21st Century Problems

Planning Rules, Manuals and Handbooks – a flashback

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Here is a post from a short-lived blog I ran in 2005, Forest Planning Directives, about Forest Service planning Manual/Handbook rewriting. I think it may shed light on our planning rule critique as well. And it can serve as a guidepost, for the inevitable Manual/Handbook rewriting that will ensue just after the Draft Planning Rule moves to “Final.” Here it is, lightly edited:

Any role at all for NFMA Directives?

I have struggled for the last few days to better understand management and planning systems and ask myself whether we ought to keep any parts of the "interim directives." As usual I answer, No! You may find my thoughts amusing. You may find them bemusing. There is an odd chance you may find my thoughts enlightening. Here they are:

Land Management Planning as an Embedded Process

We have many processes (or systems) to help us manage the national forests and other public lands. Problem is these systems are often fractured and fragmented, and sometimes work at cross-purposes. We have tried to run our systems as pieces of a well-oiled machine. But it can’t work that way. The world is too complex for that, and sometimes politically wicked as well. A better management model is one that mimics nature, one comprised of self-organized complex adaptive systems. See Margaret Wheatley and Mryon Kellner-Rogers A Simpler Way for more.

Looking at things hierarchically, in a complex systems frame, we can see land management planning systems embedded in planning systems, embedded as part of "management systems."

Forest Service Management Systems
It proves helpful to see the map of interrelated systems that aid in adaptive management/organizational learning. Commonly recognized systems include:

  • Assessment Systems
  • Evaluation Systems
  • Inventory Systems
  • Monitoring Systems
  • Planning Systems

Add to these supporting systems, like:

  • Education and Training Systems
  • Personnel Recruitment and Support Systems
  • Budgeting and Finance Systems
  • Information Technology Systems
  • And so on

Now overlay all these with various "functions," like:

  • Vegetation management (timber, range, etc.)
  • Bio-physical resource management (soil and water, wildlife, plants, etc.)
  • Fire management (suppression, pre-suppression, etc.)
  • Facilities management systems
  • Recreation management systems
  • And so on

Finally overlay all with what we refer to as "Line Management," with about:

  • 900 District Rangers, who report to
  • 120 Forest Supervisors, who report to
  • 9 Regional Foresters, who report to
  • 1 Chief Forester

Now we can begin to get a glimpse of the complex nature of the management systems that we attempt organization with. The trick to all this is to make sure that the systems are not only complex, but adaptive and purposefully interrelated as well. No small order. And there are traps along the path we need to be aware of.

Decision Traps
Identifying systems and subsystems can either empower us or disable us. There are two traps that people commonly fall into here. First, we do not want to overly-reduce the complexity that enfolds us or we may develop overly complex systems or components in any one area, and at the same time neglect other important areas. This trap has been called "Abstracted Empiricism" or "Methodism."

Second, we may simply trap ourselves in the identification of the complex systems themselves. This trap is called "Grand Theory," where the trapped are paralyzed by their own overly-generalized identification and specification of complexity in the universe. In extreme form, this trap paralyzes people to the extent that they do not attempt any organization at all.

Interconnectivity, Dynamics, and Relationships
Traditionally we like to think of our organization as decentralized. But given law, policy, and Manual and Handbooks, etc. it is hardly decentralized.

We also traditionally think of our organization as working according to the dictates of "directives" that guide much of the action. Problem is, the directives tend not to be able to guide the workings of this (or any other) complex, adaptive, system. So what we have is a mess. We pretend to be decentralized, but that cannot be. We pretend to be directed in much of what we do, but the direction seems at best archaic, at worst unworkable from the get-go.

All the management systems are highly inter-connected. For now we will simply recognize them without pigeonholing them into some rigid structure like "plan-do-check- replan." This is not to say that we won’t keep that model in mind. Instead we don’t want to get trapped into thinking that is all we have to do. Our general approach should be mindful of our over-complexification dark side, our penchant to narrow our focus to the inner reaches of whatever box we find ourselves in and begin crafting ever-more- complex regulation, rules, technical guides, etc.

Take planning, for example. We have to plan before we develop any system or subsystem. But we can over-plan any system and ruin it. See, e.g. Henry Mintzberg, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, 1994. In the Forest Service we have many over- planned and under-used systems. A lesson we continue to fail to learn, is that we need to design systems that can grow and develop as "users" continuously critique them and improve them. That means we have to start small, and let systems grow and develop as they are used. It also means that we have to weed out components, subsystems, and even whole systems that have outlived their usefulness. Pruning and tending are important, if unglamorous tasks in managing systems.

