Adaptive Forest Management

From Forest Planning to Adaptive Governance

"If planning is everything, maybe it's nothing." Aaron Wildavsky

Let's face it, the "forest land and resource management plan" is an anachronism—an artifact of a bygone era. That era was in its heyday when the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reigned supreme after President Richard M. Nixon consolidated rule-making and other powers in the OMB via executive order in 1970. Economics-based, comprehensive rational planning was the rage. It is no surprise that The Renewable Resources Planning Act was passed in 1974, just after Nixon consolidated power under the banner of rationally planned and carefully audited governmental process. Twenty years later Henry Mintzberg penned The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (1994). Mintzerberg's classic pretty much laid a tombstone atop rational planning exercises. Or at least it should have.

The Forest Planning Era
Following passage of the National Forest Management Act of 1976 as an amendment to the Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974, it was thought that forest program management decisions could be adequately fit into a forest plan "decision container"—that somehow each forest could develop a forest-wide plan that would integrate programs now and into the future in a such a way as to allow disclosure of environmental consequences that might flow from said decisions. Project level National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) disclosure would disappear with proper forest planning and environmental disclosure at the forest level.

Allowance was made for FS administrative region plans, and for a national RPA Program plan. Given the upper two tiers, it was believed that decisions would be integrated vertically, and cumulative effects—according to NEPA standards—could be adequately disclosed.

It was a relatively innocent era, when viewed through the "green-eyeshaded accounting lenses" of OMB over-see-ers. The innocence collapsed relative soon in the forest arena as litigation proved that the three-level administratively-bounded review was not going to pass muster in the courts. Not only were projects not going to be shielded from NEPA review by a forest plan, there was increasing evidence that at least one level of planning/disclosure might be needed between project and forest.

An initial remedy to the seemingly endless process gridlock brought about by too many levels of planning was to eliminate regional plans. I referred to this then as the Texas two-step solution (forests/projects), since at that time the Forest Service's National Planning Director was from Texas. But that was a solution looking for a problem, or better still a "non solution" not looking for anything but an easy way out. The problem between forest and project remained. Another problem was to be found elsewhere, framed larger than forest plans but not fitting into regional plan containers.

Spotted Owls, Roadless, and more
Much time and effort was now spent in the 1970s, 80s, 90s on above-forest policy making, brought about by actors and actions taken either against the Forest Service or from within the Forest Service responding to the Endangered Species Act of 1973. They were, "Spotted Owl Management Plans," "The Roadless Rule," "The Northwest Forest Plan," and more. These decision containers were bounded as regions, not FS administrative regions but geographical regions more appropriately suited to the issues and the actors petitioning for problem resolution. Note that the policy-level decision making was largely about curtailing timbering and roading, but the Forest Service chose to name the efforts after the initiating issues, not the federal actions being considered.

Forest Planning Proves Resilient, if not useful
The forest planning paradigm still captured much attention, but the three-level planning process swirling around the forest plan—projects/mid-scale/forest—was felt by forest planners and the Forest Service generally to be too cumbersome. Something else needed to be done. While the rest of the world was waking up to complex systems, wicked problems, and adaptive management, as was part of the Forest Service via the Northwest Forest Plan, the Forest Service via the NFMA rule was still stuck in the wonderful, if overly complex and somewhat bizarre world of capital P "Planning." And the Forest Service was always trying to force-fit things into forest-level and project-level decision containers. But times were changing by 1990 and at least for a time, the Forest Service seemed to be ready to catch up to the rest of the world.

Adaptive Governance: Emergence in the Clinton Era
Adaptive management seems to be evolving in name to Adaptive Governance, following a path laid down early on by Kai Lee in Compass and Gyroscope: Integrating Science and Politics for the Environment (1993). For a time the Forest Service seemed inclined to follow. [Note: Today, the "adaptive governance" path seems already well-discussed, if not well traveled. That is if my "adaptive governance" Google search is an indication. But my Wikipedia search didn't give me much. Recognizing that the only viable adaptive management for dealing with public lands management has to deal with both Kai Lee's Adaptive management compass and his civic-engagement gyroscope. I'll go ahead and use the term "adaptive governance" hereafter.]

In what we might call Clinton era management, Chief Michael Dombeck sought to bring about a Leopoldian awakening (see, e.g. here, here) to Forest Service thinking. That "awakening," as per Leopold's earlier thinking, was about adaptive governance. But the largely Republican-dominated Forest Service resisted. Chief Dombeck was never accepted by Forest Service managers since he was from the BLM and appointed by an environmentally left-leaning Clinton administration. Things didn't get better under Chief Jack Ward Thomas, himself a huge fan of Leopold. The road from Pinchot to Leopold was not going to be an easy one. Adaptive governance thinking was soon on the chopping block along with pretty much all else from "new forestry" to "new perspectives," etc. following the election of George W. Bush as a new Administration came to Washington.

Adaptive Governance: Bush/Cheney Backlash
The Bush/Cheney public lands legacy can be viewed as a legacy of war—war on the environment and war on anything the previous Clinton Administration had built under the rubric of "ecosystem management" (See generally Bob Keiter's Breaking Faith with Nature: The Bush Administration and Public Land Policy). Under Mark Rey as Undersecretary of Agriculture, the Forest Service moved into its "Healthy Forests Initiative," followed soon thereafter by the "Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003." As Bob Keiter notes, the names could be viewed as cynical, as part of a well-orchestrated backlash against Clinton era reforms. To Keiter:

By using the Healthy Forests Initiative to expand the scope of NEPA categorical exclusions and to alter the ESA consultation process, the Forest Service has further enhanced its authority and reduced the potential for judicial review of its decisions, which is also what the [Aquatic Conservation Strategy] and species inventory revisions to the Northwest Forest Plan would have done. Congress has abetted this de-legalization effort by including NEPA provisions in the HFRA and the Energy Policy Act that either eliminate or reduce environmental analysis requirements for timber thinning and energy exploration projects.²⁷⁹ Add to this the Bush administration's approach to its ESA responsibilities—which include an overt hostility to new listings, a rush to delist species, and contemplated revisions to the section 7 consultation process and critical habitat designation and critical habitat designation criteria—and the land management agencies could well be relieved from meaningful regulatory oversight. Related efforts to eliminate administrative appeal opportunities are plainly designed to further insulate management decisions from review. The net effect is to minimize opportunities to enforce environmental standards and procedures, and thus shield criteria—and the land management agencies could well be relieved from meaningful regulatory oversight. Related efforts to eliminate administrative appeal opportunities are plainly designed to further insulate management decisions from review. The net effect is to minimize opportunities to enforce environmental standards and procedures, and thus shield the agencies from any meaningful accountability. It is a return to an era when discretion reigned supreme. [Footnote in original]

