Man On Wire
Charles Blondin was a French tightrope walker and acrobat (and yes, I know Man on Wire was about Philippe Petit). He was best known for crossing the 1,100-foot Niagara Gorge on a tightrope. In fact, he crossed it more than 300 times, often with different theatrical variations: blindfolded, in a sack, trundling a wheelbarrow, on stilts, carrying his manager Harry Colcord on his back, sitting down midway to cook and eat an omelet, or standing on a chair balanced on a single leg.
As I imagined Blondin suspended above the churning falls cooking an omelet (or Philippe Petit between the Twin Towers), it made me think about leadership. There are three elements working together in this picture—the person, the pole, and the rope. If you remove any one of them, the whole thing falls apart.
The Person: Tightrope walkers undergo extensive physical and mental training to develop coordination, body control, spatial awareness, and balance. Crossing Niagara Gorge once is an achievement. Crossing 300 times with variations is mastery. Notice that Blondin didn’t stop after his first successful crossing. He added the blindfold, the wheelbarrow, and the omelet. This wasn’t showmanship alone—it was continuous skill development. Each variation demanded new capabilities, forced him to solve different problems, and expanded his understanding of balance and movement.
Leaders face the same imperative. The skills that got you here won’t keep you here. The market shifts, technology evolves, your team grows, the competitive landscape changes. Standing still, at altitude, is just slow-motion falling. You maintain balance by moving forward, by expanding your range, and by practicing in conditions different from today’s so tomorrow’s challenges don’t catch you unprepared.
The Pole: Watch footage of any tightrope walker and you’ll notice the pole. It’s not optional equipment. The long pole lowers the center of gravity and increases the walker’s moment of inertia—their resistance to rotation and falling. This slows down any tipping motion, giving the walker more time to correct their position.
For leaders, the pole is your team and culture. A leader alone is inherently unstable—too reactive to every shift in the wind, too vulnerable to sudden changes in balance. The team provides steadiness. They carry organizational memory, bring diverse perspectives, and absorb shocks that would topple an individual. Good culture creates collective momentum that doesn’t change direction with every gust.
This is why building a strong team isn’t about making your job easier—it’s about making the crossing possible at all. Once, Blondin even carried his manager across on his back, but Harry Colcord wasn’t dead weight. He had to adjust his position, match Blondin’s movements, and become part of the balance system. Your team does the same. They’re not passengers; they’re active participants in maintaining equilibrium.
The Rope: Here’s what many people miss—the sag of the rope matters immensely. A rope with too little sag vibrates quickly, while one with too much sag swings wildly. There is an optimal sag where the rope’s vibration period matches the time it takes for the walker to react, making it the easiest to balance. The art is in the tension.
This is organizational structure. Your policies, processes, decision-making frameworks, communication systems—everything that defines how work gets done. The same structure doesn’t work for every organization because you’re tuning for specific conditions: the span you need to cross, the winds you face, the load you’re carrying.
Tight structure feels safe, but it amplifies every small input into wild oscillations. You sneeze and the whole organization lurches. Loose structure feels flexible, but it means you’re constantly compensating for drift, burning energy just maintaining position. The right tension is taut enough to be predictable and slack enough to absorb movement.
All three elements must work together. Brilliance without a team is exhausting. You might make the first crossing, but you won’t make 300. A great team on poorly tuned structure is chaos—everyone working hard, the organization swinging wildly. Perfect structure with weak capability never leaves the platform.
Blondin developed his skills continuously. He understood that anything on the rope with him was part of the balance system. He tuned the rope tension for the conditions he faced. Remove any one element and the whole endeavor becomes impossible.
Leadership isn’t just about personal capability; it’s about building the complete system—developing yourself, strengthening your team, and tuning your structures—so you can make the crossing not once, but sustainably and reliably, even while carrying others across with you—the Bison Way.