Four hundred feet above the ground, rock-climbing in the Eldorado Canyon near Boulder, Colorado, the teenage Jim Collins was seconds away from death. The knot in his rope had come loose, he was slipping out of his harness and his hands were tiring.
“I was very lucky because there was an old piton (metal peg) in the crack right in front of me … I could clip a sling in the piton, grab the rope and tie it … Had I been 10ft above it or 10ft below it at the same moment it would have been a different story … I would have died. And I remember that. It’s just so seared in my brain.”
He’s not kidding. That much was clear sitting across the table from Collins – one of the most intense people I have ever met – in London a couple of weeks ago. Think of it: the co-author of Built to Last and author of Good to Great and How the Mighty Fall was very nearly lost to us before he had got started.
The remainder of this article can be read here. Please post comments below.
Stefan Stern writes a column on Tuesdays on 
Ravi Mattu is the editor of 
Lucy Kellaway writes a column on Mondays on 
Luke Johnson writes an FT column on Wednesdays on 
Lucy Kellaway, FT columnist and associate editor, offers her solution to your workplace problems in a column in the Financial Times. In the 
