I’ve been thinking recently about people and the management thereof.

We get a lot of people here at the Trust. There’s the 45,000 visitors per year, obviously, but there’s also all the staff, volunteers and work experience students. The age range of all of these people is from zero to one hundred and over, and here’s the thing that has struck me; the sheer quantity and quality of knowledge and life experience that is gathered in the park through an average year must be phenomenal. The question is; how do we harness and make the most of it? I think the answer lies in the simple acknowledgment of it.

I believe that, whilst we all begin life with a genetically inherited set of characteristics (probably), our approach to the business of living emerges out of people we have met and experiences we have had.

Take the catering assistant – yep, you know, the one who just served you tea and a flap jack who looks like they should be at school. Well, it’s true, he/she is about 14 or 15 years old and still at school. What do they bring? They are mentally agile and physically fit. You see them as the catering assistant but they are also somebody’s brother or sister, somebody’s child and grandchild. They are a pupil also an employee; responsible for their own health and safety and that of their team in the kitchen and picnic areas.

The attitude with which they approach you, the customer, is a direct result of the people they have known and the experiences they have had, including all the customers that came before. Their manager has trained them to do a job and asks that they do it to a certain standard. Their attitude and approach to any given task comes from their life experiences and what they bring can be encouraged and channelled by their manager and by their encounters with the visitors. Their encounter with you will go on to shape their approach to the next in the queue and so on.

This applies to everybody who works at the Trust, from Senior Management to work experience student. We’re all full of life experiences that shape our attitude to a task or person at a point in time.

So, here’s what I’m trying to say. I think we, and I as a manager, need to have two pictures in mind all the time. The first is of the moment; the person/task in front of me now, that deserves all of my attention in that moment. The second is of the larger cause and effect. The history that led up to the moment and the ripple effect of the action or encounter in progress particularly, since that encounter will go on to shape someone else’s attitude and responses.

So, here I sit, behind the scenes, doing my best to dedicate myself to the moment and not lose sight of the bigger picture. Also, to acknowledge the people and experiences from my life that I bring with me to my job with the Trust.

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