daveiverson

Why Three Planning Levels?

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Anyone who has followed this blog knows that I am fond of talking about adaptive management (here) and railing against planning. (here, here, here). Sometimes both at once. Today I puzzle, once again, over why the Forest Service insists on three levels of planning: national, forest, and project or activity. Note: it used to be four levels, adding “regional”, but that is likely a trivial point. I ask: Why? Why? Why?

So I decided to try and understand how this particular three-level planning scheme came to be. “National” is understandable, at least in some contexts—particularly budgeting and organizational accountability, and some policy development. “Project or activity” is where work gets done. Logical enough, at least for budgeting and work planning and accountability. But I don’t know what role such plays in a forest plan, unless we are taking about the “loose leaf compendium” that the Clinton-era Committee of Scientists recommended.

“Forest”? That too makes sense for budgeting and work accountability, etc. Remember the “cut and sold” reports, during the good old go-go timbering days? I do — painfully! But there again I can’t quite wrap my mind around ecosystem/social system planning or management at this “level”, unless we are once again talking about the “loose-leaf compendium” for administrative purposes. But even here the case for a “forest” level of planning is weak. Better to work toward planning at scales where “sense of place” and/or “sense of purpose” are in play. These type scales often cross forest borders, and often include other than forest service lands.

Finally, I began to think through the history of the Forest Service and in particular try to better understand the run-up via controversy to the National Forest Management Act (1976), following in the heels of the then recently passed Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974. Not much help there. NFMA mandates a “forest plan” but doesn’t require the type forest plan the forest service keeps writing into its “rules.” Note that the timber sale, etc. restrictions in the NFMA can still be applied even with the COS “loose-leaf compendium” notion of a forest plan.

For completeness, here is what the Clinton-era Committee of Scientists recommended, in part (from Proposed Summary of COS Report, Feb 9, 1999):

The NFMA calls for development of an integrated land- and resource-management plan for each national forest and grassland. In our approach the integrated plan is the assemblage of all policies and decisions affecting an administrative unit. It can include regional guidance for conservation strategies relevant to the area; the strategic vision, policies, and multiple-use goals developed through large landscape planning, including the description of the desired future conditions; proposed management pathways for achieving the desired future condition and multiple-use goals; implementing decisions and proposed project-level management activities developed at the small-landscape level; and sufficient records and documentation from monitoring to support ongoing adaptive management. As the foundation of administrative policy and guidance, this planning documentation also should include the budget and staffing needs for implementation as well as the procedures and timing of monitoring and review processes. As a management tool, the plan not only includes monitoring processes, but also records ongoing results and subsequent changes in both strategic and implementation decisions.

In the past, the use of administrative units as the planning units often caused large-scale ecological, economic, and social processes to be neglected or resulted in inconsistent decisions by adjacent administrative units. Therefore, the Committee suggests a planning and decision-making hierarchy whose geographic extent will often not be limited to the boundaries of a particular national forest or grassland but whose physical repository will rest at [sic] within multiple administrative units.

Thus, the land- and resource-management plan should be in the form of a loose-leaf notebook that contains all of the policy directions, strategies, and implementation proposals from decisions that have been made at all levels of the planning process. It is the official repository of decisions big and small that have been made and reviewed in the strategic and landscape-level planning processes. It must also contain the monitoring methodologies that will be implemented as well as the evaluation results from monitoring. Because this model of the land- and resource-management plan is different than that employed during the first round of NFMA planning, the process of plan amendment is also different. Rather than a formal process involving review and comment, these loose-leaf plans are dynamic and evolving, readily reflecting and accommodating the outcomes of adaptive management. Thus, as decisions are revisited and revised in response to changing social understanding, natural and social events, and policy priorities, the loose-leaf notebook immediately reflects those changes. Consequently, any “amendments” made to these plans reflect decisions that have been made and reviewed elsewhere.

I find no fault with the COS recommendations! I’m just puzzled why they are not on the table this time around. I am well aware that these recommendations were developed at the very end of Clinton’s term of office, and the incoming George W. Bush Administration moved quickly to nullify all that they could that were marked by Clinton’s footprints. (including the 2000 NFMA Rule (pdf)). Why were they not followed in the 2000 rule development?

