Imagine scaling Everest Base Camp, not just for the thrill of it, but to draw deep life and leadership lessons. Our guest, Ketul Patel, is a seasoned supply chain and operations executive, and a climber who dared to reach the Everest Base Camp despite naysayers pointing out his age. The challenges he faced, the motivations that propelled him, and the importance of a strong 'why' in his journey, all parallel the rigors of a transformative corporate journey.
Patel's narrative takes an interesting turn as he delves into how his expedition shaped his perspective on team leadership, conflict resolution, and the essence of cultural contribution in building successful teams. His experience with his group of hikers, guides, and Sherpas is remarkably relatable to corporate dynamics, providing profound insights on selling transformation internally. This episode isn't just about a thrilling climb; it's about how Patel's journey serves as a unique lens to view personal and business transformations. So join us, as we traverse in Patel's footsteps, scaling not just a mountain, but a metaphor for corporate success.
Imagine scaling Everest Base Camp, not just for the thrill of it, but to draw deep life and leadership lessons. Our guest, Ketul Patel, is a seasoned supply chain and operations executive, and a climber who dared to reach the Everest Base Camp despite naysayers pointing out his age. The challenges he faced, the motivations that propelled him, and the importance of a strong 'why' in his journey, all parallel the rigors of a transformative corporate journey.
Patel's narrative takes an interesting turn as he delves into how his expedition shaped his perspective on team leadership, conflict resolution, and the essence of cultural contribution in building successful teams. His experience with his group of hikers, guides, and Sherpas is remarkably relatable to corporate dynamics, providing profound insights on selling transformation internally. This episode isn't just about a thrilling climb; it's about how Patel's journey serves as a unique lens to view personal and business transformations. So join us, as we traverse in Patel's footsteps, scaling not just a mountain, but a metaphor for corporate success.
Welcome to the Third Growth Option podcast, where we talk with business leaders and innovators hungry to drive growth that can be faster than internal organic growth and less risky than acquisition. Your moderator is Bernal Dunke-Schpuller, chief Sherpa and CEO at Realign, who has led private equity-owned distributors through turnarounds and growth. With battle-proven leaders from all frontiers, we want to provoke thinking about business growth beyond conventional wisdom and binary choices.
Speaker 2:Hey, I'm Bernal, your host, talking today with Catoel Patel, both a Mount Everest climber and a supply chain and operations executive with companies like Poppin and Wayfair and Michael Kors and other big companies, currently writing a book on your experience climbing Everest Base Camp. So, as somebody who calls himself a Sherpa and is a Sherpa but has never been on Mount Everest, I'm super excited about having you on this podcast. Welcome to Third Growth Option podcast, catoel.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Bernal, and I appreciate the opportunity and it was very kind of you to mention about the Everest, but I want to also clarify that it was the Everest Base Camp. I still haven't yet taken that next step to climb all the way to the Everest, but I appreciate the opportunity here and certainly to share my experience and how it really relates to all my years in the corporate world and supply chain.
Speaker 2:So you and your wife were part of a group right who spent, I think, 11 days in the Himalayas between Nepal and Tibet. Now you're writing a book about how that journey, those 11 days to base camp, revolutionized You're thinking. I love the sort of analogy between climbing a mountain and climbing the corporate ladder in the US and transforming businesses, but let's just kind of start. What made you begin that journey to Everest Base Camp?
Speaker 3:It's really about right, the why, and we talked a lot about me and my wife and especially starting out first for myself as well as to why would I want to do this right? And obviously it's a much more challenging, herculean effort that I had ever undertaken. And as I kind of started to reflect on my career lifespan as well and I started to see that I've always been very open and embracing challenges throughout my life and as I came to this point I was looking for some challenge right to make it less monotonous here. And as we started to kind of explore and looking at the fitness and where I was during my age group and whatnot, I felt that this was the right time to kind of take that on. And then also something not for records or anything, but what would it be like to kind of really experience something that probably 99, 99.5% of the people may not have, and then certainly go from there, and I think that is where everything started.
