MOUNT EVEREST

1996
GROUP 9

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INTRODUCTION
• This case is about mount Everest expedition

• On May 10th 1996, eight climbers died on the slopes of

Everest

• Amongst them were Rob Hall and Scott Fischer who were
highly regarded commercial expedition guide.

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CASE BACKGROUND
• This case talks about survival skills in project management
which needs to be displayed by the leader.

• This case considers the tragic expeditions in 1996 to scale

the peak of Mount Everest.

• Things went terribly wrong ending in the deadliest tragedy in

the history of the mountain.

• The combination of size and complexity of a project

sometimes leads to mistakes and failures.
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 This case has two commercial expeditors Rob Hall and Scott
Fisher trying to gain as much exposure as possible

 Many people in both the teams didn’t had the experience

neither had the guidance for an expedition.

 Rob Hall and Scott Fischer are the focus of this case study.

 The accounts of the survivors summarized in this study

reveals about the leaders and their leadership styles, hubris,
planning, communication, and constraint.

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 ABOUT THE LEADERS
ROBERT HALL SCOTT FISCHER

 Rule based approach.  Great faith in human spirit .

 Situationalist.
 Legalist.
 Rules on some occasions should
 Rules can substantially reduce be subordinated to unique
the possibility of bad decision demands that present
themselves.
making.

 Decisions were unilateral but the

 All determination of policy by subordinates were given
the leader.(directive autocrat) flexibility.(Permissive autocrat)
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 AUTOCRATIC
 Hall and Fischer were Autocratic leaders to the core.
 They took decisions without referring to any team members.
 The members had high dependency on the team leaders .
 It created demotivation and alienation among the team
members
 The leaders should have taken the decision keeping in mind
the capabilities of the group members.
 The members were not given any freedom to take decisions
on their own.

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 MANAGERIAL GRID
 According to this theory leaders help the organizations to
reach their purpose through two factors:
 Concern for production.
 Concern for people.

 The leaders laid heavy emphasis on task and job

requirements and less on people.

 Hence the leaders followed authority-compliance or (9,1)

style of leadership.
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 The leaders were highly focused n the task irrespective
whether the members were comfortable or not.

 Some of the individual members were not comfortable with

the turnaround times

 Instead the leader should have taken into consideration all

the members with regard to decision making.

 The leader should have the (9,9) style of leadership which is

about team management.

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CONTINGENCY THEORY
 This theory is concerned with styles and situations i.e. matching the
leadership style and the situation.

 In this case the leaders are task motivated and are primarily concerned
with attaining the goal.

 The leader member relations were poor.

 Issues and errors were not discussed openly.

 Group members did not feel comfortable expressing dissenting views.

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 The task structure was not well defined e.g. the
turnaround time was given as 1 p.m. or 2 p.m.

 Both the leaders Robb Hall and Scott Fischer had

strong position power.

 The LMR here should have been high as it was a critical

task which needed high degree of co-ordination.

 The task structure should have been properly defined

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CONCLUSION
 The leaders should have made the decisions with reference
to their subordinate
 Instead they should have been consultative
 Both Hall and Fischer used dictatorial style of leadership(9,1)
 Instead they should have used (9,9) style where there is high
consideration for people as well as task
 The task structures should have been well defined as it was a
very critical task
 The leader member relations were not good and this task
required a very good LMR
 The situation in this case required a very good understanding
among the team members which was missing
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THANK YOU

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