All good things come to an end. So do all bad things. The Bush/Cheney regime and its war on the environment ended in January 2009, although effects (and federal judges) linger. [Personal aside: My friend from the early "planning days," Dale Bosworth served as Forest Service Chief early in the Bush/Cheney Administration. I believe Dale did what he could to curb the worst of the what might have been done to the Forest Service during that era, but didn't take my advice the be take a firm stand and be the first Chief since Gifford Pinchot to be fired for standing up against the powers that be. Had I been in his shoes I might not have taken that advice either. Who knows? But it wasn't in Dale's nature to work that way. I don't find fault with Bosworth's leadership/management during that era.]

Adaptive Governance: Obama's 'Audacity of Hope'
Unfortunately for Leopoldian dreamers, incoming President Barrack Obama's audacious plans have not yet been focused on matters environmental, other than green energy. Nor will they likely anytime soon, even if Obama or anyone in his Administration were prone to do so—which itself is in question. Obama is too distracted with two wars, emergent unrest in the Mideast and Middle America following Tea Party elections in statehouses and the US Congress. Not to mention continued after-shocks from the near-disaster of the financial meltdown that arrived coincidentally (or not) right as Obama was entering the White House.

Obama cut his political teeth on community organizing, and that is in a sense Kai Lee's gyroscope to accompany his adaptive management compass. So we can at least hope for endorsement from Obama if planning is replaced with adaptive governance. Whether or not it will be a good thing depends largely on whether or not untoward devolution happens—or is perceived to likely happen—under adaptive governance schemes. Time will tell. But I get ahead of our story. The Forest Service hasn't yet embraced adaptive governance, although I hear they are flirting with it. Instead they are still wedded to capital P "Planning." As Andy Stahl noted, the recent Draft NFMA "planning rule" (pdf) (as the Forest Service likes to call it), stages up a rational planning exercise. The difference is that this time it is driven by ecological rationality instead of the earlier economic rationality from the OMB era.

Adaptive Governance: Absent in the NFMA Draft Planning Rule
I suspect it was because the Bush/Cheney era NFMA rule was thrown away by the courts, but for whatever reason the Obama Administration chose to rewrite the "NFMA rule." There has been a flurry of commentary on this blog and elsewhere about the rule and associated planning. But does anyone really care about this type planning anymore? What decisions are really contained by a forest-level plan? Despite the language of the draft rule, I find no "ecological resilience" decisions, neither "ecological or social sustainability" decisions, nor any "species viability" decisions, nor … that can be contained in a forest-level plan. All such considerations will well-up at scales different from forest boundaries.

As I've argued before, these are wicked problems. Wicked problems are not amenable to rational planning resolutions. Part of the "wicked problem" problem is that they are shape-shifters, they vary in problem identification and resolution across both time and space. They just won't stand still, and will not be force-fit into predetermined "decision containers."

In addressing wicked problems, I believe that scale-dependent futuring, and/or puzzle solving, is in order alongside scale-dependent assessments and monitoring. We ought to add in scale-dependent standard setting. They all fit under a header “puzzle solving.” Where scale-dependent is really the stuff of framing decisions/actions according to a “Garbage Can Model” wherein issues, actors, and arenas self-organize across the landscape into various and sundry decision containers. We all need to think hard about wicked problems and, e.g. Cohen, March, and Olsen’s garbage can decision model. Here’s a pdf of CMO’s 1972 article: "A Garbage Can Theory of Organizational Choice."

See too Pritchard and Sanderson’s chapter in Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems (2002), “The Dynamics of Political Discourse in Seeking Sustainability.” After setting stage for adaptive governance, complete with "wicked problem identification" and "garbage can" resolution mechanisms, Pritchard and Sanderson conclude:

[Testing hypotheses and applying lessons learned] to the thorny puzzles of environmental management and governance are [noble] goals. The greatest promise lies in addressing political issues directly, rather than in avoiding or submerging them. The fondest hope might be that individuals, communities, and formal organizations engage the spirit of adaptation and experimentation, by allowing a set of contingent ideas to shape "the gamble" of democratic resource management, and citizen experts to report on the results. Of course, for such a profoundly disorganized and multiscale approach to thrive, government, market, and citizen must share a common vision—that all must address these puzzles in order that they might be engaged and worked on—not solved forever; that “expertise,” popular voice, and power are separable, and none holds the dice [from a "floating crap game" model of politics] for more than a pass.

A Few Questions Linger
Is an ecologically framed rational planning rule what we need to resolve controversy? Or is it time to embrace adaptive management, even adaptive governance in an attempt to tame wicked problems? Yes, I know that the preamble to the Draft NFMA rule claims that forest planning will be driven by adaptive management. But, really? Read the rule and explain to me how the draft rule stages for more than rational planning.

Forest Service Sins of Omission and Commission

Let's deal with "sins of commission" first, since these are more easily seen. We humans are not good at dealing with surprise. It gets worse when we are surprised by our own failings as pointed out by others. The sad tale of the US Forest Service's continuing inability to deal with failures pointed out over decades by the environmental community is testament to this failing. There are sometimes private admissions of error, but where are the organizational admissions that translate to inbuilt policy shifts and organizational behavior changes?

I will never forget a conversation I overheard one day just outside the Auditor's Building (FS Headquarters). Associate Chief George Leonard, arguably the most powerful FS player of the day was just ahead of me, talking with a companion. As the conversation turned toward the over-cut Pacific Northwest, Leonard remarked, "We did cut the shit out of the Olympic National Forest." There it was, a personal admission of guilt. Unfortunately, only grudgingly and without overt policy shifts, did the Forest Service change its ways. This is understandable, because as Herb Kaufman (author of The Forest Ranger) predicted, the Forest Service has become a rigid, unchangeable force: a blind bureaucracy. That brings us to "sins of omission", what you don't see you can't fix.