Speaker 2:So it was kind of curiosity and see how far you can push the envelope, in a way right.
Speaker 3:Exactly, and that was also the thinking as I kind of went into it in terms of, hey, not to let your ego come in the middle, in terms of, hey, I want to do it, but also, as my doctors reminded me, right, that be realistic as to where you are at this point and however far you will go.
Speaker 2:How old are you? Because you're talking about doctors and you're talking about age, so now I've got to ask how old were you when you, when you started the journey?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would salmon upper, fifties or lower, lower fifties.
Speaker 2:I was gonna say you're not in the upper fifties.
Speaker 3:And so obviously there's a risk factor there as well, right, but I think the important point was that to be really enjoy the journey right, and that is something that I also reflect on, even my my past corporate life as well, that is, I have touched so many organizations going through transformations, whether helping them go through the transformation or be on the receiving end of the transformation. To have that enjoy it right, have that fun, as you never know where you may come out on the other side, and so I think that is how it all started, and then, certainly, in discussions with my wife she was also quite a bit of a motivator for me as well that yeah, let's do it and we'll see how far we go and where we would go. That would be probably the highest we have ever been.
Speaker 3:Which we knew so and that's how it all started. How high is base camp? In an altitude base camp is about seventeen thousand five hundred feet Right, so some somewhere around fifty five hundred meters, fifty four, sixty eight to be precise For those of us who count these things seventeen thousand five hundred feet.
Speaker 2:that is amazing. So now you said climbing ever space camp provided a clearer understanding in terms of what it means climbing through a business transformation. Right, take me through sort of the analogy between climbing ever space camp and climbing through a business transformation supply chain transformation, digital transformation, whatever kind of business transformation you wanna Talk about absolutely.
Speaker 3:When I talked about the transformation, it is Even the transformation I was going through internally personally, right, whether it's emotional transformation, physical transformation, talking about the journey itself, preparing for the transformation. The big question we talked about is why I wanna do it right, and there's always a why and what, and as I as actually going through that journey, that track, you know, I reflected upon all the transformations that I've been involved in, whether I've been leading or have actually been part of it, and also looking at the organizations that go through it right, some more actively, some other right on the outside, and I could relate to all the way from even the question of why right, why transform and what is it that you want to transform, our very fundamental questions that organizations of any given size, right, even in a relatively small to medium size companies versus Large, multi billion dollar corporations, have to answer. But then, as they undertake that, how do you sell that internally, the transformation, which is the selling I had to do internally, for myself, you know, between my wife and I, and then also to my kids. As to you know, is this something that this is something we really feel passionate about and we want to take on, and there were very Open conversations we had to have, similarly, as the organizations go through the transformation, in preparing for it, and many times we ended up actually going forward.
Speaker 3:But even when organizations kind of do their own assessments, they may not choose to go forward as well from multiple different reasons, and once they take that on and they go through this transformation of you know I also saw how beautifully you also talk about on your website in terms of your value proposition banner around finding the right mountains, right which mountains to climb and which not to climb to get to you the final.
Speaker 3:You know your final goal, destination, and that is the assessment that the organizations have to go through as well, and as to why they're doing it, what they're doing it, what are the things that they would want to avoid, and then how they go through those. In my case, 1112 days that we talk about that we had to go through, and every day was a new day, as our morning would depend on. You know what the weather looks like today. How much is going to rain, are there any landslides? That has just happened on our path, that we have to time it, and you never know what hurdles you are going to come across. Similarly, as organizations go through these transformations, I can relate so well in terms of how they are preparing for it, as well as how they are surrounding adapting themselves, with the right resources, tools, equipment and the team leadership To kind of make sure that they come out on the other end in a much more successful way.
