Administration

The Changing Role of an Administrative Officer — Remember that common phrase about the only thing that is constant is change? I have come to believe that this concept really applies to the world of administration today.

More than 140 National Park Service administrative employees gathered Oct. 27-29, 2009, in Albuquerque at a joint conference representing the Intermountain and Midwest regions. The majority of the audience was comprised of administrative officers.

The three-day agenda was packed with speakers from the WASO office, and many of us were looking forward to hearing current news right from the chief program managers themselves.

As I took in the conference and talked to my fellow administrative officers, a theme started to develop. It was becoming apparent to us that an avalanche of change was coming to the world of administration and that we had better prepare to embrace it because we all know you cannot outrun an avalanche.

The signs of the oncoming change express were all there about a year ago with the invention of the regional SHRO and MABO concepts. The Servicing Human Resource Offices (SHROs) and the Major Acquisition Buying Offices (MABOs) have centralized the functions of human resources and contracting. Although this concept does have some great benefits (I am a strong supporter of both concepts), it alters the supervisory role of an administrative officer. This has left some parks with fewer on-site staff or even burdened the remaining administrative staff with duties that were once collateral duties of the now-streamlined human resources and contracting staff.

With the removal of human resources and contracting as one of the day-to-day functions overseen by an administrative officer, the role of the administrative officer may need to be redefined. Perhaps we need a new job title?

Oversight of the park’s budget is still a major function of most administrative officers, so perhaps the title of chief finance officer could apply. This title is easily recognized and understood in the private sector and would put us more in line with running a park like a business, a concept that continues to be brought up. Another title could be chief strategy officer as was suggested by a superintendent attending the conference. A good administrative officer must be able to plan ahead, understand the park’s needs and have the ability to prioritize — all strategic tools to bring to the management table. I believe that an administrative officer must have her ear to the ground, be able to network and ask the questions that need to asked. Perhaps then the title would be “chief inquirer”?

There are days when there is a steady stream of people in my office looking for a variety of advice. Some come seeking answers to budget questions. others come in to plan for a future project or just need to talk to another supervisor. Perhaps then the title that would apply is “chief nurturer.”

Whatever the title given to the main supervisor of an administrative staff, it must reflect the recent changes in this field. I believe there is still an important support role for administrative staff at every park. Who else to better tackle the cumbersome programs that deal with travel and payroll?

These are my thoughts as I prepare to weather the storm and figure out how to ski triumphantly through the avalanche of change that we should prepare to embrace now.

Interpretation

A 21st Century Direction — The Second Century Commission, sponsored by the National Parks Conservation Association, has released a major report. It explores, defends and defines the role of the National Park Service as a provider of meaningful learning and experiences for people around the world, and visitors come to parks in search of these connections. Every employee should take the time to read this report and think about how we all add meaning to the visitor experience, and most important, that we work together to do it.

We all play a role in ensuring visitors find the meaningful connection they seek. Every division in a park supports the visitor’s interest, from interpretive programs and media projects, to a law enforcement operation to keep a resource from disappearing, a resource manager sharing information about a species under threat, cultural resource staff preserving something historic, or facilities folks who design and maintain the infrastructure that allows people to experience the resource.

The process of connecting visitors to meaningful resources in parks is why the NPS and all of us are here. Everything our agency does flows from and supports the seeking of meaning, but it involves changes in strategies and tactics as times change. We must continue to find new ways to support each other so that we can support our collective purpose.

It is easy in tough budget times to defend one’s own divisional territory, but this knee-jerk habit is counterproductive in the big picture. Rather than engage in divisional tribalism, which is still endemic on poorly led management teams, I want to believe that each division leader in each park has the emotional intelligence to choose to think collaboratively, weaving their respective roles into support for that singular idea. We serve our visitors best if we coordinate our actions and think about and understand why we are here. To work without direction and friends is to work blind and lonely.

I see many positive and hopeful signs in the exciting new messages and direction from our leaders in Washington. Now is the time to embrace 21st century thinking servicewide to provide direction and guidance as the NPS charts a new course to a future of meaningful connections.

From the national level to regional level, this thinking must be promoted. However, for true success, we should expect all our superintendents to use their authority to actively implement positive evolutionary change in each park. Seeing this through at the ground level should be one of our top priorities, and it’s happening with varying degrees of success right now.