As bad as we humans are in dealing with surprise, we are worse at dealing with our own ignorance. Among the most important things the Forest Service has missed in its ignorance, is that bureaucracy must be managed and must be led. In order for both to be effective – remembering that the two need to be jointly and thoughtfully applied for successful organizing – they must be studied and talked about regularly. They must also be practiced. How was this missed? Note: The problem is much bigger than the US Forest Service. Only in the past few years have I realized how utterly blind and mismanaged are other agencies of the US Government, including the CIA, the NSA, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, SEC, the FTC, and so on.

Right now, supposedly, the top brass in the Forest Service is working with Bill Isaac's Dialogos group to begin a journey to right what has heretofore been undiscussed and undiscussable, what I have elsewhere called "the management trap". (See also this on the 2007 Dialogos report on the FS.) But little light (insight) from that effort has trickled down to the rank and file in the Forest Service. And, so far, little if anything has been done to change in internal working of the FS bureaucracy. Or maybe I've just not seen it from my "retirement" perch. Is anything being learned? If so, can individual learning translate into organizational learning?

Over a decade ago, I challenged the Forest Service to rethink its stance on management, leadership and learning. Here is a bit of what I offered-up:

In searching out answers, we would do well to read among the many good books written on "planning as social learning" and "planning as organizational learning," and also among the many good books on "adaptive management." It's always dangerous to single out one book, but what the hell. I heartily endorse Lance Gunderson , C.S. Holling, and Stephen Light. 1995. Barriers and Bridges to the Renewal of Ecosystems and Institutions. Within even this one book there are many lessons yet to be learned about ecosystems, institutions and the boundaries that both separate and integrate them. Space doesn't permit, but we ought not overlook the contributions of organizational learning writers like Chris Argyris, Arie De Geus, Joseph Jaworski, Donald Schon, Peter Schwartz, Peter Senge, and Karl E. Weick. Even if we could figure out a thoughtful approach to organizational learning and adaptive management, we still have to tackle the problem of working politics that Lee defines as "gyroscope" [in Compass and Gyroscope]. This is a lesson well known to Gunderson and friends, but a lesson yet to be learned by the Forest Service.

Later, I reprocessed my plea as a "process gridlock" suggestion:

Do we continue to operate our organization in an antiquated parent/child organizational framework? Do we continue to operate from a belief that running an organization always or most frequently requires use of power-over instead of power-with? If we answer yes, as I believe we must, why not rethink our organization? We might begin with workshops or "inquiry sessions" for Line Officers, WO Directors, and Regional and Forest Staff Officers. The workshops would focus on how organizations function based on a premise of working with adults, rather than overseeing children. (See generally the literature on 'Learning Organizations.') Sure we have rules and regulations dictated by law and policy that emanate from domains 'above' the agency in the US government that require certain things from us. Sure we have encumbrances (also opportunities) on 'personnel management' different from private sector organizations. And so on. But that ought not to stop us from reevaluating our organization functions in light of emerging organizational theory/practice. As I've done before, I recommend that you bring in Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe, Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, Margaret Wheatley and/or Peter Senge. You may want to include Gifford and Elizabeth Pinchot as well. Let this group suggest recommendations on how to structure such inquiry sessions as well as on other organizational betterment ideas.

I reiterate my plea, that the Forest Service begin to reevaluate the agency's approach to policy-making, management, and leadership. There is simply no way to effect better planning policy-making, and administration, if there is no substantial changes in extant bureaucracy. Gifford and Elizabeth Pinchot were among the early proponents of such change. See Pinchots' The End of Bureaucracy. Unfortunately they didn't employ the proverbial 2x4 approach. You remember. The story goes something like this:

A farmer went to the State Fair and watches a muleskinner driving some mules in the plowing contest. He's got one mule in the lead harness that seems really smart, doesn't balk, works hard, has strength and leads the other mules so the farmer buys the mule and takes it home only to discover that the mule laid down and couldn't be made to work. The farmer and his wife finally drag the mule into the back of the farm wagon, and the farmer goes back to the Fair. The farmer finds the muleskinner and starts yelling that he's been cheated. That mule won't move, let alone pull the plow. "Oh, I'm sorry," says the muleskinner, "I forgot to give you the rest of the gear." With that the muleskinner picks up a big piece of 2x4 and bangs the mule a good hard blow to the side of the head. The mule scrambles up and looks as if he just can't wait to git started. "Yes Sir," says the muleskinner, "This is a really good mule. You just have to get his attention." He hands the 2x4 to the farmer and sends him home. The next day, the farmer walks toward the mule carrying the 2x4, but before the farmer can lay it across the side of the mule's head, the mule scrambles up and gets to work and drags the other mules up, too. Best damn mule the farmer ever had.

The problem is, who can deliver a "policy-making, management, and leadership" wake-up 2x4? Or maybe such has been delivered via Dialogos and others. If so, when will we begin to see the effects?

Kaufman's Little Known 'Paradox of Excellence'

Early in my Forest Service career, Herbert Kaufman's The Forest Ranger (1960) found a place alongside Jeanne Nienaber Clarke and Daniel McCool's Staking Out the Terrain (1985) in many Forest Service offices. Both books were a source of pride for the agency. Clarke and McCool referred to the Forest Service and the Army Corps of Engineers as "bureaucratic superstars". Kaufman's praise was sufficient to blunt inquiry into the deeper criticisms of the agency that were embedded in the book. The Forest Service, not much of book-learning bunch in any case, basked in the praise.

But as Kaufman predicted, and Doug MacCleery echoed in Reinventing the United States Forest Service (2006), the praise was to be short-lived. By 1980 the once-proud agency found its reputation in tatters. It has to date not recovered, and may not unless somehow the agency finds a niche that society is willing to defend and also reinvents FS management/leadership to work in the 21^st century.  MacCleery concludes:

"It still remains to be seen whether Chief McGuire's 'grand experiment' wherein diverse interests consent to 'share the land' is a viable approach for multipurpose public land in an era of representative democracy characterized by diverse and fiercely competing special interest groups."

[Note: Maybe, instead of just finding means to "share the land", "we the people" are just as well off in fighting for over our public lands, our res publica (public thing). Maybe during our various fights we can periodically rediscover who we are and why, as Dick Behan and Dan Kemmis are fond of pointing out. Pehaps that is the true worth of the an era that I have called the era of sustained conflict. Incidentally, I believe that we are right now transitioning, painfully, from an era of "sustained conflict" to one of "collaborative stewardship".]

