Page 19 - OneVue Annual Report 2015

People and Culture
The OneVue Philosophy
We are 20 mile marchers. We make no apology for
this. Being a provider of middle to back office services four such devices. The divergence in preparation
means that consistency of delivery is everything.
The best way for OneVue to maintain its high growth
targets is to continue delivering consistently to our
existing clients (ensuring we retain and grow with
them) whilst also aggressively looking for new clients
and opportunities.
The 20 Mile March -
The story of Amundsen vs. Scott
The round trip trek was roughly fourteen hundred
miles. The environment was uncertain and
unforgiving, where temperatures could easily reach
20 degrees below zero even during the summer.
They had no means of modern communications –
no cell phones, no satellite links, no radio – a rescue
would have been improbable were they to err. One
leader led his team to victory and safety. The other
led his team to defeat and death.
Amundsen prepared rigorously for years in advance
of the journey. He learned what worked in polar
conditions, going as far as to live with Eskimos to
learn how they moved in sub-zero temperatures,
what they wore, and reviewed every conceivable
situation that his team might encounter en route to
the Pole. He trained his body and mind with fanatic
discipline. Scott presents quite a contrast to
Amundsen. His preparation was limited, and what
plans he made were based on his own intuitive
conclusions, rather than direct research of the
environment he was entering.
Amundsen stored three tons of supplies for five
men, versus Scott, who stored one ton for
seventeen men. Amundsen used sled dogs (learned
from the Eskimos), whereas Scott used unproven
“motor sledges” which failed within days of his
journey. Amundsen carried enough extra supplies to
miss every single supply depot and still have enough
to go another hundred miles. Scott ran everything
dangerously close to his calculations, so that missing
even one supply depot would bring disaster. A single
detail aptly highlights the difference between their
approaches: Scott brought one thermometer for a
key altitude measurement, and he exploded in “an
outburst of wrath” when it broke; Amundsen brought
goes on and on.
Unlike Scott, Amundsen systematically built enormous
buffers for unforeseen events. He designed the entire
journey to systematically reduce the role of big forces
and chance events. He presumed that bad events
would strike his team somewhere along the journey
and he prepared for them.
On December 15, 1911 Amundsen and his team
reached the South Pole. He and his teammates
planted the Norwegian flag and then went right back
to work. They could not have known that Scott and
his team were now desperately man-hauling their
sleds, fully 360 miles behind. More than a month
later, Scott found himself staring at Amundsen’s flag
at the South Pole. Amundsen had already travelled
five hundred miles back North. Scott and his team
turned back North dejected, just as the season began
to turn. The already menacing weather turned more
severe, while supplies dwindled and Scott and his
men struggled through the snow.
Amundsen and his team reached home base on
January 25th, the precise day he had planned.
Running out of supplies, Scott and his team stalled in
mid-March, exhausted and depressed. Eight months
later, a British reconnaissance party found the frozen
bodies of Scott and two teammates in a forlorn,
snow-drifted little tent, just ten miles short of his
supply depot. His whole team had perished.
Throughout the journey, Amundsen adhered to a
regimen of consistent progress, never going too far
in good weather, careful to stay away from the red
line of exhaustion that could leave his team exposed,
yet pressing ahead in nasty weather to stay on pace.
Amundsen throttled back his well-tuned team to
travel between 15 and 20 miles per day, in a
relentless march to 90 degrees south. When a
member of Amundsen’s team suggested they could
go faster, up to 25 miles a day, Amundsen said no.
ONEVUE ANNUAL REPORT - 19