Could mocking your manager be saving lives?

I’ve just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers: the story of success” it’s a great read, if only in that Gladwell takes a topic that could have so easily fallen into the already overflowing category of self-help drivel and moulds it into an engaging, thought provoking read… even for a cynic like myself.

But I’m not here to jot superlatives about Outliers. The thing that I’d like to share, the thing that really stuck in my mind about the book was Gladwell’s look at the idea of power-distance.

It’s a concept first developed by Dutch psychologist Geert Hofstede in the seventies as part of an IBM sponsored research project into the way different national cultures work together*. Hofstede explains it like this:

“Power-distance is the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions (like the family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. This represents inequality (more versus less), but defined from below, not from above. It suggests that a society's level of inequality is endorsed by the followers as much as by the leaders.”

What this means is, in a low power-distance culture, managers are seen as just other co-workers who happen to have a bit more responsibility, whereas in a high power-distance culture managers are seen more as the ruling class, they’re cut from finer cloth than lowly workers. In a high power-distance culture, you do what you’re told, you don’t ask questions in the hope that maybe one day you’ll prove yourself worthy of making the step up to a better life.

“in an environment like, say, the cockpit of a 747, subordinates being squeamish about questioning superiors can make a big impact – literally”

So why does that make a difference? Well, if you’re working in an environment like, say, the cockpit of a 747, subordinates being squeamish about questioning their superiors can make a big impact – literally. In these sorts of complex, high-consequence environments, the difference between respectfully suggesting your superior checks the instrument panel again and saying, “Hey Bob, what’s that red light…oh crap, you’ve forgotten to put the undercarriage down!” make the difference between smooth landing and fireball.

OK, so flashing back home to Queenstown, the adventure tourism capital of New Zealand. Where do we fit on the power-distance scale? Right at the lowest end, New Zealand is in the bottom five. That’s great right? Well, yes and no.

Thanks to a quirk in our immigration laws, Queenstown receives a large proportion of its workers from Latin America. Which is fantastic - I’ve always maintained that without immigration and tourism Queenstown would be like any other farming town, just with bigger mountains. The thing is, Latin America is a textbook example of a high power-distance culture.

So what we have occurring increasingly frequently is low power-distance managers (who expect to be questioned) working with high power-distance staff (who don't ask questions) in adventure tourism – an industry which lends itself to complex systems and high consequences – just like a 747 cockpit.

Recent events like the Outdoor Pursuits Centre tragedy, the river-boarding death of Emily Jordan, the jet boating death of Yan Wang and numerous near-misses stand as evidence that in adventure tourism, unless every box is checked and cross-checked, things can go horribly wrong.

So what are we to do? Well, I’m no expert (plus, bloggers don’t solve problems, we create them! :-) so I’m not going to try to offer a panacea here. But it would seem that Queenstown’s business community needs to ensure that we keep our low power-distance culture, and encourage visiting workers to join that culture.

Perhaps a instituting a points-based reward scheme to encourage a healthy disrespect for authority could work: steal your boss’s parking space - that’s a point; make a joke about your manager’s new haircut - that’s two; pin a childish caricature of the CEO to the company notice board - that’s five. Whoever scores the most points at the end of the week gets to take Friday afternoon off.

Who would have thought all that time Kiwis have spent ridiculing the boss behind his back – and in front of it – was actually fulfilling an important occupational health and safety function.

*The study identified five ‘cultural dimensions’; power-distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term verses short term orientation. There’s a good summary on Hofstede’s website - http://stuwww.uvt.nl/~csmeets/index.html

Out There - in print!

Check out January’s edition of Wilderness Magazine for the first installment of the Out There column, exploring the etiquette of bringing music into the wilderness. The story is the first in a series on philosophy and travel that I’ve agreed to co-author through 2010 (and hopefully beyond). The column’s brief is a dream: a thousand words on philosophy and travel – basically explore with your mind or your feet… then write it up. It’s going to be a fun year!

This Kiwi Christmas, think of the environment; kill a tree

These days the whole Christmas thing seems to be a bit past its used-by date. It’s had a good run: the festival that started out in the spirit of charity and camaraderie has been kicking on for nearly two millennia, well and truly outliving its Pagan creators.

Unfortunately, true to the laws of entropy, over the years the feel-good fest has decayed to a point where it’s now really just about absolving your guilt for neglecting friends and family by buying them crap they don’t need and you can’t afford. Bah humbug!

However, if you pick over the carcass of Christmas, moving carefully past the poisonous bits – the consumer fads, the nauseating carols, and inevitable family squabbles – you can still find some delicious titbits, sometimes in the most unexpected of places.