I’m puzzled. Maybe some of you who are smarter than I can help me understand what the hell is going on here with these bizarre “three levels”? And what has been going on since 1979. What were/are the drafters of these various rules thinking? Is it just “Tradition”? (Like in Fiddler on the Roof), i.e. the language was there in 1979 rule, so it will stay until hell freezes over. Something else? Can it be justified today?

Update: As Sharon points out in comments, the 1999 Committee of Scientists Report is available on the sidebar. Here the Synopsis: pdf

Planning: The View from Plato’s Cave

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A “forest planner” friend called me the other night to chide me for missing one of the best powder skiing days ever. As our conversation progressed I shared my frustration with the Forest Service’s thirty years failed national forest planning efforts. My friend said that I ought not to expect forest planning types, including those charged with writing “new rules,” to do anything other than minor tweaking of older rules. After all, that’s what they know and where they find comfort. My friend has a point! Sometimes, however, there is Danger in the Comfort Zone.

Keep in mind that most people, both managers and employees prefer bondage in bureaucratic power-play organizations, “psychic prisons,” to the freedom and responsibility of adaptive management learning organizations (shorter verson, longer verson (pdf)). I prefer the empowerment of the latter.

Digging deeper into the FS comfort zone, I believe the Forest Service’s “comfort” is much like that Plato talked about in his Allegory of the Cave (Wikipedia). In short, Forest Service top brass are too often like the inhabitants of Plato’s cave, chained in some way to see only the shadows of outside reality flickering on the cave walls, but unable to encounter that reality themselves.

I admit that I too am blinded by ideology/methodology, taking too much comfort, for example, in adaptive co-management. None of us is immune to this failing. Still, questions linger: Which frame serves best, planning or adaptive management? Or are both bankrupt? If not these, then what? And if an adaptive co-management frame is better, how can the Forest Service ever get there? In answering the last question, remember what Kristen Blann and Stephen Light told us a decade ago, Adaptive ecosystem assessment and management will be The Path of Last Resort (doc)! Perhaps the “path” will never be taken at all. That would indeed be unfortunate.

Links, for those unfamiliar with Plato’s Allegory:
Allegory of the Cave, Wikipedia
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave: A short summary (Warning: Not for those offended by the “f-bomb” and other “street talk”)
The Cave: 9 min. audio (with text), that explains Plato’s allegory well in contemporary context

New Planning Rule Fails as Adaptive Management

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What is a forest plan? A committee of scientists once said that a forest plan is simply a loose-leaf compendium of all decisions large and small that affect the administration of a national forest. Following adaptive management principles and practices, “decisions” can and are made at multiple scales: international, national whether or not made by the US Forest Service, regional and local. So too with assessments, and monitoring and evaluation measures. All these are the workings of adaptive management (pdf), not planning . The whole of the Forest Service ought to be charged to work together to accomplish broad conservation, preservation, and use goals through adaptive management. Framing needs to be changed to do this. A central planning frame has failed for 30 years. Why continue down this path?

In an adaptive management frame, forest supervisors oversee the day-to-day workings of a national forest administrative unit. But decisions affecting that unit are made in various ways at various scales, whether as part of laws, policies, programs, or activities. There are no administrative “kings” in this worldview. Instead we have various actors, some within the Forest Service and some without, working in interrelated systems that frame the workings of a national forest. We have whole organizations working together to accomplish the work of adaptive management. The task is not left to “planning.”

Now let’s begin to parse the most recent “proposed rule” for developing a forest plan. Note first that the three levels of administrative decision-making outlined in the proposed rule — national, forest, project or activity — don’t fit the adaptive management model outlined above. Why does the Forest Service continue to pretend that managing a national forest comes down to three levels of decision-making? I can see no reason, beyond tradition for maintaining this hierarchy. Can you?

If the Forest Service is incapable of understanding adaptive management, is there any hope in trying to fit adaptive management into the Forest Service culture? After thirty years watching and attempting to participate in rule development for the RPA/NFMA I am once-again left to doubt whether any progress can be made.

Adaptive management is about organizations learning to adapt to ever changing environmental and social systems. Adaptive management is not about “planning.”

