It's a Zoo

The verb "to lead," University of Maryland Professor Henry Sims recently told a panel investigating management problems at the National Zoo in Washington, comes from a Norse word meaning "to guide the course of a ship." The question facing the National Research Council panel, which is two months away from issuing a final report, could be framed this way: Why has the National Zoo drifted off course?

The zoo and its director, Lucy Spelman, have been under scrutiny for more than a year as allegations of mismanagement surfaced in The Washington Post, the organization's accreditation was challenged by the Aquarium and Zoo Association, and the research council launched its investigation. A string of preventable animal deaths, including those of two red pandas that ate rat poison, triggered the outside reviews.

The research council issued an interim report in February that offered some glimpses into the zoo's leadership problems. The council found that managers did not stick to a schedule of preventive medicine for its animals. As a result, an elephant developed TB. In addition, the zoo's nutrition program was not standardized, nor did managers regularly evaluate animal diets to see if changes were needed-a problem that may have contributed to a zebra's death. An internal oversight committee set up to regularly review animal welfare operated in an "on again, off again" manner, the panel found. The committee failed to follow up to see if deficiencies it found were corrected. Record-keeping was shoddy. In general, "National Zoo staff have often failed to adhere to the zoo's own policies and procedures for animal health and welfare," the council reported.

The common vein running through the council's criticisms was the zoo's ad hoc culture-its leaders had not created a disciplined system of management so that problems could be identified and dealt with before they became crises, or lessons could be learned from mistakes. In an ad hoc environment, emergencies and crises tend to take over managers' time. "If you only address the urgent things coming across your desk, you won't be effective," San Diego Wild Animal Park veterinarian Don Janssen told the council. "It's a time-management issue."

In response to the criticism, the National Zoo has begun to develop a strategic plan aimed at identifying the goals that managers and employees should strive to achieve. Spelman, who announced her resignation in February, has been overseeing such changes. In March, the Aquarium and Zoo Association granted the National Zoo full accreditation, signaling that Spelman is indeed improving operations.

But Paul Tesluk, a colleague of Sims' at the University of Maryland, warned the council that leadership is not so much about what leaders say as what they do. Employees take cues from their managers and colleagues to determine if procedures on paper are actually supposed to be followed, and if the culture of the organization promotes learning and improvement or dooms itself to repeat the errors of its history. "Culture is enduring and very difficult to change," Tesluk says.

While the council found pockets of excellence at the zoo, it also found a general lack of accountability and personal responsibility at all staff levels.

A common mistake, Sims says, is for leaders to think that their job is to "allow" such empowerment to take place. A leader's job is to facilitate and even require personal responsibility and empowerment, not merely to allow it, he says. As a Norse captain might say, a ship can't be allowed to stay on course. It must be guided.