It is not surprising that the culture of the Forest Service can and does change. What is
surprising is how resistant it is to change. This a good thing, not a weakness. It helps maintain stability of and agency responsible for very long-term stewardship of public natural resources. A business school professor, James McKenny, told me that working with the Forest Service was like working with and organization wrapped in rubber bands. Once you let go and walk away, it snaps back. What he did not realize was how strong and deep the culture is in the agency, nor did he know how to make change(s) in the Forest Service. It does happen. Leadership is about change. And if you understand the roots of its culture, and its tendencies, a leader can use
them to advantage.
The Forest Service is a very stable institution. Its culture keeps it from descending into chaos and protects its most important values. I listen to understand (at least think I understand) how successful leaders in the Forest Service make changes – both big and small. Making seemingly small changes can be almost as difficult to making as big ones. The difference is the big ones require a long view. As I learned from Control Theory, if something is not working, do something different.
John McGuire had an analogy he shared. He compared the Forest Service to a battleship. When you want to turn a battleship, you turn the wheel. But the battleship keeps moving straight ahead. It does not turn or seem to turn. It is because of the mass of the ship, and the small size of the rudder. (Think, the Titanic). The Navy refers to this as “putting on the helms.” If you put the helms on, and keep it on, the ship eventually starts to turn. It will keep turning until you
take the helms off. This is what you do in the Forest Service. Maybe among the reasons the
traditional tenure of a Chief had been ten years or more: (1) Timing the succession of Chiefs
out of phase with the political cycle (administrations mostly last eight years) limits the chances
of the Chief being a political appointee; (2) With a planning horizon measured in decades, there
is greater value in consistent leadership that extends more than just a few years; and (3) Having
“risen through the ranks” the Chief can identify with the challenges facing managers in the
field, and understands the importance of signaling stability and predictability in the internal
policy environment.
The Founder- the Book of Pinchot
I do not know of a public organization that had a founder quite like Gifford Pinchot. Char Miller’s Gifford Pinchot, and the Making of Modern Environmentalism, helped me understand how and why. The National Park Service had Steven Mather and Horace Albright, but they did not screw it down quite like Gifford Pinchot.
Understanding the underlying values and how they provide the glue to hold the far-flung decentralized agency from blowing apart. Pinchot loved a fight and stood up to his opponents.
However, he did little internal fighting. Internally, he was a moderator and reinforced positive behavior. He was a motivator. In the Forest Service, change is based on trust. Building trust takes time. It is earned. Line officers who put in the time have a greater chance of making it happen. A fundamental value in the agency is integrity, or as Pinchot described it, character. Herb Kaufman’s classic study, The
Forest Ranger, a Study in Administrative Behavior, describes the administrative culture in the Forest Service in the 1960’s. Forty years later, Herb gave a lecture at Grey Towers and stated what he thought the weakness was in the agency’s leadership culture – a bit too much loyalty to the Chief. Having had little or no contact with the agency for decades, he really understood administrative culture.
The day after Pinchot was fired by Taft, he went to the Forest Service office and told the assembled group of employees, many of whom were crying, that they have a higher calling – they serve the American people, not the Administration, nor some powerful outside interest. The employees should stay and continue to do the right thing. They do it because they believe in The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number for the Longest Time.
What influences behavior?
Dennis Perkins1 , also known for his book on Ernest Shackleton’s leadership and survival,2 said one’s “family system” can reveal much. “Professional growth can get stymied for all sorts of reasons. But one of the most important is rarely discussed: You’re contending with ghosts from your past. Fundamental attitudes and behaviors that evolved from the family dynamics of your childhood have traveled with you into the present – into the office.” It is in our families where we learn about authority, mastery, and identity. “There you are, negotiating with your boss, when suddenly your five-year-old self shoves the adult you aside and reacts.” The theory recognizes identifying key elements: values and beliefs, roles, secrets, boundaries, triangles, and expectations and mastery. Perkins says leaders need to identify family ghosts3. An understanding of the workplace AND how it ties to personal history.
This is why I begin with Gifford Pinchot’s family history, family beliefs, and how it shaped his and our beliefs and actions.4 I include Gifford’s family history, developmental experiences, and his political life. It provides context. Pinchot becomes head of the minuscule Division of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture in 1901 – 11 people, 4 of which were clerical. When he leaves in 1910, the organization is 6,000 – half of which were student assistants. The Forest Service was an agency of 20-year-olds led by 30-year-olds.
In the archives of Grey Towers, I found a Forest Service R-5 Range Manual with Pinchot’s name
embossed with his name in GOLD letters. Decades after he was fired for insubordination, he is
presented an instruction manual. The rank and file gave him credit for it, 40 years after the fact.
He is the apostle of conservation.
He could also be a thorn in the side of agency leadership. If the leadership strayed from his
view of conservation, they heard about it from his acolytes in the agency, especially Raphael
Zon.
When Pinchot died in 1946, the agency began to make him into a mythical figure. This is typical
for organizations with iconic founders. Pinchot made it difficult to stray far from the righteous
path. The icon was not so demanding.
For more than a decade, I worked in Gifford Pinchot’s house. I breathed the air. I read his
public writings and personal diary and notes to family and friends. I read all the biographies on
his life. You can never really know a historical figure. But in Gifford’s case, you can know more
than most.
- Dennis Perkins, Personal Conversation (1995). ↩︎
- Dennis Perkins, Margaret Holtman, and Jillian Murphy. 2012. Leadership at the Edge: Leadership Lessons from the Extraordinary Saga of Shackleton’s Antarctic Expedition. Harper-Collins. ↩︎
- Dennis Perkins and Deborah Ancona, Family Ghosts in the Executive Suite, Harvard Business Review, Jan-Feb 2022. ↩︎
- See Char Miller, Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism, Island Press, 2001. ↩︎