Managing a corporation or a forest requires a long range plan. The first step in long range planning is to determine our current reality. The second step is to articulate an inspiring vision of the future. The third step is to articulate our guiding principles. Our vision gives us direction. Our principles keep us on the right path.
Creative tension generates the energy needed to move forward. Tension is created only after the current reality and a vision of the future have both been clearly articulated. There are two ways to resolve creative tension. One is to move the vision toward the current reality; the second is to move the current reality toward the vision. People who work with creative tension learn to use the energy it generates to move more reliably towards the vision.
People can be motivated by fear or aspiration. Fear only works in the short term to resolve a crisis. When the crisis goes away, so does the motivation. However, an inspiring vision of the future coupled with an honest assessment of the current realities provides continuous energy and positive motivation.
One of the most potent shapers of behavior in organizations and in life is meaning. Viktor Frankl writes, "Our main concern is not to gain pleasure or avoid pain, but rather to seek a meaning in...life." The 7th American Forest Congress held in Washington, D.C. in February 1996 was a first step in gaining a national consensus on the vision and principles that will guide the management of the public forests in the United States.
There is always a gap between our current reality and our vision of the future. In fact, one of our primary objectives is to find out just how big that gap is. It all starts with a clear vision of where we want to be and what we want to have in the future. In forestry terms, we need a clear picture of "desired future conditions." We also need to figure out our current realities or exactly where we are. Then we can do some "gap analysis." Once we've created an accurate map, we can really make progress. It is important to have the right map. A roadmap of Chicago doesn't do us much good if we're in Seattle or Atlanta.
Visions are created by leaders, not the masses. Leaders first seek input. Then they articulate visions and mobilize their communities behind them. People who are paid to lead include: presidents and prime ministers, corporate executives, school administrators, religious figures, legislators, plus the heads of government departments and agencies. The most important function of a leader is to explicitly and clearly articulate the current reality and a vision for the future. Much of the confusion over natural resource management can be traced to inadequate leadership.
All great individuals, organizations and nations have had one thing in common. Every one of them had a positive vision of the future. They were able to endure hardships and stay focused because they were driven by their visions. Even in circumstances as horrible as the concentration camps, the survivors were driven by positive visions of things yet to do in their lives. Viktor Frankl wrote "Man's Search for Meaning" after surviving the worst conditions a human can experience during his imprisonment at Auschwitz. Among all living things, only we humans can envision our futures and play out mental scenarios of how we will make our visions a reality. It's our responsibility to make sure that our visions are positive and inspiring. Our visions must require us to stretch, and they must be worth the effort.
Visions are seldom expressed in numbers. As Joel Barker points out in his video tape titled The Power of Vision, numbers are the result of a vision achieved. However, visions must be detailed and explicit. In the case of a forest, our vision must include the achievement of a "desired future condition." Since forests are constantly changing, we are never going to freeze a forest in one condition; but we can reproduce "desired conditions" again and again.
Most of us would like to leave a legacy behind that will make our family and friends proud. Try writing the legacy you would like to leave for yourself and your organization. This is a back door way of coming up with a good vision statement. Chances are that you will write a positive and inspiring legacy. That legacy becomes your vision, and your job is to make it happen.
The absence of a vision mires us in our current realities. It's like having a roadmap with a starting point but no destination. To a large extent this is where we have been in the debate over our public forests. Attacking others seems easier than coming up with a positive and inspiring vision, sound principles, and some options of our own. However, we're in no position to critique another's option unless we have one of our own to offer.
Long range planning implies change, and change is threatening. Yet somebody is always writing new rules and inventing new technologies. Change is as inevitable as death and taxes. We can have things happen to us, watch things happening around us, or be proactive in making things happen. It's only by being proactive that we can manage change for growth. What better place to be proactive than in a forest where constant change is the norm? It is often seen as noble and glorious to be totally immersed in "urgent" affairs and to fight the daily fires. However, the real objective is to prevent the fires in the first place. We can do this by addressing "important" issues such as maintaining healthy, productive, forest ecosystems.
Paradigms (pair-a-dimes) are mental models. These models consist of rules and regulations. They set boundaries, and they tell us how to be successful within those boundaries whether we're foresters, teachers, or business executives. In fact, all organizations are forests of paradigms. These mental models dramatically affect our judgments and decision making by influencing our perceptions.
Paradigms filter incoming experience. We are viewing the world through our paradigms all the time. We constantly select from the world the data which best fits our rules and regulations, and try to ignore the rest. This "paradigm effect" can be positive in focusing our attention, but it can also block our vision. A new and better model can be right in front of us, yet we may fail to see it.
