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University of California Berkeley
MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY OF THE U.S. FOREST SERVICE
AN ORAL HISTORY WITH
Gordon D. Fox
Walter L. Graves
Chester A. Shields
Robert H. Torheim
Forest History Society, 1980
The following series of interviews were conducted
by the Forest History Society under contract to the
U.S. Forest Service, Management Sciences Division. The
four interviews trace the development of management
sciences in the U.S. Forest Service. The interview with
Robert Torheim was subcontracted by the Forest History
Society to the Regional Oral History Office, University
of California at Berkeley.
It is expected that this volume is the first of
a continuing series of interviews on management sciences
in the U.S. Forest Service.
Willa Baum, Department Head
Regional Oral History Office
October 20, 1980
Regional Oral History Office
Room 486 The Bancroft Library
University of California, Berkeley
INTRODUCTION
The United States Forest Service has long enjoyed a deserved
reputation for excellence and innovation in management techniques. From
its creation to the present, it has experimented with new techniques in
an attempt to administer its personnel at peak efficiency and to achieve
maximum results from its limited staff.
Born in controversy, the Forest Service has frequently been on the
defensive. It has been continuously required to justify itself and its
policies to an often skeptical public. This insecurity has caused the
Service to run a perhaps more efficient agency than any other branch of
the government.
This drive for efficiency only partly explains why the Forest
Service became a model of management innovation for government bureaus
and oftentimes even private industry. To understand this phenomenon,
we must look at the historical context of the agency's birth and the
individuals who helped it mature.
The Forest Service was being formed at the turn of the century,
concurrently with the rise of professional forestry in the United States.
Trained, scientifically oriented foresters were attempting to explain
their values to a nation unaware of a need for them. To argue their
case, foresters had to claim special credentials that separated them
from their self-taught, trained-on-the-job predecessors. They did this
by claiming expertise and wearing the mantle of professionalism.
"Professional" was a concept undergoing change. It was being
used more and connoted an expert with special knowledge and a sense of
ethics. Much of the growth of professionalism occurred because
universities had begun to give degrees in fields where previously none
existed. This caused a social revolution with mechanics and technicians
educated in the "school of hard knocks" giving way to the new breed of
university education "professionals."
Professional ization affected all fields but none as dramatically
as engineering and administration. The movement toward professionalism
in both of these areas had one central character, Frederick Winslow
Taylor, early president of the American Association of Mechanical
Engineers and the so-called "father of management science." Its driving
thrust was closely allied to mechanical engineering and its ideal of a
perfectly running machine.
Forest Service Decentralization:
A Climate of Innovation
In the late nineteenth century, as Taylor was formulating his ideas,
there was a climate of excitement and optimism. Political and social
activism had reached new heights of popularity and fervor. Women's groups
were seeking "social purity" and the right to vote, Americans were flexing
their muscles in international affairs, and William James was teaching
the truly American philosophy of "pragmatism." It was apparent that the
new century would bring new consciousness.
An important part of this consciousness was the growing realization
that natural resources were finite and were being consumed at a dangerous
and negligent rate. Conservation had become an issue of importance.
In March 1886, professional forester Bernhard E. Fernow was
appointed chief of the Division of Forestry of the Department of
Agriculture. Congress had seen the need for a better knowledge of timber
resources ten years earlier, but Fernow 's appointment demonstrated the
recognition of and the need for the science of professional forestry.
At the end of his first year, Fernow, in his Annual Report to
the Secretary of Agriculture, presented an administrative plan for a
forest reserve system. He proposed three territorial divisions
(Pacific Coast, Rocky Mountains, and all other areas), each headed by
an "inspector," who was to be in actual administrative charge. Below
each inspector there were local inspectors and rangers who were each
in charge of a "reserve." Fernow planned to headquarter the three
territorial inspectors in Washington D.C., and assign them to inspect
their divisions "at least once a year."
In July 1892, a congressional committee reported on the so-called
"Paddock Bill" and quoted from Fernow 's 1886 annual report. The report
called for the transfer of the forest reserves, created only a year
earlier, from the Department of the Interior to the Department of
Agriculture. "Only a fully developed and separate system of management
and administration," the report argued, "carried on by competent men
under expert advice, can accomplish the objects of a rational forest
policy. "
In 1896, the National Academy of Sciences appointed a commission
to study the forest reserves. Its report influenced President Cleveland
to proclaim, on Washington's birthday in 1897, twenty-one million acres
of forestland. On May 1 of that year, the commission recommended a
general plan based upon Fernow 's earlier system but with more
decentralized administration. Instead of locating the inspectors in
Washington, the NASC design placed them at regional headquarters. This
plan would have transferred much of the administrative authority to the
field. The number of regions was extended to four: California and
Nevada; Oregon and Washington; the Southwest; and Wyoming, Montana,
and Idaho. In June, Congress established policies under which the
forest reserves were to be administered. The NASC plan was not
incorporated into the act, and administrative organization was left to
the discretion of the secretary of the interior.
President McKinley's secretary of the interior, Cornelius Bliss,
asked Gifford Pinchot to make a study of the reserves. As confidential
forest agent, Pinchot was specifically instructed to design an
organization to administer the reserves. He had always believed, as
Fernow had before him, that forestland administration was unique among
government responsibilities. The natural, economic, and social variance
among regions dictated a decentralized system.
Pinchot submitted his "Report on Examination of the Forest
Reserves," in March 1898 to the secretary of the interior. The report
called for the creation of a "Forest Service" of technically trained and
competent personnel. His proposed administration followed the NASC
plan but put even more emphasis on decentralization. There was to be
an "Administrative Force" in Washington, D.C., composed of a "chief
forester" and an assistant "inspector of forests." Fieldwork would be
under an "Executive Force" of the seven "forest rangers" assigned to
specific forest reserves. The rangers would be assisted by twenty
"forest guards" and 165 part-time "fire watchers." Following the
submission of the report, Pinchot severed official connections with
Interior and succeeded Fernow as chief of the Division of Forestry in
the Department of Agriculture.
The "Division of Forestry" was changed to the "Bureau of
Forestry" in 1901. That same year the secretary of the interior
published in his annual report, "Memorandum Regarding Government of
Forest Reserves," which was probably supplied by Pinchot. Hitchcock
sent the report on to Commissioner of the General Land Office Binger
Hermann, with orders to put the plan into effect. Hitchcock stated
that it outlined "the principles and practice which I have concluded
shall govern the administration of the National Forest Reserves."
The report called for several elements of decentralization.
Each forest reserve was to be dealt with independently. "The present
system of uniform rules for diverse conditions," the report warned,
"is simply destructive." Administrative emphasis was to be placed on
fieldwork rather than on "the basis of papers and reports from the
office point of view." It recommended closer contact between field and
office and removal of unnecessary steps. This was to be facilitated
by the creation of the Office of Superintendent, which would gradually
be phased out in favor of "inspectors familiar with the woods." "Local
questions," it emphasized, "should be decided on local grounds and on
their own merits in each separate case."
Pinchot and his assistants remained dissatisfied with Interior's
management of the reserves. They bemoaned the "deadening effect of
remote control from Washington, the lack of adjustment to local
conditions," and other disfunctions of centralization. In anticipation
of the transfer of the forest reserves from Interior to Agriculture,
they began to design a new organizational system that would operate
more efficiently.
A draft memorandum proposing a decentralized system was submitted
to Pinchot in January 1905 by Frederick E. Olmsted and Herbert A.
Smith. Titled "Suggestions for the Administration of the National
Forest Reserves from Two Standpoints, (1) Future Ideal Administration;
(2) The Best Administration Possible Under Existing Conditions," it
reiterated Pinchot's earlier arguments for decentralization. Part I
provided for a number of "district forest offices" to be located at
key points in the West. The district offices were to be headed by
"forest superintendents," who each had "direct administrative control
of a group of reserves."
-
Part II covered the placement of "forest inspectors" at "central
points in the West." The inspectors were described as "the most
important field officers and upon them depends, very largely, the
success of the administration." Indeed in the envisioned decentralized
organization, the inspectors served as the vital link between the
almost administratively autonomous districts and the Washington Office.
The inspectors were to act as evaluators and instructors with "all
local administrative authority possible under existing conditions."
The position of forest inspector was planned to gradually grow into that
of forest superintendent.
On February 1, 1905 the forest reserves were transferred to the
Department of Agriculture. The new Forest Service operated under the
organization inherited from Interior, while attempting to create a
system that would best serve its particular, and often unique, needs.
Service Order No. 82, issued in July, instructed all forest officers
to "begin keeping a file of notes for a revised and improved edition of
the 'Use Book." 1
After much internal discussion, Service Order No. 96 called for
a "Section of Inspection" to be established in Pinchot's office. These
inspectors were to facilitate communications between Pinchot and field
personnel. They were not to give orders but were to "render themselves
useful on the ground by consultation with the men whose work they
inspect." Secretary Wilson approved the recommendation on February 26,
1906.
A year later the field organization under the supervision of
district inspectors was described under Service Order No. 125:
District IMontana, northern Idaho, and northern Wyoming, with
headquarters at Missoula. District 2--Colorado, southern Wyoming, a
bit of Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas, with headquarters
at Denver. District 3Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, with
headquarters at Albuquerque. District 4 Utah, western Wyoming,
southern Idaho, and eastern Nevada, headquarters at Salt Lake City.
District 5--California and western Nevada, headquarters at San Francisco.