Speaker 2:I work with clients that are on both sides of the spectrum of love to plan, or believe in planning and maybe need some help planning, or are just completely reactive. You know what is it ready? Shoot aim, no planning at all. So I, you know, we all know people on both sides of the spectrum and in the middle of it, but the fact is that it would be suicidal to track up through the Himalayas for eleven days to get to base camp at seventeen thousand five hundred feet altitude without any plans. You've got to really, really plan and, as you say, you got to adapt that plan because you know, something happened last night that nobody could have planned for. Now, you, you were telling a story of the crossing of a bridge that you planned for a certain time of day because I think you said goats were using that bridge other times of the day. Talk about that. I love that story. Talk about.
Speaker 2:That's right inventing of the goats.
Speaker 3:No, and I think you know that is something, although we were kind of alerted Buy our head guide there that, as you see kind of cattle going through, yeah, and whether it be yaks or, you know, bulls or goats, and but we have to be mindful because we are basically in their territory, right, they use that day in, day out For the daily chores, whether you know just grazing or taking tools, equipment, whatever that may be, you know, up for the rap in the mountains. So when they have their specific time as to when they kind of come out and they go and use that same path that we hike on. So they also make sure that we are being respectful of that and they have literally the path figured out in their mind, so they don't need Any kind of a guide and they just follow every day what they are doing. So you have to actually respect that and give them that way, and so that takes up time.
Speaker 3:So when you have to pause and stay on the side and let them go, and we're talking about these long queue when that hurt comes in and it could easily, and one of the days I remember that it actually added almost about hour, hour and a half To our track time and when you are trying to get to the next destination before dark because it's very, very risky to kind of hike in the dark you have to be mindful of those things and what time you're leaving. If you delay too much or if you take a long pause for lunch and then kind of gets into a conflicting situation there, it may add up your track time and put you in trouble later on, right? So I think that is something that we have to be very Mindful of as we go or tracking up.
Speaker 2:tell me a little bit about the people that Were on the journey. It was eleven hikers, climbers like yours, yourselves, you and your wife, plus, sure pass, how many, how many people were on their team?
Speaker 3:Yes, so we had, apart from my wife and I, we had another eight kind of group of friends, so we were ten of us hiking and we were supported by the group of another three guides and five sure pass. And the sure pass were really just to kind of take our clothings and you know, all our our bags and accessories and tents and everything for their up and really the guides, with the one who are helping us navigate and there was a kind of a guide in the front, another one at the back and then the one person always kind of Navigate it kind of the teams that were not either too fast nor slow and the word in the middle right.
Speaker 2:And you are in a executive position in corporate America. You have people reporting to you on your team, you are working with teams of other Executives and you know other verticals and the corporation, the way you look at Team leadership and beating people in corporate America. How has that changed through those eleven days in the Himalayas with eight friends of yours and three Guides and five sure pass, because there was all kinds of dynamics between that doesn't plus group of people and different jobs that they had to do, and sometimes that probably went splendidly and sometimes maybe there was a little bit of human frailty that showed it's that weird it's head, I would imagine.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and this is something that you know. I'm kind of bringing out in my book as well a lot about the team dynamics and that was probably one of the most profound learnings and what I could also correlate to my corporate life, which I had Also have much deeper understanding and deeper appreciation actually of how the teams get formulated, starting all the way from leadership, and oftentimes as the company's organizations go through these transformations, or even as as I Formulate my teams, we tend to gravitate more towards picking people who are like minded, who thinks exactly as how I think, and so that you don't want to take on additional risks there with the ones who may provide different perspectives and same similarly, in the transformation and there's a Gamut of different philosophies, writing terms of the business, chemistry is of different individuals. That comes to play when you're forming your teams, and I have a much, much deeper appreciation of looking at the teams and building the capabilities as well as picking the personalities. That compliments me as well.
