Persevering through pivots along pathways, from playgrounds and through people

Mind your Ps and Qs (32)

Whatever our decisions, we’re expected to “Persevere”. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. But the slog can be exhausting. Undeniably, the conditions under which we make decisions inexorably shift or evolve over time. The assumptions we once believed in become unglued and may be proven invalid. The unknown consequences of prior decisions eventually become known, some serving to blindside, attack, and haunt us.

Yet, the grit and determination required to advance our aspirations and progress in achieving our purpose or goals is not something we can walk away from. In many cases, it cannot even be put on hold. But in advancing the desire for growth and constant improvement, it is essential that it be premised on remaining attentive to the nuanced realities and ramifications associated with the appropriateness of what is on offer, as well as to new data and information on up-and-coming internal and external possibilities and pressures, opportunities and obstacles existing within our unique, contextually complex, competitive environments.

Adapting, adjusting and modifying, if not re-evaluating and re-formulating, however, are not simple tasks. In concerned and adaptive organizations and communities-as-destinations they proceed through thorough, on-going destination assessments based on question storming activities. As an aside, do know that the most significant questions are contained in Astonish! Smarter Tourism by design (my four-volume e-book, free for all paid subscribers, once I activate that option).

But that isn’t what usually happens. When initiating new endeavors, for example, I think you would agree that there is a tendency to believe that they will succeed regardless of the odds. But it is often an allusion. Gung-ho, hectic, but feeling in control, we expect that our known-knowns will put us on upward trajectories. It is when the lurking, unknown-unknowns descend and disrupt when all hell breaks loose.

For those who think they operate in a stable world, it’s unlikely that they are thinking too far ahead. Starry-eyed, they`re unable to fathom the fallibility of their truths before everything destabilizes and relationships sour. Though, let it be said: When chaos represents their norm, stability can seem equally unfathomable.

At any point in the journey, as plans and strategies veer off-course, the challenges many individual leaders and managers face are pivotal…some may even seem fateful. Getting unstuck and back on track represent formidable organizational and community-wide quests. Quests, interestingly and possibly, that can turn out to be personal and transcendent…but more on that later.

In preparing for this on-going series of articles, ‘Mind Your Ps and Qs’, you will recall that I started out by laying out the requirements for being truly effective, adaptive, and conscientious leaders and managers. I then proceeded to the “Qs” - “quantity” and “quality” - because I knew that their volatility and mercurial nature is of the utmost importance and top-of-mind to all operating business enterprises.

This then led to the four part series of articles, “Quintessential Queries,” a consequential review of the cyclicality of tourism that was originally published in the book The Tourism Area Life Cycle – Review, Relevance and Revision, available from Channel View Publications.

While I didn`t discuss it at the time, I like to think of destination life cycles as a composite or tangled array of individual organizational life cycles, with cycles representing interspersed pathways with vague starting, transitional, and finishing points…endless varieties of, winding, beginning-to-end routes. Pathways that represent far from predictable stages, shapes or conclusions. Pathways that become blocked or clogged (perhaps too many people and cars, necessitating transit action).

Pathways that often require us to meander or take them slowly. Pathways that may or may not allow us to see, understand, and explore deeply, especially in relation to the booms and busts of economies and business cycles, and the role played by monetary and regulatory practices and policies. Or, as the case may be, pathways that represent fast speedways that encourage us to ignore, if not bypass, the intersection of tourism with urban planning.

There are all sorts and varieties of pathways, some that become worn-out through neglect or over-use. Pathways that carve out or lead circuitously to turnoffs or unknown destinations. Pathways that permit, encourage, or alter behaviors and intentions in accord with changing circumstances, driving conditions, especially the motivating factors, moods or temperaments of decision-makers known to cement their bonds not through ideals but by deals. Problematic if you define a destination brand as a set of values contained in an image.

Indeed enigmatic, as deals represent legalized agreements or contracts that have well-defined but limited outcomes, difficult to terminate, making it arduous for people, organizations, communities or governments to seek (often mid-course) alternative pathways, particularly when progress or achieving fulfillment and prosperity have to be redefined.

In the academic literature, TALC studies provide ample, contextually rich explanations and depictions of these pathways but, to my mind, inadequately deal with the degree to which organizations and communities utilize their agency to formulate the direction or redirection of cycles or paths. After all, as pathways become imagined and built, their routes and level of utilization cannot be easily predetermined or interpreted. Moreover as they become traversed, they are known to alter existing landscapes and vacationscapes, to the point that they may eventually become viewed as nullifying and incongruous.

To say there is a total lack of awareness isn`t true though. To some extent, most tourism developments proceed through independent studies that determine feasibility and viability but often lacking in desire-ability as determined by citizens of communities. On the other hand, so much of what we think of as tourism development emanates from entrepreneurially driven activities that tend to operate reactively rather than preemptively or proactively.

En masse, communities-as-destinations and their tourism clusters represent configurations of independent rivals and allies representing small-to-large organizations, governments, DMOs and NGOs that may or may not operate in integrated ways. As such, their overall effectiveness is likely to be determined by the degree to which there is a corresponding network effect, as well as by the integrity of the integration, rather than the form that integration happens to take…all determined by the effectiveness of leadership teams

As a matter of course, though, the configuration of tourism clusters can sow the seeds of their own destruction. This happens, most likely when there is a lack of futures literacy compounded by hasty decision-making, the over-estimation of demand, excessive and misplaced blue-sky thinking, lack of synergies, along with unanticipated failures associated with financing, marketing and operating, that can precipitate setbacks at any stage of a life cycle, triggering concern, alarm or decline.

