Kicking and Screaming

Following a cold November and a few big storms already, here in Vermont we’re off to the best start of any ski season in recent memory. All the snow has presented me with some interesting challenges, challenges out of the ordinary for me considering that I’m unable to ski. It may be an exaggeration to say that I’ve been dragged kicking and screaming, but I reluctantly have joined the ranks of management in the Okemo Learning Center after years of successfully resisting overtures to do so. Now that it’s a month into the season and I've gotten my sea legs as a supervisor, I thought I'd share some recently acquired insights into the broader snowsports business.

Back in November, I joined the Nordica sales staff at the annual Boston Ski and Snowboard Expo. This huge event takes place over four days each fall at the Bayside Expo Center in South Boston and is the largest consumer snowsports expo in the nation each year. All the major ski and boot manufacturers, resorts, travel companies, and gadget makers of all kinds set up booths displaying all of the current season's gear and Ski Market sets up an enormous sale center to liquidate their leftover inventory from the prior season. The event presents a fascinating and entertaining array of humanity. Half the attendees are busy looking for free stuff, half the attendees are looking for any and all equipment that will make them a better skier, and the third half are looking for a deal, any deal, however small. Many of the people attending are simply excited and ready to get out on the hill and are happy to talk shop with anyone who seems authoritative. Just about everyone who attends collects stickers like hypoglycemic children trick-or-treating on Halloween.

Apart from the difficulty of standing around for four days straight on cement floors and eating bad food a scant four weeks following knee reconstruction, the Boston Expo was certainly instructive, providing insight into the equipment sales and marketing side of the snowsports business. Mostly, the Boston Expo confirmed that I'm very glad to be on the skiing side of the ski business. I'll resist the urge to lay out the large number of incredibly funny anecdotes from the event except to say that I was not aware that it's a great thing to have a ski in the Nordica lineup that is "wicked awesome fast, just like a Solomon Pocket Rocket", said with the thickest South Boston accent one can imagine (think "Sawlimin Pawkit Rawkit"). I’m grateful for my relationship with Nordica, for the people, the equipment, and the insight derived from all of the above. How they do what they do on the sales side is beyond me, but it certainly helps that they (really, we) believe in our product, are passionate about our sport, and genuinely enjoy working with people, whatever their accent or level of expertise.

Speaking of expanding my understanding of the industry beyond my limited place in it, becoming a supervisor is proving to be a little different from what I imagined it to be. Just as I find while instructing, the guests are fun, genuinely excited to ski and to improve as skiers and, while occasionally needy, a pleasure. Their enthusiasm is contagious. The problem for me is the staff and my new relationship with them.

In recent winters, the running joke among my friends is that I’m the shop steward. I run among the supervisory staff, count them among my best friends, seek their counsel and am sought for counsel, and represent a line instructor’s perspective in the decision-making process. In a normal winter, while skiing around the hill with guests, I occasionally see things occurring in other lessons or being done by other instructors with which I do not agree or which do not meet my own standards of professionalism or quality skiing and teaching. In a normal winter I see them, make a mental note, and continue along my way, unimpeded and unaffected. This is no normal winter.

Perhaps because I am unable to ski and teach, and certainly because I’m the person assigning staff to their lessons, I feel responsible for the content and conduct of everyone’s lessons. It’s a problem for which there is no solution. Yes, I can try the Taoist approach and affect the staff in little ways with subtle comments, but that’s not particularly effective in the short term and not particularly gratifying. It’s not that the guests aren’t having a good experience or that they’re not learning anything. It’s just that the quality is not what I know it can be.

This is not intended to be a commentary on our Learning Center or on ski instructors generally. The majority of our staff does an exemplary job. I’m lucky to have numerous colleagues whom I trust to provide my own guests (a term I prefer to ‘client’ or ‘student’) with the same level of care and quality experience that I would provide myself if I were able to teach this year. The difficulty for me lies with the few staff members that I know can be better but aren’t. I am open to the possibility, a significant caveat to this whole analysis, that I am particularly sensitive this season to issues relating to other peoples’ skiing and teaching.

Ultimately, apart from my own personal psychosis relating to other instructors’ performances on the job, there are two aspects of what I’m doing this year at Okemo which form the crux of what makes it different. First, rather than providing guest service on an intensive, extended and mostly one-on-one basis, I am now providing guest service to many, many people every day for very brief periods of time. Secondly, as in the case of the Boston Expo, I’m seeing a side of the business about which I have been blissfully and intentionally unaware.

At the end of the day, each day, I am an instructor and coach. I’m very grateful for my current job and for my wonderful relationship with Nordica and the people at our local retailer, Northern Ski Works, and I intend to learn a lot from all of the above. Ultimately, however, I hope this added breadth of experience will help me improve my own teaching, my own skiing, and my appreciation for and understanding of the people with whom I am fortunate enough to ski.