District 6--Oregon, Washington, and Alaska, headquarters at Portland.
This plan was affirmed in Pinchot's 1908 annual report, with District 4
headquarters changed from Salt Lake City to Ogden.
During the years 1907 and 1908, Pinchot sought assistance from
the New York firm of Gunn and Richards, organizational consultants. The
use of outside management consultants was to become a tradition in the
Forest Service. In later years the Service utilized to great advantage the
objective abilities of consultants to study organizational needs.
In the fall of 1908, decentralization became a reality. Chief
Forester Pinchot sent a personal letter to each forest supervisor, in
which he stated:
Under the District organization, all business
now transacted with the Washington Office will be
transacted with the District Office. All correspondence,
reports and papers which the Use Book or subsequent
instructions that provide that you should send to the
Forester, will hereafter be sent to the District Office,
from whose officers you will receive your instructions.
Emphasizing the advantages of decentralization, Pinchot added that
"it will unquestionably increase the spirit and efficiency of the whole
Service." He also listed the six district foresters he had chosen to
head the now powerful district offices.
The letters promised to send a "Manual of Procedure," which
prescribed the routine under which business would be transacted with
the district offices to the forest supervisors. The manual gave an
8
official outline of the new operating organization and detailed
procedures to be followed in the conduct of official business.
Decentralization has continued to be the Forest Service's
governing management technique. It has become even stronger, despite
the introduction of such centralizing forces as the computer center
at Ft. Collins, Colorado. Pinchot's plan was unique and imaginative.
As Earl Loveridge put it:
Pinchot's decentralization is one of those
remarkable instances of social experiment based on
a consciously-thought-out principle of action.
Remarkable, too, that the principle should have been
developed at a time when even the term "management"
as we know it today had not yet been coined; at a
time antedating the first management leaders such as
Taylor, with his teachings beginning in the publication
of his first book in 1911.
The climate within the Forest Service was one of experimentation.
In the following interviews, it can be seen that the scientific
principles of problem identification, research and investigation, and
solution and recommendation, have been the operating philosophy of
Forest Service management technology. Change has never been feared,
but complacency has. "There is a tendency sometimes to think of things
as they used to be and not be realistic." Interviewee Fox explains:
"One has to meet today's situations, today's problems, and you've got
to make adjustments to do that."
The Modern Period: The Interviews
Gordon Fox was restating a principle of management science.
Intuitive and historical methods are not to be accepted but a cognitive
system a combination of the analytical, behavioral and social sciences-
can provide a realistic evaluation of "today's situations."
Shortly following Taylor's publication of Principles of
Scientific Management, the Forest Service had its own Taylorite in
the person of Roy Headly. Headly, as chief of the Division of Operations,
was very innovative and introduced Taylor's ideas to the Service's
management. He also brought Earl Loveridge into the Service.
In the 1930s, management fell under the team of Loveridge and
Chief of Personnel Peter Keplinger. Gordon Fox describes Loveridge
as a "doer" and Keplinger as a "thinker"; they balanced each other and
were all the more effective. Loveridge spent much time in the field
and experimented with applications of Taylor's "work simplification."
He correlated a system of base workload analyses which allowed for the
allotment of funds for each administrative level. Keplinger used
correspondence courses to train field personnel and expand their expertise.
Especially innovative was a course he began in administrative science,
which gave foresters expected to act as administrators some formal
background. He also began a program at American University under
Arthur Flemming (who later became secretary of health, education, and
welfare) to grant masters degrees in public administration to foresters.
Fox was one of the first two foresters to complete this course.
In 1934, Earle Clapp submitted a report titled, "Chief's Office
Reorganization," arguing that the administrative organization needed
to be updated. "One of the results of this long outgrown organization,"
he wrote, "has been a more or less general tendency to condemn or actively
to oppose activities which do not bear directly on national forest
problems. It has been reflected in efforts to prevent the use of funds
for other work." He proposed that staff, budget, and wages be increased
and, more importantly, that administration be centralized. Counter to
Forest Service tradition, Clapp felt that conditions required that
10
closely related types of forest work be brought together into
"relatively few large groups," with one man delegated to direct each
group. His recommendation for a larger Washington Office staff,
considered heretical by Pinchot's followers, was to become more and more
of a reality, as the Service's problems and duties became more complex.
Rather than investing more responsibility in a single man, however,
power continued to be dispersed.
Following the tragic death of Chief Forester Robert Y. Stuart
in 1933, the Forest Service reorganized so as to alleviate the pressures
on any one man. The number of assistant chiefs was expanded and
Loveridge was put in charge of Administration. This new administrative
layer supported the chief across the board and thus reduced his work
load.
After the 1938 reorganization, the Forest Service contracted with
Henry Farquhar to study the organization of the Washington Office.
Farquhar was the first outside consultant hired since Pinchot had used
the firm of Gunn and Richards three decades earlier. For various
reasons his efforts were of dubious value, but the use of an outside
consultant reestablished a pattern which would be followed by later
administrators.
The next large-scale use of outside consultants occurred in
1954. At the suggestion of Gordon Fox, the Forest Service retained
McKenzie and Company to suggest a design for a modern directive
system. McKenzie recommended a subject-numeric codification for the
manual, which had been divided by Washington Office categories such
as timber, range, and fiscal. This new design enabled the user in
the field to look up policies and instructions by subject, without
11
having to know what division it fell under. It also used a closed-end
decimal system so that writers would be restricted as to how much they
could expand a subject.
To facilitate rewriting the manual, the new classification of
management analyst was created. For about eighteen months, those
selected for the new position, including Chester Shields, worked in
the Washington Office coordinating the drafting and publication of
the new Forest Service Manual. They then returned to their respective
regions to coordinate regional supplements for the manual.
The subject-numeric system devised for the manual was adopted
for use on a range of related paperwork. Shields had the responsibility
of field testing the application of the system to correspondence. The
scheme that evolved enabled a number to be affixed to a form that
would relate to all correspondence on the subject and to the proper place
in the manual. Paperwork experts had long maintained that such a
system was impossible, especially in a decentralized organization.
The Forest Service, however, enjoyed great success with the
system, probably because they were able to keep it simple. Other federal
agencies, state governments, Canadian and other foreign governments
have come to the Forest Service to study the system and have applied
it to their own uses. As Shields states, "It has been an international
success."
A few years later, Fox and Deputy Chief Clare W. Hendee decided
that an organizational review was due. Because of the favorable results
of the earlier work done by McKenzie and Associates and because of their
familiarity with the Forest Service, they were hired to perform the
new study in cooperation with Service personnel. The study and resulting
12
publication, "Gearing the Organization to the Job Ahead," was of epic
proportions and is a landmark in Forest Service administration.
Three members of the McKenzie firm worked on the project with
Fox, Hendee, Walter Graves, and Joe Pechanec of the Forest Service.
Together they worked out a study plan and interviewed a large cross
section of personnel to identify administrative problems and gather
ideas for possible solutions. After several months, a draft of "Gearing"
was sent out to everyone in the field, asking for comments. Most field
personnel accepted the new organizational design. However several
objections were voiced, such as fear of staff overload, loss of power
at some management levels, and increased inflexibility. Some thought
it was "impractical" and "theoretical." One respondent spoke for many
by stating, "we got too much planning without responsibility to make it
work already."
Comments from the field were synthesized and several drafts
were written. Finally, Shields and Art Grumbine, chief of Operations
at Atlanta, Georgia, were assigned to redraft the organization section
in the Forest Service Manual, incorporating the new plan, and the
system was put in effect. Although there were minor problems at first,
the effort was successful .
One of the McKenzie recommendations called for the establishment
of deputy chiefs and deputy regional foresters. This system had been
used previously but had been abandoned. This time Shields did a
literature search and wrote job descriptions for the new positions,
which were then adopted. As Taylor had argued, it was felt that
efficiency could be increased through use of additional management
personnel.
13
The recommendations from the study were put into effect
incrementally. Almost immediately, deputies and associate deputies
were installed in the chief's office. An element calling for multiple
deputies in the larger regions was not well received in the field and
was not implemented until 1970. By 1973 all regions had adopted the
multiple deputy concept.
After World War II, Fox and Loveridge attended a lecture series
on operations research at Johns Hopkins University, which eventually
led Fox to set up the Operations Research unit at the Pacific Southwest
Experiment Station in Berkeley, California. Patterned after military
technology, the Management Science Staff v/as formed in 1963 at Berkeley,
so that they could operate independently from the Washington Office,
while utilizing the facilities of the University of California. The
"think tank" was staffed by Ernst S. Valfer, project leader; Malcolm W.
Kirby, industrial engineer; Sherman J. O'Neill, mathematician; Gideon
Schwarzbart, statistician; and Eivor Hinge, secretary. Management
science was finally institutionalized.
"OR [Operation Research] is not magic," the staff wrote,
and like other scientific procedures depends on 3
things:
(1) whether the problem can be stated and defined.
(2) whether data is or can be made available to
describe it, and
(3) whether criteria can be set up by which solutions
can be evaluated. The third requirement is often
the most difficult to satisfy.
After the operational research lectures at Johns Hopkins, Fox
had another idea. He decided to set up an "experimental forest" for
both operations and administration research. Although the early goals
were not fully met, it was very imaginative and it was well worth the
experiment. The experience also served to make a manager out of Shields,
14
who was brought in as staff specialist for administration, after a
recommendation by Graves, who was then in the Washington Office.
