LAST CALL: Once Frostbitten, Twice Shy
Queenan, Joe
Once Frostbitten, Twice Shy LAST CALL BY JOE QUEENAN When the legendary explorer Ernest Shackleton led his 27-man crew on a disastrous trip to Antarctica in 1914, he had no way of knowing what a...
...Publishers love this mumbo-jumbo: Every year some nitwit tries to draw parallels between Machiavelli's Prince and the head of Human Resources at Orlando P&E...
...The bull market genius today finds himself in the embarrassing position of having founded a financial news Website that has cost investors their shirts...
...Leadership Secrets of Mad the Impaler cannot be far off...
...Then Cramer stumbled upon an article about Shackleton which contained the quote, "Optimism is true moral courage...
...Shackleton's Way descends directly from that great-granddaddy of braindead business books, Leadership Secrets Attila the Hun...
...All hands survived...
...What are the lessons we can learn from this...
...His hedge fund more than doubled in value...
...No one has...
...Before writing a book likening a money manager to a famous explorer, check the newspaper to see how his stock is doing-especially if you happen to work for a newspaper...
...Find a way to turn setbacks and failures to your advantage...
...Here's just a sample of the tips they have gleaned from studying his jaw-dropping feats: Do your part to help create an upbeat environ ment at work...
...Draw your own conclusions...
...No one will...
...In high-stress situations, use humor to put people at ease...
...The truth is, if any of these inspirational books were actually useful, somebody would have already written Warren Buffet's Way: Leadership Secrets That Antarctic Explorers Can Learn From the World's Most Daring Investor...
...After all, Shackleton's expedition was a complete disaster and Shackleton was incapable of learning from his mistakes...
...Unfortunately, his boat The Endurance got scrunched into splinters before he ever reached land...
...Shipwrecked but upbeat, he thereupon led his men on one of the epic adventures of all time...
...He began scrawling inspirational Shackletonian quotes all around the office and before you knew it, his business empire had crawled out of the crypt...
...Shackleton, of course, is the vaunted explorer who sought to cross Antarctica on foot shortly after World War I erupted...
...On first glance, Morrell and Capparell's book would appear idiotic...
...This totally changed his worldview...
...Publishers love this kind of mumbo jumbo: Every year some nitwit comes along and tries to draw parallels between Machiavelli's Prince and the beleaguered head of the Human Resources department at Orlando P&E, and editors jump at the chance to publish it...
...he went back to Antarctica a few years later and died during his third unsuccessful expedition at the age of 47...
...All this we can thank Shackleton for...
...unless you yourself are amazing, don't think you can duplicate the feats of the amazing-they are cut from different cloth...
...I mention all this because Cramer's misbegotten progeny, TheStreet.com, has traded as low as $2.50 a share, down from a high of $71...
...Once Frostbitten, Twice Shy LAST CALL BY JOE QUEENAN When the legendary explorer Ernest Shackleton led his 27-man crew on a disastrous trip to Antarctica in 1914, he had no way of knowing what a profound influence this expedition would exert on New York-based money manager James Cramer's investment performance 85 years later...
...James Cramer, of course, is the cofounder of TheStreet.com, an Internet Website that offers timely information about the stock market...
...The basic template used in compiling this sort of twaddle is simple: Dredge up some mass murderer, bloodthirsty conqueror, or cynical theoretician from the history books, derive a few absurdly general laws or lessons from his experiences, and then by a process of alchemical analogizing, try to explain how these lessons can help some guy in Dayton, Ohio, get 160,000 hard drives shipped to El Paso by midnight...
...of 106 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR May 2001...
...Shackleton, who first achieved immortality by surviving an expedition that was a bad idea in the first place, now receives additional lionization in a book that explains how a motor-mouth money manager drew such inspiration from his exploits that he refused to fold his money-losing Website...
...In 1998, Cramer's hedge fund was getting massacred by an imploding stock market, and his financial news Website was at death's door...
...when looking for leadership role models, try nonAntarctic types like Jack Welch, Andy Grove, Bill Gates, or Peter Lynch...
...This is the inspirational tale woven by Margot Morrell and Stephanie Capparell in their new book Shackleton's Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer...
...According to Morrell, a financial representative at Fidelity Investments, and Capparell, an editor at the Wall Street Journal, the explorer "embodied the attributes of the best business leaders...
Vol. 34 • May 2001 • No. 4
