For those who have attended one of the sessions, I have given at RMLA or LMS on Accountability in Maintenance you have heard me preach the value of conflict in creating accountability within an organization. For me, this belief in the value of conflict came from reading Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. […]
Predictive Maintenance for Ski Lifts

A scene we don’t like to see and yes in almost all cases the outcome is nothing more than a disruption in operations and experience for guest to talk about for years to come. However, the goal of lift maintenance teams at ski areas is to prevent such happenings. The recent expansion and development of […]
Low Hanging Safety Wins

At RMLA this year David Byrd of NSAA gave a motivating presentation of the safety issues facing the ski industry in the US. Intro to David’s presentation from RMLA website: David Byrd Director of Risk and Regulatory Affairs National Ski Areas Association “Workplace Fatalities and OSHA With 11 deaths in 14 months, across all departments, […]
Take Away from an Unfortunate Event

The recent ski lift incident in Gudauri, Georgia has certainly gotten plenty of air time and I am sure you have seen various posts about this unfortunate incident. It is remarkable that the injuries that did occur were not more serious and that there were no fatalities. For those requiring a refresher on what happen, […]
Snow Safety for All Skiers

Snow safety for many of us in the ski area business is something we don’t think about too much while others spend a huge amount of time giving thought and effort to snow safety. This subject hit close to home for me recently as there was a slide in the Smugglers Notch area injuring 6 soldiers […]
Sound Advice from a Retiree

Just read a great article in Forbes that was about retirement but brought home a couple of different perspectives for me, How One Woman Landed Her Dream Second Act Job (Only page 1 is relevant to this discussion) They were: Kudos to Deer Valley for sending someone who actually does the grooming out on the hill […]
Time To Address Climate Change

Over the past years writing the Steep newsletter, I have refrained from really expressing any points of view on the impact of climate change on the ski industry. Partly that is due to being told back in 2010 by some of the leaders in the industry after I and a colleague had done research on the potential […]
Lift Maintence Standards – Moving Forward

Over time I have advocated for training for lift maintenance personnel, both veterans, and apprentices. It is very encouraging to see the efforts of a committee put together by the NSAA to advocate for training. The intent of this committee is to initially put together a resource guide that can provide guidance to individuals and […]
lift maintenanceSystems Thinking

Hate to share another article with you but I do feel this one is very worthy of sharing. I hope you will see the analogy of the Titanic with workings of the ski industry; THE TOOLS OF SYSTEMS THINKING. There are many good points made in this piece. I especially welcome the comments on challenging […]
ManagementWishing Snow and Happy Trails

It’s mid-December and winter has been good and bad with fitful starts in various places, no start in others and in some a robust beginning. The season is young and there is still plenty to look forward to. At Steep Management we are looking forward to hopefully having the opportunity to speak with you either […]