Take for instance the whole Christmas tree thing; the custom of chopping down a small evergreen tree, bringing it inside and festooning it with so much tinsel and fairy lights that the boughs creak under the strain.

There are a lot of theories floating around for why it’s become a tradition, the most logical being that in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, having a bit of greenery inside during the cold and dark of the winter solstice was a comforting reminder that spring is on its way – pretty irrelevant for forty-five degrees south, where Christmas falls in the heat of summer. Or is it?

You see, New Zealand’s South Island is faced with a bit of a thorny (or should that be needly) problem. Forestry is one of our biggest industries, earning us about 3.5 billion export dollars and directly employing over 20,000 people in 2007. In my limited understanding, as far as large scale agriculture goes, forestry is one of the good guys - turning atmospheric carbon into houses, books and stuff. But, from a local point of view, the industry has a big downside.

The average eight-year-old radiata pine, (the species of which 90% of our plantations are composed) will produce thousands of wind dispersed seeds each year – and spread them over a ten kilometre radius given the right conditions. The resulting seedlings, known as "wilding pines" out-compete our native plants, eventually turning iconic kiwi landscapes like Central Otago's alpine tussock meadows into very North American looking pine forests. It’s a phenomenon that, according to the Department of Conservation, threatens over 210,000 hectares of public land.

The good news is; the average seven-year-old radiata makes a particularly handsome Christmas tree, and if every household in the South Island had one decorated and dying in their house this year, we’d be well on the way to getting the problem under control.

So, this Christmas, rather than erecting a petrochemical plastic monstrosity in your living room, why not pick up a saw, head into the highcountry and chop yourself down a tree. You'll be doing the environment a favour.

Here's my excuse

I like to think of myself as being an optimist. But if, in fact, my life does prove to be a crashing failure, serving only as a warning to others, this’ll be why:

When you think deeply about life, love, culture and politics, from the United Nations General Assembly to Altitude Bar on a Friday night; it’s all really just biology.

When you look closely at biology; muscles, hormones, cell reproduction, and DNA; whether you’re talking about the physiology of an Olympic athlete or the mating behaviour of a Kakapo; it all boils down to chemistry.

When you study chemistry in its fundamental parts; molecules, protons, neutrons and electrons and the finely choreographed sub-atomic dance happening all around us; it’s all really just physics.

If you’re bright enough to study physics in detail; matter, motion, energy and force; it’s really all just mathematics...

...the thing is, I suck at maths.

Mother Nature's gambling den - follow up

A bit of follow up from the last post regarding the Fine Line screening in Queenstown. I'll let Sophie from AdventureSkope do the talking:

"I'm delighted to let you know that last night's screening of the award-winning avalanche film "The Fine Line" at Queenstown's World Bar was a huge success!

The AdventureSkope Productions crew were hoping that about 100 people might attend, so they were overjoyed that almost 200 people braved the rain to be a part of this fantastic night.

Even more people wanted to see the movie - the AdventureSkope crew had to apologetically turn people away due to the World Bar having reached maximum capacity.

Proceeds from the film night, which are going to New Zealand Land Search and Rescue, have already exceeded $1,600 and further donations are still pouring in. Search & Rescue's Ed Halson is delighted with the result and has said that the money will be used to fund new "lost person rescue kits" a crucial ingredient in a successful backcountry rescue.

The event was very well supported by local businesses with over $2,000 worth of products being given away to thirty lucky people. Sponsors included Body Sanctum, Harris Mountain Heli-Ski, IO NZ, Joe's Garage, Onsen Hot Pools, Outside Sports, Petzl, Quest, The Studio Pilates & Physiotherapy and The World Bar; along with 3 Fold Print and Impact Print.

Thanks to everyone that supported and attended this event - without your help it wouldn't have been the incredible success that it was!"

Mother Nature’s gambling den

How to ski steep and deep... while stacking the odds in your favour.

To the average flatlander, skiers’ obsession with powder snow must seem a bit ridiculous. Why on earth would go to so much effort, so much expense and generally risk your neck for a bit of frozen rain?

The simplest answer I can give is this: riding steep untracked powder is an experience that leaves any other non-medicinal recreation for dead.

Why? Well, the nature of powder snow is such that you don’t so much travel across it as fly through it, piloting your skis or board in three dimensions. Plus the surface itself is incredibly forgiving, more so even than water, allowing you to drop cliffs and have wipe-outs that’d send you to the emergency room on any other surface.

Then there’s the whole kinaesthetic side of it. The rhythmic motion of linked turns in deep snow is a little like dancing to a steady, thumping baseline – the sort of rhythmic movement that awakens the primal hunter-gatherer part of your brain; the beast within - Grrr!