Perhaps I’m too old to dabble in this stuff anymore. Perhaps the “devil in the details” ought to be left to those younger. But I believe I’ve seen this same rhetoric before — since 1979 — and it appears, broadly speaking, pretty much the same to me. The Wilderness Society gives the proposed rule a B. I give it, once again, an F. The Forest Service simply doesn’t get adaptive management. The F is for failing to adequately frame the process, for “frame blindness” and other decision traps.

If I were a forest supervisor I would feel victimized by this (and earlier “planning rules”). Forest supervisors are asked to act as “forest kings,” not forest administrators. The Washington Office of the Forest Service does a disservice to both forest supervisors and regional foresters, as well as many in the so-called “staff” program areas of the Forest Service by continuing this tradition of laying it all at the feet of forest supervisors. We might as well call them “forest scapegoats” if this tradition continues. The Forest Service seems intent to continue its 30-year tradition of gridlock unless and until there is an awakening.

I will not comment here on the many process failings leading up to this proposed rule. I’ve done it before. Suffice it to say, despite many pleadings, the Forest Service once again gathered some input in the early stages, then went into the isolation booth to hatch a rule. It should surprise no one that it closely resembles earlier rules. No “real” blogs, no wikis, no true collaboration in rule development. Why not? Other government organizations use them. What we got instead was administrative politics as usual, with associated administrative gridlock.

It is likely too late to change this rule. Despite billing it as Draft, we all know that only minor tweaking will be allowed between Draft and Final Rule. It would be refreshing for the Forest Service to admit that it botched this effort. But American politics will not allow it. Too bad! Peter Drucker once remarked that one key measure of the worth of a decision is how rapidly it can be changed in light of new information. Would that the Forest Service could “see the light,” and change this rule.

Forest Service Sins of Omission and Commission

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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 2×4 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 2×4 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 2×4 to the farmer and sends him home.

The next day, the farmer walks toward the mule carrying the 2×4, 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 2×4?
Or maybe such has been delivered via Dialogos and others. If so, when will we begin to see the effects?

When We Just Don’t Know

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I have often wondered why Forest Service scientists and managers talk about risk and uncertainty, yet don’t wander into the territory of “novelty, surprise, and ignorance.” My studies in decision-making and economics inform me that risk and uncertainty are the domains of games where probability distributions are well-known. Another realm, the realm of novelty, surprise, and ignorance is where many business and organizational management decisions live. That is why I’m often railing about “wicked problems”, and about how to make sense of the organizational, environmental, and social contexts we dwell in. Today I want to explore the wilds of “organizational ignorance.” In short, I want to take a look at what to do when we just don’t know.

To make my case, I want to examine a little article that I found a few years ago on the subject, titled Managing Organizational Ignorance, by Michael Zack. The only time I mentioned it before on internet chatter, best I can tell, was when the Forest Service was trying to wed Planning with Environmental Management Systems. (my Forest Service EMS/Planning blog chronicles are here). Here is what I said:

[A]s we continue on this EMS journey maybe we ought to spend more time exploring novelty, surprise and ignorance. Study adaptive management, and read in detail books like Panarchy, Supply Side Sustainability, Compass and Gyroscope, Discordant Harmonies, and more. And don’t forget to wander over and read Michael Zack’s Managing Organizational Ignorance—either right now, or later after you’ve worked yourself into a frenzy over EMS and come up short.

Zack begins with one of my favorite quotes, from Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, “Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?” [Note: Postman’s book ought to be required reading for everyone in the U.S.—to better understand our current plight w/r/t ignorance]

Zack builds his thesis around four knowledge-processing problems, each describing a unique form of “organizational ignorance”:

  • Uncertainty: not having enough information;
  • Complexity: having to process more information than you can manage or understand;
  • Ambiguity: not having a conceptual framework for interpreting information;
  • Equivocality: having several competing or contradictory conceptual frameworks.

Each problem describes a particular form of organizational ignorance, calling for a particular knowledge-processing capability. Each in some way also represents a fundamental organizational or strategic management problem. Taken together they define the range of knowledge processing capabilities an organization must have to manage its ignorance effectively. These four knowledge problems can be categorized along two axes: 1) the nature of the knowledge being processed, and 2) whether the solution is to acquire more knowledge or to place restrictions on what you have.

