water always must be navigated.

Lesson #2: When you are in a canyon, most of the information on the maps is irrelevant to you. Maps are super valuable, of course. But if you are hiking or rafting in a canyon, and you can’t see above and outside of the rim, then most of the topographical information on the map is irrelevant to you. You can’t see it. Which means the only really valuable aspect of the map is the shape of the canyon itself. And the best way to keep track of your progress is to count the number of turns you are making, and notice how many left turns and how many right turns have been made… that’s how you keep track of where you are.

In my business life, this makes me think about the data and information I pay attention to. Not every piece of data is helpful, and knowing what to ignore is a powerful survival skill. This metaphor works incredibly well in today’s business environment, because there is more information available than ever before. So knowing what to pay attention to, and what to ignore, will be essential to your success.

Lesson #3: If you arrive at a good and safe place to spend the night, stay there, no matter what time it is. There are lots of places to camp in Grand Canyon. But not all of them are available to you every night, because there are other groups also looking to camp. And some campgrounds are less ideal for your group than others. So, as you make your journey, don’t expect to travel until an exact specific time. When you are in the wilderness, the environment doesn’t always cooperate with your ideal timing. If you arrive at a good place to spend the night, even if you are ending your day a little earlier than expected, stop… make camp… and take advantage of what you have right in front of you. If you pass it by, and decide to just go a little longer, the next option (or two or three) might not be available to you.

In business terms, this means be agile in your thinking… don’t allow mental rigidity to force you into a bad decision. When something good comes along, and you see benefit for your company, take advantage of it. Even if you have not gotten as far as you were hoping to. If you rigidly stick to a plan, and move right by a good opportunity hoping for more, you may be passing up the best thing that may come your way for a while.

As I have written many times before… the simplest lessons are usually the most valuable. And as my family has re-entered our normal life back in New England, I have tried to capture some notes on what the Grand Canyon taught me. Situational awareness is an essential skill, in the wilderness, in business and in every aspect of our lives.

Good luck, stay safe, and have a great day.