Past, Present and Future with President & CEO, Bob Chastain Part 2: The Present.

Our Strategy for Life At the Zoo

Two years ago, we announced that our 20-year President & CEO, Bob Chastain, is retiring after 30 years of service to Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. In February, we announced that our incoming President & CEO, Dave Ruhl – the Zoo’s current executive vice president – will move into the position in June, when Bob retires.

As we continue our centennial year and Bob’s final months at the Zoo, we asked Bob to look back on three decades of the progress and growth that made Cheyenne Mountain Zoo the stable community and national destination and leader in animal care and conservation that it is today. In February, Bob shared reflections on his early days at the Zoo, in a “Past, Present and Future” series. Today, he’s sharing his thoughts on the Zoo today – the Present. Next month, he’ll share his thoughts on the future of the Zoo.

Please enjoy reflections on ‘The Present,’ written by Bob Chastain.

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There is a quote at the top of the Zoo’s Strategic Plan that says, “The ideal zoo should be at the heart of every community. In pursuit of that goal we are … Never Perfect… Always Purposeful… Always Progressing… Never Done.” I can only hope, as our close friends, you see us live this out every day.

When I was asked to share a letter from my point of view about where the Zoo is today, I could not help but to think about two ideas. I asked if I could write what I am really thinking about these days or if it has to be what people might expect.

You might think, for example, that I might write about our animals. Over the years, I have been able to share so many joys, but also so many heart-breaking moments with you. Moments like when we spent months leading the celebration for our long anticipated “Race to 200 giraffe calves”. Number 200 was born a beautiful healthy girl, later named Penny. But, in a moment, when Penny was found splayed in the barn, the Race to 200 did not matter. What mattered was the care we gave her, an open book on communication, and the love the community felt for her and all giraffe as they watched her struggle to heal. In her short life, she made 10 million social media impressions. I could share a thousand of those moments with Penny and other animals that made an impact, but this is not what I am reflecting on most these days.

These days, it is about the most remarkable animal at the Zoo: the humans. And to be exact, how best to harness the power of the human race to build and preserve things that really matter: close families, people guided by the greater good, humility, intact ecosystems, healthy animal populations, the least intrusive but most effective interventions to challenges, the ability to believe deep down that you don’t have all the answers and if we would only listen better our solutions would be better. This is what I am thinking about most.

What we set out to do here was to be a test case… to see if we pursue these ideas within the Zoo first and our community second. We have had some success. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t believe we can all get along all the time, and I am very aware that some values are so different that we can’t find common ground. That is why we have also tried to become experts at the most compassionate way to separate from those who are unwilling or unable to work together in pursuit of our vision. So much so, that in our strategic plan we say, “We want people to look back on the Zoo as one of the best places they have ever worked.” We are aware that Zoo employment is not a good fit for every person.

I have long told our staff that I imagine us more like Spiderman than Batman. He lost his parents at a young age, but Batman came from a privileged life otherwise; he is wealthy and lives in a mansion. Spiderman was just a young guy who was bitten by a spider, and when he wasn’t saving people, his life was normal — sort of like our lives. Here is how our staff is special. They have a remarkable history of putting their differences aside and working together on the things we believe are important. Then they do something both straightforward and remarkable. They show up every day and do the work. The small things. Day after day after day, every day, for years. They are disciplined and dedicated. How often do you see people who substantially disagree on the details of life, politics, environmental activism, religion, and cultural differences AGREE to set those differences aside in order to work on what we all have agreed is worth fighting for? Running one of the country’s best zoos, providing great homes for the remarkable animals we care for, and doing our very best to make sure the world values the natural world around them – that’s what they do every day.

Now here is the remarkable thing to me that prompted me to write this letter. Quite frankly, I am not sure you will ever get to read it because our team is very transparent in terms of the work they do, but private in terms of how openly they share personal things. As I sought to get their permission to share this letter, it is my hope as they read, they realize their story will help others see we all struggle, and, that we all are capable of success despite life’s challenges.

So, here is where the team is ordinary. They have proven average people can do great things through a consistent push in the same direction. We have leaders with high school educations, home-school educations, bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees, and Ph.D.s. They have helped us become the 2nd best Zoo in the country, all while living lives very similar to you and your daily struggles. Let me share just a little about some of the people who work here in an effort to say, if they can do it, you can do it, too.

I’ll start by sharing a thread from my life. Twenty-one years ago, when I was interviewing for this job, I found out my niece had a brain tumor at only six years old. She died at seven years old, on July 4th, shortly after I was offered the job. I am close to my family and my sister (my niece’s mom) and this was my first real loss in life. It is honestly remarkable I made it through the first year as CEO, let alone 21 years. I look back at how that heartbreak shaped my leadership and views on life and as you will see, is still shaping them today. I now know deeply that some days it is everything a person can do to just get out of bed and do the simple things.

We have at least two employees at the Zoo who suffer from debilitating migraines so frequently that they regularly miss days of work. One of them is my wife, Antonia, the Zoo’s manager of public art, who has managed to sculpt six life size custom giraffes that will live at our new front entry. Millions of photographs will be taken with them, and the joy in children’s faces will be seen as long as they are there. The other is our director of guest experiences. His job is to manage the chaos of parking more than 1,200 cars a day during our busy months, directing a seasonal staff of more than one hundred, and making sure more than four thousand of our closest friends have a goosebumps moment with every visit, every day.