Here is Zack’s table, summarizing the relationship between the knowledge problems and information processing (gathering, restricting, analyzing, etc.):

Zack sums up with:

The four knowledge-problems framework provides a powerful lens for viewing information processing, communication, and knowledge management in organizations. It suggests several prescriptions and conclusions.

  • Organizations must be open to novelty and anomaly. Only by acknowledging its ignorance can an organization put itself on the road to learning. Organizations must recognize and accept that there are events that may be difficult to explain because no one understands them well enough. …
  • Knowledge management today focuses primarily on solving problems of complexity and uncertainty. It aims to share and exploit what is known within well-defined circumstances and contexts, and is dominated by information technology. Expert systems apply codifiable but highly complex sets of rules; best practice databases attempt to share less structured but well-documented expertise; point of sale systems attempt to provide rapid feedback for managing market uncertainty, while e-mail and discussion databases do the same for internal uncertainty. Much less effort has been spent worrying about the ambiguous and equivocal situations resulting from more profound forms of organizational ignorance. To truly manage knowledge and expertise, however, organizations must make sure that their members work toward building a shared fundamental understanding of the situations and problems they face. Meetings and teams, as well as informal opportunities for engaging in sense-making conversations that raise good questions, challenge the status quo, and directly deal with ambiguity and equivocality are all essential. Solving convergent, well-defined problems requires having a shared understanding in place first. It is therefore critical for organizations to be aware of and to solve problems of ambiguity and equivocality before diving into the more structured problems of uncertainty and complexity.
  • Information technology can play an important role in managing information and knowledge, when it is appropriately applied. This requires diagnosing the nature of the knowledge problem beings solved. Information technology makes sense in cases of uncertainty and complexity, but much less so for dealing with ambiguity and equivocality
  • Organizations need to go beyond their own boundaries to find the knowledge they need to help them make sense of the world. Where the organization is relatively ignorant…, it should include [constituents] in the sense-making process. In doing so, the organization will also develop a shared understanding and basis for ongoing communication with its [constituents]. As ambiguity and equivocality give way to uncertainty and complexity, the organization can more easily migrate to more structured technologies to communicate and coordinate with its external partners. … Organizations may use information technology to exchange data and information, but they will need to use social interaction to exchange knowledge in building a shared understanding about their commercial relationships.
  • Senior executives and managers must interact freely with those at lower levels of the organization in sensemaking and problem-solving processes to discover what the organization as a whole truly knows. It is not enough for managers merely to catalog organizational knowledge by creating a “knowledge map.” Rather, they must sense the organization’s knowledge and ignorance by engaging all organizational levels in the process of resolving the four knowledge problems.
  • Like managing knowledge, managing organizational ignorance requires an appropriate culture. In general, the organization must create an environment in which it is acceptable to publicly admit that one does not know something. Multinational organizations I have observed find this to be particularly problematic in certain national cultures. Managing complexity requires a culture in which it is acceptable to identify and support experts and seek their advice. Resolving uncertainty requires a culture supportive of open, clear and extensive cross-boundary communication, and a willingness and ability to bridge various languages (both professional and national) in use across the organization. Resolving ambiguity requires the ability to confess ignorance and confusion. Managing equivocality requires an environment in which it is acceptable to disagree about interpretations and which accepts diversity of views as well as useful and productive consensus.
  • Each of the four knowledge problems suggests a different set of processes, roles, information technologies, and organizational structures for their resolution. … Often … problems are intertwined. [An organization] must be flexible enough to modify itself dynamically to deal with the knowledge problem at hand. …
  • Even the non-routine or unpredictable aspects of the four problems can be managed, or at least anticipated, in a routine fashion. Where ambiguity or equivocality routinely arises, organizations should create standing mechanisms to address them. Provisions must be made for face-to-face conversations to occur among those most relevant to resolving ambiguity or equivocality. Those responsible for executing the resulting interpretations must also be involved so that those interpretations can be meaningfully communicated. Uncertainty can be routinely handled by anticipatory mechanisms for exchanging information; complexity can be handled by anticipatory mechanisms for locating knowledge.
  • The four problems suggest a framework for managing organizational learning. Ambiguous and equivocal problems often represent non-routine events about which the organization lacks sufficient knowledge. The process of resolving ambiguity and equivocality, however, is the stuff of which organizational learning is made. Ambiguous and equivocal events, if encountered enough times, eventually become familiar enough to be migrated to more routine processes. Organizations must have the ability to evaluate events to determine if they are interpretable or not, route them to the appropriate resolution process, and eventually migrate those that become familiar to routine processes, thereby reserving the organization’s capacity to continually handle novelty and confusion. [Emphasis (bold) added by Iverson]

Is the Forest Service ready to deal with Zack’s four knowledge-processing problems? Do they help make better sense of “ignorance problems” than traditional rhetoric of “risk and uncertainty”? Have Forest Service managers/scientists/staffers already been dealing with these problems albeit in different frames? In short, what do you think?