During 1964-1966 the Bureau of the Budget was reviewing
management practices and manpower utilization in government agencies,
at the request of the department secretaries. The review team was
composed of Ed Deckard, BOB team leader; Sydney Freeman, BOB management
unit; Ron Landis, BOB budget examiner; a representative from the Civil
Service Commission; Joe Loftis, from the secretary of agriculture's
office; and Fox from the Forest Service.
Fox convinced the BOB examiners that it would be most advantageous
if Forest Service personnel could work jointly with them on the project.
It was believed, as it always had been, that the Forest Service could
only gain from a critical study of the organization. The result was a
study comparable in size and impact to the McKenzie Study.
The "Deckard Study" was an in-depth examination that ran for
several months and covered all aspects of Forest Service programs.
Forest Service personnel, including the Operations Research team,
participated fully and, with the BOB teams endorsement, were able to
offer proposals of their own. The myriad recommendations are still
being implemented.
One recommendation of the Deckard Study was to review the size
of ranger districts, forests, and regions in terms of efficiency.
This resulted in two additional studies, the Size of Ranger District
Study and the Size of Forest Study. The later study was modest in
scope, but the Size of Ranger District Study was the largest of its
type in Forest Service history and involved some very sophisticated
technical methodologies.
15
Using "size" to mean acreage, budget, workload, staffing,
resource production, level of use, and terrain, a number value was
given to various factors. As Shields explains, they "tried to make use
of the latest organization theories that related to the technical systems
within which social reaction, work patterns and job content are
evaluated and related to the technological requirements of the job
on the ranger district."
Graves at this time was chief of the Division of Operations
in Region Three. His regional forester had given him a leave of absence
for at least a year, so that he could run the project. He procured the
assistance of Ken Norman, and they made up the field team that worked
closely with the management sciences staff headed by Valfer. In
Washington, assistance came from Hendee, Fox, and Shields.
Graves and Norman interviewed a cross section of Service
personnel from seventy ranger districts, ten or twelve national forests,
and regional office staffs. After assigning a numeric classification
to each forest, the values were quantified at Berkeley and an ideal
numeric range was established. In the end, no districts were found
to be too large but several were too small, and were consolidated to
form larger districts.
The Size of Forest Study was less thorough. Since an act of
Congress is needed to add to or subtract from national forests, the
implications were limited throughout the study. Again, no forests
were found to be too large. Several forests, however, were
administratively consolidated while legally remaining independent.
Shasta and Trinity National Forests were combined as the Shasta-Trinity.
Sitgraves National Forest was combined with the Apache.
16
Computers, too, are a part of management sciences. Robert
Torheim sees computers as "a management tool, a tool to manage."
Brought in following World War II, computers were used first to handle
payroll and then more and more complicated analyses of data. Suddenly
it became clear that the tool had become the master in some cases,
where the agency had lost the older skills to do certain jobs. At the
chief's order, procedures were adopted to return the computer to its
proper role.
Additional management studies have been conducted by the
Forest Service, and their technology has continued to grow and improve.
Just as Frederick W. Taylor argued for scientific management and the
abandonment of tradition or rule-of-thumb as administrative techniques,
the Forest Service has always been ready to reexamine its organizational
self. Technical management tools have been developed and used at a
tremendous rate, and the Service has been rewarded by an excellent
reputation.
The following interviews offer much more detail on the subjects
discussed here, as well as many that were not. Graves, Fox, and Shields
can say it best, because they were at the center as the technology was
developed. Torheim offers his perspective from a vantage point in
the field.
GORDON D. FOX June 15, 1978
Ronald C. Larson: Let's begin the interview with a brief
biographical sketch such as where you were born and
those events in your childhood that you see as maybe
contributing to your final choice of careers.
Gordon D. Fox: Thank you, Ron. I will follow that procedure
at least up to a point. I was born in Kent County,
Michigan, in 1908. My father owned a small farm as
most of the people in that area did what they call a
family farm today. At that stage, nobody around there
had a college education. The feeling was that you
didn't need one to be a farmer. I was lucky to get a
high school education because when I finished the eighth
grade in a one-room school, the high school five miles
from our place changed from a two-year, ninth and tenth
grade, to a four-year school just at the time I entered.
This was one of the first breaks in my career as other
wise I wouldn't have had a high school education. So I
finished high school in 1925, and then, of course, there
was the question of a future. Commonly, in that area,
the older son got the farm which was my brother. My
mother and I were talking about the future and I recall
her urging me, "Why don't you get a job somewhere here
and save your money and go on to college?" I thought
it was an excellent idea and the question of what to
2
study didn't come up until later. I found a job in
1926 in a brass factory in Grand Rapids about 18 miles
from home. A neighbor was working there, so I rode
with him. In the following spring an uncle of mine
who was then a township supervisor got a job with the
county, so I took over his farm that summer. In the
fall of 1927, I started at Michigan State College. I
had saved enough money in the interim two years to get
the college education under way. My parents did not
have the financial resources to pay the cost, although
I remember my father offering to mortgage the farm to
obtain the financing.
The reason I took forestry is that a distant relative
advised me one time: "You know if I were a young fellow
starting out, I'd take forestry." He had been a police
man in Detroit for a while and then had moved to Traverse
City and was in the clothing business. He didn't know
anything about forestry but his advice seemed pretty
good to me. It sounded like a hunt, fish, and trap job.
I always liked the out-of-doors as I was brought up on
a farm and hunted, fished, and trapped, so I decided to
take forestry.
As I said I had saved enough money to get started, and
through a connection that my uncle had with a member of
the Board of Trustees at Michigan State, whose son
belonged to a fraternity, I obtained a job at his fra
ternity waiting on table and wiping dishes which gave
me my board and room. This job continued for four
years. During the summers I was fortunate enough to
obtain employment so I could continue my education.
The summer between my freshman and sophomore years I
worked in a private tree nursery. Additionally, I
pitched baseball games on Sundays and received a few
dollars from that source. By playing on the freshman
team at Michigan State and on the varsity, up to a
point I'll put it that way not a regular by any means,
I received a "spare-time" job cleaning the gymnasium
which further eased the financial situation to a degree!
In the summer of 1929, I was lucky that in the Upper
Peninsula, at the Dunbar Forest Station, a forestry
professor, R. H. Westveld, gave me one of two jobs that
were open at that location. It was during the start of
the big Depression and I needed a summer job to get
cash for tuition and hopefully for other necessities.
Then in 1930, as a follow-up on the experience I had in
1929, I received a job with the Michigan Department of
Agriculture working on the white pine blister rust in
the Upper Peninsula.
.
RCL: You got that job because of your education at that point
GCF: The education plus the fact that I had had some experi
ence working for Michigan State at that Dunbar Forest
Experiment Station.
RCL: What did you do there?
GCF: I did some work on research, establishing and checking
experimental plots and also worked a short time on white
pine blister rust control.
When I graduated from Michigan State in 1931, I had
planned on being back with the state but these were not
civil service jobs, and with high unemployment in this
severe depression period and all the political pressure,
the nephew of a state senator got the job.
This same Professor Westveld told me to join with three
graduates that were heading West. Two of them had jobs
in Idaho for the summer and one of them had an automobile
So I joined them without a job. They were leaving the
next morning. Professor Westveld gave me the cash he
had on hand and wrote me a check for fifty dollars. The
first night we spent in a cornfield in Iowa, I had one
running board of the car for a bed and one of the others
had the other running board, and one the back seat and
one the front seat. That was about the way we operated
during the trip.
We arrived on the Clearwater National Forest at Orofino,
Idaho and I went in to see the forest officers of the
Clearwater National Forest. It was a few days before
Assistant Supervisor Paul Gerard came back from a trip
on the forest and I had a meeting with him. By that time
I was out of cash. I was staying at night along the
Clearwater River. The bank at Orofino would not cash
the check since it was not certified. They stated
that they would need to send the check to East Lansing,
Michigan, which would take several days. So I was out
of cash. After talking with Assistant Supervisor Gerard
for a few moments he said, "Now, let me see you do a
little lettering." And I did some lettering for him.
Paul said, "Well, you seem a little nervous this morning."
I said, "I am, I happen to be out of money and out of a
job." He said, "I'll give you a job here first drawing
up a fire plan organization chart." That's why he wanted
to check my lettering ability. He said, "You draw this
up and then we'll look at the next step."
*r xr
RCL: The die was cast right there.
GDF: Yes. That's what I did, so he gave me fire fighter's
meal tickets and room tickets that I would just turn in
at a hotel, the Lumbermen's Hotel, there in Orofino,
Idaho. The Forest Service redeemed the tickets from the
hotel. I still remember the Lumbermen's Hotel, the
proprietor coming in there with a squirt-gun one morning
and spraying around edges of the mattress for lice and
other insects. He said, "You got to get in these places.
That's where you find them." The loggers and other users
of the hotel were not the best type of roomers.
When I finished that job, Assistant Supervisor Gerard
sent me out on the national forest to a white pine
blister rust control camp. I still recall that I had
6
five cents left that I spent for fish hooks when I left
Orofino to go out to that place. The job was as a laborer
to start with. About two or three weeks after I was on
that job, the camp superintendent, Webster Sterba, a
forestry graduate from the University of Minnesota, came
to me and said, "You know I've got one foreman who can't
see very well and he isn't finding the currants and
gooseberries (which are the alternate hosts to the white
pine blister rust) and the crew is missing too many. I'd
like to have you take over as foreman of that crew because
I'm going to have to let that other fellow go." So I took
over as a crew foreman. I only have the sight in my right
eye and never have had sight in the left eye. He fired a
foreman because he had poor eyesight and he put a one-
eyed man in his place!
