We arrived at the South Pole at 8:30pm Dec 31 just in time for New Years dinner. It was a hard journey and we faced some challenging weather and poor visibility along the way, but that is what you get when you travel by ski expedition to the South Pole. This is hard and demanding work and is what makes it rewarding, but you must train hard and come prepared to do what it takes. We took some South Pole photos and were fortunate to get a tour of the Amundsen/Scott South Pole research station which usually does not happen any more. We were also there for the ceremonial moving of the South Pole marker. This marker drifts with the ice about 25m each year and on January 1 it is moved back at the exact geographic South Pole. After a restful night at the South Pole camp we are now flying back to Union Glacier to prepare for our next adventure to climb Mount Vinson. Given all our time pulling heavy sleds our legs should be strong once given a day or two of rest. We will also be picking up a new team member who will be joining us for Vinson. We have a tight schedule with days lost due to poor weather so we hope to move fast and efficient and will need the weather to cooperate with us to do so. If not, we will be patient and wait for the right moment.
The Team Building Brief | August 2026
Summit Team Building
August 31, 2026
This month: Microsoft Research on why AI’s gains stubbornly refuse to scale from individuals to teams, a peer-reviewed study in Administrative Sciences on the casual conversations hybrid work quietly strips out, CNBC on the executive burnout nobody at the top wants to name, Angela Duckworth at HBR’s Leadership Summit on why grit matters more in the AI era, and MIT Sloan Management Review on a practical way to defuse team friction before it hardens.