Speaker 2:That's so interesting because you're right, I think we in our social life we end up sort of hanging out with like minded people, or we might belong to A biking group or sports group or you know chess club or whatever, and that's like minded people hanging out together. So that's human tendency, I think, that sort of normal human socializing. And then we take that into business where it can be very dangerous when we have a group of. I've always had a problem with the word cultural fit In hiring. I believe the better term is cultural contribution. You know how can you pick people that contribute, maybe different perspectives, maybe from different Angles, from different thought processes and maybe from different cultural backgrounds. Right, it's about contributing. And so when you have a group of Mountain climbers and sherpas and guides, so now when you go back to the office on a monday morning after the eleven days on the house, do you Build and interact with teams differently From before the trip? And and and how so?
Speaker 3:Yes, it's a great question and one of the things that, as you go through right all the way to the average space scam but I think I share with you as well is you literally feel as if you are on a different planet and everything that you do Fields so small, right minute, and one of the things, as I kind of came back and as we're talking about that, how we look at the teams and how the teams with kind of different business chemistry is Provide a different perspectives and many times it may require you to be much more conscious about conflict resolution, right, how do you manage these differences in perspectives?
Speaker 3:And because these are different personalities as well, and one of the things that I always do is when I get I feel that, okay, I'm in a situation where there's a lot of conflicting emotions that are at play, all the all with the good heart in resolving something for the organization, I tend to take my mind up at the average space camp and suddenly it provides me a perspective that what we are doing is part of a much larger Thing at play and it really helps me then focus on what is the issue on hand and why is if one person versus another is kind of providing this perspective. I have a much deeper appreciation of that perspective, even though it may not be presented in a more amicable way. But I tend to find solutions to get around that and make sure that the team still provides one plus one still becomes two and a half or three instead of one and a half.
Speaker 2:And it's interesting, the image of being in the Himalayas, where everything I mean. I have spent time in the Rocky Mountains or in the Swiss Elves, so I have a tiny appreciation for what it is like to be surrounded by just landscape that is much bigger than ourselves. Right, they're much bigger than us. But you have the added element of danger at 17,000 feet altitude where if something goes wrong, it can be catastrophic.
Speaker 2:I can imagine that this group of 12 or 15 people saying things to each other. Maybe the Sherpa said something that rubbed the guide the wrong way, or maybe the climber said something that rubbed the Sherpa the wrong way, or whatever, right. But you're at 17,000 feet altitude. You're going to focus on what the person said. If the person said, watch out, there's a rock coming, you're not going to get all bent out of shape because here she said it in the wrong way. You're just going to be like, oh my god, there's a rock coming. So I think I would imagine that that is one lesson coming out of climbing through the Himalayas with the danger around. You're focusing, as you said, on conflict resolution rather than getting bent out of shape over the style of how somebody said something. And healthy conflict resolution, right.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and I remember right in the initial days, we actually started our track with Plan B in place. In spite of planning for months and working with the head guide tour guide as to what that day one will look like, we had to start our day one with Plan B just because of the weather, changing of the weather and cancelling of the flights and what. Now we actually had to start added our tracking days by almost two to three days, and those initial days resulted in a lot of frustration within the team members and that was the time when I also had to kind of step in and have the team focus on okay, what is our ultimate goal? Right, and if we still are determined to go up there. Fortunately, no one was impacted from health standpoint, even though we went through some really horrendous couple initial days, with almost a 13-day hike one day which we called our 10-11, if you will, which was October 11th.
Speaker 3:We had to again regroup, get everyone on the common mindset, as there was a lot of internal finger pointing happening, and then again come back, get everyone aligned and have continued to stay focused on what our ultimate goal was. So, absolutely, I think that is where it certainly provided me a very different perspective there and then even coming back as well, oftentimes I kind of use that analogy and how I think as well. You know, with my teams or even external teams, which is much more difficult, where right, the internal teams, that reports into you. You have a very different kind of perspective. But the others, where you are influencing without authority and now more and more transformations rely so much on external partners, when you look at supply chains or commercials and whatnot, and how do you influence them while also keeping the team balanced and focused, you know, for that ultimate transformation?
Speaker 2:Are you showing up differently at home, like in your you know, sort of outside of the office? Are you finding that you are showing up differently or looking at life differently because of that transformational 11 days 10, 11, 12 days in the Himalayas?