Paradigm paralysis is a "terminal disease of certainty." The Swiss actually invented the electronic quartz watch and put it in a trade show as a novelty. They thought they owned the watch model, and they did as long as the watch was made of springs, bearings and gears. The people from Seiko and Texas Instruments were at the trade show and instantly recognized the digital quartz watch as the new paradigm. In one year the Swiss share of the world watch market fell from 85 to 10 percent. They had been caught in a classic paradigm shift, which they had created without realizing it. Approximately 45,000 Swiss watchmakers lost their jobs in that year. The Swiss eventually made a comeback by introducing the Swiss Watch or "SWATCH," combining elegance and style with the quartz technology. This time they were in control of the shift.
When a paradigm shift occurs everybody goes back to zero. Thousands of Northwestern woods and mill workers have lost their jobs, their families and their identities in a huge paradigm shift. This happened rapidly when the rules changed for managing National Forests. They changed away from timber production toward a model called ecosystem management. It meant that many rural communities and families who had produced wood from national forests for generations were left without work. Somebody was writing new rules, and it wasn't the people who were caught in the shift. In this case a slow shift was inevitable, but the actual speed and magnitude of the shift was dramatic. No matter how good you are at what you do, you can become obsolete if caught in a paradigm shift. Until recently Smith Corona was still making excellent typewriters, but very few people buy them anymore. We do word processing on computers. In the forest, new machines are constantly being developed to harvest and process wood. New mill technologies are constantly being developed, rendering others obsolete.
There are three keys to the future. In his book, Future Edge, Joel Barker identifies these keys:
Excellence is just the price of admission. Anyone who cannot offer excellent products and services won't even get to play the game in the 21st century.
Innovation is essential to differentiate products and services. With intensified competition, people must constantly differentiate in ways that are meaningful to their customers. We see this in a variety of innovative forest products which serve particular niches including engineered wood products.
Anticipation is the third and most challenging key. The most excellent and innovative product or service will fail if it is not in the right place, at the right time, at the right price. In today's world, it will be impossible to anticipate or create the future without a long range strategic plan.
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny
matters compared to what lies within us."
Oliver Wendell
Holmes
There are two key ingredients which make strategic planning work, and they are of equal importance:
I. A viable planning process. II. Organizational commitment to the plan and planning process.
Developing and executing a long range strategic plan is a three part process. It's a dynamic process which never ends, not an event that happens every few years. The three parts are:
I. Think Develop the vision, mission, core principles, core competencies, core products, and strategic options for all market segments. Define the critical issues.
II. Plan Align all the operations with the strategy which has been chosen. If an operational process is inadequate, it can be improved by Continuous Quality Improvement or replaced by Re-Engineering.
III. Implement Monitor and measure the results as the plan is implemented.
The strategic planning process is shown in the chart above. It isn't as complicated as it looks; it's just organized common sense. Once you understand this process you will have mastered an incredibly powerful planning tool. Strategic planning is an information technology; and in many cases its importance might be compared with knowing how to read, write, or use a computer.
The relationship between strategy and operations is shown in the following matrix. All the operations, which might include research, engineering, communications, service, manufacturing, marketing, and so on, must line up to support the strategy selected. (graphic not currently available)
A cardinal rule in strategic planning is never to present someone with more than three or four clear options to consider. If you need to present more than this, you have not done an adequate job. The "President's Forest Plan" for ecosystem management on the Northwest public forests had ten options. It is difficult for laymen (i.e. the public) or scientists to understand and differentiate between ten options. We can do better.
Most people think that ecosystem management is a good idea. However, there are different ideas on how this should be defined and implemented. Dr. Chadwick Dearing Oliver, Professor of Silviculture at the University of Washington, has developed a matrix which explains the three main options we have for managing the same public lands addressed in the President's plan. The three forest management options presented here are clearly differentiated from one another.
Option A would clearly be our best choice if our goal was to drive our management plan by producing a high yield of wood fiber and some amenity benefits. This option may be difficult to sell on public forest lands, but is very appropriate for private forest lands.
Option B would be a great choice if we wanted to manage the forest as a dynamic entity undergoing constant-change to produce a variety of values including wood fiber.
Option C would be our best choice if we believed that the forest would reach a steady-state of equilibrium if left alone, and our goal was preservation of a particular seral state (like old growth) and other amenity benefits with minimal wood production.
A vision must be guided by sound principles. These are the core values which keep us on track as we pursue our visions. Here is our vision statement and accompanying principles for the forests of North America:
Quality Science:
Develop a hypothesis. Test the hypothesis with facts and peer review. Observe. Amend accordingly.
Stewardship:
Think of nature as the garden and humans as the gardeners, living together in a symbiotic relationship. As stewards, we are responsible for sustaining the forest.
