After already 4 sessions on the first day, this was the last one at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (“d.school”), Building 524 from Dr. Rodrigo Jordan, founder of Vertical S.A. (Leadership expeditions). He was nominated as “one of the 100 young leaders for the new millennium” from Time Magazin in 1995.

First I thought that he is talking a bit too long about his hobby: Climibing on Mount Everest. I had not read the whole text in the program due to the thing that I went from one session to the other. But as I soon recognized this was the main topic: How to build teams with whom you are able to reach the maximum like climbing on Mount Everest or K2.

This was one of the best workshops I had since years. Totally unexpected. The whole audience was totally fascinated and magnetized in the end following his speech and his videos.

Hopefully the will upload the video soon here: http://ecorner.stanford.edu

Until this will happen, here is a short summary out of the program guide:

Nominated by Time magazine in 1995 as “one of the 100 young leaders for the new millennium,” and leader of the first successful South American expedition to Mt Everest and K2, Dr. Rodrigo Jordan will share his philosophy on applying to business and education the leadership and team-building skills needed to climb the world’s most challenging mountains. Through videos and jaw-dropping photographs, he will bring his gripping leadership stories to life. He’ll examine the dynamics of building and leading high-performance teams that produce great social and economic results.

Watch a video clip of Dr. Jordan describing a crisis during the first crossing of the Ellsworth Mountains in Antarctica. He explains how one team member’s optimism in the face of certain death completely transformed his perspective as the team leader and also saved their lives.

Here is a video from Stanford in 2007

And here one from a session at Google:

In a nutshell: Rodrigo emphasized three dimensions when building up the right team:

1. technical skills

2. personal skills

3. social skills

You should not only focus on the core team but also on the ecosystem and everybody who adds value to reach the objective to change the world.

But his workshop was really excellent and it is not enough to read only this short summary. There was much more to experience!