Interpretation

A Culture of Evaluation — A good bellwether for operational health is an organization that is vibrant and moving in a positive direction. What is required to make that happen? It surely doesn’t happen by accident or luck. It is wonderful when any division’s operation comes together, painful when it doesn’t. Warning signs of problems may include complacency, contempt for others on staff, the development of fiefdoms, no appreciation for information exchange or a lack of unifying division leadership.

One of the key tenets of the Renaissance is evaluation. I’d like to apply this tenet toward a park’s interpretive operation. This includes supervisors and field personnel, and an assessment of where we stand and where we are capable of going.

Perhaps a checkup in terms of organizational health is in order. It will be hard to implement the Renaissance if we can’t work together or appreciate the need to evaluate so that we can move forward. We are in the midst of a rebirth in our organization, and now is the time to be open to new methods of doing our work. If you are in a position of leadership, or aspire to one and you want your program to do more than maintain the status quo, to what extent have you discussed the Renaissance with your staff? If you and your team aren’t really familiar with it, how can a program evolve and stay relevant? If you are a field-level employee and you don’t think your supervisor is aware that the time to move forward is now, you have two choices: seek a new park or see what you can do to take it on yourself. Procrastinate at your peril or seize the day.

I suggest we adopt this policy of growth so that we are able to take the next step in interpretation. It isn’t enough to mouth the management platitudes. This will only work if we own it for ourselves.

I’ve met interpreters who think things should continue as is or aren’t motivated toward change. Some are hooked on arguments about how nefarious leaders don’t support a program financially. A myriad of excuses is there for the taking. During times when I felt lost and powerless I searched for hope from someone else, never realizing I had to take some kind of action. It was easy to blame others, never looking within to enact that change I sought. Things became hopeful when I stopped blaming and I stood on my own two feet.

Any division in the NPS that can’t be honest and assess itself is doomed to languish. We provoke visitors and challenge their perceptions in parks every day. Why not take our own techniques and apply them to ourselves and our operations? I try to turn my interpretive techniques inward whenever I can. Do you or your program foster a learning environment based on the active pursuit of professional excellence?

An issue that I’ve wanted to write about involves the resources I’ve found to help pull me from the confusion and irrelevance of dependence on others. In particular, I recommend the Harvard Business Review. Not a financial publication, it is written for executives and has great articles and scenarios about workplace issues and how to solve them. It focuses on organizational excellence. The private sector uses many other resources on management to advance their agendas. We can use these materials, too.

This isn’t a call to emulate the private sector. Government is not like private business. Research has proven that. All the same, there are ways in which human organizations with goals and objectives have universal traits, whether public or private.

What I am positing is this: Our interpretive operations across the Service will always benefit by evaluation and it needs to become a habit. We have many resources to draw on from motivated individuals and tools in the private sector.

We do a lot right in this agency, and we have a noble and nationally critical calling. President Obama articulated that idea in early March at the 160th anniversary of the Department of the Interior. He acknowledged that we tell the nation’s natural and cultural stories and connect Americans to their shared legacy. For us to continue to do that work, we must foster a culture of evaluation, stay vigilant and never lose the willingness to evolve.

Protection

Operational Leadership: Empowering Employees to Reduce Risk — The National Park Service historically has not enjoyed an impressive track record regarding safety. In fact, among federal agencies, we’re one of the most accident-prone.

Injuries inflict pain, require us to put certain aspects of our lifestyles on hold while we’re healing and attend time-consuming and often painful physical therapy. Injuries also can be expensive and sometimes never heal completely, leaving us with physical limitations.

Yet, NPS employees seem to lead the pack every year among federal employees in lost-time injuries.

It’s due in part to the dangerous work we perform. Dangerous jobs include plowing six-foot snow drifts at high elevation, SCUBA diving to recover a drowning victim, tranquilizing wildlife from helicopters, wildland firefighting, high-angle rescue, cave operations, hazard materials response, high-risk traffic stops, and whitewater and ocean surf operations.