I never did mention that incident because I wanted to
join the Forest Service. The standard at that time was
20/20 vision in both eyes. You might ask, "How did you
get into the Forest Service?" It happened this way. I
was in the first CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps] camp
in northern Minnesota on the Superior National Forest in
the spring of 1933. They had a camp doctor in each of
those camps. In my camp we had a young doctor just
graduated from a university medical school. Like the rest
of us he didn't have a practice or anything else. There
was about 25 percent unemployment at that time.
We became good friends so when I took the Civil Service
examination, I had the forms for the required M.D.
certification. He said, "You can do anything here that
these other fellows can." So he put it down as 20/20
vision in each eye.
RCL: That was all there was to it.
GDF: That was all there was to it. But that's the way some
of these things happen and that's just a break. Several
of these happenings I've mentioned were just pure luck
just chance.
RCL: A lot depends on chance in anybody's life, really.
GDF: That's right, but sometimes you get those breaks, and
you can look back and think of those things that
really . . . well, they determine your life for you.
Well, I finished the job in Idaho that summer and I
returned to Michigan to again take a job with the
Michigan State Forestry Department. W. K. Kellogg had
given Michigan State College an abandoned, badly eroded
farm, between Battle Creek and Kalamazoo, Michigan,
with the understanding that it would be reforested. He
gave a donation for that purpose also. The camp
superintendent on the Idaho job, Sterba, and I became
good friends and we went over to Spokane and jumped a
freight train and rode that freight train back to his
home in St. Paul, Minnesota. We were saving the cost
of that transportation. There's no point in going into
that in detail here. Anyway, Professor West veld offered
8
me the job of reforestation of the Kellogg' Tract and
running that crew. So I went down to Battle Creek in
the fall of 1931 after returning from Idaho, and also in
.
the spring of 1932 during the planting season. Then in
the summer of 1932, I worked for the first time for the
Bureau of Plant Industry, again on blister rust control
in the norther part of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan.
RCL: So you'd become something of a specialist.
GDF: That's right, and I've always thought . . . let's digress
just a moment on the white pine blister rust. Warren
Benedict has written the history of that program. I can
think of a lot of foresters who got their start on white
pine blister rust control who otherwise wouldn't have
had a job during that Depression period. I think that
had been one of the important contributions of that
white pine blister rust control program.
RCL: It had been beneficial.
GDF: That's right.
RCL: How did the reforestation take place?
-
GDF: I hired a crew there. We got the trees from the nursery
at Michigan State and planted them. They are forty-eight
years old now and I still enjoy visiting the area. The
area has been expanded and much larger reforestation has
taken place over the years. But to me that first re
forestation project has more meaning than maybe the
500,000 acres or more that I was involved in at different
times later on in the Lake States. It meant that I had
9
the opportunity during the one year interval between
Michigan State and Yale to build up enough cash to start
a graduate degree at Yale University.
At Yale, I was fortunate to get a part-time job with the
Yale Landscaping Department . The head of the department
was a Yale forester. When I was at Yale, Henry Solon Graves
who was a former chief of the Forest Service, was the dean
of the forestry school. I requested a loan and still re
member well when he talked to me and stated, "We have
approved your $150 loan." It was loaned without interest.
That loan plus a job Alf Nelson, a roommate, and I obtained
during the Christmas vacation provided the funds for the
second semester. I had enough then with what I was earning
to obtain a master's degree in forestry from Yale.
I will add that at the time that I was finishing the
second semester the CCC program was starting. It was one
of the first programs of President Roosevelt's New Deal.
To me an interesting side light is that Professor H. H.
Chapman helped me financially and otherwise. His picture
is right up there on the wall. Professor Chapman was one
of the real leaders one of the driving forces in develop
ment of forestry in this country. Chappy let me drive his
car from New Haven to Urania, Louisiana. There was a spring
session at Urania, for Yale forestry students. Another
student , Bob Beaman , and I rode with him and drove the car
from New Haven down to Urania which means we didn't have to
.
10
pay any transportation. Chappy stopped at all the state
and federal forestry headquarters along the way to find
out what was happening in their sectors. I listened, and
it was a good indoctrination in those visits. When I
finished at Urania, Chappy paid my board bill and loaned
me money to help defray the cost of traveling to Duluth,
Minnesota for a job in a Civilian Conservation Camp.
The CCC camp was one of the first ones in the Superior
National Forest in northern Minnesota. My first job there
on that forest was as a technical foreman. There were
twenty-two camps on the Superior and two hundred boys in
each camp. The army was also involved in that with
largely reserve officers in charge of the camp. When the
CCs left the camp in the morning for work the Forest
Service had them until they were returned to the camp at
the end of the work day. It worked two ways using the
capabilities of the Forest Service at the time. That was
the best way to handle it. I was a camp technical foreman
for about four or five months.
RCL: What was a technical foreman?
GDF: The tecnical foreman had charge of the technical forestry
activities. There were technical foremen who were
foresters and non-technical foremen of various occupations
such as civil engineers, for example. There was wide
spread unemployment at this time. There were enough
foresters to provide the forestry capability for the
different jobs. The other foremen would be largely
11
supervising crews and often on projects such as road
construction for which the foresters did not have the
capability. The foresters would, for example, mark timber
stands for thinning and lay out and supervise reforestation
projects. One of the first jobs at this CC camp was that
we marked some trees to be cut and obtained a portable
sawmill to saw them, and the lumber was used for the
permanent camp. For the first summer there were only tent
'
camps. Some camps were established in just a few days.
There were other camps established on the Superior termed
NIRA camps under the National Industrial Recovery Act.
The mission of these work camps was giving employment ,
which I believe was running about 25 percent at its peak.
I took over as camp superintendent of one of those camps
of around one hundred men. I had a construction foreman
and one forester, plus crew foremen selected from the
workers .
RCL: How does that differ from the CCC camps?
GDF: We ran them and the Army was not involved. These were
older men. They were not in the young age class of the
CCs . Many of the workers were from the industrial mining
areas of northern Minnesota and the Mesabi iron range.
The mines had shut down. They were out of work and
needed employment. There was no Social Security or
unemployment benefits. When you were out of work, you
were done.
RCL: So it was something like the WPA.
12
GDF: It was during WPA times and there were a couple of
thousand WPA workers on the forest also. I was an NIRA
camp superintendent for about another four months and
.
then received an assistant ranger job . . . the ranger
of the Stony Ranger District had me in there as an assis
tant ranger to him. There were about four or five NIRA
camps in addition to five CCC camps on that Stony Ranger
District. The ranger was Frank Crow. We had the NIRA
camps and also WPA workers employed on the Stony District.
It was a big organization that was put together in about
six months! Previous to that time Frank Crow didn't even
have an assistant on his district. He had a couple of
fire guards. Organizationally, that was it except when
there was a forest fire and he picked up some local men
to fight the fire. So you can visulize the administrative
job that was created. Many of us who started at that time
had quick promotions. It was, of course, much faster
than normal. So I became assistant to Frank Crow and the
job was largely inspecting and supervising those different
-
camps we had.
In the fall of 1934 a ranger district opened up. There
had been a considerable period of short funding and
tight budgets until all the new programs were started in
1933. They decided to establish a district north of Ely
which was the former Kawishiwi District and is now a part
of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. It's a wilderness
district up there. I became district forest ranger of the
Kawishiwi District.
13
RCL: What year was this?
GDF: This is the fall of 1934. One of the first jobs on the
Kawishiwi was cruising a considerable area north of the
old boundary and extending to the Canadian boundary. The
cruising was to obtain timber values in fixing the land
acquisition costs. It was a big acquisition job with a
short time limit. It was one of the big ones. We also
had four work camps on the Kawishiwi District.
I was probably the last ranger up there to use dog teams
in the wintertime across the frozen lakes.
RCL: Why were you the last?
GDF: Because the Forest Service soon purchased airplanes. Dog
teams are an inefficient way to travel and in this case
we had a big winter cruising for land acquisition.
RCL: That was undeveloped area.
GDF: That's right. It is still undeveloped because, except
for the trails and portages, it's been kept that way. In
fact, I still remember I had the first radio in Region 9
of the Forest Service on the Xawishiwi because it was a
roadless wilderness district. I was out in one of our
tent camps in February when I received word over the
radio that there was going to be a National Forest Service
meeting on radio in Portland, Oregon, with radio experts
from all the Forest Service regions. I was asked to
represent Region 9. I was the expert as I was the only
one who used our Forest Service radios. I still remember
snowshoeing in to the Fernberg Guard Station that night
14
to make connections. It was a bright moonlight night and
I had about fifteen miles to snowshoe to reach the station
which was at the end of the road. The wolves were howling
as they were chasing the deer in that wilderness area. I
reached Ely in time to catch a train for Portland the next
day.
RCL: You snowshoed for fifteen miles?
GDF: Oh, yes. You see probably half of it was across lakes.
In June 1935, I was promoted to a timber management staff
position in the supervisor's of f ice in Duluth. At that
time, the Superior Forest was not selling much timber.
It was in a depression era. The biggest activities were
in reforestation, stand improvement, and protection
activities. We established two new tree nurseries in my
first year in Duluth, one at Ely and one at Two Harbors.
A management plan was also completed. I was on that job
in Duluth until 1938.
