Mount Everest 1996

       Case Analysis 1- Mount Everest—1996  
Summary
   Mount Everest, also known in Nepal as Sagarmāthā and in China as Qomolangma, is the highest mountain on Earth. In the spring of 1996, Ninety-eight men and women climbed successfully to the summit, but unfortunately, 15 lost their lives. After the accident, many people have analyzed the decisions that the leaders (Hall and Fischer) made during their climb.  

commercial expeditions        

• Climbers of commercial expeditions are more unprofessional in analogy with professional climbers who had more techniques.
• Commercial expeditions usually consist of a professional team leader, clients and Sherpa (people who live close to Everest).
• Each client has to pay $65000 for the expeditions.
• Commercial expedition companies( Adventure Consultant and Mountain Madness) are usually companies which make profit from adventure consulting and clients’ zeal of mountain climbing.
• The revenue is mainly from clients’ payment, advertisement, sponsors and media.

Analysis & Discussion:

  Before analyzing the questions below, I’m trying to make sure that I truly understand the meaning of “decision-making”.

  According to Wikipedia ,in psychology, decision-making is regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several alternative possibilities. Every decision-making process produces a final choice; it may or may not prompt action. Decision-making is the process of identifying and choosing alternatives based on the values and preferences of the decision-maker.
1.What are the decision-making biases presented in the case? List the examples. 

• Boukreev had different conclusions about the abilities and preparedness of the clients:
  He concerned about the whole team’s level of readiness and ability. He understood, as had been the situation on other commercial expeditions, he had been hired to prepare the mountain for the people instead of the other way around.
  This different conclusion made him have biases when making decision.
• Krakauer didn’t have good relationship with the others. Besides, he didn’t think the others look like hard-core climbers. He attributed his growing unease to the fact that he had never climbed as a member of such a large group—a group of complete strangers.

Most of the time, when we have the decision-making biases, relationship between others will be the main reason.

• When Ngawang Topche was ill, Fischer instructed him to return to Base Camp and seek medical care. However, Topche didn’t choose to listen to Fischer’s advice and continued to climb.
• The teams climbed to Camp IV on May 9.  When Boukreev arrived at the camp, he thought the weather was not good enough for assaulting the summit. However, Hall had different voices, he thought they should wait for the weather to change, if it got clear in the night, they would make their bid tomorrow.
• Boukreev planned to climb the mountain without carrying bottled oxygen. However, the other climbers insisted that guides should always employ supplemental oxygen to ensure that they would have the physical and mental capability to assist clients.

2. What is a leader’s role in decision-making (e.g., how does a leader affect decision- making)? 
   Sloan Leadership Model is the model created by MIT which includes five aspects: Visioning, Analyzing, Relating, Inventing and Enabling. In this part I’ll use these five aspects to analyze how the leader affects decision making.
Visioning：As the founders of Adventure Consultant and Mountain Madness company, Rob Hall and Fischer created a vision “ Anyone can climb the Everest if you join our group. You don’t have to be a hard-core climber”. As a result, those clients decided to join their group and hire them as their guides.[pic 1]