Another rationale for this rise and fall of organizations and destinations has to do with the style and scope of management. The initial development of most organizations starts out as (and may have to remain) entrepreneurial (e.g. restaurants) and then advances into professional managerial structures as organizations grow and mature. Eventually, especially for larger corporations struggling to seek new directions, inspire their people, and sustain themselves, growth tends to evolve into political problems…particularly problematic for communities-as-destinations when “destination life” dominates and becomes misaligned with the values (purpose and principles) of “community life”.

Stated another way, as organizations grow and mature, they are inclined to spend considerable time and effort getting organized, achieving efficiencies, specializing in standardized work, formalizing procedures, controlling through rules and regulations, forming a hierarchy of authority, and formalizing planning to formulate strategies before implementation.

Unfortunately, such well-conceived bureaucracies become ill-suited and antithetical to the need for quick response to crises, evolving events, changing consumer habits, and the constant need for improvements and innovation. In such situations, neuroplasticity, or the business of adaptation and change, atrophies causing deliberations and course corrections to stall.

The more organizations, government agencies, DMOs and NGOs become overtly “rational” in their orientation, their individual and collective judgments and intuitiveness slow down and calcify. Unable to react quickly to economic, social, cultural, geo-political and social crises, organizational effectiveness falters. Spread across communities and throughout tourism clusters, any semblance of a network effect slips and can serve to prematurely throw plans and strategies off-course and possibly into decline.

These days, fortunately, more organizations and communities are attempting to embrace agile practices, rejecting the inadequacies and dehumanizing aspects of overt rationality. And, as mentioned in the previous article, “prevention and protection”, there is an acknowledged requirement for “thick” knowledge, as the speed and severity of change escalates…knowledge that will help identify critical inflection points through early warning systems, fostered through force field analysis, with the intention to:

· Overcome the failure of information and the failure of imagination.

· Identify obstacles and opportunities before they escape attention or pass by.

· Expand optionality.

· Reset strategies and to time them carefully.

· Regain trust

· Fix and transform tourism`s impacts.

· Continue to Astonish!

Of course, it’s wise to remember that visitors seek stability and security as much as they want to be sensationalized. They love to return and promote those communities-as-destinations that harbor fond memories and take them off the beaten path. Closure or the demise of favorite gathering-spots and attractions may be unavoidable, but if destinations hope to maintain or advance their appeal it`s vital that their continuous development encompasses the complexity of the human experience associated with careful and caring urban planning and the need to partner with nature (Natural Futures) that`s the ultimate place-maker.

As explained in my book Astonish! Smarter Tourism by design, I favor design-thinking as an approach to resolving problems or discovering new opportunities more creatively. One of the reasons why it’s wise to consider switching the analogy from paths to sandboxes. (Do listen to the entire presentation, even though it does not deal with tourism.)

Imagine utilizing the sandbox or playground as the place whereby all stakeholders can freely gather on a regular basis to discuss the merits and/or implications of the ever-expanding list of economic, climatic, political, cultural, natural, and social issues. Tourism in or out-of-sync with local, regional, national and international concerns and events such as the shift in trade corridors that are likely to alter tourism flows.

As is well known, the inevitability of change represents a major conundrum for tourism-serving organizations and communities-as-destinations. Most want to maintain a semblance of stability while continuing to grow, improve and develop. The challenge at this point is to gain the ability to “see around corners”, navigate inflection points and build resilience (as referenced in this report from the Global Travel and Tourism Resilience Council). After all, communities are not just keepers of memories, but keepers of possibilities and wonder, committed to creating shared futures which benefit all stakeholders.

Put into the context of ensuring that tourism can deliver community shared value, the initial task at hand is to anticipate and attempt to resolve the what, where, when, for whom and why of (possible or probable) value migration. Whether related to poor-to-bad policies, lack of attention to service encounters, measurement of the wrong or misleading metrics, insufficient re-investment in products/services/technologies, uninspired hospitality, inattention to natural resource regeneration, or problems with reinventing mobility ecosystems and the imbalance of tourism’s impacts on communities, the key idea is to be aware and prepared for intervention.

On the other hand, communities-as-destination require value to migrate to rather than away from them. If wealth and “wellth” are to be created, new value must be sought after and found. Within every community exists unexplored or untapped opportunities, new niche markets, and different ways of connecting with visitors, and visitors with citizens. While it’s a matter of exploring trends and changes to people’s sentiments with deep appreciation for their (sometimes conflicting) sensibilities, desires and interests, strategic shifts in business models frequently require pivots, so long as they stay true to a community`s principled purposes for pursuing tourism. Here is a useful guide to pivot-driven innovation.

All communities have agency to reshape their trajectories, to re-imagine what growth should mean and entail, how socio-economic productivity could and should be re-interpreted. But here is what remains problematic: Tourism is simply expected and allowed to happen without sufficient oversight.

Fortunately, more communities-as-destinations are coming to their senses and starting to take governance more seriously…new forms of governance that require networked leadership; and for individual industry and community leaders to “shift their mindsets and consciousness to see the world anew”…in ways that provide “storied experiences” – a version of the sandbox that fosters more meaningful and playful experiences for visitors.

Now, you’ll recall that I indicated that change needs to occur at personal levels. I can think of no better insight into this requirement than encourage you to adopt a servant leadership approach and listen to David Brooks’ talk at the Aspen Institute about the second mountain – the next big challenge in life.

When answering the question which mountain are you on, perhaps you might come to the conclusion that everything must change, as is happening in Banff National Park – Leading Tourism for Good. But “leading” will never be sufficient. “Tourism for good” requires a total re-design, mobilization and execution of your strategies if you hope to become a strategy champion.

A sincere tourism champion