When you combine these things it’s like being a superhero for the day – flying faster than a speeding bullet, leaping tall buildings in a single bound, surviving blows that would kill any mortal man. It’s an endorphin rush, an adrenalin rush and a head rush all at once. Better than any drug… and way more addictive.

You see, there are no guarantees with snow – especially in a maritime climate like New Zealand – you can have champagne powder one day, slush the next, and ice day after that. It’s Mother Nature’s gambling den; you get a random reward with a random frequency. It’s no surprise people get hooked.

The problem is snow’s a tricky substance, when it’s freshly fallen it’s light as eider down, but given the right conditions it can form into dense layers (often hidden deep in the snow pack) that can peel off a mountainside when triggered by the weight of a skier.

To make matters worse, if you don’t know what you’re doing, it can be hard to tell just how securely things are stuck together– in effect, you won't know whether you’re playing a 20c poker machine or betting everything at the high rollers table.

So what’s a hapless powder-addict to do? One word my alpine amigos: learn.

If you're reading and this thinking "hey, that sounds like me" and you happen to be in Queenstown*, then a great way to get started is taking place on Thursday the 27th of August at the World Bar (yes… before you ask… you are allowed to drink beer at the same time), with the screening of the mould-breaking avalanche movie The Fine Line.

Event Director, Sophie Kennedy from AdventureSkope, who was one of the first on the scene at the recent avalanche that killed Ryan Campbell, says what she saw that afternoon inspired her to organise the screening.

“Although we weren't able to save Ryan, I hope that by screening this movie and increasing avalanche awareness in Queenstown, we might be able to prevent situations like this happening in the future.”

“If you have any interest in avalanches, snow sports, backcountry access or simply exquisite cinematography you should see this film. You just never know, someone's life might depend on it some day," she said.

The film’s cutting-edge cinematography which includes wire-cam, time-lapse, animation – and even a claymation cameo – has seen it win a swag of international awards including "Best at Festival" at the 2009 Fernie Mountain Film Festival, “Best Director” as the X-Dance film festival and "Absolute Winner - King of Films" at the 2009 Livigno Film Festival in Italy. Check this out to whet your appetite (or click here):



Doors open at the World Bar, Queenstown at 6.30pm with the film starting at 7.00pm. Tickets are $10 with all proceeds going to Search & Rescue. House drinks are $4 and entry to the spot prize draw is included.

If you’re a skier or boarder, and you’ve ever found yourself gazing wistfully at the untracked powder beyond the ski area boundaries, then $10 for a ticket – available at the door - could well be the best money you’ve ever spent.

*If you're not in the neighbourhood, then get on a plane... but seriously, if you visit Rocky Mountain Sherpas you can buy the DVD, or maybe track down a screening near you.

The eco-tourism paradox

Visit our country… or the monkey gets it!

Here’s an interesting concept… well at least I thought so: Is travelling to developing countries a good or bad thing for the environment. Could it be both in the same action?

In a lot of ways this whole economic downturn and the flat tourism market it’s produced are doing great things for the environment. People are taking staycations instead of vacations, thereby saving vast quantities of increasingly scarce fossil fuels and their associated carbon emissions.

By not travelling people generally consume less plastic, less paper, and less water – on the whole we just seem to consume less when we’re at home and we generally do so in locations that are better able to cope with the resulting waste.

But… and this is a really big but (think J.Lo), over the years tourism’s big gift to the planet is that it’s attached an economic value to nature. Developing communities have generally realised that the big old trees in the forest are worth more standing unharmed than they are chopped down for paper pulp. The monkeys swinging through their branches – they’ll educate the local kids.

However, when the economy slows down and the tourists stay home, those old trees start to look pretty tempting once again. It’s obvious to all that going back to the bad old slash-and-burn days is a short sighted solution, but in developing countries people often just don’t have the financial backing to ride out a global recession.

So what to do? Travel? Stay home? It might just be that we’re equally damned… and equally blessed whichever we choose.

As far as I can tell there’s no easy answer. The most likely fix is for travellers to exercise a bit of intelligence – ask some pointy questions before you make that booking: Is there a short-haul destination I could visit instead? Who owns this hotel? Where do you get your water? Is this food local, or did you fly it in?

But perhaps the most important thing you can do in terms of the environment while travelling is try to learn from the locals. Behave like a missionary in reverse. Odds are, if you’re travelling to a developing country your hosts will have a smaller ecological footprint than you. So look around, and see what ideas you can bring home.

Go forth, travel, think, learn and you might just land on the positive side of the paradox.