Imagine what would happen if it were standard practice in all parks that superintendents and division managers sit around the table on a regular basis and get beyond day-to-day issues to instead discuss cooperative interdivisional 21st century goals? Discussions should flow from stated goals, be led by an engaged superintendent and be reflected in general management plans. This vision should be clearly articulated so that every staff member understands not only what direction the park is going in, but also how each division and individual plays a role in the promotion of park resources and their meanings. Actively managed collaboration will go far in facilitating the changes that will keep us as an agency healthy.

I sense that the NPS is fighting its way out of the bramble patch of confusion, malaise, and in some places, even mutual distrust toward a new period of positive collaboration and forward movement. We must continue to fight against the energy-sapping forces of inertia, reject the urge to give up and be cynical about the future, and avoid the tendency to find our strength only in memories of former glory.

Unless we are adaptable, the challenges of the 21st century will overwhelm this agency. Our audience is evolving and we must continue to embrace new strengths and ideas to meet our audience where they are, or our audience will leave us behind. Relevancy comes from operations that are flexible, optimistic and open to new ideas so that we target our work to the new eyes and ears yearning for connections to parks. This will require many of us to let go of cherished but outdated priorities and techniques. That is not an easy thing. The ability to fight institutionalized hopelessness, dismantle tired management constructs, facilitate change and build vibrant new managerial structures is critical. We must assess our leaders by these measures.

In my view, the single unifying idea that all employees should understand is that our visitors, our supporters and the promise of continued funding rests on how well we work together to promote our meaningful resources, value flexibility and innovation, and prioritize the pursuit of continued relevancy. As we move into the 21st century and figure out how our resources are relevant, we will continue to connect people to meaningful experiences if we are open to new thinking. No matter the division or role, everyone should be working toward this inspiring goal and ask, “So what can I do in a new way today?”

This is my last column for Ranger. I enjoyed writing in this space, but I have passed the torch to others with ideas to share. I will dedicate my time to a new interpretive project to continue the work of interpretive change management and agency evolution.

Thank you, and I hope that my columns have provoked at least a few discussions. I have used this column to pose tough questions to and challenge the status quo of current operations, warn about the pitfalls of inaction, and stay vigilant against thinking and actions that harm our division. I hope the interpretive staff keeps evolving and we all do our part to keep the NPS a great agency.

Protection

The Individual Development Plan: A Tool to Guide the Future of Your Career — Where do you want to be in three years? Or even five or 10 years? How about when you retire?

These are important questions that all rangers and other National Park Service employees ought to be asking regardless of where we are in our career path. One available tool to help us guide the future of our careers is an Individual Development Plan, or an IDP.

When things progress the way they are supposed to, new employees during their initial years of employment are educated about IDPs and the role they can play in guiding their career by their supervisors and possibly their human resources folks. Many employees, though, may have several years of employment before they hear the phrase IDP for the first time.

Don’t let this happen to you. Recognize that you ultimately hold the reins of your career, and you are the primary guiding force in the direction your career moves. A lot of factors exist that can influence your career, but in the end, you decide where you want to go professionally and how far.

By using an IDP, you can begin early on to steer your professional development toward measurable, definable, realistic goals you set for yourself. The beautiful thing about IDPs is they help to accomplish two things at once: help individual employees guide their careers and help the NPS develop its workforce. To quote the NPS Fundamentals curriculum, which includes an entire section on IDPs, “they provide a logical and structured framework for assessing and addressing both individual and organizational needs.”

According to the NPS Workforce Management Team, its mission is “to ensure that NPS has people with the right skills at the right place at the right time. To achieve this, we work to create an NPS culture that brings out the best in all NPS employees by fully aligning workforce management systems and processes with the needs of the NPS to accomplish the mission.”

“People with the right skills.” That means people who have progressed along a certain career ladder, developing specified skill sets along the way. These skill sets vary with each job title and are known in NPS lingo as “Essential Competencies,” those skills that are crucial to the job.

For protection park rangers (which the Office of Personnel Management has listed for the NPS as a mission-critical occupation), the NPS has identified six essential competencies: law enforcement, resource stewardship, resource education, emergency operations (to include fire management, EMS and SAR), special park uses, and recreation, backcountry and wilderness management. The OPM has identified two additional essential competencies for protection park rangers: legal, government and jurisprudence, and emergency medical (similar to the NPS Emergency Operations competency).