During the five years on the Superior National Forest,
Region 9 was building up training programs in adminis
trative management. The region had a large organization
and management job almost overnight . It was an emergency
in several aspects. At the outset, the eastern regions
had considerably greater emergency programs than the West.
The unemployed population was in the East and proportionately
the largest number and size of the human resource programs
were in the East. It was easier and less costly but they
gave the biggest workload to a region like Region 9 with
15
the Forest Service. John Taylor, chief of personnel in
Region 9 was very interested and knowledgeable in admin
istrative .maijagement . He started a training center at
Eagle River, Wisconsin. Groups of Region 9 foresters were
given courses in adminstration at that location. My first
exposure to the courses at Eagle River was in the winter
of 1936.
RCL: How old was the course by the time you started?
GDF: I would expect it was probably over a year old. They
didn't have their own building at that time so they rented
one. It was a resort type of building in the summertime
and you could rent it in the winter. Later, the region
built a building there as a training facility.
RCL: So, it really wasn't begun until two years after the need
for it.
GDF: That would be very close because we are only discussing
the period from the spring of 1933 to 1936. It was around
January or February 1936, that I went down there for a
month when they were giving that course. It was our first
experience in an organized course in administrative
management. I'll give a lot of credit to the personnel
staff in Region 9 who set up and staffed that short course
in management. They were getting some help, I am sure,
from Washington in terms of encouragement from people like
Peter Keplinger, the chief of the personnel division, and
we'll get to him later. I think it was about the next
16
year, 1937, that personnel from the Division of Operation
came to Duluth and I was first exposed to a formal workload
measurement and workload analysis procedures.
RCL: In management terms, what sort of material did you cover?
GDF: We covered everything in terms of planning, organizing,
staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting, and budgeting,
in the administrative process known as POSDCORB. Planning
in forestry has to be both short and long term. You plan
and you check on the results .
RCL: How long was the course?
.
GDF: I was only at the Eagle River Region 9 management school
for a month. It was an exposure. It was a start on this
science called "organization and management." It was a
busy period and those foresters were needed at their staff
headquarters, but it was a good initial course. The
course was well developed to teach the principles of good
administration. The personnel unit at that time was in
the Division of Operation in Region 9. They added a couple
of staff members who selected material and adapted it to
Forest Service operations. They'd send it out to you to
study and encouraged its application. It was an important
step.
I should mention the job load analysis. It was the first
time that we had gone through the procedure of setting
objectives and analyzing the best procedures and the time
allowances needed to achieve those objectives. What do
you need to do? And how are you going to do it? What
17
are the jobs that have to be done? What are the standards
for those jobs? Are they the best ways to obtain satis
factory quality results? For inspections of on-going
projects, how frequent and how intensive should they be
to insure acceptable performances? How much time will you
need to spend in the office? Or spend in field operations?
What jobs should be delegated? In inspections, the ob
jective is not only to correct errors and check performance
but to recognize and give credit for good performance a
two-way street. After taking all these things into con
sideration, you had the total job that needs to be done.
RCL: This is really based upon Frederick Winslow Taylor.
GDF: It was based upon Taylor's system of analysis. Where you
found the best way of doing a job, what functionalization
is needed, what experts should be selected and trained in
those functions and to do the most efficient job. Proce
dures and time allowances were not guessed at, they were
measured in Frederick W. Taylor's development of "scientific
management." In Forest Service operations the time
standards were not as precise as in industrial operations
where the repetitive operations could be measured quite
precisely with a stopwatch. Many Forest Service standards
were based on experience of foresters and others who had
become experts on certain tasks. I'll explore this just
a little bit with you right here. There is a tendency at
times for using just an accounting procedure. For example,
on a district, forest or region, they are selling their
-
f "
18
timber and it's only taking so much time per thousand
board feet, at a certain cost, and that's a lot cheaper
than another outfit in an adjacent region or unit. There
fore, why can't the high cost unit perform the job as
cheaply as the low cost unit? This approach is often
used in the government today, but overlooks the results in
terms of quality standards. The Forest Service system of
engineered standards avoided a strict unit cost accounting
disclosure. Cost accounting, of course has its place in
the administrative process.
For another example, without standards, a ranger could
sit in the office and point out an area of timber to a
potential purchaser and tell him that when a certain volume
is cut to let him know and he, the ranger, will have it
scaled. From a strictly cost accounting standpoint, the
unit costs per MBM harvested would be very low. But the
quality of timber sales supervision and management could
result in forest destruction. You don't want that type
of performance. I've also seen it happen, that if you
have on an individual unit twice as many employees as
needed to do the work, they will all put in eight hours
a day but they will, as we used to say be "sand-papering
the stumps." They will be doing the tasks to too high a
standard and their planning and accomplishments will be
costly. They will, however, put in the required time
but on less productive work. With one man on a unit which
has work for two men, the one man will likely put in
19
considerable overtime and will cut the standards to keep
on top of the job. So this is another reason for having
these engineered standards. They provide the facts for
staffing the units on an equitable basis in relation to
the workload. The Forest Service system used this basis
for many years. Since funds were generally not adequate
to finance all units at 100 percent, the funds were
allocated on a percentage basis.
The process is a direct application of Frederick W. Taylor's
principles of "scientific management." It does not apply
to Forest Service work with the same precision as to work
in a factory, but it is a much better way to staff than
actual time being used in different areas, as a basis for
planning and determining manpower and financing requirements
to get those jobs done. It also is a training device to
insure that the individual has the best instruction on the
best way to do a job. Earl Loveridge whose career ended
as assistant chief for administration was the first forester,
specialist, who applied the work measurement system on a
national basis to national forest tasks.
There is a story about Earl Loveridge who was really the
main guiding force in obtaining application of this system
to the Forest Service. The story has likely been elabo
rated on considerably. He once went to a ranger district
to obtain a volume figure on how many loads of wood were
needed on the district for the winter and the time needed
for the job. He took a bucksaw and timed himself for
20
fifteen minutes, rapidly sawing wood. Then he applied
the unit time allowance to the volume needed to determine
the total time for the ranger in getting his wood cut for
the season.
RCL: He worked as fast and as hard as he could for fifteen
minutes?
GDF: That's the story anyway, but just one side of the story.
RCL: Why don't we go a little bit into some of the other people
You mentioned Loveridge but before him was Roy Headley.
GDF: Roy Headley was greatly interested in this field. He
always appeared to be looking for new ideas and was in
terested in applying them. I am sure that he was
instrumental in getting Earl Loveridge into the Washington
office to work on administrative management.
RCL: What was Roy Headley 's position?
GDF: At that time, he was chief of the Division of Operation.
That was before the support activities were reorganized
into separate divisions for the specialized functions.
In fact, fire control and personnel and all of the general
administrative functions were in Headley 's Division of
Operation. I give him credit for many administration
improvements. I noticed this morning in going through
some old files that I had a note from Headley regarding an
approach in forest fire control. His note ended with,
"Now what do you think of this?" He was asking a young
forester that question. He was looking for ideas. His
proposal was regarding the need to have someone make a
21
study of our practices and procedures in fire control.
A forest officer would be assigned to go to fires of
different sizes and areas and study the organization and
methods from start to finish. He would have no control
responsibility on the fires, other than to come up with
suggestions for improvement. He would be checking and
determining what are the best ways of fire suppression
such as, what other things should be done or done dif
ferently? Loveridge, in my judgment, was an individual
who made major contributions to Forest Service management.
Peter Keplinger's important contributions were as chief
of personnel, in the indoctrination and training aspect,
and these were equally valuable for the organization as
a whole. You asked about my career and we were up to 1937
and 1938. Do you want me to finish it?
RCL : Yes .
GDF: I was in Duluth for three years, 1935-1938, in charge of
forest management, which mostly involved activities in
getting work done in the camps and centers, rather than
selling timber. I think that Peter Keplinger was the
prime starter in 1938 of a program in the Forest Service
for bringing in two young foresters with interest and
presumably some aptitutde in administrative management
and offered to provide an opportunity to obtain a master's
degree at a university. Loveridge I am sure, was also
supporting this project but Keplinger certainly worked
22
out the plan. There are two types of people in this area,
one a studious type and a thinker, and another one who
will get things done. Loveridge was the type of individual
who got things done in a hurry. He outlined the steps
that needed to be done in a planwise manner and followed
through them to get the job done. Kep was more of a student
The pressure of the routine job in getting personnel
selected, placed, and related functions was not so much to
his liking, in my opinion. He was more interested in the
employee development functions and, I think, contributed
more in planning and looking ahead to the needs of the
Forest Service and training employees for those positions.
In the summer of 1938 the Washington office program was
started to bring in two foresters to obtain a graduate
degree in public adminstration at American University.
This request went to the field for applicants who were
interested. The forest supervisor of the Superior
National Forest at that time was Ray Harmon. Ray brought
the Washington office letter in to me and said, "How
about you applying for this assignment? Read it over
and see if you might be interested." So I looked it over
and it sounded interesting. As a part of that applica
tion, you had to have a photograph, give some background,
and write up something on what you had done, something
original that had some relation to the purpose of the
Washington office assignment. In other words you had
to have some originality. What kind of an effort does
23
this candidate put into something like that? As I
mentioned to you the other day, I had always felt that
the "special use" policy of the Forest Service was not
logical. We had taken over the public lands for the use
of the public and then gave summer home construction'
permits for exclusive private use on many "key" re
creation areas. So I wrote up a memorandum on that issue
and said this was contrary to the purpose for which the
national forests were established and I still remember
saying to Ray, "How about using that?" He read it over
and looked up at me with a kind of smile on his face, and
said, "I don't thing you better send that one in!"