Learning from Failure

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One of the Meridian Institute consultants (working with the Forest Service on the “new planning rule”) recently asked me how I might frame discussions for the NFMA rule. Here is what I offered, adding that I thought it already too late for the kind of slow, thoughtful reflection/conversation that might make for effective change:

Suppose we could begin again. The public lands have just now been declared public. All laws, customs, and values are as they are, except that there is no RPA/NFMA. How might we begin to design a public process for managing the national forests as part of the nations’ public lands intermingled with private lands? How might we begin to discuss the possibility of a design process? How best to engage stakeholders?

Now fold in the RPA/NFMA, and the customs and history of the US Forest Service. What might we do now with the NFMA rule? How might that step fit within other design steps that might lead us to a useful outcome for managing the national forests?

Today I’ll add that we might want some “framing” to evaluate the eventual outcome of this NFMA “rule” effort. As I was pondering that, and remembering the many past failed attempts to reform planning and management in the Forest Service, I reread The Logic of Failure, by Dietrich Dörner. (book review) Then I did some internet sleuthing, and found a nice little reflective design blog that also built from Dörner’s wisdom. One tidbit of wisdom was titled “Metamorphosis: Transforming Non-designers into Designers” (pdf). I thought of Forest Service planners and managers. Maybe, if ever they are to learn, some might learn from this little paper. Here, altered a bit to get closer to the Forest Service’s task at hand, is the heart of the message:

[Consider] moving through three transitions:

(P) Pre-emergence
(T) Transitional
(D) Designerly Thinking

Characteristic of each of these transitions is a penetration of barriers. Rather than progression along a smooth continuum, you penetrate these (intellectual, practical, psychological and social) barriers in a step-like function. …

Barriers (numerals in parentheses indicate the transitional stage(s) where the barrier occurs):

  1. Design definitions. Naïve designers [tweak what has been framed too narrowly]; experienced designers also include [interaction, experience from others, emotion, and a ‘systems perspective’]. (P)
  2. Best solution. Naïve designers hold onto the belief that there is a best solution; experienced designers believe there exist many solutions and judged by critical criteria and presented through a design argument or explanation. (P)
  3. Technology-centered vs. human-centered. Naïve designers focus on the technology; experienced designers study human behavior, motivation and need. It’s very difficult to “let go” of gadgets and things; there’s an over-fascination with techno-fetishism among naïve designers. (P, T)
  4. Me and we. Naïve designers defend their own designs; experienced designers look to their team for inspiration and solutions. (P, T)
  5. User research. Naïve designers underplay the role of user research; they know what people want. Tools such as personas [pdf] are resisted rather than embraced naturally in the design process. Experienced designers do not make assumptions about human desires and motivations; they study it instead. (P, T)
  6. Algorithm / design paradox. Naïve designers expect to memorize algorithmic solutions to problems; experienced designers learn to deal with ill-structured problems, seemingly paradoxical situations and design thinking. (P, T)
  7. IT domination. Naïve designers tend to overemphasize efficiency, effectiveness, scalability; experienced designers include experience and emotion. (T)
  8. Idea loyalty. Naïve designers hold onto a single idea; experienced designers engage in systematic exploration of multiple ideas. (T)
  9. Critique culture. Naïve designers worry about [internally generated performance measures]; experienced designers welcome critique. (T, D)
  10. Notebook. Naïve designers [focus on] a particular project; experienced designers sketch continuously, deriving inspiration from all contexts. (T, D)
  11. Role. Naïve designers are learning what they do and how to do it; experienced designers begin to defend the position of design in a multi-person development team made up of designers and non-designers. (T, D)
  12. Research and philosophy. Naïve designers find solutions [patterned from past experience, “best management practices”, etc. — single-loop learning]; experienced designers explore philosophical foundations of design as well [i.e. double-loop learning]. (D)
  13. Reflective designer. Naïve designers spend little to no time reflecting on how they are designing versus experienced designers who can look at themselves “out of body” as they design. (D)
  14. Omnipresence. Naïve designers see design embedded in objects [or events]; experienced designers see systems that affect designs and designs that affect systems. (D)
  15. External / internal. Naïve designers find external answers to design problems; experienced designers begin to look internally and introspectively for inspiration and resolution. (D)