Every day NPS workers are out there doing these jobs. So are people from other agencies, yet their safety records shine compared to ours.

An explanation for the high accident and injury rates is the safety culture we’ve fostered over the years. We have accommodated a less-than-safe approach to getting our jobs done. Whether it be in the name of efficiency, obligation to duty, peer pressure or some other driving force, we have allowed ourselves to be exposed to unacceptable risks for the wrong reasons.

Then, when somebody sustains an injury, we consider it as “only a matter of time given the nature of the work.” This attitude is wrong. We will never completely eliminate injuries, but we can reduce them.

This doesn’t mean that we never assume risk. Some of our work is wrought with hazards. That doesn’t mean we simply turn our backs on our duty. It means we mitigate those hazards until the risk, though still a risk, is acceptable.

One approach to mitigating the risks is a program called Operational Leadership. The NPS has partnered with California Training Institute, which has provided an entire paradigm shift in the way we approach hazardous work.

In short, Operational Leadership simply states that one of the root causes of accidents and injuries while carrying out hazardous work is human error. It also states that this human error can be mitigated and controlled through better judgment, better decision-making, improved attentiveness, more effective leadership and supervision, and the empowerment of each employee to be assertive in their own safety.

This last point is critical. OL empowers every individual to speak up and assert their concerns and ideas for a safer approach any time they size up a job as presenting unacceptable risk. The wildland fire community has already recognized this concept and has provided a framework for “tactfully refusing” an assignment that is too risky. OL is providing similar empowerment to employees throughout the NPS.

This doesn’t mean employees can refuse any job and become insubordinate. It means when we’re faced with a risky situation, we stop for a moment, come together as a team, evaluate the risks vs. the gain we would achieve by completing the job, and then make a decision.

That is what OL calls effective mission analysis or operational risk management, which is one of OL’s seven critical individual and team skills, called components.

The other six components are effective leadership; error and accident causation; stress and performance; situational awareness; attitude, personality and hazardous thought patterns; and effective communications.

These seven OL components make up the OL approach to accomplishing hazardous work safely, and each is devoted a chapter in the OL student workbook. For more information on these components and OL in general, visit the website at inplame06/sites/oplead/default.aspx.

There is much more to OL than what appears in this primer. The NPS will be a stronger, more effective and safer organization once we all get on board with this new safety culture.

The best way to achieve this is to have every employee take a two-day, basic OL course. First we need to qualify more people as OL facilitators in a three-day course. Facilitators then bring the two-day, basic course to their home parks and elsewhere throughout their regions. With this process moving ahead, we will eventually reach a point where OL is used to mitigate every risk on every job every time.

In the end, we have to remember that the real reason behind this new approach to work safety is as old as the human story itself: So that we may go safely home to our loved ones at the end of every shift.

~ Kevin Moses, Buffalo National River

Six Themes — The associate director for natural resources stewardship and science has identified six themes or issues to emphasize in the transition to new leadership in Washington this year. They are climate change, landscape use, relevance, oceans and coasts, invasive species and energy. The Natural Resources Advisory Group of field representatives helped create the list.

In the past year, action on the first item has included naming Dr. Leigh Welling, formerly of the Crown of the Continent Research Learning Center, as NPS climate change coordinator. It also established a new national climate change steering committee made up of park managers and regional and park resource managers/specialists.

The coordinator has posted NPS Talking Points reports, titled “Understanding the Science of Climate Change: Western Mountains and Forests” and “Climate Change and Impacts to Resources around the Great Lakes.” Each provides a synopsis of what scientists know, what is likely, and what they think is possible about how climate change will affect six key areas of interest. These include visitor experience, disturbance and landscape modification, wildlife, vegetation, the water cycle and temperatures.

NOTE: If you work in resource management and are interested in becoming a columnist in this space, please contact the editor at fordedit@aol.com.