So I wrote up another one. I've got a copy of that here
too, some place. I saw it this morning. There were
several parts to it but one of them was something original
During the fire season in 1936, we had a big fire on the
Superior. It started on state land and was about 10,000
acres when it hit us on the national forest. It finally
reached another 10,000 acres before we got control but
I had that large fire at that time. It was in the south
end of the forest that was a populated area. One of the
things we had to do was get people out of there with some
of their belongings as a first step. I said, "Now here
is something." There isn't anything in the manual about
that type of a situation. But here is a case where the
situation dictates the action. One better forget about
24
controlling the fire and do the priority things first.
You are saving people's property and people's lives and
we'll do that first and then control the fire.
Some other questions were asked in the application. Any
way, I was lucky enough to be one of the first two
selected for this program. K. D. Flock, was the other
individual. "K" was about seven years older than I. He'd
been a ranger in Region 1 and forest supervisor of the
Beaver Head National Forest. So we went into Washington
headquarters, and reported to Peter Keplinger in August
1938. Kep mentioned to us that the USDA was not interested
in training people for administration and neither was the
Civil Service Commission at that time. The only person
that expressed an interest was Dr. Arthur Flemming who
at that time was dean of the school of public
affairs at American University in Washington, B.C. When
we arrived, Kep had Dr. Flemming come over and have lunch
with us. I was surprised that he was only a few years
older than I. I was then 29. Flemming was very interested
in this program. At that time we had to work in the
Forest Service during the day and go to school nights and
do most of the studying on weekends. They didn't have the
authority that we have now to send someone to school and
pay for it. We paid for the tuition ourselves.
RCL: You paid for school yourself?
GDF: Yes, we paid all costs. The Forest Service could only
25
bring us into the Washington office, and provide training
on the job during the days in different divisions within
the Forest Service and transfer us to the field after com
pleting the scholastic requirements. There was no authority
for anything else.
RCL: That wasn't easy then.
GDF: It wasn't easy. It was a hard job because you had to get
a graduate degree in public administration in one year by
working daytime and going to school nights and Saturdays.
You had to get your studying done in any spare time you
could find. So it wasn't easy. But it worked out, and
incidentally, Dr. Arthur Flemming, as you know, achieved
national prominence. He became a member of the Civil
Service Commission and then was president of a Methodist
university in Ohio, and then president of the University of
Oregon. He was secretary of the department of Health
Education and Welfare and held several important jobs
afterwards. The last one he had was as commissioner on
aging until this past year. I met him again then. It was
the first time I'd seen him since I graduated.
The Forest Service program is important as a landmark, I
think, in public administration in the government as a
whole. The Forest Service, in particular, deserves credit
for that initiative. The program originally was set up
where we would work short periods in each of the divisions
to get familiar with the entire organization. At that
time Earle Clapp was the associate chief of the Forest
26
.
Service and Ferdinand A. Silcox was the chief. Clapp was
developing "A National Forestry Program," a plan for
forestry in the United States. This was one of those big
jobs where you look at the total forest situation in the
United States and say what ought to be done and who does it
The states, the federal government, and the private sector
were all involved in this total picture and the recommenda
tions for action. Congress had requested this forestry
program. It just happened that I got tied up in this
national forestry program development in some way.
RCL: Was this after you were out of school?
GDF: No, this was when I was in Washington here.
RCL: Going to graduate school.
GDF: Going to graduate school. I was assigned an office with
Bill Kramer who was chief of the Division of Operation at
that time. It finally developed almost into a full-time
job working for Clapp. I became sort of a custodian of
all the cost data in the proposed program and worked out
a plan for repayment to the treasury on the basis of value
from added timber growth resulting from the program. The
American University Administration Program was continued
after "K" Flock and I finished our assignment. I left
Washington, D.C. in December 1939.
Finally some universities, I believe the forerunners were
the University of Montana and the University of Minnesota,
started giving short courses in administrative management
and our employees were encouraged to attend them. It was
27
.
a lot faster than bringing in two candidates per year to
D.C. and that practice was discontinued early in World
War II.
RCL: Let me interrupt you. On this fellowship program, it
wasn't really a fellowship program, why did the Forest
Service decide to bring people up from the field rather
' ' ' ' .1
than hiring people who already had a graduate degree in
administration?
GDF: They wanted to train the foresters in it. Foresters
occupied the managerial positions but did not have that
kind of training. And if you are going to improve the
organization then you needed some of those people to have
management training.
RCL: I see. That way you had both a forestry background and
adminstration background.
GDF: That's right. You had them both. The theory was that
you should be more competent in the managerial jobs if
you had both of those degrees.
RCL: Rather than choosing to fill the position with just one
type of expertise, either forestry or management, this
way they got both.
GDF: Right. I still remember the American University business
management students talking among themselves that they
should have those top jobs rather than professionals or
technicians.
One thing that has been, I think, a change in the Forest
28
Service staffing is that there are now more laboratory
and other technicians than we used to have particularly
in research. I mean that the build up in discipline
specialties now provide more slots that are less adminis
trative in character than previously. More particularly,
when I was occupying the different positions on the way
up the ladder most of the things we were doing were ad
ministrative whether we were out running a crew fighting
fire or whatever we were doing. It was administration.
We were not isolated. It was always a mixture of duties
but strongly oriented to the administration side. I have
always thought the emphasis on administrative training
was an excellent move on the part of the Forest Service.
It was triggered at a time when the workload had built up
tremendously as we discussed previously.
RCL: Overnight, almost.
GDF: That's right. And the need was apparent and it was
stressed most in the regions like Region 9 where they had
a greater managerial workload buildup in a short time
period.
From Washington, D.C., I went to Lower Michigan on the
Huron National Forest as assistant supervisor of that
forest with headquarters in East Tawas, Michigan. That
was in January, 1940. It was a small national forest and
the administration was not nearly as heavy as on the
Superior. In fact, in addition to the assistant supervisor
position, I had responsibility for timber management and
29
land acquisition since we didn't have the workload to
justify division chiefs for those activities. We did have
some staff people in other activities. I did want to
stay on that forest for enough time to gain additional
field experience.
RCL: You wanted to stay.
GDF: I wanted to stay out in the field for awhile. But there
was a request from the Lake States Experiment Station at
St. Paul, Minnesota, from Raphael Zon, the director, for
a detail to that station. You probably have seen his name.
RCL: Yes.
GDF: He wanted more attention given to small sales to residents
rather than to the big companies. Small sales, i.e., the
family type of sales. They'd get the returns and not the
companies. It was one of those forested areas where per
capita income was very low. A lot of the farming was
subsistence farming. There were opportunities for com
bining both agriculture and forestry in terms of cutting
timber during the spare time, such as pulpwood, cabin
logs, sawtimber, and posts. Most of the timber being cut
was pulpwood and was being sold to the big paper companies.
On the small sales, that we discussed, the payment for the
utilization of KV funds was one of the road blocks.
Another problem on the Huron National Forest was that sales
for the most part in volume were by the big companies.
This was Michigan after the white pine had been cut off
30
- >
and the major stands had been denuded. We were dealing
with the remnants of those stands but there was still
enough growth that you could have a fair sized business
if the products were diversified. But not enough for
these big companies who were dealing in pulpwood. They
would hire a contractor and he would bring in workers
from the outside, transients such as the Mexican migrants.
They wouldn't pay the workers adequate wages. When they
got sick or something happened there would be problems
in the county and it was unsatisfactory all the way around.
And here were these subsistence farmers that needed the
cash income. Pulpwood cutting paid so low that there was
a saying that nobody but a "damn" fool would cut pulpwood.
I got to thinking about that. I had checked on cooperatives,
too. We were also having trouble in the forests with
selling all the timber. You didn't have just the pulpwood.
There were posts, poles, cabin logs, and other products.
You need a variety in product sales to manage the forest
properly and to produce the most income. So with this
<
detail that I had for three months with the experiment
station, I had a chance to see the operations of coopera-
tives in the northern Lake States. The Scandinavians in
these areas had built them up based on "old country"
customs. I don't know if you are . . .
RCL: I 'm Danish.
GDF: My wife is Swedish. She has some friends in Copenhagen.
31
Many settlements made in that area were by immigrants
from Scandinavian countries. The cooperatives sort of
intrigued me. I finished that job and returned to East
Tawas .
Cooperatives were one of the mechanisms that were needed
to harvest the timber from the forest for all the products
under good management practices, and also to provide that
cash income needed there locally and avoid all the prob
lem s with the migrant labor. So we got a cooperative
started. I paid for the articles of incorporation per
sonally because the government couldn't do so. One of
my forestry classmates at Michigan State, who was an
extension agent at East Tawas, obtained the assistance
of an extension expert to help in getting the cooperative
established under Michigan laws as a non-profit corpor
ation. There was another classmate in the area who worked
for the Farm Security Administration. This classmate,
Forrest Potter, obtained some financing from his agency
for working capital. Potter told me that this was the
first unsecured loan his agency had made at least in
Michigan. There was no collateral at all, just a group
of farmers we got together who formed an association,
elected a president, and board of directors and did other
legal formalities.
RCL: It was probably very important to the community.
GDF: It was.
