by Yiannis Gabriel
You have heard the one about the soldiers who got lost during a snow blizzard in the Alps but eventually managed to find their way back to base camp, thanks to a map in one of the soldiers’ pockets.
You have heard the one about the soldiers who got lost during a snow blizzard in the Alps but eventually managed to find their way back to base camp, thanks to a map in one of the soldiers’ pockets.
Only, it later turned out the map was one of the Pyrenees. “In a crisis, any old map will do”, conclude some.
You will also have heard about the authorship of the story, various charges and counter-charges of plagiarism involving highly respected and eminent scholars.
Still. Did you ever ask yourself what an old map of the Pyrenees was doing in the pocket of a soldier stationed in the Alps?
And how come the soldier did not know what kind of map was nestling in his pocket? A map after all is not a tiny scrap of paper.
Anyone who has served in an army, unlike management academics, will surely have some suspicions. Could the map have been put in the soldier’s pocket by his officer, intent on playing a mischievous prank to his subordinates? This, remember, was the same officer who, we are told, had a “paroxysm of guilt at having sent his men to their death”. [Please note the quotation marks.]
What you probably don’t know is that the map had no part whatever in the soldiers’ escape from their nightmare. In fact, the soldier in question never thought of checking his pockets, his hands too frozen to have any feeling at all.
For several hours the soldiers meandered in the frozen landscape, until they realized they were not getting anywhere. They pitched their tent and waited for the snow to subside, as indeed it did a day or two later.
The rest, as they say, is all story-making, or story-telling, or story-selling. Implausible. Seductive. Pliable. And liable to undertake travels and variations far wider than any soldiers ever undertook in the Alps.
I told the story to my friend Larry, a political sociologist with no connection to management, Karl Weick or the military. Larry was not impressed with the story. But, a natural storyteller, he trumped a story with a story.
He, his ex-wife and a casual acquaintance had once got lost in the Swiss Alps. It was getting dark and cold on a November evening. They were getting anxious. At last, they discovered the tracks of a narrow-gauge railway winding its way down the mountain. They started following the tracks in the hope that they would lead to safety.
It was now dark and getting colder. [At this point, I omit various episodes, delightful in the telling, unnecessary for our purpose.] Climbing down the steep and narrow tracks was getting harder and more hazardous.
Suddenly, from a distance they heard the sound of a train approaching. They leapt on the side of the tracks. [The excitement of the audience mounts.]
Larry pulls a lighter out of his pocket. Its flimsy light is unlikely to be seen by the train driver. Then a stroke of genius. He pulls out the map from his coat jacket and sets it on fire with the lighter.
The train slows down. An hour later, they are all enjoying a hot fondue in the Swiss manner.