The list of all the challenges people face and still manage to come to work is actually quite sobering. Everything from relationship problems, health problems, kids with medical or behavioral challenges, adult kids with addiction problems, home problems, bill problems, grief challenges and many, many more. There are as many ways people are struggling than we have animals at the Zoo. Oh, and while we are on the topic, we know our guests are like us too. They often come celebrating milestones but also facing their own challenges when they arrive. I know one couple who lost their son who loved the Zoo, and they come here to feel close to him, sitting on his favorite bench. Maybe all this seems a bit melancholy for you, but for me, it is a source of admiration for the human spirit. It amazes me how humans can have so much going on in their heads and in their lives and yet they can still work together to build something great.

This leads me to my second point. How do we set aside our differences and work together with all that life noise in the background? It started here with imagining the world we wanted to live in, writing those ideas down and holding ourselves and others accountable for living them. Most places would suggest that you only have a few core values. We have 28, broken down into four categories. We further have 15 Standards for Employment Success. Why so many, you ask? There is an idea when training animals that, since they cannot talk to you and you don’t really know what is going on in their head, you simply describe (operationalize) the behaviors you see and develop a plan to get more or less of those behaviors based on your goals. We apply that by having a few general ideas but then writing sentences that are strong and directive enough to be useful but broad enough to know it has to work for many people with many different backgrounds. I have taken the time to share a few of these with you below. I hope they give you an insight into what we do and why, but, as importantly, that you realize you can write down your own standards.

To those of you who were hoping to get some insight into what it is like to work with some of the most remarkable animals in the world, I am sorry I did not deliver on that. But, for those of you who really want to know what is going on behind the curtain in my office and throughout the leadership of the Zoo after 30 years, this is at least one great place to start. And, come to think about it, you did get some insight into a remarkable animal: the human being who does not grow weary of doing good. A human being, like you, who just gets up and tries their best to make their little world a little better place. I am told there are three types of fun in life. Type 1 fun is actually fun while you are doing it. Type 2 fun is not fun while you are doing it, but fun and memorable after it. Type 3 fun is when you thought it would be fun, but it was not fun during or after. My hope is this letter is Type 2. This may not be the letter you thought you would read, but hopefully it will be one that will be helpful well after the reading.

Warmly,
Bob

A sample of our “We Believe and Standards for Employee Success”

Conservation and Education

1. We believe our animals have the important job of helping people develop passion for the natural world and we must honor their stay with us by providing first-class experiences.
2. We believe our animals deserve the best home we can provide. We will not stop until every exhibit is built in such a way as to maximize the impact each animal has on our guests and their attitude toward the environment.
3. We believe people want to make a positive difference in the world, and we will do our best to equip them with the tools and information they need to do so; telling the truth the best we know it.

Community

1. We believe we can foster a community that looks beyond itself and embraces things like philanthropy, the common good, and other ideas we believe are self-evident if people share a common vision for what the community should be.
2. We believe because we cannot and should not agree on everything we should focus on and work extra hard on the things we can agree on.

Culture

1. We believe in a positive workplace and will diligently work to preserve it by not participating in negative talk and by actively stopping it.
2. We believe work should not be “just a job”, nor is it a right, but instead a responsibility an employee has toward the organization and its mission.
3. We believe we can make the world a better place, and the work we do and the way we treat people matters.
4. We will do whatever it takes to get the job done and work as a team.
5. We believe when we do things without ego, we can accomplish anything if we don’t care who gets the credit. We will put what is best for the Zoo first and our personal preferences second.
6. We believe in a workplace where we live the behaviors we wish to see, creating our own reality one small decision at a time.
7. We believe good communication is one key to success. We believe talking is not communicating. True communication is an authentic exchange when one person says something in a way that is understandable and is received with the same intent that it was delivered.

Business

1. We believe because we are financially smart, stable, and disciplined, we can focus on the heart of our mission.
2. We believe we can operate effectively without tax support by continually looking for new and diversified revenue streams, cultivating lifelong relationships with supporters, and making every dollar work like two.
3. We believe safety is achieved by minimizing risk at every opportunity, but are not focused on creating a zero risk environment. This balance between risk and safety will be applied to all parts of our business: workplace safety, staffing decisions, finances, exhibit design, investments, etc.

Standards for Employment Success at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo

1. We value professionalism and the search for excellence. When we keep our word, show up on time, prepare, improve, present ourselves as Zoo Crisp, speak with passion, seek the best answers without ego, do whatever it takes and EARN our job everyday; we are professional.
2. We value the ability to recognize it is not all about you. We make decisions with the best interest of the Zoo: our mission, our people, and our collection at heart. The ability to have open dialog about the best possible solution is a goal worth stretching for.
3. We value the team above individual achievement. You can never be strong enough as an individual person or department to overcome the synergy created by the team. Understanding this, exceptional team members are the building block of a great team and each person must make individual contributions to the team.
4. We value balance. We believe you have an obligation to yourself and the Zoo to strive for a balanced life no matter how elusive this can be.
5. We value the idea of Community and will work to create an example of community within the Zoo and in the greater Colorado Springs area.
6. We value laughter as good medicine.
7. We value someone who works like nobody owes them anything.
8. We value those who raise their hand when volunteers or leaders are needed.
9. We value employees who rigorously debate an issue during the decision making process, but unite behind a decision once it is made. Negative after talk and second guessing only pulls energy from the team and is unacceptable. If you cannot, in good conscience, live with this decision, your only choice is to discuss this in person with your supervisor and then the President, not other staff.
10. We value the ability to continuously take constructive feedback and apply it to your work habits and skill set. Mistakes are expected if a person is working hard and pushing the growth of their person and the profession. Continually making mistakes of the same type should not be acceptable to you and those around you.
11. Make a plan. Be able to communicate your plan. Work your plan until you are convinced it won’t work. Don’t drop it at the first sign of trouble but be flexible if you are not achieving your desired results.