Martin bucked tradition while serving AGFC
Some people say they want to run government like a business, but Bobby Martin came closer than anyone to actually doing it.
Martin, whose seven-year term on the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission will end on June 30, brought an accelerated level of progressive energy to the commission. He truly modernized an agency that was bound by tradition and often paralyzed by bureaucratic inertia.
Martin did not bring an agenda to the commission. He brought a vision. Beginning with his first meeting in July 2016, he immediately began transforming the agency into a nimble and responsive organization whose primary objectives were growing its customer base and serving its existing customers.
It was the Walmart model. Martin, the former CEO of Walmart International and current chairman of the board and interim CEO of Gap, Inc., embodies that philosophy. Martin was often criticized for trying to turn the Game and Fish Commission into Walmart. That charge is accurate in the context of ingraining proven retail concepts and principles into a public model that has no vision beyond the current fiscal year.
From the beginning, Martin pounded the doctrine of recruiting, retaining and reactivating (R3) hunters, anglers and shooters into the agency’s culture. First, he beta tested his vision as president of the Arkansas Game and Fish Foundation when he spearheaded the construction of the foundation’s state-of-the-art shooting sports complex in Jacksonville.
Activating Martin’s vision required composing the Game and Fish Commission’s administrative leadership with like-minded individuals. It began with Director Austin Booth. Martin believed, against considerable resistance, that the new director should come from outside the agency, unbound by traditional agency dogma.
For his part, Booth assembled an administrative staff with kindred spirits. They don’t believe in wheezing along on patchwork repairs. They are civil engineers who are bent on reinvigorating the agency’s vast inventory of depreciating assets.
Traditionally, commissioners mainly emphasized providing public hunting and fishing opportunities. Martin expanded the mission to envelope the 95% of the state that is privately owned, the portion which most of our state’s wildlife inhabits.
To actualize that vision, Martin facilitated creating a new private lands division. This division contains biologists that specialize in creating, maintaining and improving wildlife habitat on private land. It actually complements the vision that former commissioner Fred Brown of Corning idealized nearly a decade ago.
Under Martin’s leadership, the commission finally acted to renovate our state’s revered green tree reservoirs. The commission’s public relations and marketing apparatus persuaded the public to invest in the commission’s vision so that future generations of duck hunters might enjoy what previous generations took for granted.
The same is true for some of our most treasured fishing assets, including lakes Poinsett and Monticello, and now Lake Conway. These are all audacious projects whose scale and scope would have intimidated previous commissions. Under Martin’s leadership, the commission’s vision for fisheries enhancement evolved from sinking cedar trees to re-engineering entire water bodies.
Certainly, Martin’s unshakeable self certainty often annoyed his fellow commissioners. He does not stop selling until he makes the sale, which in meetings meant frequent and extended filibusters.
While Martin does not suffer fools or pettiness, one incident reflected a depth of patience and compassion that astonished us. In a committee meeting he sparred with a high-ranking staffer about the validity of the agency’s chronic wasting disease management doctrine. The staffer became overwrought and bluntly accused Martin of lying to the public.
Ordinarily, that person’s career with most organizations would have ended at the end of the next business day. Instead, Martin calmly de-escalated the emotion and reset the entire tone of the debate from that point forward. That incident earned Martin a lot of respect from his skeptics.
This beat gives us the luxury of studying successful, highly effective people in intimate settings. I see in Martin the attributes not only of a successful leader, but those of a man who does not allow a moment to define him. He defines his moment. Arkansas hunters and anglers will feel the influence of Bobby Martin’s moment on the Game and Fish Commission for a very long time.