The Tracking Success Pathway

Using Animal Tracking To Deliver A High-Pressure Value Proposition

After a successful, first-ever roadshow to India recently, I continued my time away from home by hosting a group of 6 people deep in the Kruger National Park in South Africa. The group was made up of curious business people who were keen to explore what made Africa’s booming ecotourism industry tick. My colleagues Alex VD Heever and Renias Mhlongo guided our team of 6 at their Tshokwane River Camp.

Tshokwane is a safari camp and its business value proposition revolves around providing guests with the opportunity to interact with Africa’s spectacular wildlife. Many of these guests have saved their entire lives to be able to afford a trip to this wild place. Wildlife is free to roam across a vast area and finding them on a consistent and predictable basis can be a real challenge. Guests have limited time and high expectations; this creates pressure for the camp to deliver the goods.

Our team was keen to understand how Tshokwane approached this challenge and whether there might be some transferrable skills that they might be able to deploy in their businesses.

So what is Tshokwane’s secret sauce?

They rely on the ancient art of tracking animals on foot. Tracking was primarily a survival skill in times gone by, but the camp’s animal trackers have deployed the same techniques to find unpredictable and potentially dangerous animals. As our group spent time tracking with Renias and Alex in the field, we noticed that they adopted a certain mindset and avoided particular traps at different stages of the tracking process. It’s this process—repeated over and over again—that we believe enables Tshokwane to deliver on its high-pressure promise to guests.

We have called this the Tracking Success Pathway and the stages are listed below.

Find the track

At the start of the trail, our team was often confronted with multiple sets of tracks made by the same animal. The best trackers take great care to pick the freshest set of tracks at the outset. A tracker’s currency is energy, and they cannot afford to waste energy on trailing a set of tracks that will deplete scarce resources. This requires a discerning mindset, and the trap is to be impulsive and rush to judgment too quickly.

Follow the track

Once committing to the trail, the expert tracker notices the tiniest of details, constantly evaluating the probability of a successful encounter. At the same time, they are tuned into the surrounding environment which may provide clues on when to slow down to stay safe or speed up. This requires a curious mindset, and the trap is getting hyper-focused on each piece of evidence and moving too slowly.

Close the gap

Wild animals can move at speeds faster than a human can walk, and the tracker’s focus in step three is to close the gap with the target. An open and imaginative mindset is key here and the trap is hubris – assuming it has all been seen and done before.

Losing the track

On every trail, our team lost track on multiple occasions. When this happened, Renias and Alex stayed calm and returned to the site of the last known track and redoubled his efforts. This requires an adaptable mindset and avoiding the tendency to stick rigidly to a plan that is now patently out of date.

Respect the encounter

The successful application of the previous steps often led to us to finding the target animal. This is a high-stakes moment. Will the animal become fearful and run away? Will it become fearful and charge? The tracker’s goal is to build trust with the target so that it can be tracked over and over again. This increases the chances of the safari guests seeing an iconic wild animal and delivering on Tshokwane’s reason for being. The dominant mindset is respect, and the trap is contempt.

Our first attempt to capture the Tracking Success Pathway.