Here is MacCleery's version of the decline and fall of the Forest Service:

After its first 50 years, the Forest Service generally was looked upon as a stunning success — an agency known for high morale, a strong sense of purpose and administrative excellence. A [June 2] 1952 Newsweek magazine article stated, amongst other factors, that due to its sterling reputation, "The Forest Service is one Washington agency that doesn't have to worry about next fall’s election. Nor will the next administration have to worry about the Forest Service. In 47 years, the foresters have been untouched by scandal”. Because of this, "Most Congressmen would as soon abuse their own mothers as be unkind to the Forest Service"

A 1960 book on public administration, The forest ranger, documented the Forest Service as a case study example of an efficient and effective public institution (Kaufman 1960). Kaufman attributed the Forest Service's success to a sense of shared purpose, values and a common culture. Ironically, however, two decades later, the reputation of the Forest Service would be in tatters.

Kaufman's predictions of a rough patch for Forest Service organizational management are not well known in the Forest Service. MacCleery gets it, however: "the same characteristics that had made the agency effective when demands on it were relatively modest and rural-based, made it rigid and difficult for it to change when those demands became more intense, diverse and complex (Kaufman 1994)."

Here is the essence of Kaufman's 1994 "The Paradox of Excellence":

Every organization must therefore have to overcome its members' tendencies to go off in directions of their own. As I studied the district rangers, I realized that they were subject to a host of pressures to do so, some common to all organizations, some unique to the Forest Service. All together, these pressures constituted quite a formidable array of centrifugal forces.

To override them, the Forest Service instituted a set of procedures that predetermined what their field officers were to do in almost every foreseeable situation, that tracked their behavior to make sure they remained within the guidelines, and that corrected and discouraged departures from the prescribed norms. There are limits, however, to what can be accomplished by external controls on people. You can't specify and police everything; without further measures, the centrifugal forces will begin to chip away at any organization's unity.

Hence, in its earliest days, the Forest Service introduced another set of techniques to elicit compliance. It instituted a set of measures that instilled in its members the will to conform. That is, it not only got its officers to do what the agency leaders directed, but got them to want to do what the leaders wanted. In this fashion, the leaders could be confident that their wishes would be carried out by field officers without close, continuous supervision and with minimal feelings of compulsion. Compliance in the field was not merely imposed on subordinates; appropriate behavior was, in a manner of speaking, implanted in them, so that when they, in their professional capacity, exercised their independent wills, they freely chose courses of action that conformed to the agency's policies. They were of course aware of alternatives; to state the case in extreme terms for emphasis, they simply could not conceive of following them.

The result of all these practices was remarkable success producing conforming behavior on the part of the agency's staff. (Admittedly, the evidence of this success was circumstantial, but it was convincing.) In this regard, the Forest Service was indeed a model organization, and its reputation for superior performance in molding its personnel into a cohesive and loyal body was well-deserved.

The Down Side of Cohesion

It came at a price. The system functioned as well as it did because internal and external influences on behavior worked in tandem. Ingraining the will to conform and a common set of outlooks in members not only engendered voluntary compliance; it also intensified the effectiveness of external controls by broadening receptivity to them. External controls, in turn, reinforced the internalized ones by making obedience, even when not entirely voluntary, habitual. But while both sets of influences were crucial, the internalized ones carried greater eventual risks. While welding the organization into an effective, unified entity, these influences tended to lock members--especially leaders who had come up through the system--into a prescribed set of ideas and behaviors formed in a particular context, and thus were likely to impede formation of new patterns for which changes in the context might one day call. [Later on (Kaufman, 1971), in an exercise of poetic license, I would refer to this mechanism as the imposition of "mental blinders."] In other words, the better the organization got at using techniques of mental manipulation to improve its performance, the more uncertain its future became. This ingredient of managerial success seemed to contain the seeds of its own ultimate undoing.

I expected the Forest Service to be outraged by this characterization of its managerial style; who in America wants to be portrayed as engaged in a type of brainwashing, no matter how administratively effective such a strategy proves to be? I also anticipated that the public administration community, and social scientists in general, would seize on this finding as the major conclusion of the study. I was wrong on both counts. The Forest Service, students of public administration, and the social scientists who paid attention to my book, focused on the acknowledged cohesion, high morale, and outstanding performance of the agency, and on the contribution of its methods to those attainments. For a long time, hardly anybody took note of the long-range implications I considered disturbing.

Lingering question: Is is just by oversight that Kaufman's "Paradox" isn't part of FS collective memory and definitely not part of the official record? Or maybe I'm mistaken and it is a part of the offical record. If so, find me a better hyperlink.

[Note: The hyperlink to Kaufman's Paradox of Excellence in MacCleery's paper does not work, except as given new life here. When I discovered that Kaufman's paper had vanished from the FS electronic records some years ago, I got a copy of the paper and loaded it into my personal archives. I feared that it would eventually be lost forever. Someday I expect someone will put it back into public archives. Or maybe not.]

The Frame Game

There is power in “framing” political discourse and policy development: Those who control the frame, control the content, the context, and more. In short, “He Who Sets the Frame Controls the Game”.

What just happened in the NFMA Rule Development game? The comment period closed yesterday. The frame was set by rehashing experience in planning, then constructing five “Substantive Principles for a New Rule” and three “Process Principles” (each with a battery of related questions). How many people, do you suppose, chose to respond outside that frame? How powerful was the frame?

In my formal comment I said that I wish the Forest Service had simply established a blog, and begun with a simple question, like: “Given the noble ideas embedded in RPA/NFMA (Wikipedia link) and other principal laws related to the Forest Service, how might the planning/management process of the USDA Forest Service be improved?” Then I said that I hoped someday the FS would indeed engage the public in meaningful inquiry as to its operations and the management of the national forests. Not yet, though. I added:

Unfortunately but not unexpectedly given the RPA context, these regulations have been dubbed a “planning rule.” If one looks at RPA/NFMA through the lens of adaptive management, the process outlined in Section 6 looks much different than if one views it through the lens of comprehensive rational planning. Unfortunately, all previous “NFMA rules” (and associated forest plans) have been developed under the “comprehensive rational planning” frame.