We need fewer teams of people to design work for other people, and more teams that design their own work and do it in ways that both improve and simplify the systems they work with. W. Edwards Deming champions such organization in his The New Economics: For Industry Government Education. Margaret Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers lay out fundamental ideas and concepts on organization, information, and relationships in A Simpler Way. I recommend reading the books beginning with A Simpler Way, then moving to The New Economics, and finally for the devoted (and particularly for planning cheer-leaders) reading The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning. But there is no way to practice adaptive management if we are unwilling to think about and read about ways to make it happen.

What does this mean for Manuals and Handbooks?
It means only that we had better do something very different from 18-30 feet of shelf space filled with cumbersome Manuals and Handbooks. We had better cut it all to the bare minimum. We had better take advantage of what’s out there in professional practice, and only add what must be added to help professionals work in our environment. It means The End of Bureaucracy & the Rise of the Intelligent Organization, which is also a very informative book written by Gifford and Elizabeth Pinchot. {Note Gifford is the grandson of the Forest Service’s founder.}

In this spirit, the Forest Service economists recently reduced about 100 pages of Manual and Handbook materials (FSM 1970, FSH 1909.17) to about 2 ¼ pages each for Manual and Handbook. The manual says, in essence, address social and economic context in various ways and places to help set a stage for managerial decision making. And highlight the social and economic consequence of proposed (and actual) action to the extent practical and foreseeable.

What does this mean for the Land Management Planning Manual & Handbook?
For Land Management Planning it means that we need to design and work with a subsystem that contributes to the whole rather than being parasitic on the whole. It means we need to quit thinking about controlling other systems. We need instead to think about contributing our small part to a broader whole.

First lets look at broad management systems. What might such a systems look like? What directives might guide it? The system is a complex web of multiply interrelated systems, all sharing some information with other systems while holding some information within any given system since it only adds "noise" to other systems. All systems are interrelated as well by the relationships between them, and by the relationships between those who take care of each system, and by the relationships of these people with those whose focus is broader, covering several or all systems.

Sustainability
The system is purpose driven, wandering down a path toward what many call sustainability. We know that the path is long, winding, and indeterminate. Sustainability is a vision quest. Sustainability is something that shape-shifts as we move down the path. But sustainability is also something that we are ever-mindful of. It is a goal that hovers in front of us, guiding us. Ecosystem constraints bound the path – some associated with natural and biological systems, some associated with human systems.

Long term, we are rewarded when we stay on the path toward sustainability, and punished when we stray beyond the bounds. Short term, we often blow the boundaries, sometimes by political design and sometimes by human error. Such deviations are punished, but the punishment may be felt by "contemporaneous others" or "future others." There are lags, often very long ones, in the feedback loops.

Surrounding our complex of managerial systems, and connected to them are broader-framed social systems with names like science, ethics, politics, beliefs, participation, that are part of the social/cultural environment. These systems interrelate with natural systems in the physical and biological realms.

Now let’s look at land management planning systems, embedded in ever-larger adaptive management frames.

Land Management Planning
What questions might guide our inquiry? (Similar questions might be framed for any planning)

  • What is planning?
  • How does it fit into adaptive management?
  • What do we expect from planning?
    • What if desired deliverables do not include a plan? Remember that Scenario Planning advocates and many others do not believe that the goal of planning be the production of a plan. Instead, they stress the importance of planning to rehash the past and rehearse the future.
  • If we expect a plan, along with other deliverables, what do we want it to do?
    • If we only want a plan to be a vision document, perchance highlighting vision over a variety of landscapes, but not making any how-to decisions, then we will answer this question much differently than if we expect a much more comprehensive, detailed plan.

Why bother with any Manual or Handbook? Why isn’t the NFMA Rule enough directive? Perchance the NFMA Rule is already too much directive, but that is a question for another time.

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2011 Update: Closely Related Posts
Why Three Planning Levels?
New Planning Rules Fails as Adaptive Management
The Frame Game

Voice in Democracy: When Anonymity Helps

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As we are seeing these days in the Middle East and Africa, even Wisconsin, democracy is never easy—whether to initiate or to keep. What we know is that we cannot maintain a democratic form of government without “voice.” After all, democracies are “temples of talk.” Yet, many times it proves too threatening to express opinions, or even to interject facts, into public discussions. Discussions sometimes threaten work, family, or community relations, yet without discussions, none of these institutions can long survive. In many situations, only the few dare voice opposition to either the status quo or to proposed change. But these days it is getting easier to be heard without some of the threat that has traditionally attached to voice. We are seeing an upwelling of “anonymity” as a form of voice.