Management:
Think of ecosystems as dynamic systems where everything is connected and also constantly changing. Look for sums and consequences and cumulative effects.
Integration:
Realize that any sustainable forest management policy must be socially acceptable, biologically possible and economically feasible.
Forest Health:
Think of healthy forests as diverse, productive and resilient. Forests must be disturbed to remain vital and to mitigate the impact of catastrophic events such as wildfire and insect infestations.
Resources:
Realize that adequate capital, skilled labor,accessible land, time and a long range plan are critical resources for sustainable forest management.
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowances for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or, being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, or talk too wise;
If you can dream-and not make dreams your master; If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with triumph and disaster And treat these two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life for broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve you long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on;"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings-nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With 60 seconds' worth of distance run- Yours is the earth and everything that's in it, And-which is more-you'll be a man, my son!
Rudyard Kipling
Strategic Planning is an information technology which can facilitate a quantum leap in the conservation and development of natural resources. It fits perfectly with the concept of ecosystem management which must consider regional strategies, landscape and watershed level operations, and on the ground implementation. The strategic planning process will bring discipline to an often fragmented effort. It will also help define the issues and options for a confused public. Tomorrow's leaders will be the visionaries who have mastered this technology.
The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World, Peter Swartz, Currency Doubleday, 1991, ISBN 0-385-26731-2.
Competing for the Future, Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad, HBS Press, 1994, ISBN 0-87584-416-2.
Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performances, Michael E. Porter, Free Press, 1985, ISBN 0-02-925090-0.
The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization, Peter M. Senge, Currency Doubleday, 1990, ISBN 0-385-26094-6.
Future Edge: Discovering the New Paradigms of Success, Joel Arthur Barker, Morrow, 1992, ISBN 0-688-10936-5.
Leadership and the New Science: Learning about Organization from an Orderly Universe, Margaret J. Wheatley, 1992, ISBN 1-881052-44-3.
Principle-Centered Leadership, Stephen R. Covey, Summit Books, 1990, ISBN 0-671-74910-2.
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey, Simon & Schuster, 1990, ISBN 0-671-70863-5.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas S. Kuhn, Chicago, 1962, ISBN 0-226-45803-2.
Thriving on Chaos, Tom Peters, Knopf, 1987, ISBN 0-394-56784-6.
Core Competencies: The portfolio of skills that make you good at what you do. Your core competencies should remain constant and define your organization. Core competencies include things like: teaching, marketing, trading, manufacturing, and leadership.
Creative Tension: The natural tension created by the tug of war between our current reality and our vision of the future. Our vision pulls us up, and our current reality pull us down. People who learn how to work with creative tension, learn how to use the energy it generates to move more reliably toward their visions.
Critical Issues: Internal or external issues which may have a severe impact on your ability to execute a strategic plan. As an example, proper incentives might encourage conservation, long range planning and ecosystem management.
Gap Analysis: Defining and analyzing the gap between your current reality and your vision of the future. Your mission is to close this gap by selecting the best strategies.
Guiding Principles: The "core values" which ensure the rightness of your direction. While only a vision can give you direction, values ensure that you are on the right path.
Leadership: The quality which enables a person to articulate the current reality and a vision for the future. The ability to mobilize a community of interest behind the vision. People will follow leaders where they wouldn't go on their own.
Legacy: How you will be remembered, and how your organization will be remembered. Writing your own legacy is an excellent way to come up with a vision statement. Once you know how you want to be remembered, you have a vision and can go to work on making it a reality. Obviously, you don't want to wait too long to do this.
Mission Statement: An explicit statement of how you are going to make your vision of the future a reality. If your vision is to become one of the greatest football teams in history, then your mission might be to win the Super Bowl year after year.
Options: The different alternatives available for action. All options have strengths, weaknesses, risks and trade-offs. Informed decisions are made by understanding the options, and then choosing the best one. There are many options for running an organization or managing a forest ecosystem.
Paradigm: A mental model. Rules and regulations which set boundaries and tell you how to be successful within those boundaries. Organizations are forests of paradigms. Leaders are capable of moving people from one paradigm to another.
Paradigm Effect: When ingrained paradigms filter incoming information, blinding people to the presence of new and better models. If the paradigm effect is strong enough it becomes "paradigm paralysis."
Paradigm Shift: What happens when a new model comes along rendering the old model obsolete. In every shift there are winners and losers.
Strategic Planning: Long range planning which allows an organization to exercise control over its future and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace. Without an overall strategy, tactics are often misguided.
Vision Statement: An explicit statement of what you want to do, be or have in the future. It must be positive and detailed enough for people to form a mental picture. It must be inspiring, challenging and worth the effort.
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