We must remember that the Clinton era Committee of Scientists recommended that a forest plan be viewed through an adaptive management lens — viewed, figuratively, as a loose-leaf compendium of all assessments, decisions, monitoring and evaluation efforts, etc. that affect an administrative unit of the national forest system. …

If so-called “planning rule” development is viewed, once again, as yet-another comprehensive, rational planning exercise, the agency will be mired again in analysis paralysis and process gridlock. If viewed as a mandate for adaptive management with a heavy dose of collaborative engagement on the part of other agencies, other governments, and citizens, then a whole new world of opportunity and challenge opens up to the Forest Service.

Please do not fall into the ‘planning trap’ again.

Now we wait for “next steps” and for a “Draft Rule.” And we hope that we — all of us, both the Forest Service and the public — won’t be trapped in an inappropriate “frame.” It is not that I believe that the Forest Service deliberately manipulated the “frame” in this case. Just the opposite. I believe the Forest Service fell into common decision traps: “frame blindness”, “lack of frame control”, “plunging in”, others?

Related:
Adaptive Forest Management blog
Earth to FS Planning: Get a Blog!
The Forest Service as a ‘Learning Challenged’ Organization, (1999)

From A New Century of Forest Planning

The Blame Game

How often do we resort to blaming others for our own problems/failings? Think first of international relations and war. Think second of our own families. Think third of the organizations we work for and with. Admittedly, everything depends on everything and relationships are a two-way street. But I still believe that much of our undiscussed, and often undiscussable conflict derives from our own inability to see ourselves as others see us. This too, is a two-way street. Anyone or any groups we are in conflict with usually have the same problem, which we might think of as a special case of "frame blindness."

(See generally Chris Argyris' Action Science ideas. For the Forest Service specifically, see my Catch-22 and Maladaptive Organizations, and on "frame blindness" and other decision traps, see How to Avoid Harebrained, Cockamamie Schemes.)

Not only do we too-often think of ourselves as victims, but usually "frame" ourselves as well-meaning heroes — hardworking, fair and sensitive heroes — stopped in our tracks by those who we vilify as enemies, or malcontents, who we to-often view as lazy, inconsiderate, unappreciative, and insensitive. The problem gets worse as each side digs in, nurturing a co-dependency. In organizations the problem spreads as more and more people buy into the blame game, setting up a contagion that afflicts entire organizations.

I just finished a little book, Leadership and Self-Deception (2000, Second edition 2010, Amazon.com link) that captures the organizational "blame game" well. Importantly, the authors give hints on how to move beyond victim/blame both in interpersonal relations, management and leadership, and organizational effectiveness measures.

One key toward organizational betterment is to learn appreciate people as people, not as cogs in organizational machinery. Another key is to learn how to accept and share responsibility for organizational problems. In an afterword, the authors describe how in applying lessons learned from the book a CEO instituted a new way of tracking and dealing with problems in a company:

Whereas before, he would go to the person he thought was causing the problem and demand that the person fix it, the CEO began to consider how he himself might have contributed to the problem. He then convened a meeting including each person in the chain of command down to the level where the problem was manifest. He began the meeting by identifying the problem. He laid out all the ways he thought he had negatively contributed to the culture that had produced the problem and proposed a plan to rectify his contributions to the problem. He invited the person directly below him to do the same thing. And so on down the line. By the time it got to the person most immediately responsible for the problem, that person publicly took responsibility for his contributions to the problem and the proposed a plan for what he would do about it. In this way, a problem that had gone on literally for years was solved nearly overnight when the leaders stopped simply assigning responsibility and began holding themselves strictly accountable.

See too: Difficult Conversations (1999) (Amazon.com link) (Google Books preview)

None of this is new, of course, both the aforementioned books were written around 2000. In a 2006 Forest Policy-Forest Practice post titled Perplexed by Principles for Process Improvement , I alluded to the "power-over" v. "power-with" dilemma, and reiterated my 2003 suggestion to get us beyond gridlock by beginning the journey toward true collaboration.

Maybe I was planting seeds of thought, maybe I was whistling in the wind. Maybe the time is right now, or is yet to come. But maybe it will never come!

Why ? Despite rhetoric to the contrary, Capital P "Politics" is a power-over game, and US government agency administration is "political". It used to be that the Timber Barons and their Congressional and Administration lackeys were never far from earshot of anything that the Forest Service did (remember especially the 1950s through 1970s or 80s). Now the game has shifted, and Fire Money (and assoicated power) has more sway, as increasingly does Recreation Money. Maybe we will get a chance for better collaboration, even adaptive co-management as the Resilience Alliance folks call it.

But I won't be surprised if we don't. I have been hoping for a "collaborative future" for a very long time, but I'm beginning to wonder if I've not fallen into the insanity trap: doing (saying) the same things over and over, and expecting different results.

Returning to more optimistic thoughts, Leadership and Self-Deception got me to thinking about other books like Argyris and Schön's Overcoming Organizational Defenses: Facilitating Organizational Learning, (1990) and Susan Scott's Fierce Conversations (2002). (See my 2005 Forest Policy-Practice Fierce Conversations post). Only after learning to own up to and defeat the victim/blame game do we have any chance at other important organizational learning opportunities.

A key question: Is it really possible, or remotely likely that the US Forest Service (or any other large government bureau) will ever be able to move beyond the blame game?

Forest Service 'Transformation': Engaging Employees

US Forest Service Chief Gail Kimbell recently sent a letter to Forest Service leaders, daylighting a report [PDF, "discussion draft", 46 pp] from Dialogos International on FS culture, transformation efforts, safety and more.

The report and accompanying studies show how all improvement efforts are grounded in and guided by organization culture and culture improvement. The studies were begun with an eye toward safety, but it soon became clear that safety could only be dealt with as part of a much broader organzaional transformation.