I follow a bunch of blogs in the economics and finance arena. Believe me, there are a bunch of these. As you might guess, given recent financial shenanigans events, there are very active conversations in these blogs, and also in mainstream periodicals—that themselves now embed blogs. Some who comment and some who blog remain anonymous. Why? Because of perceived threats, sometimes very real threats. Anonymity allows a particular voice that would be disallowed if people were to “post” or comment under their real names.

Here are two examples. One noted financial blogger, The Epicurean Dealmaker, posts as TED (an acronym). TED is widely viewed as a sage in the arena of Wall Street financial deal-making. TED claims to be a mid- to higher-level employee of a Wall Street firm. He (or she? Not likely!) has been very critical of the culture wherein he makes a fine living. And his posts, and guarded/shielded interviews, have helped to unravel some of the mysteries of this arcane world. TED is unabashed. He even challenges people to find out who he is. He is so sure of himself that he believes that he will not be “outed.”

Then there is Maxine Udall (girl economist), who spent a few years blogging and attracted a following. Turns out that “Maxine” was not her real name. Unfortunately, the real author passed away suddenly a few weeks ago. She was “outed” after her untimely passing. Most everybody had previously thought Maxine was a savvy graduate student. Turns out that she was a professor. Had she been blogging under her real name, her voice would have been less edgy.

If you want to comment with anonymity, here’s what you can do. First create a fictitious name/email address, then begin commenting. Or, particularly if you want to carry conversation “off line” set up a real email, like TED did, with a “handle”, not your real name. If you feel you have more to say, start an anonymous blog—it is very easy.

We need more “voice” in the public lands arena. I don’t understand why there are not more blogs on matters we discuss here. Is it just timidity? Is it that there is so little passion among employees and public lands watchers? Really? Likely not. So what else is going on?

Al Gore meets Bark Beetles: The Forests at Risk Symposium

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On February 18, Al Gore visited Aspen, Colorado for a symposium put on by For the Forest. Some of my colleagues attended and said that the presentations were excellent. Fortunately for those of us who couldn’t make it, the whole enchilada is posted here.

My colleagues especially recommended the Canadian and international perspectives as particularly interesting, as we are more aware of the local pest-related impacts. Those would be the Kurz and Allen presentations, and Linda Joyce is always worth hearing, so if you only have so much time, I would recommend those.

Here are a couple of quotes from a Denver Post news story here.

“The climate is changing,” said Forest Service ecologist Linda Joyce, speaking at “Forests at Risk: Climate Change & the Future of the American West.”
“Temperatures are warming and will likely continue to warm,” she said.
That will change the look of forests forever, but exactly what they will look like remains to be seen, she said.

Aspen, the iconic trees of the West, will probably vanish from mountainsides where they once thrived, Joyce said. Pine trees will retreat to cooler climes, and animals that depend on them will follow.

That leaves land managers trying to grapple with “the eventual loss of the plants and animals we know,” she said.

And

“It’s a challenge that I’ve never seen,” said Rick Cables, Rocky Mountain regional forester for the Forest Service. “. . . This context, the context of our times, with climate change and what we’re seeing on the landscape, is a game-changer.”

Government agencies are used to working slowly and juggling a variety of interests, from environmentalists to industry.

Those groups may have to learn to work together, Cables said, if land managers are to respond quickly. Tools such as fire and logging may be necessary, he said, even if they’re unpopular.”

FWIW, that’s the way I frame “climate change and forests” as well, that the shared challenge of climate change is calling for us to work together differently and, dare I say, better than we have in the past.

Finally, here’s a High Country News Goat Blog piece by Sarah Gilman, with a different take on the conference.

But the conversation was lacking in one glaring way — especially given the event’s location within striking distance of the mini-mall-sized houses (which loomed unignorably over my left shoulder through the giant picture windows of the Doerr-Hosier Center) peppering Red Mountain, the private jet-dominated airport which accounts for a sizeable chunk of Aspen’s greenhouse gas emissions, the four ski resorts that draw people here from all over the world.

No one pointed the finger back at us — at our insatiable appetite for energy, be it “dirty” or “clean;” at our use and over-use of resources — land, water, timber — regardless of our political affiliations or whether we’re global-warming believers. Energy efficiency and conservation got barely a nod. There was no mention of living smaller, closer to home. After the auditorium had cleared and everyone dispersed to a fancy reception with live music and free food, a colleague snarkily dubbed the day’s proceedings “Drive For the Forest.”

My next post will be relating the worldview described at this conference to the concepts in the proposed planning rule.

Time for a New Department of Public Lands?

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An old adage says, “Form follows function.” In my experience with the federal government it often works the other way around, i.e. Function follows form. Consider “collaborative engagement.” If you survey the landscape, you’ll often find the Forest Service attempting collaboration, while at the same time so is the Bureau of Land Management, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the US Park Service, etc. Each attempts to develop policy (often via planning) by “considering the needs” of adjacent land holdings, but they still do it for the most part alone. In single-agency collaboration and planning, function follows form.