Speaker 3:Yeah, my answer might be different than my wife's, probably.
Speaker 3:Okay, all right let's hear them both yeah, but yeah, no, absolutely I think it has. Certainly One of the things that I tend to do more is just I'm enjoying more, I'm having more fun in whatever I do right, as opposed to being before being kind of too stressed out about things. And also one of the things that I've noticed is that I tend to shy away from minutiaes, you know, in terms of okay, as soon as if there are certain things that I feel passionate about, if it may not get done, I tend to put it in a larger perspective and tend to just either ignore it or, you know, handle it in a different way, just so that it does not become more of a conflicting situation.
Speaker 2:And your wife would answer it about you how.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh, you haven't changed at all, fair enough.
Speaker 1:Fair enough.
Speaker 3:So yeah, we agree to disagree there.
Speaker 2:I mean, look, I use the Sherpa terminology in my day job, right, I started a growth agency 14 years ago and, as you say we help people reach. First of all, figure out what mountain do they want to climb, which, in a business sense. You know, not every revenue dollar is a good dollar and not every mountain is a mountain to climb. You know whether that's a new channel or a new category or a new geographic market or what have you. But you said you started the journey with plan B because in the first few days it went right to plan B, because something happened. And I think it is so important You're not going to succeed with a big transformation, with it climbing a big, scary mountain, if you don't have a bunch of different plans in your head before you start.
Speaker 2:And I love this quote attributed to former US president Eich Eisenhower, who said it's not the plan, it's the planning. Right, it's that process of planning before you start the journey. That is so important, because that's sort of where the team members get educated, educate each other, get aligned with each other, understand that there is maybe a plan B and then maybe a plan C, so that, even if you only have plans A, b and C articulated, and if all of them go, you know, to hell in a hand basket because you did the planning as a group, you'd be able to come up with plan D and E on the fly.
Speaker 3:That's right exactly, and I think it also for the organizations to come up with these plans is to have a self-assessment right and there's readiness assessment that they ought to do even before they take these kind of transformations, anything that they may want to do right from either supply chain transformation, commercial transformation, adding new markets, channels, you know, geographic expansion. Once they answer the question why, they have to have a very honest discussion about can the organization as it stands today can take that transformation on? Because change management, as we all know, is the reason that most of the transformation feels.
Speaker 2:Right, because only wet babies like change right.
Speaker 3:Exactly and I think. But once they do, once the organizations do the business readiness assessment, it will prompt them to highlight the weaknesses that the organizations have, Not that they cannot move forward, but then they are better prepared and planned right, Whether to get the right resources needed, rather to get, you know, four or five different backup plans ready in the event, some things that are not materialized. And I think that is all part of the planning, which is something you know, that you just fully shared here.
Speaker 2:Katoel, thank you so much for you know, taking the time to talk through your base camp experience, the people aspects, the planning aspects, the pushing the envelope how do you sell it internally or, in your case, to your kids, maybe right or family members. All of these are very valuable, I think, prospectus to any kind of growth journey, be it up a mountain or in a business transformation. If folks wanted to reach out to you and just talk to you one-on-one and maybe pick your brain a little bit, what's the best place to find you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, feel free to reach me on LinkedIn. You can also drop me an email at Patel Katoel R1 at Gmail and be happy to connect and exchange additional thoughts here.
Speaker 2:Terrific. I'll put that email address in the podcast notes so you'll see it there as well. Excellent, thank you so much, katoel. Thank you for being on this episode, and I appreciate you sharing your lessons with us today.
Speaker 3:Great. Thank you, Beno, for the opportunity here and allowing me to share my experiences, and hopefully I'll be able to share more in the book that I'm writing an upcoming book as well. But again, I appreciate it and good luck, Thank you, hey.
Speaker 2:If folks wanted to explore other growth topics, you can find me on our website, realign4resultscom, or just email Beno B-E-N-N-O at realign4resultscom. Thank you and keep growing.
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