There were two settlements in that area where the cooperative
32
was formed. The next step was giving the cooperative a
name. The word "cooperative" didn't usually ring a bell
in that area either. So I happened to be looking at a
map and noticed that the Au Sable River, a famous river
up there in Michigan, had one of the two communities on
one side and one on the other. I thought we would just
name this the Au Sable Forest Products Association instead
of cooperative, which we did.
RCL: Why did you switch from "cooperative?"
GDF: There was a feeling at that time in that area it was
sort of a feeling that a cooperative was something . . .
RCL: Un-American?
GDF: Un-American may be too strong. It was possibly a feeling
that it wasn't private enterprise, individualism, this
type of thing. We got it under way and I think the
charter was for thirty years. It did a lot of good for
local employment and the forest. It worked up to a half
to three-quarters of a million dollars worth of business
annually. I don't know whether that ties directly into
administrative management. We may be getting a little
bit off the main subject except that the association was
an administrative mechanism designed to obtain the major
objectives of the national forest.
Then the war came along soon afterwards . The Au Sable
Forest Products Association was started in 1940. World
War II involved the U.S.A. in 1941. Toward the end of
1942, the Board of Economic Warfare, which had as one of
33
OMB conceived a series of management improvement
projects to be used nationally, whereby they would
go to the departments and bureaus of various depart
ments with a team, study their organization and
management, and come up with substantive recommenda
tions for major improvements. This had been done on
one or more departments of other agencies before they
came to Agriculture. The Forest Service was selected
as one of the Agriculture agencies as well as the
Secretary's office. The team was composed of
Mr. Deckard from OMB, a representative from the
another department, and a Department of Agriculture
person. Originally the approach they had been using
in these studies was to come in and make a completed
study and submit it to the secretary of the department
who then would implement it as he saw fit. However,
in their initial approaches within the Forest Service,
Gordon Fox suggested to Mr. Deckard that a much more
useful product might result if the Forest Service could
work day by day, item by item, with the study team to
help them develop their study report and then jointly
formulate a series of recommendations that we would
submit to the Secretary of Agriculture. This was ac
cepted.
Now this approach of coming up with a joint recommenda
tion, or at least a mutually agreeable product, suggests
-
34
I couldn't get into the regular military because of the
defect in my vision. So I went down there and spent a
couple of years in the Upper Amazon in Peru. The first
stop was in Colombia, as I mentioned, and I also was in
Guatemala for a short period advising on the establishment
of a nursery there for Cinchona. It was interesting. I
had contact with the Mayan Indians in Guatemala. We used
the Inca-Quechua tribe Indians as cargo-bearers in the
Upper Amazon in Peru. I have had crews of Indians starting
with the Chippewas in Northern Michigan, Mayans in
Guatemala, and Quechuas in Peru.
RCL: Mr. Fox, what did you do when you got back from South
America after the war?
GDF: Upon return, I was assigned to the Clark National Forest
with headquarters at Irontown, Missouri, again as assis
tant supervisor of that forest which was a much larger
forest than the Huron. The problems in Missouri were
much different than in the northern Lake States forests
that I had been on previously. They were new areas and
an educational program was needed with the residents
particularly to try to stop incendiary forest fires that
were customary in that area and educate them to protect
the forests and not destroy them.
RCL: Did you run into a lot of problems doing that?
GDF: We ran into several problems. Incidentally, Roy Headley,
as we mentioned before, was interested in different
techniques and he hired a psychologist to work on the
35
problem. On one district, they took the strong-arm
approach and tried to get convictions. Starting forest
fires was a federal offense. In this one district, law
enforcement was therefore the primary consideration in
trying to stop incendiary fires. In an adjacent district,
the educational approach was adopted. Timber sales were
made to the residents, educational films shown in schools,
etc. The program covered the damages from forest fires
and how important it was to stop them and the related
benefits. It was interesting to note that in those two
districts, at the time that I left, there was no dis
cernible difference between the rate of incendiary
forest fires with the two different approaches although
the number of forest fires in both cases had gone down
very considerably. And, of course, has decreased greatly
since that initial period. That was one of the big
hurdles to overcome in starting in a new national forest.
The public relations aspects on a new forest are much
greater.
As another aspect of this, we moved from Irontown, which
is a small town, over to Rolla. I made a study and it
was based on the fact that Rolla was a much larger city.
Irontown was a very small town. Rolla had housing
available for the employees because Fort Leonard Wood
nearby had just gone down as the war ended at that time
in 1945. Housing was available at low cost for rental
or purchase. In the study of a headquarters location I
36
considered Rolla from the standpoint of a consolidated
office for the two Missouri forests, Mark Twain and Clark,
as a logical combination. Rolla was in a central location
and was a logical forest supervisor's office for the
consolidated units. This combination was made a few years
ago and apparently is working out well. I don't know that
there is any reason for spending time discussing other
affairs in Missouri. The big one was the forest fires
and getting established.
RCL: What did you do then in 1945 and 1946?
GDF: I was in Rolla until the end of 1946 and on the 13th of
January 1947, I was transferred to Washington, D.C.
headquarters. I have been here ever since. That's
thirty-one years.
There is an interesting sidelight on the transfer. Charlie
Connaughton who was director of the Southern Forest
Experiment Station was starting some new field stations.
He was looking for "group leaders" and Charlie offered
me a job in one of those positions at Alexandria. Louisiana
I indicated to him that I'd come down and talk with him
about it. I went down to New Orleans. The next day I
went up to Alexandria with the station's business manager
and we worked out the rental of a new office headquarters
with room for expansion of the field station with new
members who were coming aboard. At that time, at the end
of the war period, the unit was in the county courthouse,
37
which was so crowded that they had desks out in the
corridors for their offices. We went across the river
to Pineville and rented a building that day. The next
day we went back to New Orleans and there was a telegram
from Washington, D.C. , informing me that I was not to
transfer to the southern experiment station but to
transfer to the Washington, D.C. headquarters. I've
always kidded Charlie about working for him for three
days! I transferred to Washington with the Division of
Operation. The budget bureau had written a letter to
the Forest Service stating that the appropriations seemed
to be growing way out of line with the volume of business,
out of proportion to the benefits and they wanted an
answer to that letter.
I want to digress just a moment on that because what had
happened was that during the period when we had all the
labor from the various emergency programs there was
plenty of help on the national forests to do all the
reforestation and fight forest fires, build roads, etc.
During the war these programs, of course, had been dis
continued. Since the regular Forest Service appropria
tions had not built up proportionally to total workload
increases during that period, there was a gap which the
Forest Service was trying to fill with increases from
the regular funding source. So on paper, it looked to
the budget bureau as though the Forest Service was out
of line. So I had the job of answering that letter which
.
38
required considerable study. In fact, the position they
put me in first was as assistant chief of operations in
Region 9 in Milwaukee and detailed to Washington, D.C.
I think it was planned that I would go to Milwaukee after
completing the budget justification. I completed a report
on that subject and it took a long time because I never
worked on it full time. Shortly after I arrived Dave
Nordwall, who was assistant chief of operations, transferred
to Region 5 as chief of operations. This meant that I
had to try to fill in as alternate chief of operations to
Bill Kramer, chief of operations, primarily handling the
& M activities, including budget allocations, which limited
the time available on this other project.
Some of the things that were analyzed for the report to
the Bureau of the Budget, such as the size of the average
fire, which showed a sudden increase when all CCC camps
were discontinued, supported a need for additional
financing. The same situation prevailed for reforesta
tion activities. There was a substantial gap. I mention
this here because possibly the same situation may face
the Forest Service in the future if the large human
resource programs, which now provide a substantial labor
supply on the national forests, are discontinued.
RCL: Sure. This was your first purely administrative job,
wasn't it?
GDF : In Washington, yes. I had made an initial contribution
on this report requested by the budget bureau on a trip
39
which I made to Washington, D.C. about six months or a
year before. I had been offered a job by the Foreign
Agricultural Administration, handling its administrative
support activities in the Washington office. In other
words, this agency had charge of the USDA assistance in
the foreign countries. After talking with them, I didn't
want to leave the Forest Service so I turned it down.
After I was in the Forest Service office for a couple of
days, they asked me to reply to the budget bureau Request
which had recently been received. I drafted a reply to
the budget bureau about our approach with certain justi
fications and this might have been a factor when the
Washington office Forest Service officials heard that I
was going to transfer to New Orleans and they wanted me
on the other job.
RCL: You'd already done some work on it.
GDF: I'd done a day's work on it, I'll put it that way. That's
the way many of these things happen. Happenstance.
Anyway, I was transferred here, filled the position of
alternate chief of operations and then chief of operations.
Later I proposed a change in the name of the unit to the
Division of Administrative Management to eliminate many
details such as administrative services and space problems,
which took time away from the main objectives. We figured
we could set up a separate unit for administrative services
but keep the responsibilities for administrative management
tied in with one unit, dedicated for that purpose. I was
40
'
there as chief of the Division of Administrative Management
until after some studies, and the workload buildup, we
put in associate deputy chiefs. I was given the position
of associate deputy chief for administration which is
where I ended up .
Towards the end of that period there were several times
that I made short trips to developing countries in Latin
America on various forestry activities. I had been in
terested in and had kept contacts in Latin America in
the forestry sector. In early 1968 I received a recom
mendation to assist the Interamerican Development Bank
in its development of their forestry programs. They had
nothing in that sector to that date. The reimbursable
detail to the Interamerican Development Bank (IDE) was
to write a forest load policy document and start its
implementation. The various trips included heading an
AID mission to Honduras to advise on a control program on
the Southern Pine Beetle, Dendroctonous frontalis,
epidemic in that country. I took trips to Colombia,
Guatemala, Honduras, and Ecuador for the Interamerican
Development Bank. I spent a month in El Salvador for
AID writing a long-range forestry program which coincided
in time with the so-called Soccer, War between El Salvador
and Honduras. You probably heard of that war?