These essential competencies are listed for specific job titles and are in addition to the eight NPS universal competencies, which apply to all NPS job titles in all career fields. These are mission comprehension, agency orientation, NPS operations, fundamental values, resource stewardship, communication skills and individual development and planning.

That last one proves to reinforce how important IDPs are, so much so that the NPS includes the concept as a universal competency that all employees must master. Moreover, one of the five NPS core values is “excellence.” This means that as NPS employees, we are expected to be professional, competent, highly skilled and excellent at our jobs. If that’s not compelling enough, consider the Centennial Initiative. Under it, the NPS director has outlined several goals, one of which is to “develop the next generation of NPS leaders.”

We are part of the next generation of NPS leaders, and an initial step toward our development is to complete our IDPs.

So how do we go about accomplishing that? The steps are simple and begin with accessing the actual IDP form. We can do this through the InsideNPS website by conducting a search for “Individual Development Plans” and clicking onto the link provided. Another way is to enroll in the NPS Fundamentals curriculum, complete Fundamentals I and II, then begin Fundamentals III, during which IDP forms are made available to us.

Once the form is printed, schedule a time to sit down with your supervisor and fill in the blanks. Begin by actually listing individual competencies that need to be achieved. Next, list different training courses and/or developmental opportunities that will enable the employee to achieve the targeted competency. Lastly, identify dates for the training courses and/or opportunities so that a timeline is established. Be sure to make the timeline realistic and achievable.

The IDP becomes a useful justification to help us acquire needed training sessions and developmental opportunities in a competitive world. Once we attend the training or participate in some other developmental exercise, we complete the blanks asking if we met the competency.

By staying true to a well-thought-out IDP, we can have a tangible means of guiding our own career and be able to answer the question, “Where do you want to be in x years?” with a confident certainty, whether that destination is district ranger, FMO, special agent, chief ranger, superintendent or beyond.

Better yet, we can know that we are on track to becoming part of the next generation of NPS leaders who, according to the NPS Workforce Management Team’s Vision Statement, are “a diverse, highly skilled, motivated and effective workforce capable of accomplishing the NPS mission and carrying it into the next century.”

Where do you want to be in 10 years?

~ Kevin Moses, Buffalo National River

New NPS Director Jon Jarvis has appointed Dr. Gary Machlis as the agency’s first science adviser to the director. Creation of this position sends a strong message about the director’s priorities and the importance with which he views the role of science.

Dr. Machlis has outlined 10 goals. They include advancing science delivery and literacy; engaging the scientific community to support science for parks and parks for science; establishing standards to ensure that science is relevant, rigorous, peer-reviewed and delivered in usable form to managers; elevating and expanding the role of science in decision-making; work on defendable, defensible funding, looking at education programs as an investment; training NPS leaders in how to incorporate science into decision-making; developing a diverse, professional science workforce; linking park science to education programs that contribute to visitor experiences; promoting science-based communication across boundaries, even international ones; and ensuring that science is accountable and efficient.

Dr. Machlis earned graduate degrees in forestry and human ecology, has authored several books, and is national coordinator for the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit Network.

Other resource news from the natural resource and science directorate — Pending OMB approval, the NPS plans to solicit early public input, through a notice in the Federal Register, to aid in developing proposed revisions to its nonfederal oil and gas regulations at 36 CFR Part 9B. Approximately 700 nonfederal oil and gas operations exist in 13 park units, on private or state inholdings or split estates.

The NPS Geologic Resources Division is developing a comprehensive list of energy-related projects outside park boundaries that could impact park resources. If you know of an energy-related project near your park — existing and potential projects for conventional (e.g., coal, oil and gas, coal bed methane, oil shale, tar sands, power plants, transmission lines and liquefied natural gas) and renewable (e.g., solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, hydropower and coastal hydrokinetics) energy development — send a summary to kerry_moss@nps.gov or call him at 303-969-2364.

The U.S. Animal Welfare Act calls for the establishment of an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee to review investigator protocols and actions. To help ensure the highest standards of animal welfare in parks, the NPS Biological Resource Management Division has hired an interim attending veterinarian/committee chair and appointed three additional members to serve on the committee. Immediate priorities include working with each region to select representatives, and development of outreach, policy implementation and training activities.

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.