Maybe we can use these barriers/’barrier busters’ to see flaws in the Forest Service’s design strategy/tactics. Or maybe the Forest Service and its bevy of consultants can use them. Or maybe the roundtable participants can use them. Or maybe I’m just once-again wandering about in the wilderness of esoteric thought. More on Dörner’s book in a later post. But it is a “must read” for planners and managers.

All’s Well on the Planning Front — Or is it?

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The year was 1995 (or thereabouts). I attended a Forest Service sponsored meeting on Strategic Planning at Grey Towers. I carried my brand new copy of Henry Mintzberg’s Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning to the meeting, referring to Mintzberg’s death-knell for planning whenever I could. (Here is a six-page summary pdf) A few souls agreed that Strategic Planning as envisioned by the NFMA regulation ought to have died even before Mintzberg penned his classic. But most in attendance were true soldiers from the Forest Service and a few other government agencies — looking only to do better at their assigned/accepted tasks.

Now it is 2010 and the Forest Service is once-again playing the Frame Game to make sure that the status quo planning frame is not upset too much. Or so it seems to me. As always, I hope I’m wrong. The game is to rewrite the regulatory “rule” for NFMA. If he Forest Service believes it to be a “planning rule” my guess it that the game is lost before it begins. To set a stage the Forest Service is hosting a bunch of so-called collaboration meetings. First out the chute, a Science Forum — a two-day gathering of “scientists” early this week. The outcome of the meeting will likely prove up my 1995 observation-warning that the Forest Service hadn’t (and hasn’t yet) learned its science lesson:

It is folly to assume that, “Science will find the answer,” as if science alone were the key to resolving social problems. Such thinking hasn’t been helpful to medical practitioners, engineers, even scientists when challenged to help explain the cultural mess we’ve gotten ourselves into relative to sustainability.

A framing question lingers: Why is the Forest Service once-again leading with science if the intent is to reframe policy and/or management?

On the heels of the Science Forum, the Forest Service will host three two-day sessions in Washington DC, and a series of one-day sessions in the hinterlands. Not enough time for thoughtful deliberation of what social mess (or wicked problem nest) the Forest Service is in, neither how it got there, neither how it might begin to move forward.

A framing question lingers: Why is the Forest Service once-again hosting a series of meetings to begin reframing the “rule”? Isn’t there any other way? Or is tradition rearing its head once again? Some of us have advocated for Blogs (internet discussion forums) to begin discussing serious policy matters and Wikis to actually write alternative versions of policy. (See, e.g. here.) But all, so far, is to no avail. We’ll see what will happen this time relatively soon. For now, though, let’s step back again in time.

The year was 2002. I began to preach the gospel of Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems (Buzz Holling’s intro to the Panarchy idea), following on the heels of Barriers and Bridges to the Renewal of Ecosystems and Institutions, The Politics of Ecosystem Management, Managing the Unexpected and a few other key books. (See: Collaboration Readings for Reflective Practitioners). I continued to do so until my retirement in 2007. Nobody, other than a few who blog here, seemed to care. Nobody seemed anxious to seek a different path. At least no one in power circles seemed to care.

Inevitably each new idea that emerged was transformed into “Planning”: assess, plan, act, evaluate, plan, …. Planning swallowed up adaptive management without a hiccup. Planning swallowed up Environmental Management Systems, or almost , again without a hiccup. (my 2005-2007 EMS blog) But it was pretense. Pretend adaptive management. Pretend collaboration. Nothing remotely real about it. Still, it suited the Forest Service bureaucracy well. It could be force-fit into the rigid straitjacket of the Manual/Handbook system. Nothing would change the planning juggernaut that was launched way back in 1979.

