Chapter 10      

Seeing what's wrong is easy — the hard part is the fix

The AAD is based in a beautiful little suburb of Hobart called Kingston. It's far enough out of town to have the luxury of being able to spread itself out, but it's close to the docks and waterside. The AAD facility would be my new ‘office’ for the next three months. I would commute daily on a minibus from our serviced apartments in Hobart. I was looking forward to the prospect of driving along the beautiful Derwent River, watching the yachts and keeping an eye out for the icebreaker that would eventually take us on our adventure.

Expedition leader school

The night before the first day of training we all arrived at our apartments and were milling about in the outdoor barbecue area. Not everyone was required for the full three months and the only people so far in Hobart were the other Station Leaders and their deputies.

It was an eye-opening dinner. Here was I, a girl from Dandenong, sitting down to a meal with seasoned Antarctic leaders. We were joined by Ross, who was to be one of my Deputy Station Leaders over summer. He had returned from Antarctica earlier this year so I felt comfortable that my deputy would be well versed in the Antarctic ways.

I had to share my suite with another woman, Eve, the doctor headed to Casey Station. I hadn't shared a home for over 10 years, but it wasn't the last time I would feel a bit awkward in those hectic few months.

I was highly impressed by the AAD on my first day. I had a laptop that was configured and worked properly, I had an office with my name on it, and even my phone extension was already set up. The key people responsible for our training met the bus at the front door and we spent the morning being inducted into the division.

For the first week or so it was just the expedition leaders and doctors at the training sessions. We were taught specific things relevant only to Station Leaders, such as our role as coroner and our legal obligations under the Crimes Act! We were also told, in no uncertain terms, that the sole purpose of Australia's funding and running these expeditions was to further our scientific endeavours.

How Antarctic expeditions work

Nearly all the science takes place outdoors and there is only a threemonth window when that is possible: summer.

We were to arrive at the beginning of summer and immediately commence our scientific work. The station would be full to overflowing, and managing the demand for resources such as helicopters, planes, quad bikes and lab space was going to be a challenge. Summer would also be the time for any major infrastructure work that may be needed, such as putting up new buildings and installing new scientific or communications gear such as antennas.

At the end of summer, the ship would return with new supplies and take the 90 or so ‘summerers’ back to Australia before the ocean froze around the station. Once the ship disappeared over the horizon, that was it. No way in. No way out.

With the exception of two scientists and two Bureau of Meteorology staff, the 18 who stayed behind simply did so to ‘keep the lights on’ until next summer. The ‘winterers’, as they are known, are mostly not scientists but ordinary people with simpler, everyday skills: diesel mechanics to maintain the fresh water production system; carpenters to refurbish worn-out equipment and furniture; plumbers to ensure that, well, everything flushed.

In addition to the trades people, the winterers would include a doctor, a chef and someone to lead, support and manage the team. Me.

It appeared to be quite a strange existence. The picture of summer the AAD built in my mind was one of mayhem, furious activity and the huge challenge of fitting everything into these three short months. The picture of winter was of nine long months of nothing much at all. It occurred to me that the seasons would have opposing challenges: managing frenetic activity in summer and managing boredom in winter. I would need to delve into and develop my kitbag of ideas and techniques to lead effectively through both seasons.

Meeting my fellow expeditioners

My fellow winterers started to arrive and by week four I had met all 17. I was happy to finally meet the people I was going to live with for the next year. People find it amazing that as expedition leader I had absolutely no input in the selection of my expedition team, but upon meeting them I felt they were a great bunch. They were as interesting as you would expect from such diverse professions. I liked my new team and we quickly started to bond.

Some 99 per cent of our training concerned the mechanics of running the station and living in Antarctica. Sessions were organised for quad-bike lessons, first aid, crane operation and the like. Looking through my training schedule one afternoon I was surprised to see that Station Leaders were not given any Antarctic-specific leadership or management training. I thought that surely such a harsh and uncompromising environment would create unique management scenarios that aren't found in the average workplace. Obviously the AAD didn't agree. Towards the end of my time in Antarctica I would reflect on the leadership and management challenges and agree. They are no different in principle, but they are vastly different in application!

