2. What does an Iceberg have to do
with Building Capacity and
Enhancing Staff Performance?
Steve McCool
Professor Emeritus
Department of Society and Conservation

3. The Titanic and Its Encounter

4. Adapted from Senge (2008)

5. How many triangles do you see?

6. Mental models determine how we respond
to life’s situations

7. Mental models
often serve to models we use to frame tourism
• The mental
handcuff our
development questions are often barriers to
thinking
achieving goals

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

9. Capacity Development
• Key Questions
– Who
– What
– How
– Success
• Some Guidelines

10. 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

11. Who Needs Enhanced Capacity?
• Rangers/Guides
• Middle Management
• Policy makers

12. What Competencies?
• Rangers/Guides – Physical skills
– Law enforcement
– Interpretation
– Trail construction/maintenance
• Middle Management – Problem solving skills
– Thinking critically about challenges/opportunities

13. 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

14. 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

15. Middle Management Competencies
Strategic Planning Operational
Competencies Competencies Competencies
Develop a vision for the Integrating development Revenue generation
area and protection mechanisms
Partnership/stakeholders Visitor use and tourism Administration/human
outreach and planning resources
engagement
Negotiation Knowledge of facility and Financial management
infrastructure design & and business planning
construction
Understanding the Education and Marketing
context interpretation
Innovation and Monitoring Regulation and
entrepreneurship enforcement

16. Methods to Build Competencies
• Shortcourses/workshops
• Long term educational leave
• Twinning
• Technical assistance
• Webinars
• Demonstration/pilot projects

17. Guidelines
• Multi-threaded
• Long-term
• Adult education principles
• Partnership with focus on joint exploration
and learning

18. What way forward?
• What competencies?
• For whom?
• How?
• Who?

19. Tourism Growth Expected