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Atrractivess of the park - Aquatic birds

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Atrractivess of the park - Aquatic birds

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Symbol of the national park - Herds of elephant

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Symbol of the national park - Herds of elephant

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In 2019, I worked in a government institution as second administrative officer in a rural part of Sri Lanka (Polonnaruwa District). My organization mainly relates with economic growth of livelihoods, social welfare development of the people in the district and conduct disaster management activities. Minneriya is a famous national park in the district, and it is famous for biodiversity and therefore famous among local and foreign tourists. July and August are dry seasons for the district and there were several experiences about bushfire incidents in this national park in the dry seasons.

On that day, my boss was not in the office, and I visited field duty in the Minneriya area. At about 11 AM, one village man came to me and said that there is smoke in the northern part of the national park. “A brush fire” came into my mind and I asked the situation in that area from the wildlife officer in the
area over the phone. Unfortunately, he was unaware about it and I asked help from the in-charge officer of the Minneriya Army base. He sent a group into the place and identified it as an initial stage of a bush fire. After that, I could coordinate with the disaster mitigation unit of the district, wildlife
officers, air forces troops and water supplying Authority of the district. In addition, I canceled all field day activities of all village men and sent them into the affected area according to the guidance of my boss. Within 2-3 hours
we, as a group, could manage the fire.

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Today, the business world as well as the natural environment is not static. Most changes lead to a crisis, and in generally, they are unpredictable. In addition, people have used to depend on the leader in that situation to escape from the crisis (Bowers, 2017). Therefore, it is essential to all leaders to acquire knowledge, develop skills and use their experiences to cope with these situations to mitigate undesirable outcomes. Crisis management can be defined as the actions which are taken in the markers of a crisis, to minimize its potential damage (Akdemir, 1997, cited in Fener & Cevik, 2015).  According to the definition, crisis
management is not providing a solution to the crisis, and it is avoiding the crisis before emerging and becoming a disaster. In my story, I understood that the village man believed me and trusted me as a follower to mitigate the
crisis. I acted when signals of crisis were observed, and therefore it was mitigated before becoming a disaster. Fener and Cevik (2015) describe that leaders need to make
decisions after verifying data in crisis. Similarly, I did not decide on the village man’s information, and I verified it by sending a suitable group into the area.

Paixão et al. (2020) identify three important attributes of
leadership in a crisis, and they are communication, making critical decisions and level of mentality in the crisis. In my experience, I communicated well with relevant actors in the situation, and I made suitable decisions with a strong mentality, even if my boss was not in the situation. Christensen et al. (2016) point out that strong network between inter departments is a crucial factor in crisis management. I used my business network to get support from various organizations in that situation and It mostly helped me to get initial actions to mitigate the crisis.

Leaders need to change their routing activities and rearrange the organizational structure to face the
prospective crisis after initial indicators of a crisis are detected (Fener & Cevik, 2015). In my story, on that day, I visited said area to solve land matters, however I changed my duties after detecting the crisis signal and allocated organizational resources to mitigate the adverse situation. However, Eric & Leonard (2020) highlight that
some leaders limit to close foreground, some return to normal operational working mentality, some managers make unnecessary approval in the new layer which are
less responsive and some focus on revenue and cost neglecting people. According to the author's indication, I did not return to normal operational background until the crisis became normal. However, I focused on the closer foreground, and I used unwanted resources like village men for crisis mitigation. Therefore, I believe leaders need to allocate only necessary resources in a crisis, and they should not give approval for unwanted expenditures. Further,
they need to make decisions considering post crisis situations and they need to act on reliable information.

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Bowers, M.R., Hall, J.R. and Srinivasan, M.M., 2017. Organizational culture and leadership style: The missing combination for selecting the right leader for effective crisis management. Business horizons, 60(4), pp.551-563.

Christensen, T., Lægreid, P. and Rykkja, L.H., 2016. Organizing for crisis management: Building governance capacity and legitimacy. Public Administration Review, 76(6), pp.887-897.

Eric, J. M. and Leonard, M., 2020, Are You Leading Through the Crisis … or Managing the Response? Harvard Business Review, pp.2-5.

Fener, T. and Cevik, T., 2015. Leadership in crisis management: Separation of leadership and executive concepts. Procedia Economics and Finance, 26, pp.695-701.

Paixão, G., Mills, C., McKimm, J., Hassanien, M.A. and Al-Hayani, A.A., 2020. Leadership in a crisis: doing things differently, doing different things. British Journal of Hospital Medicine, 81(11), pp.1-9.