The Wrong Finish Line

More people die descending Everest than climbing it. That's because reaching the summit isn't the goal. Getting home safely is.

We think the climb is the hard part. We train for it. We feel euphoria when we reach the summit. We linger and celebrate.

But the hard part is often the descent. The endless stairs pounding our knees and feet. The fatigue after twelve or thirteen hours on the trail. The afternoon sun starting to disappear when you're still hours from camp.

This is the same in leadership. We're focused on the summit, not getting home. We prepare for the presentation, but the presentation isn't the goal. It's what happens because of the presentation that matters.

We work for years to get promoted, then discover the promotion wasn't the finish line. It was the starting line. I remember working incredibly hard in my late twenties to become a Vice-President of a small consulting firm. Not long after the promotion, I had a surprising realization: Oh... this isn't over. This is the job now. I'd spent years becoming the person who could earn the promotion; now I had to become the person who could do it well. The promotion wasn’t the finish line, it was the entry fee.

We celebrate signing the client, then forget that delivering exceptional work is what determines whether they stay.

Even outside of work, we do this. We prepare for the wedding, not the marriage. When I was pregnant with my first born, I read What to Expect When You're Expecting and about ten other pregnancy books. I prepared for the labour and the birth.  I didn’t read a single book about actually being a parent (those came later). The birth wasn't what changed my life. Becoming a parent did.

The summit is exciting because it's visible. But we become so focused on reaching the milestone that we forget to prepare for the chapter that follows. So many of the things we celebrate are actually milestones, not destinations. They get photographed and celebrated (as they should), but they were never the end of the story.

Maybe that's why milestones matter so much. They don’t mark the end of something. They ask something different from us than the journey to get there did. They ask us to become someone new.

Instead of asking:

How do we get there?

Ask yourself:

What will it take to thrive once we arrive?

Who do I need to become for what comes next?

Those questions determine whether the milestone actually matters.

The summit makes for a great photograph. But milestones aren't the end of the journey. They're the beginning of the next version of you.