All could be pretended to be well. If only the damn enviros would just quit suing. After all the Forest Service was/is no longer rapaciously clearcutting. Never mind the mining/drilling interests, the grazers, the commercial recreation interests, etc. Never mind the suited men behind the curtains. Why can’t the enviros just settle in, kick back and enjoy (by 2009) the stimulus money that is being thrown thither and yon, some of it for so-called ecological restoration. Note: the reason the “rule” is once-again ‘in play’ is because some damn enviros sued and got the last one thrown out. (Personal admission: I am one of those ‘damn enviros’, and was long before retiring from the Forest Service.)

A framing question lingers: Did I fall into the ‘Good Will Hunting’ trap? Here is the trap in a nutshell: Badboy Will said to his psychiatrist, in essence: “You people baffle me. You spend all your money on these fancy books, you surround yourselves with ’em — and they’re the wrong fucking books.” (Great movie, btw)

Did I read the wrong books? If so, assuming that any power brokers in the Forest Service actually read, what books ought I to have been studying and preaching from. And if ideas, visions, and paths forward are not to have come from books, what ought I to have been looking for smoking?

Just a few Sunday thoughts to ponder while awaiting the meetings, and the posts that will flow here and in the official FS nonblog.

Fixing the “Rule”

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As we have been discussing in previous posts/comments, one possible resolution to the forest planning dilemma — as part of NFMA rule development — is to deal with what has been called forest planning under the broad umbrella of adaptive governance, or adaptive co-management.

A part of the process would be to require an “every five years review/evaluation” of ALL decisions related to or interrelated with an administrative unit of the national forest system. This was recommended by the Clinton era Committee of Scientists as I recall. The evaluation, along with a database of all decisions relating to the FS unit would be all that a new rule would require. Specifics required by the law could be packed into the review/evaluation requirements or allowed in other decisions fitting into “ALL decisions” above. Note that most decisions would be appropriately framed (scale and scope) and dealt with as wicked problems (Wikipedia, EcoWatch) at levels above or below the forest administrative unit—on rare occasions “at” the level of the administrative unit.

The “review” might be accompanied by some simple scenario planning (Wikipedia) — which is more the stuff of futuring than of planning — to deal with emergent, but unknown, even unknowable futures. Note that scenario planning specifically avoids the “desired future” trap.

My vision of the every-five-years-evaluation would also allow for “niche” statements to be developed for a forest unit (perhaps for appropriate subunits as well). As with “scenario planning”, the Forest Service/USDA might or might not require niche statements in the NFMA Rule. My preference would be to include both, but with a strong caution not to over-complicate “requirements”, in the rule, in manuals, in handbooks.

I would be pleased to see the Forest Service adopt such a resolution or to at least explain how such is inappropriate framing (Wikipedia) for RPA/NFMA forest planning/management, or inferior to alternate proposals. Maybe some who frequent this blog can step up and explain any inappropriateness in advance of what will likely be yet-another nonresponse from the Forest Service. Or maybe you will like it, and will offer up suggestions for improvement. I am very concerned that the forthcoming “show and tell” NFMA Rule meetings will yield no useful results. So any suggestions coming from us here may be the Forest Service’s best hope to avoid another wasted 30 years.

Related:
The Frame Game
A Simpler Way (Forest Policy-Practice, 2006)
Interrelated Ecosystems and Adaptive Management, (EcoWatch, 1992)

The Frame Game

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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)

Earth to FS Planning: Get a Blog!

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Yes I know that the FS thinks it has a Planning Rule blog. But it doesn’t. Not a real blog anyway. All it has, so far, is a poor excuse for a comment aggregator. The other day I decided to leave a comment on Peter Williams’ recent post on the “official blog”. Guess what? The so-called blog won’t accept comments that include paragraph breaks. No HTML is allowed. And, best I can tell, even simple “http” references are not converted to active links. So I decided that until and unless the FS is willing to at least fix the paragraph breaks problem—or tell folks how to use the blog so that it will include “breaks”—I will just use real blogs outside the “official” smokescreen. Here is the comment I intended to post as a response to Peter, slightly edited:

Here is my “take” on Peter Williams’ final two questions, restated a wee bit:

How might the planning rule provide for an all lands approach and address the contribution of NFS lands to local communities?

