The Falls Taught Me More Than The Summit Ever Did

Eight people went into the Arctic.

Five came home.

Most people assume that's where Mark Allardyce learned about consequence. They're wrong. The lesson started much earlier.

At twenty-three years old, Allardyce found himself preparing for an Arctic expedition in northern Sweden. Even now, he admits the whole thing sounds faintly ridiculous.

He wasn't a polar explorer. He wasn't wealthy. He wasn't part of the public-school adventuring world that seemed to produce an endless supply of expedition leaders, Himalayan climbers and men called Rupert.

He was a lad from a council estate in Salford who loved being outdoors.

Like many inner-city kids of his generation, he discovered early that hills, mountains and open spaces offered something the city couldn't.

Perspective.
Freedom.
Escape.

By then he had already done a fair amount of climbing and had been invited to join an Arctic expedition. There was only one problem.

Expeditions cost money. Quite a lot of it.

Fortunately, his sister worked for Woolworths. He asked if she would introduce him to her manager. She did. Then something unexpected happened.

People listened.
Newspapers.
Radio stations.
Equipment suppliers.
Food companies.

One by one they started saying yes.

Looking back, Allardyce believes this was one of the most important discoveries of his life. Not the Arctic. Not the mountains.

The discovery that the world wasn't nearly as fixed as he had imagined. That ordinary people could make extraordinary things happen.

A few months later, eight young men disappeared into the Arctic wilderness.

When Allardyce emerged eight weeks later, he was snow-blind.

Britain was at war in the Falklands.

Three Dutch lads he had met beside a hydroelectric dam at the beginning of the journey were dead.

And something had changed. The Arctic taught him two lessons.

The first was that ordinary people can make extraordinary things happen.

The second was that consequence doesn't negotiate.

Reality always gets the final vote.

Years later he would see the same principle repeated in healthcare, leadership, technology and artificial intelligence. The environment changes. Human nature doesn't.

Optimism remains optimism.
Assumptions remain assumptions.
Consequences remain consequences.

The Arctic simply delivers them faster.

A couple of years later, the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme approached him about leading a high-altitude expedition to Huascarán in Peru. Twenty-three-year-old Mark would have said yes before the question had finished being asked.

Twenty-five-year-old Mark paused.

He examined the route. The altitude. The logistics. The planning. The assumptions. The medical support.

Then he politely declined.

Not every mountain is worth climbing.

The Arctic had taught him adventure. Peru taught him judgement.

It was the first time he consciously chose consequence over excitement.

The first time he asked a question that would later shape much of his professional life:

What happens next?

Over the next four decades that question would follow him into boardrooms, hospitals, government departments and technology companies.

Long before apps became fashionable, in fact before most people had even seen the Personal Computer, he was already building software and selling it into healthcare.

There were no founder podcasts.

No YouTube tutorials.
No LinkedIn experts.
No startup playbooks.

Much of the territory was unmapped. Most lessons were learned the hard way.

Over the years he would go on to found and scale ventures spanning healthcare, secure communications, behavioural systems and emerging technologies.

His work would serve organisations including Shell, HSBC, BT, PwC and HMRC. One healthcare platform would reach significant areas of UK cardiac rehabilitation before being acquired by a fully listed London Stock Exchange public company. Another would be adopted by the UK Government as a national best-practice portal.

To outsiders, it might appear to be a career built around technology. The irony is that technology may not be the thing that interests him most.

After four decades building systems, he has become increasingly fascinated by things that don't scale particularly well.

Stories.
Questions.
Conversations.
Judgement.
Witnesses.

The analogue things.

Again and again he watched intelligent people make avoidable mistakes. Not because they lacked intelligence. Because nobody was asking the difficult questions before it was too late. The clues were usually there.

Hidden beneath optimism.
Buried beneath momentum.
Ignored because everybody was busy looking forwards.

Eventually those observations evolved into The Witness System, a framework designed to help people and organisations explore consequence before consequence explores them.

The Arctic taught him that consequence doesn't negotiate. Business taught him exactly the same lesson.

The only difference was that the avalanche sometimes arrived six months later.

