Lessons from scorpions and Grevy’s Zebra Trust

“If you turn the blacklight on at night, you’ll see they’re all over the place.” Belinda Low, Grevy’s Zebra Trusts (GZT) founder and Executive Director, and I stood over an eight-inch scorpion that was brightly glowing white amidst the purple light she pointed at it. I had run out of my tent in my pajama shorts and flip flops to see it, she was in jeans and sneakers just back from the campfire. “That’s why I always wear closed-toed shoes at night.” She paused and then laughed as she turned the light to my exposed toes. 

As I went to bed that night, the dusty wind rattling my tent, I thought about how the invisible scorpions of GZT’s Samburu headquarters were a metaphor for the challenges of management. You can oftentimes ‘get by’ as a manager, but there are probably a lot of near-misses that could be avoided if management wasn’t so commonly done in the dark. With more care, thought, and preparation you can almost certainly avoid serious problems. My naked toes in the Samburu bush went unscathed not because I was consciously avoiding scorpions, but because I was lucky. I simply didn’t know what I didn’t know, but sometimes the unknown can come up and bite you.

I had come to GZT’s field camp in Samburu with my colleague to run a management training for the GZT team. The training was just one piece of Maliasili’s broader engagement to support GZT to optimize its team performance. While this work is ongoing, GZT has already said they feel more coordinated and efficient as a team as a result of investing in this process. We hope this work will take them a step closer to achieving their ultimate goal of helping to conserve and restore Grevy’s zebra numbers in Kenya. Inspired by GZT’s growth so far, we share three strategies for enhancing management practices to increase organizational impact.

1. Call out the scorpion in the bush - What is ‘Management'?:

Management is about coordinating and strengthening a team to deliver upon their strategic goals and to achieve intended results. It’s about actions, plans, support, and results.

Management doesn’t need to be a big scary unknown beast (or creepy-crawly critter). But often managers in the conservation field got to where they are because of their technical prowess and not because of demonstrated management talent or training. Teams should take the time to understand management: what it is, why it matters, what it looks like in practice, and the different roles people play.

To demystify management we spent a day with GZT defining it as a group, discussing its purpose, and reflecting upon the different styles and roles of managers. We gave the team time to describe and share their own management styles based on a reflection of their values, their roles, and their experiences. This gave everyone an appreciation of the personalities, characteristics, and individual approaches each person brings to their management style, while also building intimacy within the team to understand each other for a more productive working environment.

 2. Spell it out and tailor it

A management system maps out the different ways a team interacts to bring about results. Effective systems are clear on roles and responsibilities, the purpose and expectations of each ‘management’ interaction, and the frequency and timing required.

Even with a strong understanding of management, it can still feel overwhelming if it’s not tailored to an organization’s reality. With GZT we began by understanding their needs: what was the problem they needed to solve when it came to their management systems?  We identified that their ED needed more peer support. She knew her team had the capacity but lacked the mandate, so we helped GZT form a senior leadership team and we worked with them to articulate their purpose and the different roles they all had to play. From there we supported them to develop a system for coordination and communication, which they decided would include weekly leadership team meetings on Monday mornings. They took it a step further and added a monthly podcast/book club discussion on management.

At our management workshop, I suggested regular management meetings should be short - no more than an hour - something we normally suggest to our partners. The leadership team laughed and said they enjoyed theirs which were lasting between 1-3 hours. It was a healthy reminder that one size does not fit all and that management systems need to be tailored to different organizational cultures and contexts.

Lillian Sekko, GZT’s Administrator, shares an overview of the Senior Leadership Team’s new management system.

On a paired walk, team members discussed their management strengths and challenges as they worked on identifying their management style.

3. Commit - consistently 

Effective management requires an investment of time and resources and needs to be a normal and prioritized practice within an organization.

When organizations get busy and stretched (which in my experience in the African conservation field is almost always ) one of the first things that gets pushed aside is management. Meetings get skipped, feedback is forgotten, and let’s not even mention performance appraisals… But when the opposite happens, when an organization sticks to their management practices especially in the hard times, the coordination, communications, and support actually makes them more effective at handling the pressure.

The day we held our management training with GZT was a Monday and the leadership team was distressed that they were missing their first team meeting in three months. Their angst demonstrated the value they see in these meetings, which they have reported has improved their coordination, empowered team members, and enhanced their efficiency. As they look to roll out similar management systems across their programs, they discussed what would work and what wouldn’t and acknowledged that if they didn’t commit to being consistent that management wouldn’t bring value.

By Jessie Davie, Portfolio Manager