Noteworthy, the report highlights what I'll call 'Forest Service cultural impediments' that limit success in the short- and longer-run. The report, a "discussion draft", argues, among other things, that these "impediments" are "critical 'high leverage' points that must be addressed and transformed." They include:

• Ceding Power — "[T]o the regions …[resulting in a] lack of a clear, central focus …"
• Mission Confusion — "… [C]ompeting stories about the right and central focus of the Agency"
• Family "Collusion" — "… [P]eople tend to use ["FS family"] as a defense, attributing that others do not understand as we do, and seeking to fend off positions of external stakeholders. …"
• Lack of Straight Talk — "… People often seem to be unwilling to speak out and name difficulties that they see, and attribute that to do so is to run serious risks. …"
• Capability Trap — "… [A] phenomenon where people are working increasing hard but where overall capability … is not improving and can in fact be deteriorating. …"
• Impaired Learning — "… Errors are not generally embraced as opportunities for improvement, particularly now, in a climate where people fear that the admission of error may lead [to retribution] …. Many suggested that the Agency has been poor at reflection on itself, and learning from reflection. … [A] proliferation of rules and requirements … tend[s] to have the effect of creating compliance, but not internally motivated commitment to change and learn."
• Physics of Accidents — "… Changing environmental settings … and budget pressures result in more demanding conditions that need to be faced with the same or fewer resources…. More intense circumstances, fewer people covering greater distances, simply icrease risks and chances for error.
• Initiative Proliferation — "… [Tending] toward a fragmentation of focus.

Here is Kimbell's letter, with highlights (in red) to denote the FS Chief's emphasis on employee engagement in "Transformation":

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Date: June 15, 2007
Subject: Safety Culture Report and Broader Implications
To: Regional Foresters, Station Directors, Area Director, IITF Director, Deputy Chiefs and WO Chief Staff Directors

Last year Chief Bosworth charged our national safety council with examining the ingrained habits, expectations, and "ways of doing business, or culture" that contribute to death and injury, despite visible commitment to the safety and health of Forest Service employees. Enclosed is a summary of the report called "Safety Culture for the 21st Century" that the consultant Dialogos International prepared in response to Chief Bosworth's charge. The report describes our safety challenges in terms of a much broader set of issues and dynamics.

After interviewing over 400 Forest Service employees at every level of the organization and analyzing what they learned, Dialogos determined that our safety record is not just about safety – it is about literally everything we do, and how we do it.

Our safety record and our operational challenges are embedded in how we:

• Contribute to mission confusion by not making hard strategic choices;
• Avoid or discourage straight talk, including reporting near misses;
• Divert energy from mission work, overtaxing people and diminishing our capacity;
• Skip time to detect, learn from, and act on our errors;
• Lose energy to a proliferation of piecemeal initiatives that come and go;
• Support a normalized attitude that it is okay to deviate from safety protocols.

This is not easy for most of us to hear. However, it is critical in this time when we are transforming and realigning our national and regional organizations. We need to ensure that we as core leaders are better aligned; provide more mission clarity; ensure better community and working relationships; and integrate our work and capabilities across boundaries. To ensure our success, we must continue to engage our employees in identifying things that drain energy away from our mission, and integrating what we learn in a single, unified effort to work well, safely, and consistently for the long run.

Our agency fatality rate (six or seven people a year "do not go home") is triple that of the National Park Service and more than four times that of the Bureau of Land Management. Clearly, it is not just that we are a natural resource agency in an intrinsically dangerous line of work.

Perhaps most painfully, our can-do mindset is diluting our effectiveness, overtaxing our workforce and resources, and contributing directly to fatalities and injuries. Every time we say "that rule does not apply to me," we are exacerbating operational challenges that put our coworkers and the Forest Service itself at risk. As Einstein once noted, "insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results." Our culture creates the results we get; we cannot expect different results until we do the hard work to change it. The good news is that we now know we can turn this around.

I thank the hundreds of people who participated in the Safety Culture for the 21st Century project and contributed to the Dialogos report. No change effort, however important, has ever survived without deep commitment from the people charged with doing the work.

I ask you as senior leaders in the Forest Service to:

• Distribute this letter and enclosed summary of the report for further discussion;
• hold and promote regional change dialogues, and report results to me;

Stay tuned. We are in this together.

/s/ Abigail R. Kimbell
ABIGAIL R. KIMBELL
Chief

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On the heels of Chief Kimbell's letter, and the Dialogos "study", comes an 6/29/2007 email from a member of the Transformation Team (subject: UPDATE: WO/RO/Area Transformation; to: [distribution list] "wo change champion roster") saying, in essence that, henceforth, employee engagement will be strictly limited due to time constraints and managerial commitments:

… Employee Involvement: Early in this Transformation effort, I (and the Transformation Team) had high expectations for how employees would/could be involved in a very transparent collaborative process for this effort. Given the timing of and re-definition of the WO/RO/Area Transformation task, the direction from leadership, and the extremely short timeframes assigned to this effort, it is not going to be feasible to engage employees in the early design to the extent I/we had originally envisioned. There will still be opportunities, albeit limited. As a result, it may look and feel like a top-down effort. For this, I am sorry. It does not reflect my personal desires or values. However, it is the nature of the task the Transformation Team has been handed. We'll do the best we can with the time we have. Please call me if you'd like to discuss this further. …

Let's hope that the Transformation Team "Update" is simply a missstep, and that Chief Kimbell's stated desires prevail. Let's keep pitching for deployment of both blogs and wikis to engage Forest Service employees and others in much-need "Transformation" dialogue. We will "stay tuned".

Note: 6/19/2007 I gleaned the Chief's letter from:
"They Said It," Archives, June 2007, June 19: "Safety Culture Report'
Home of the Wildland Firefighter

Forest Service Decentralization Myths, and a Few 'Transformation' Suggestions

Here are thoughts from a colleague. We begin with the ever-present management conundrum of centralization v. decentralization, and how the Forest Service has worked it into a Catch 22. Then we move to a few suggestions to get out of organizational traps we've fallen into:

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THE CIRCULAR MYTH OF FOREST SERVICE DECENTRALIZATION

The Forest Service is organized as a decentralized agency in order to allow field managers the flexibility to make decisions that are responsive to local conditions and needs;

BUT, the Forest Service maintains a voluminous system of Manuals, Handbooks, Directives, Desk Guides, publications, and direction letters which govern the minutia of virtually every decision a Forest Service officer must make, not to mention the micromanagement of its daily affairs by political appointees;

BUT, in meetings, training, and other communications, the Forest Service reiterates the folklore of decentralization, fostering an institutional culture that believes the Forest Service is a decentralized organization, which leads to disregard of the centralized direction;

BUT, woe to the Forest Service officer who gets caught deviating from the centralized direction under the mistaken belief that the decentralized organization allows the flexibility to make local decisions based on local considerations;