  • How can the new planning rule, by itself or as a road map for developing forest plans, reflect the interdependency of social, economic, and ecological systems in a way that supports sustainable management of national forests and grasslands?
  • How can it help provide or ensure opportunities for goods and services to support vibrant rural, regional, and national economies?

My guess is that any planning rule that is developed in the long tradition of “rules” dating back to 1979 will not be helpful in achieving the goals embedded in the questions. Why? Because the focus of each “rule” has always been on developing a “Forest Plan” as if there were wide discretion in that process and “as if” the forest administrative unit made sense as an overall “catchall” for decision-making. Neither is the case.

One problem is that there can not be wide discretion in forest-level decision-making if only because the ecosystems embedded in each administrative unit of the national forest system are themselves part of broader ecosystem wholes, e.g. larger watersheds, larger “basin and range” systems, both, and more. This means that what works for sustainability (instead of against) re: “forest subsystem contributions” to ecosystems must be informed by the needs of broader wholes. So too with social systems. An “all lands approach” must be scaled, hierarchically, to guide development of plans at subscales. Maybe a NFMA “rule” can address such, but we haven’t seen one yet. Only with such an adaptive management assessment information system could forest-level decision-making begin to make any sense. And the ecosystems/social systems scale problem is but one of many problems that impede wide discretion in decision-making. Another is what I call the “wicked problem” problem.

The Forest Service has never (to my knowledge) addressed “wicked problems” (Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem. Such problems were first introduced to the Forest Service in 1986 by Allen and Gould (Journal of Forestry) and to the world by Rittel and Webber in 1973 (Policy Sciences). Anyone who has studied forest management problems knows that they are indeed politically wicked and cry out for approaches much different from the “comprehensive rational planning” approach that the Forest Service always gravitates toward. Even when dressed up with terms like “adaptive” or “adaptive management” the reality of the approaches used always have rational-planning at their core.

One thing is certain when dealing with wicked problems: You can only hope to accomplish anything when you are able to define the scope the problem (time, space, issues, etc.) into “decision containers” that people (stakeholders, administrators, etc) can get their minds around. It seems that traditional “forest plan” containers are hopelessly over-filled when land management zoning, land management goals and objectives, program goals and objectives, and related “standards and guidelines” are all in play — and “in play” in a spatial container that isn’t really relevant to many of the objectives at hand. I have long felt that rational planning approaches simply can’t work. Here is how I put it in my Epistle to the Clinton-era Committee of Scientists (link: http://www.fs.fed.us/eco/eco-watch/cos_greenplans.html) , written when I was an employee of the Forest Service:

… [W]e have failed to learn the lesson that there is a difference between complex problems and wicked problems (see: G.M. Allen’ and E.M. Gould. 1986. “Complexity, wickedness, and public forests.” J.For 84(4):20-23, also Henry Mintzberg. 1994. The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning). According to Allen and Gould, politically wicked problems can not be solved by any multi-step planning process designed to “collect more data, build bigger models, and crunch more numbers … [expecting that] surely the right answer would be forthcoming.” Allen and Gould suggest that the Forest Service’s general operating norm for planning–more data, fancier analysis, more computing power, more scientists–reflects a “naive hope that science can eliminate politics.” This problem went unresolved–is still unresolved–because [Forest Service] ‘professional arrogance’ wouldn’t allow [the agency] to admit that national forest management and planning is ‘political’.

Why not try adaptive management, better still Adaptive Co-Management (Resilience Alliance Link: http://www.resalliance.org/2448.php) when thinking in terms of an “all lands approach”. Note here that the adaptive management I’m talking about is multiple-scale oriented, addresses wicked problems, and involves double loop learning (More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_learning). Maybe such adaptive co-management can be and will be fit into the NFMA “rule” rewrite. But I doubt it. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I hope I am proven wrong.

Final thought: If adaptive co-management is to work, decision-makers will have to constantly check and “be checked” to make sure that decisions (cumulatively) aren’t afflicted with policy “decision traps.” E.g. a set of decisions might be afflicted with “policy drift” — a “tyranny of small decisions” that eventually runs counter to policy aims due to the cumulative effects of sequential or segmented decisions.