THE PARABLE OF IMO, THE GENIUS MONKEY
Why Inclusive Tourism will fail if it is based on the Compliance approach alone.
Every act of imagination is the discovery of likenesses between two things which were thought unlike.
Jacob Bronowski
In Mexico, before the wheel was invented, gangs of slaves had to carry giant stones through the jungle and up the mountains, while their children pulled their toys on tiny rollers. The slaves made the toys, but for centuries failed to make the connection.
Peter Brook
A few years ago I has the pleasure of spending a couple of days with one of the foremost authorities on Corporate Leadership - Alistair Mant. The extract below is from his book Intelligent Leadership. The pursuit of the mainstreaming of Inclusive Tourism has to take a turn and concentrate on teaching organisations the significance of the sector from the top down, not from compliance up.
"Imo the monkey has become famous over the years, originally as a result of Robert Ardrey's wonderful work of science popularisation, The Social Contract, first published in 1970. Ardrey had learned of the trail-blazing work of Japanese scientists in studying the behaviour in the wild of large, self-contained and highly structured monkey
societies. The scientists had established the practice of 'provisioning'- providing some of the monkey population's food needs but without distorting the natural pattern of foraging in their island habitat. This allowed the observers to study at first hand, and continuously, the patterns of social interaction amongst the monkeys and, above all, their learning-the way that intelligence diffused in the social systems. Imo excited their attention from the start. When sweet potatoes,
which monkeys love, were placed on the beach of the tiny islet of Koshima, all the monkeys laboriously picked the grains of sand from the food in order to eat it. It was Imo, just 18 months old, who made the mental connection with the little stream that crossed the beach not far way. Imo carried the sweet potatoes to the stream and allowed
its fresh waters quickly to wash away the sand. After a while another youngster copied this method of food preparation and then, after a further period, Imo's mother did so. Very slowly the innovation diffused amongst the band, mainly amongst the young, and within families. The normal pattern was for the young to make the breakthrough,
followed by their mothers, and then for new infants to copy their own mothers.
The point of the story, for observers of human behaviour in organisations, is that the clever new ideas never penetrated to the powerful males at the top of the social hierarchy. They never came into contact with the young. When caramels were introduced to another band, the pattern was repeated-it took a year and a half for the innovation to spread from the juniors to half the entire troop. But, in a parallel experiment, the 'alpha' (boss) monkey was induced to try another new and delicious food-wheat. The alpha female promptly copied him and the entire band of 700 monkeys took to the new food in just four hours. Why? Because everybody watches the leader. Nobody much attends to an Imo. By now a mature four-year old, Imo devised a method for 'placer-mining' the wheat too. Interestingly, the youngest monkeys had figured out that it made sense to get downstream of Imo, so as to catch any floating grains that escaped the panning process. Something similar occurs near the smartest operators in big corporations."
Implications for Inclusive Tourism
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The tourism industry still has its head planted firmly in the sand when it comes to inclusive tourism |
For the past 20 years the driver of inclusive tourism has been accessibility via compliance with anti discrimination legislation. In many senses it is the same scenario as Imo. It is an impost that is dealt with at the project manager level. Some people intimately associated with the project may understand the significance of the compliance issues but most often it is simply a tick the box exercise. Some local front line staff may appreciate the assets they have and if they some association with the disability sector may actually encourage their use. As with Imo, however the organisation hierarchy is never aware of the details. Most boards and senior managers simply see a concept plan and rely on the project team to ensure the detailed drawings and construction meet all of the required standards of which accessibility is just one, and a minor one at that, compared to public safety fire protection, emergency exits, procedures etc.
Despite the best efforts of the ADA and other pieces of legislation around the world, the culture of the tourism industry remains unchanged. Even the recent fine imposed on Delta Airlines has highlighted the fact that advisory boards, and special project teams have as much effect as Imo and for exactly the same reason. An organisation takes its behavioural clues from the way its leadership behaves and unless that leadership recognises that Inclusive Tourism is a important sector to its business and embraces it then it will never permeate through the culture of the organisation and into the behaviour of its staff. That ownership at the top level will not occur while Inclusive Tourism is seen as a "disability rights" issue.
With Inclusive Tourism now worth 11% of the total tourism market and forecast to be 25% by 2020 the time is right for us to start convincing organisations of the true value of the sector. As with the Mexican slaves, the tourism industry has not made the connection between the accessible facilities it has built and the market that that they are built for. Far too often the opposite argument is actually used.
"The accessible facilities built under the compliance legislation have a poor occupancy rate when compared with the rest of the establishment, therefore the ratios as prescribed are too high."
The rest of the rooms in a resort, hotel. motel etc are advertised and are bookable through various reservation systems. Venue owners are adept at being able to market all sorts of room categories and their staff well trained in the variation of room type and are skilled in the upsell. Accessible rooms are not treated in the same way either in the way they are marketed or in the way the staff are trained to know what facilities they have. The old adage of build it and they will come does not apply to hospitality. If you don't value and advertise the asset then they certain will never come. Despite the writings of trend marketers like Tom Peters, the tourism industry has still not seen the growing demand for inclusive tourism increasingly fuelled by the retiring baby boomers. The accessible facilities are like those toys with rollers while the industry continues to perceive the market as it always has.
We have to stop chasing Imo and start working on the Alpha monkeys to redefine the segments that make up the total tourism market.