Not ‘one of the boys’

One area of leadership, however, did receive reasonably constant attention: the behaviour of the leader him- or herself. Time and time again when the Station Leaders were gathered, someone from the AAD would exhort us to ‘act like leaders’. What did this mean? What was he saying? I reflected on this one night.

We were deep into training now with an unbelievably long list of complex things to remember. We learned about the recent history of Antarctica since man started to suspect there was a continent at the South Pole. We learned about the Antarctic Treaty, which helps protect the continent from exploitation or damage. Each day was full of interesting lectures and presentations, and we had the opportunity to quiz our teachers along the way.

When a culture is broken

A couple of weeks into training I started to suspect there were some significant issues with the culture of the AAD and its expeditions. A number of clear ‘us and them’ distinctions emerged. One was between the AAD and the expeditioners on station. I likened it to what we sometimes saw in Parks Victoria — the rangers are on the tools, they do the work, they're important. But head office made the decisions and had the money and decision-making power. I've seen it in organisations where the ‘scientists’ fight the ‘administrators’. It appeared to be happening here.

Another cultural rift was forming between the scientists and the rest — these were the people I was taking to Antarctica.

Questions of culture were beginning to dominate my thoughts in these early days of training. It was apparent to me that the expedition team must consider itself part of the AAD, a remote but integrated piece of the larger puzzle. The days of glory, fame and life-risking expeditions were over. Expeditioners were no longer explorers charting the unmapped continent at great danger to life and limb. As much as we were going to an extreme environment, I was becoming strong in my opinion that this was just another workplace and we should operate as such.

At dinner one night I raised my concerns around culture with my fellow Station Leaders. I explained my philosophy of an Antarctic station being similar to a mine site or a branch office in a far-flung location. I was met with stony silence and a few grunts; my dinner partners were unwilling to talk ‘culture’. After dinner one of the Station Leaders bailed me up in the lift.

‘The culture's not broken. I've been down twice, once as Station Leader, and it's just fine. We need to be separate, boys will be boys and you can't stop that.’

‘Well that might have been true 50 years ago,’ I replied, ‘but now you must comply with EEO, OH&S and all the other legislative requirements for a workplace.’

‘Says who? What happens on station stays on station.’

I was nonplussed by this braggadocio and swagger. But it made me even more determined to run a professional, respectful and successful expedition. I would do it my way, whether or not the other Station Leaders agreed. I believed strongly that a ‘professional workplace’ should be the new model for Antarctic life. I also wondered why he brought up ‘boys will be boys’. This wasn't an end-of-year footy trip. If my expeditioners thought they were in for a year of drinking, carousing and taking it easy, they were going to get a rude shock!

Mutual respect — the foundation of our desired culture

I started to envision the culture for my expedition team and gave it a name — ‘OneDavis — OneAAD’. I wanted my expeditioners to feel and act as part of the broader division. I wanted us to be tuned in to the head office requirements for communication, news and updates, completion of tasks and, importantly, a safe and harmonious workplace. I also wanted my expeditioners to operate as one team. No more scientists versus tradies. No more most important to least important.

To succeed over summer and survive over winter, we would all need to have the utmost respect for each other and operate as a cohesive unit. To do this we would all need to know each other's business — how each individual contributed and what made them special. I was fairly blunt about it. I didn't expect them all to love each other; that's impractical. You can't take 18 strangers from all backgrounds and walks of life, throw them together in total darkness, around-the-clock, and expect they'll all love each other. It's Antarctica, not a John Lennon song. But I did expect we would all respect one another. We would respect personal space, time, experiences, opinions, skills … everything.

I facilitated three ‘culture change’ workshops with my expedition. The first was to agree on the set of values that our expedition would count the most important and would live by. We used the second and third workshops to unpack the values and explore what they looked like in practice, using scenarios that were likely to occur in Antarctica. I made sure that each scenario contained a real tension between the values. It was important that the values weren't just a laminated wish list on the kitchen wall — my people needed to understand the trade-offs required. In one of the scenarios we described a situation where the person had to choose between being trustworthy and loyal to a fellow expeditioner and raising a safety issue with the Station Leader. It was a heated workshop! As much as you can't wave a magic wand and change people's values, you can work on behaviours and create a set of norms, of rights and wrongs. I didn't win 100 per cent agreement on all of the scenarios, but it was useful for everyone to see the challenges of the culture we wanted graphically played out in front of them.