BUT, afterhours and water cooler discussions laud the ingenuity of the Forest Service officer who disregards the centralized directives and regulations in order to get good things done on the ground, contributing to the culture that wants to believe the Forest Service is a decentralized organization;

BUT, if a Forest Service officer makes a decision that the central authorities do not like, the response is to create more centralized direction in an attempt to insure it never happens again;

BUT, if a Forest Service officer fails to make a decision the central authorities want to see made because the officer believes he or she is precluded from doing so by the centralized direction, the officer is reprimanded by the central authorities for failing to be creative in interpreting the central direction;

BUT, the institutions which hold the Forest Service accountable for its actions, the courts, Congress, Office of the Inspector General, and the Government Accountability Office, measure the agency's performance by its adherence to its centralized standards;

BUT, the state congressional delegations which hold great sway with the Forest Service locally decisions impugn those officers who adhere to the centralized direction if doing so does not achieve the results the delegations want;

BUT, when displeased with a decision, the public at large views failure to follow the centralized direction as evidence of agency corruption;

BUT, when pleased with a local decision the public at large couldn't care less about the central direction;

BUT, the central direction nonetheless grows exponentially, along with internal conflicts and inconsistencies, such that keeping up with and deciphering the central direction becomes nearly impossible and it is increasingly ignored or disregarded;

BUT, once created, central direction almost never goes away. Much of it is antiquated, out of date, self contradictory, redundant or simply wrong. Nonetheless, when central direction is updated, it almost always increases in volume, complexity, and indecipherability;

BUT, as volume increases and direction is restated, the potential for internal inconsistency and inconsistencies between laws, regulations, manuals, handbooks, desk guides, instruction letters, and supervisory instructions increases, and the ability to find useful information declines further;

BUT, the intent of this internal direction is to make employees more effective at their jobs;

BUT, the central directives are used by employees in rote decision making exercises rather than true deliberation, and are used in lieu of training and career development that would actually make employees more effective at their job of making decisions that are responsive to local conditions and needs;

BUT, "staff specialists" become so caught up in the rote exercise of following the centralized direction that adhering to the direction becomes the end rather than the means of accomplishing real work;

BUT, the Forest Service is organized as a decentralized agency in order to allow field managers the flexibility to make decisions that are responsive to local conditions and needs.

(RETURN TO BEGINNING OF DOCUMENT)

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SO, WHAT TO DO TO GET OUT OF THIS LOOP?

1. Admit that the organization is not entirely decentralized. The Forest Service is a government agency (not the Nature Conservancy, Weyerhauser, or the Boy Scouts) which is governed by one set of laws. Since the Constitutional authority over the National Forests resides with Congress, the role of the Forest Service is to "faithfully execute" those laws, on the entire National Forest System.
   
   
2. These laws need to be consistently interpreted and applied by the Forest Service across the country. Since the laws are not comprehensive or without room for interpretation, clear, concise regulations are needed to fill in the gaps and insure that the laws are consistently applied.
   
   
3. Existing regulations are not clear, concise, or succinct.
   
   
4. The existing mechanisms for drafting regulations are not adequate. Drafting good regulatory language is an art form. There should be a small, permanent staff of professionals to draft regulatory language. Since regulations are promulgated by the Secretary, and not the Forest Service, this staff should work for the Under Secretary's office. This is not to suggest that Forest Service technical professionals and OGC should not have input into rule making, but the drafting of rules should be by qualified professionals, not technocrats on detail.
   
   
5. Burn the Directives system. Some very small portions of the system should be made into rules, but the vast majority of the system should go away.
   
   
6. Replace the Directives system with weblogs (i.e. blogs) and wiki systems for assisting employees in doing their work. These systems are evolving, self-correcting information tools that allow technical professionals to share experiences, approaches to problem solving, and to evaluate and critique what others are doing. Instead of the rigid, top-down, cookbook approach to problem solving that is present in the existing directives system, this is a dynamic, evolutionary to help competent professionals do their jobs, and for the agency to monitor how work is being done, and make corrections as needed.
   
   
7. Develop a workforce of competent, independent, thinking, accountable professionals. The current work force is not educated, trained, equipped, organized, or motivated to do the job they are supposed to be doing, which is to administer the National Forest System. While there are some subject matter areas of expertise that are capable of performing components of this overall job, (e.g. fire suppression, timber management, road engineering) the agency as a whole is not equipped to accomplish its overall mission.
   
   
8. Skill sets for accomplishing this mission need to be reevaluated, and there must be a commitment to professional development toward these skill sets. Currently, employees come from a pool of seasonal and temporary employees educated natural resource, engineering, and other applied sciences who stumble their way through years of initiation rites into career paths that are available and convenient. Needed skill sets should be identified and employees brought in on pre-identified career paths based on education, interests and skills, and then cultivated through training and job assignments to do those jobs.
   
   
9. There is nothing in particular that qualifies natural resource and other technical professionals to perform in the Regional Forester, Forest Supervisor, and District Ranger line positions. These jobs primarily require management, diplomacy, and public administration skills that have no correlation to the education and aptitudes of the traditional natural resources professional, but in many ways are antithetical to those technical skills. These line offers function more like governors and mayors over large land areas than natural resource managers. Qualifications for these jobs need to be completely rethought.
   
   
10. Once the agency is reorganized along these lines, employees need to be given freedom to use these tools and skills to make decisions that are responsive to local conditions and needs, bounded by clear statutory and regulatory sideboards. Employees should be accountable for mistakes and unacceptable deviations from these limited standards, but in a way that primarily allows for learning and correction, not discipline and reprimand, except in extreme or repetitive cases.

Effective Organizations

As I was looking at Toni Stafford's Transforming the Forest Service blog, I decided it time to take another look at both the bright and the dark side of organization. On the bright side, I updated my "Effective Organizations" outline. In Effective Organizations I attempt to interrelate:

• W. Edwards Deming's 14 Points and Seven Deadly Diseases
• Peter Block's Stewardship
• Ronald Heifetz's Leadership
• Karl Weick's Mindfulness
• Donald Schön's Reflection
• Peter Senge's Systems Thinking
• Chris Argyris' Overcoming Organizational Defenses
• Margaret Wheatley's A Simpler Way
• Gifford and Elizabeth Pinchot's Rights and Responsibilities
• and more, including Dialogue, Collaboration and Learning

What have I missed?

