THE STORY
“Can you see anything?” “Yes” Carter replied. “Wonderful things. Wonderful things!” Archaeologist, Howard Carter was staring at the untouched tomb of Tutankhamun. He and his team had dug through hundreds of boulders in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings for five arduous and back-breaking years.
Carter was never formally trained either as an archaeologist or even as a scientist. He learned about archaeology working on the job, when hired, aged 17, to draw Egyptian artefacts for a wealthy family. His first financial backer, Theodore Davis, a wealthy U.S. attorney declared that all great finds in the Valley of Kings had already been found. Carter disagreed. Davis withdrew his backing. When the wealthy Briton, Lord Carnarvon, became his second backer, he too became frustrated when he kept writing cheques whilst Carter continued to find nothing of significance. Carter still didn’t give up and managed to convince Carnarvon of the potential financial rewards of finding the King. The latter kept producing the money, the former kept digging. His motivation wasn’t the money. His passion was the actual work and he claims he would have found a way to fund the project himself even if Carnarvon had stopped paying.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
If there is a clear purpose to what you are doing, something you believe in, something you are passionate about, then both perseverance and persistence will come easily to you as an Explorer.
For any major project, find out what’s important to your key stakeholders and use this to persuade them to follow the path you would like to take. Explorers need supportive stakeholders in order to flourish.
Ask yourself the question: “Would I put my own money behind this project?” This will test the strength of your purpose and your passion, as well as your persistence.
YOUR CHALLENGE
Identify a project that you are working on or will be working on soon. What is its purpose as far as you're concerned?
On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 = 'extremely', how passionate are you about it?
Work out what strategies you need to adopt with the key stakeholders by establishing what’s in it for them. What will you do or say to overcome any obstacles you encounter?
