Satisfying Work
Malcolm Gladwell says the qualities of satisfying work are autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward. Mountain Guiding and Venture Capital are rich in all three.
Mountain Guides have a lot of autonomy – with an IFMGA pin, you can work anywhere in the world. Building a list of competent clients takes a long time but creating authentic relationships with them is a rewarding way to earn a living. Mastering your terrain as a Guide is infinitely complex, but the changing mountain environment keeps you engaged in a way that’s hard to duplicate in the real world down below. The connection between effort and reward in Mountain Guiding is direct: your Clients pay you for your effort and tip you based on the outcome. Mountain Guiding is satisfying work.
VCs have a lot of autonomy too – we get to decide how to spend our time and on what to focus. The best VCs learn that time is their most valuable currency and spend it wisely on the most important projects. Whether your focus is on a vertical market or on a specific geography, the early-stage investment business is complex. The connection between effort and reward for VCs is direct: we make a lot of money investing in successful companies whose market value rewards investors with a big multiple of invested capital. Venture Capital is satisfying work.
In 2013, I formed the Board of Directors of the American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education (AIARE), and have served as its Chairman for the past ten years.
AIARE’s mission is to save lives through avalanche education, and its courses are the certification standard for snow professionals and recreationalists throughout the USA. Every time someone dies in an avalanche, their death echoes through the valley, affecting their families and friends. AIARE’s network of course providers, most of whom are Mountain Guides, teach avalanche safety and awareness to more than 15,000 skiers and snowmobilers each year.
As Chairman of AIARE, I have the autonomy to travel across avalanche zones throughout the winter, skiing with AIARE’s course providers and experiencing their complex terrain. There’s no economic return for me, but the reward for our success at AIARE is profound.
We’ll never know the true impact, but the numbers are unassailable: as backcountry use among snowmobilers and skiers has skyrocketed over the past decade across the Intermountain West, avalanche deaths per year have remained stable because of AIARE.
That’s satisfying work.