What does an Iceberg have to do with Building Capacity and

Enhancing Staff Performance?Steve McCool

Professor Emeritus

Department of Society and Conservation

The Titanic and Its Encounter

Adapted from Senge (2008)

How many triangles do you see?

Mental models determine how we respond

to life’s situations

• The mental models we use to frame tourism development questions are often barriers to achieving goals

Mental models often serve to handcuff our thinking

When thinking about capacities, we need to consider how deep we want to dive; at what levels do we want to develop

capacities

Capacity Development• Key Questions

– Who

– What

– How

– Success

• Some Guidelines

Understanding the Need

• Increasingly major tourism destination

• Important steward of biodiversity

• Tourism can bring revenues to protect biodiversity

• Tourism depends on

– Resources and heritage

– Quality of opportunities

Who Needs Enhanced Capacity?

• Rangers/Guides

• Middle Management

• Policy makers

What Competencies?

• Rangers/Guides – Physical skills

– Law enforcement

– Interpretation

– Trail construction/maintenance

• Middle Management – Problem solving skills

– Thinking critically about challenges/opportunities

Middle Management

• Typical questions – How to balance tourism and biodiversity

protection

– How to engage the public and communities

– What visitor opportunities to provide and where

– How to put together a plan

– What experiences are tourists looking for

– How to market parks appropriately

– How to measure success

Goals of Capacity Development

• Focus on critical thinking

• Build awareness of the situation

• Working through policy and management challenges

• Developing confidence

• Enhanced performance of job

Middle Management CompetenciesStrategic Competencies

Planning Competencies

Operational Competencies

Develop a vision for the area

Integrating development and protection

Revenue generation mechanisms

Partnership/stakeholders outreach and engagement

Visitor use and tourism planning

Administration/human resources

Negotiation Knowledge of facility and infrastructure design & construction

Financial management and business planning

Understanding the context

Education and interpretation

Marketing

Innovation and entrepreneurship

Monitoring Regulation and enforcement

Methods to Build Competencies

• Shortcourses/workshops

• Long term educational leave

• Twinning

• Technical assistance

• Webinars

• Demonstration/pilot projects

Guidelines

• Multi-threaded

• Long-term

• Adult education principles

• Partnership with focus on joint exploration and learning

What way forward?

• What competencies?

• For whom?

• How?

• Who?

Tourism Growth Expected