CONSEQUENCE GETS A VOTE

Yet it wasn't business that ultimately changed the direction of his thinking. It was loss.

When his father died, Allardyce discovered that grief isn't always what people expect. Of course there was sadness. But there was something else too.

The sudden realisation that there was nobody left who wanted more for him than they wanted for themselves.

Nobody left to call first.

Nobody left to say: "Did you see that?"

Years later he lost his best friend, Caffers, a firefighter who had crossed parts of the Arctic with him and shared adventures in the Alps and Atlas Mountains.

After Caffers died, another realisation arrived. Some memories only exist because two people share them. When one disappears, entire conversations disappear with them.

That observation quietly became one of the foundations of his work. The importance of witnesses.

Not legal witnesses.
Human witnesses.
The people who see us.
The people who understand the story because they were there.
The people who carry memories when we no longer can.

As children we ask:

"Dad, did you see that?"

As adults we ask:

"Mate, you'll never believe what happened."

In business we ask:

"Can somebody independent look at this before we commit?"

Artificial intelligence may one day ask:

"I solved it. Did anybody see?"

It's the same pattern. The audience simply changes.

WHAT IS WORTH PASSING FORWARD?

Over the years Allardyce has written more than twenty-five books, produced podcasts and audio experiences, developed The Lantern Project, created Offscreen Explorers and explored ideas such as Parent Theory.

Not because he believes stories will save the world. But because stories remain one of the oldest technologies we possess.

A story can carry a lesson further than advice. A question can travel further than an answer. A lantern can illuminate a path long after the person carrying it has disappeared.

If The Witness System emerged from observing consequence, The Lantern Project emerged from a different question.

What is worth passing forward?

For the first time in history, humanity is teaching intelligence at scale. Which raises a question. If we create intelligence, who is teaching it values?

Who is modelling the behaviour? Who is passing forward the lessons previous generations paid for through mistakes, loss and consequence?

Most people see artificial intelligence as a technology challenge. Allardyce sees something else.

A parenting challenge.
A civilisation challenge.
A responsibility challenge.

The moment we create intelligence, he argues, we have a parental responsibility for what it learns.

Looking back, there is a pattern.

The Arctic.
The businesses.
The books.
The cards.
The stories.

They all emerged from the same instinct.

To leave signposts where there weren’t any.

To illuminate the crevasses.
To point towards safer paths.
To help somebody else avoid learning the same lesson the hard way.

In the early days of technology there were very few lanterns.

Forty years later, whether through books, stories, witness sessions, cards, conversations or reflections on artificial intelligence, he is still doing much the same thing.

Lighting them.

As children we ask: "Dad, did you see that?” As we grow we're still asking the same question. The audience just changes.

Perhaps that's why the future still needs witnesses. Why it still needs stories. Why it still needs people willing to pass lessons forward.

Because intelligence alone isn't enough. Wisdom has to travel.

And somewhere beyond the businesses, the books, the Arctic and the technology, a boy from Salford is still bringing things home and laying them on the table.

Hoping somebody might find them useful. And quietly asking the same question he's always asked.

Did you see that?

Continue Exploring

If something in this story resonated with you, here are a few places to continue the conversation.

The Boardroom

Explore consequence before consequence explores you.

The Witness System
Responsibility Pause
Pre-Mortem Witness
Personal Witness
Boardroom Articles
Audio Briefings

→ Visit Boardroom

Lanterns

What is worth passing forward?

The Lantern Project
Parent Theory
Offscreen Explorers
Books
Audio Experiences
Stories & Reflections

→ Visit Lanterns

Books & Audio

More than twenty-five books, podcasts and audio experiences exploring:

Consequence
Resilience
Leadership
Technology
Human Development
Artificial Intelligence

→ Browse Articles and Audio and Video

Elsewhere

For Interviews & Media, Speaking Engagements - Contact Mark

→ Connect with Mark

One Final Thought

The world wasn't nearly as fixed as I once imagined.

Neither is the future.

The question is what we choose to pass forward.

Meet Mark

Some Decisions Can't Be Undone