The task of moving from an 'oppressive bureaucracy' to an 'empowered collaborative' is huge. But the payoff is massive. Moving from a fear-based hierarchy/patriarchy to a self-organizing, federation is a journey none of us ought to pass up willingly.

As the journey is begun (or not, as the case may be) we ought not to forget the dark side, as I have noted before:

• US Forest Service Deeply Flawed Planning Culture, 2004
• Five Habits of Highly Defective Organizations, and Five Leadership/Management Needs, 2003
• The Forest Service as a Learning Challenged Organization, 1999

Blogs and Wikis: Learning from the CIA

Late in 2005, the US Central Intelligence Ageny began to explore new and innovative ways to adapt to a new world. No longer could the agency continue its top down, hierarchical approach to management and information gathering, intelligence gleaning, etc. Change was suggested to break the agency out of gridlock. The change was patterned after changes already underway in many parts of the US Defense Department. Interestingly, the changes recommended are the stuff we have been working on here for the last couple of years.

According to Federal Computer Week, in April 2006 the CIA had over 1,000 internal blogs. See also Webcontent.Gov on blogs.

I wonder when or even if the US Forest Service will wake up? Amid a blizzard of conference calls and in-person meetings, almost no one is advocating for and/or using blogs and wikis. Below find excerpts from two discussion paper/policy recommendations looked at by the CIA. No telling (at least by me) what changes have been acted upon by the secretive CIA. Read the linked papers for the rest of the connections to complexity theory in this realm. Here are a few highlights:

How the Web Can Relieve Our Information Glut and Get Us Talking to Each Other: Connecting the Virtual Dots
Matthew S. Burton

… A blog lets ordinary computer users with average technical knowledge instantly publish on the Web. Since blogs came along two years ago, 9 million people have started their own, many of them at no cost. Most authors are just looking to keep friends and family updated without overloading their inboxes.

This nonintrusive publication method lets writers say what they really think. We all have that uncle who forwards every terrible joke he finds online. We usually groan when it shows up in our inbox. How dare he waste my time and hard-disk space with this? We victims of poor e-mail etiquette don't want to be seen as the annoying uncle, so before we send e-mails, we self censor, taking into account our addressee's possible reaction: "Will he think I'm stupid? Will he delete this in disgust? Maybe I should remove this sentence."

A blog is different. It's our own space. Readers have the option of viewing it every day or completely ignoring it, but whatever they do, we’re not necessarily liable for their reaction. We're not telling them that they have to read it, so if they don't like it, we aren't to blame. This gives us freedom to speak our minds. …

Broadcasting a blog has another big advantage over a point-to-point e-mail conversation: It lets previously unknown people participate in the dialogue. …

And visitors to our blogs wouldn't just read. Blogs allow readers to contribute to the discussion by adding their own comments to a writer's posts. Do you have a question to which someone out there is bound to know the answer? Blog the question and wait for someone to come across it and post an answer. Do you have thoughts on an intelligence product? Write them down and let the rest of your community know what you think; then watch as your counterparts contribute their own opinions.

If the IC [Intelligence Community] used blogs, analysts, collectors, and customers could hold impromptu discussions at any time, instead of having to schedule meetings weeks in advance. And when the time came for such meetings, those present would already have a solid foundation for discussion instead of having to spend time learning the names, roles, and interests of those involved. Intelink has the potential to be a place where groups of intelligence officers from around the world can speak freely and substantively on a daily basis. Such continuous, candid dialogue is the only way to forge relationships of trust in an industry where people are trained to be distrustful. …

Rebuilding Public Trust

Over the past several years it has become increasingly clear to me that we need to rethink many things in American society and culture. It seems to me that we no longer have what we might call "public trust." Maybe we never had all that much of it, but it appears to be slipping away on all fronts.

We seem to have no clear visions of public and private purposes, and no clear demarcations between the two. We seem to have very few well-functioning institutions (any?) and organizations in either the public or the private arena. Remember the Jack Abramoff scandal, amid many other political scandals? Congressional and/or Executive Branch approval ratings? Judicial Activism? Media spin? And so on. Remember Enron? Acounting frim scandals? Government agency bureaucratic incompetence and/or corruption? And so on.

Many things will have to be rethought. In particular we need to rethink, 'public discourse and deliberative democracy,' 'public decision-building,' 'public and private organizational administration and management,' 'ethics,' …. Here are a few ideas:

Public Discourse and Deliberative Democracy

Roles and responsibilities for various institutions, e.g. government, media, corporations, NGOs, individuals etc. have to be rethought. On one aspect, leadership, see, e.g. Margaret Wheatley's It's Just our Turn to Help the World. And whatever happened to Joe Jaworski's American Leadership Forum? Are they working on public as well as private leadership issues? What else are they up to? I must remember to take a closer look at what has happened since Jaworski wrote Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership. And how does the American Leadership Forum interrelate with the National Outdoor Leadership School and other endeavors. Who/What else is out there trying to make a 'leadership difference.' I've bee too long captured by the inner workings of bureaucracies… Time to invest a bit of time/energy on something bigger.

Public Decision-Building

Time to resurrect this old idea that a few of us tried to work up years ago…
See, e.g. here, here, here, here.

Public Lands Project (another idea: plp.org ??)

As a specific, first project we might reevaluate and recast roles, responsibilities practices for government agencies, focusing on, perchance, one I am very familiar with, the US Forest Service. Lessons learned would translate easily to other land management agencies and also to a large extent to military departments, e.g. Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, as well as to other government entities that "do," in addition to what they require of others in their "regulatory" capacity.

It would then be easy to envision, say, a another little project that we might call Military Organizations Project, except that the acronym "mop" might not work too well. :)

Another possibility, with a potentially large payoff is to rethink the missions and practices of the Federal Reserve System and the Treaury. I've been trying to make sense of these, particularly The FED and other central banks relative to geopolitics and international finance on my Econ Dreams—Nightmares blog

Effective Organizations

Here is a little compendium I'm working on: "Effective Organizations".

Maybe someday we will begin to respect government enough to require better governmental practices, and better govermental performance. If so maybe "Effective Organizations", as made better through time, can serve as a touchstone.

{Note to all: This post may be the seed for a new blog, or if I get really ambitious maybe even a new organization: something like 'rpt.org'