Turning up the heat: moving your camp from great to greater

Camping Magazine, May-June, 2007 by Carl L. Harshman, Tom Etzkorn

The vast majority of you reading this article are knowledgeable, experienced, and highly successful in the camp business. Hopefully, you enjoy that well-deserved recognition because of your dedication, hard work, and thoughtful decisions. In our many years of working with employees at all levels of responsibility, we have found that those performing in the top tier are often, like you, driven to strive for even better performance and greater achievement.

The question then becomes ... how can we help these great employees become even greater?

Given the projected audience of high-performing camp owners, managers, and staff we thought we would begin by attempting to offer some insight and perspective from those already addressing and illuminating the path to the greater.

The 212[degrees] Principle

We recently read a short book entitled, 212[degrees]: The Extra Degree by S.L. Parker. The theme of this work is that when dealing with water, the single degree between 211[degrees] and 212[degrees] is the difference between simply having very hot water and ... producing powerful steam that can drive a locomotive engine.

We like the analogy because it is possible that the fundamental difference between your camp being good and being great may be just a matter of degrees, not major leaps in technical expertise or substantial professional development within a discipline. So, we proceed under the assumption that the knowledge and practices we describe in this article represent that extra degree that will increase your potential to take your camp from good to great or even, from great to greater!

Power of Your People: The Source of the Extra Degree

When asked to describe why your camp is the "best," you often cite location, programs, facilities, and experiences ... and almost in passing, acknowledge that you have a great team of committed and well-trained staff. While this is certainly easy enough to say, it is most difficult to deliver consistently year after year. In your organization, if you have the right product/service and strategy, the real secret to your success is your people, and each one determines your camp's results, reputation, and rewards ... every day. The three types of people who are key to your success are: (a) those who execute day-to-day; (b) those who provide essential support to the people who execute; and (c) the people who lead both groups. The efforts and attitudes of all three groups are deeply interconnected and highly important to ensure total success.

Even the best camp in terms of facilities, programs, and strategy is not likely to survive very long with poor to mediocre staff and unmotivated, ill-prepared leadership. Jim Collins, the author of the best-selling book Good to Great argued that staffing ... "getting the right people on the bus" ... was the essential first step in the journey from just being good to being great.

None of us sets out to hire mediocre or non-performing staff and leadership. We're all looking for high performers with a large proportion of superstars among them. In pursuing high performers, the critical hurdles are: (a) how to attract the best candidates; (b) how to select the best of those you attract; (c) how to manage and motivate those you hire; and (d) how to develop staff and leaders--that is, how to help the best get better.

The Purpose of This Article

We begin with the principle that "hiring entails a lot more than just making a surface decision about whom to put on the payroll." Rather, effective hiring is a multi-phased process--one that begins when you announce the job opening, it gathers momentum in the screening and selection of applicants, and continues well beyond the point that a job or promotion offer is made and accepted.

Thus, the aims of this article are manifold. We seek: (1) to provide an objective, criteria- based, reference model within which you can evaluate candidates; (2) to describe the role of assessment in screening and selecting candidates; and (3) to show how the information collected in the screening and hiring process can be used in managing and coaching after the person is on board and a functioning member of your team.

Begin With the End in Mind

Steven Covey in his classic Seven Habits of Highly Effective People says that one of the seven habits of highly effective people is to "begin with the end in mind." While Covey refers to the bigger picture--personal mission and vision--in terms of hiring, we mean that you start with the outcomes you want from a staff member or leader.

The best performing organizations have answers to the following questions for each role in the organization:

* What are the standards for performance? What outcomes or impacts is the person who occupies this role supposed to create or affect? (Notice we are not talking about the job description or what they do--we are talking about the impact of what they do on the people and world around them!)

** Example: Camp Counselor

** Role: To organize, manage, coach, and counsel a team of campers.