Motivated Individuals – Great Teams


Getting up at 4:30am in the morning on your holiday may seem like a bit of a daft thing to be doing; in the end holidays are meant to be relaxing and a time to unwind.  Some people enjoy lazing on a beach.  Unfortunately, that’s not my idea of a holiday – my ideal holiday is cramming as much “stuff” in to the shortest possible time.  “Stuff” is defined as ski touring (where I’ve been), ice climbing, rock climbing, skiing.

So what’s the reason for getting up so early and how does this relate to anything at all!!!

Well the reason for getting up early (especially in huts) – is because the hut guardians generally want you on the hill early so you can be back early.  The reasons are probably three fold:

  • In winter the afternoons bring a greater chance of avalanches.
  • In summer the afternoon brings the possibility of thunderstorms.
  • It also gives you the most amount of time to achieve your goal – i.e. go up a hill/mountain!

I’m not one for getting up early, however, on holiday it seems even easier to get up than it does on a work day.  It is quite simple go to bed a lot earlier than normal so that you can ensure that you are fresh in the morning – there is also not much to do in a hut after dinner!

When you get up in the morning at “silly o’clock”, there is an enviable buzz around the hut – people are psyched for the day ahead.  This energy is really amazing, you can feel it flowing through the building. 

This is the perfect example of building teams around motivated individuals (read principle 5), if a software team had the same buzz as my fellow mountaineers/hut goers then it would probably build kick-ass software.  Quite assumptive I know!

My mind now ponders at how to get this motivation flowing through everyone in a team; is getting people up at 4:30am in the morning reasonable!!!

Having a shared goal would be a good start, and finding out what motivates each individual in the team…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *