INSIGHT
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE COVID-19 Organizational
Stability – Knowledge Management and Professional Development By Collin B. Mooney, MPA, CAE, Executive Director, Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance As organizations grow and evolve, one of the biggest challenges many entities face is knowledge management, such as sharing past experiences, discussing lessons learned during and after an event or project, or even the relatively simple task of developing and providing cross-training opportunities. It’s easy to fall into the trap of going through your day-to-day routine of taking care of business, working through a ‘to-do’ list without ever thinking about what would happen if you or someone on your team were suddenly not around. One of the biggest favors you can do for an organization is to build a team – a team with a positive ‘get it done’ attitude upon which you can rely. However, aligning the responsibilities of individual members to form a cohesive team is like putting together a puzzle where you might not have all of the pieces or the pieces may inadvertently be out of place. One very important lesson is to constantly work toward finding the appropriate fit for people, making any needed changes to make sure
you’re always aligning individual skillsets with responsibilities and providing employees with the tools that will allow them to thrive. In comparison, one of the biggest favors you can do for an individual or a team is to provide them with organizational or professional development opportunities that challenge them to take on new responsibilities, sometimes with surprising results. As we approached the end of 2020 and into early 2021, with the impacts of COVID-19 still in full swing, I was looking at this pandemic experience as an opportunity, and thought long and hard about how I could leverage this unique experience to learn something new about myself and the Alliance. Many of you are already aware that for several weeks during 2021, I was disconnected from my daily routine and was far away from the office, in the expansive wilderness fulfilling a physical and mental journey of “thru-hiking” the Appalachian Trail (AT). However, this
...the trail provided me with ample time to slow things down in order to really reflect on the Alliance...
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adventure wasn’t just about me fulfilling a longtime goal. It was also an opportunity to manage my personal mental health and to work on a performance objective of evaluating the Alliance’s stability by removing myself from the day-to-day activities for an extended period of time in order to stress-test the organization’s resiliency. Before I continue, since you may be wondering, what makes a hike a “thru-hike?” It is an endto-end backpacking trip on a long-distance trail. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC) defines a thru-hiker as somebody who completes the trail in one season/12 months or less. This is to distinguish from section hikers, who do parts of the trail over the course of multiple years. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the trail, the AT was completed in 1937 as a mountain footpath extending over 2,000 miles from Springer Mountain in the north Georgia mountains to Mount Katahdin, which is located in Baxter State Park in northern Maine. The ATC describes it as the longest hiking-only trail in the world.