Is it time to rethink federal agency “form” in the ongoing movement toward collaborative engagement in public lands management? In particular, is it time to rethink how the federal government functions in these deliberations? Is is time to relearn how form ought to follow function?

Along with many others I have argued that it proves inefficient for each federal agency to attempt ecosystem management deliberations by themselves—whether for assessment, policy development, action, or monitoring. It also proves frustrating for collaborators. Too many forums, too many meetings, etc. At a time when all eyes are on the federal government to trim its budget, why not, one again, hope for high-level reorganization.

A Department of Public Lands

Maybe it is time for a Department of Public Lands. Such a Department could effectively set up appropriate forums for collaborative engagement in public lands policy and action, in concert with state and local officials, and other collaborators.

If the Obama Administration plays its cards right during upcoming budget deficit battles, we might see it make a move toward a cabinet-level Department of Public Lands, complimented with a sister Department for Environmental Regulation. This second Department would serve to separate land management from regulatory policy and enforcement—an idea that we will leave for a later post.

Setting up a new Department of Public Lands would take the Forest Service out of the Department of Agriculture and allow it to start anew as a division or agency in the new department—in concert with The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management, The Park Service, etc. (It would probably be good to once-again consider combining the Forest Service with the Bureau of Land Management, as well.)

Such reorganization would allow for a fresh start, whereby the new Department of Lands and all its agencies could be chartered for collaborative engagement in adaptive management. (Or maybe just move the Forest Service into the Department of Interior, and follow a similar plan.) In the former case legislators and the Administration would have to work up new organic legislation, etc. But it is likely time to refresh “organic” framing anyway.

Either way, with a new Department of Public Lands or with the Forest Service moved into Interior, the public wins in at least five ways: First, outdated, bureaucratic agencies can be set up with structures and functions that work for the new century—championing collaborative engagement for conservation, preservation, and use. Second, the Department could field many questions about larger-scale management that are not well fielded under current structure. Third, many mid-level staff personnel, e.g. Forest Service Regional and National staff members, might be better positioned as Departmental positions. Why? So that when collaborators work out the regional assessment, action, and monitoring, the federal government will not be so fractured as it now is. Fourth, the taxpayers win as there should be fewer personnel in a Department so structured. Finally, more money can go to the field, where infrastructure and other needs have been neglected for too long.

Why Now?

There will never be a better time to think about this idea, since many mid-level (and high-level) Forest Service employees are near the end of their careers—i.e. no massive layoffs needed. So too with other land management agencies.

Why might it work now? Because in the next few years there will be many discussions on how to trim the federal deficit and whittle-down the national debt. This may give President Obama a chance to do what so many others have failed to do: bring the Forest Service into line with other federal land and resource management agencies. In doing so, Obama might make history by charting a new course for federal lands management.

Note: Jeff DeBonis and I offered up a similar suggestion early in the Clinton Administration. Ours was just one of many similar suggestions made through the years. The suggestions have never gained traction. Maybe this time will be different. Or maybe not.

The “Common Interest” Approach: Useful for Federal Lands Issues?

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Jim Fenwood and I ran into Keith Allred when he taught us at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. During his lectures, Allred described “the Common Interest”, an organization he founded described here. Yes, he also ran for Governor of Idaho recently. What intrigued me the most about the project was not so much the advocacy, as the process for development of useful information to help citizens decide on a policy.

Fair and Accurate Issues Briefings and Representative Positions

When we brief an issue, we aim to provide the best factual evidence and fairest representation of the competing perspectives as we reasonably can. To help ensure the fairness and accuracy of our briefs, we interview those with expertise and important perspectives on the issue. We then provide draft briefs to those we interviewed to give them an opportunity to tell us if we’ve fairly captured their perspective. We keep improving the draft until there is a broad consensus among those involved with the issue that we have fairly and accurately represented the issue.

I invite you to take a look at the Common Interest website here.

George Washington warned in his Farewell Address that for the system the Founders deeded to us to realize its full promise, we would need to recognize and resist the typical ploys of faction.

One of the expedients of Party to acquire influence…is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other [parties]. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heart burnings which spring from these misrepresentations. They tend to render Alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection.

More by Allred on the Founding Fathers here.

The recent comment by David Beebe on this blog here reminded me that this might be a productive approach on “our” issues to ensure that citizens get to hear quality information from both sides on complex topics. I wonder if we should start a 501c3 that uses a similar approach to Forest Service or public lands issues? This might be a helpful resource to both citizens and to journalists. What do you think?