RCL: Yes.
GDF: Which incidentally wasn't the cause. The soccer game
fiasco helped to trigger the war but the major reason was
41
the high population density in El Salvador, which is
reflected in the way its forests have been cutover and
burned. The colonists cleared the slopes with a "cut-
and-burn," shifting agriculture to obtain the few hectares
needed to grow the corn and beans in their subsistence
economy. They were going over to Honduras which was less
heavily populated. Honduras was sending them back on
the basis that it needed all of the jobs for its own
citizens. The El Salvadoreans, particularly the large
land owners, didn't like having them sent back as they
.
would have to make land available, and there were other
factors involved. So this was one of the major reasons
for that conflict . It demonstrates also what happens
to the forests and the relationship to the total economy.
There were other minor assignments in those countries
also.
I was in El Salvador once to work out a program for
management of the mangroves. You know that the mangroves
grow at the water's edge in the estuaries of tropical
countries. So I had been . . .
RCL: Did you find any use for the mangrove?
GDF : There is plenty of use for them. There are two principal
uses. One is they had used the bark of those trees for
a tannin extract. Mainly however, the wood is used for
poles and posts and also for timber in species that grow
to a larger size. Care is needed in harvesting opera
tions since the mangroves grow in a very delicate ecosystem.
42
They grow in the estuaries where there is a mixture of
salt water and fresh water. They gradually grow farther
into the water and build up the soil that way. Shrimp
start their life cycle in the mangroves and then they
go out to sea and they are netted there. Shrimp are
economically much more important then the wood products
from the mangroves. We had to work out a system to
avoid any cutting during the wet season of the year,
which was when the shrimp were developing in the man-
groves. Then during the dry period, when the shrimp
had gone out into the ocean, mangrove harvesting under
certain practices could proceed.
I was at the Interamerican Development Bank for about
nine months in 1968 and 1969. Then I returned to the
Forest Service again, planning on retirement at age 62
and getting back into the international field. I re
tired on March 1, 1971 and went into the consulting field.
I have worked in about fourteen different countries, the
majority of them in Latin America, except for the last
couple of jobs. One of them was for a year as a consultant
.
to the National Farmers Union, Green Thumb, Incorporated,
which is a grantee for about sixty-five million dollars
from the Department of Labor. Most of the consultancies
have been international. From November 1977 to March 1978
I was with the U. S. Forest Service as a consultant to
analyze the workload and staffing in the Washington office.
43
The taping to this time covers the steps in my career
probably in more detail than necessary.
There has been some time contributed to other projects.
An example, as chairman of task force on land and building
for the Society of American Foresters, I assisted in
organizing the Renewable Natural Resources Foundation.
The RNRF and the SAF headquarters at Wild Acres, formerly
the Grosvenor estate, was obtained for that purpose.
There was need for a common umbrella organization composed
of all the natural resource professional societies located
in a common center where they could work together in the
natural resources conservation field. Most of the prob
lems today don't come in one discipline. They are
multi-disciplinary. Here was an opportunity to bring
all of these renewable natural resource organizations
together in one unit and in one location and under this
foundation which we incorporated in the District of
Columbia. The combination follows the principle which
was developed during World War II on "operations research."
It brought together in one team all the skills including
statisticians required to solve administrative problems.
RCL: Okay. There were some studies that were done during
your career that we will get into more. I would like to
go back to other people in management in the Forest
Service. You talked a bit about Roy Headley. I think
maybe we should go into a little bit more about Earl
Loveridge. Do you know anything about his education?
44
GDF : I don't recall his education but I do know that he was
supervisor of a forest down near Santa Fe--I think it
was the Santa Fe Forest. They may have changed some of
'
the names and area since he left. Incidentally, when he
passed away, his will provided for cremation and spreading
his ashes over that forest from an airplane. Earl
Loveridge was always energetic and productive. He would
be down at that office a lot of mornings, I'd say at
four o'clock. He wanted to get things moving. By the
time the rest of the staff arrived he'd have a few notes
spotted on the floor for different jobs for different
people. He was really the prime mover in the application
of Taylor's theories in "scientific management." Of
course, you know the industrial revolution, the speed
of it, was pretty much based on Taylor's developments in
that field. Instead of guessing at something, he found
the best way and developed the specialists that knew
those jobs. I don't think there is any need to go into
those aspects any further.
'
So Loveridge started the workload measurement system for
the national forests. The title of his basic publication
is "Job Load Analysis and Planning of Executive Work in
*
,
National Forest Administration." He wrote this as a
manual for forest officers. You see at that time he was
assistant chief in the branch of operationsassistant to
Roy Headley in the Forest Service here in Washington.
45
That was before they set up assistant chiefs. Earl told
me, and I think there must be evidence in your records,
that when he applied this methodology to the national
forests there were many changes in numbers and sizes of
ranger districts and forests that previously were largely
established on the basis of size of an area rather than
workload. They were the same acreage, which disregarded
the workload in those individual areas. Some of them, for
example, in desert type of country, you might say that the
principle purpose served by that particular area is to
hold the world together. That is facetious of course, as
there are environmental aspects in all cover types. But
there might not be work in terms of either timber, range,
fires, or other activities which constitute a workload of
a caliber that a ranger or assistants should do. This led
into a definition of "ranger caliber" work and described
what an employee, a fire guard for example, would do such
as checking fire caches. Work measured then formed the
basis for manning that particular unit and assuring there
was enough to justify a staff.
RCL: Why do you think the Forest Service was so advanced in
management studies?
GDF: It keeps coming back to individuals. I think it goes
back to the climate within the Forest Service, from the
time of Gifford Pinchot , as one factor. Pinchot hired
a management consultant in setting up the national forest
46
system which provided for decentralized operations.
Secondly, the type of individuals the Forest Service had
like Roy Headley, Loveridge and Keplinger. Their selec
tion and development could have been by chance in an
organization that was relatively new and growing rapidly.
It was therefore more receptive to change. Don Clark
contributed a lot in this field. Don was very practical
in taking leadership, particularly in workload measure
ment, after Earl got up to the stage where he was assistant
chief. Bill Kramer, chief of operation, wasn't involved
personally in detail and in developing these studies. He
attended the meetings to be sure that everything was
heading in the right direction but left the doing of the
job to others. But we had a good man there in Don Clark.
And from the field, I brought Ray Connaro in. Ray con
tributed quite a bit to the program from the South. Ray
passed away about a year ago. We could name many others
such as Marvin Smith, Walter Graves, Ed Schultz, Dave
Nordwall, and Ralph Fields.
RCL: What was Connaro ' s input?
GDF: I brought him in to work on regional, forest, and ranger
district job load analyses. He had been assistant chief
of operation in Region 8, at Atlanta, so he had had the
field experience.
RCL: Explain to me the workload analysis.
GDF: Let me discuss it in two or three aspects.
RCL : Okay .
47
GDF: One was what you might call the "tailor-made" analysis,
right there locally at a ranger district level, in which
the ranger who knew the district worked out a local
analysis with the forest supervisor and someone from the
regional office. They would go through all the jobs on
the district that the ranger and staff had to do and dis
cuss various jobs. They would ask, "What are you trying
to do here?" What is your objective in these activities?"
Today they call it "management by objectives" but
setting the target was always the first step. What do
you have to do to attain the objective? You analyzed all
the jobs that needed to be done and how to go about
getting them done. Standards were set for the job and
a unit time allowance for doing them to that standard.
There is also a volume of business, which is the number
of times the various jobs are done. In other words, if
you are going to make a timber sale of this size, how
much does it cost you per sale? How many sales of that
size are projected? What's the total cost? The time
allowances were later converted to dollars to find out
costs, but the initial effort was in determining manpower
needs. What are the numbers of people it is going to
take? Then there is classification of those jobs into
caliber of work and organizational level assignments.
You can'i, for example, analyze the workload at the
forest supervisor's level until a determination is first
48
made of what jobs are going to be done at the regional
office level and what will be delegated. The forest
supervisor in turn, needs to know what the delegations
are from the regional office and what, in turn, are
delegated to the ranger district level. The regional
office level, for example, retains responsibility for
policy and delegates the doing level of jobs to the forests
If you've got similar situations the delegations need to
be the same. Then you have a correlation and fund
allotments were made on the basis of the workloads. If
funds were adequate for only about 80 percent of the
workload, then each region or forest got that same per
centage of funding for the fixed base workloads and there
were changes made where there were volume of business
changes. For example, if greater volume of timber was
to be sold on a forest, the timber sales project fund
would recognize the increase. If you don't know what
the delegations are, you don't know what the job is at
the different levels. It's been generally found that you
get a better job done if you delegate work, and hold that
forest officer responsible for the results. If one is
going to send a request for approval, the person who
approves it is taking the responsibility. There is a
human tendency to do a better job if one is going to have
to live with his own decision rather than accept the
decision of a superior officer.
RCL: It's not correctable.
49
GDF : That's right. Many aspects are involved, so you have
to know what the total job is and how you are going to do
it and the work analysis for the year for non-recurrent
and recurrent work.
The recurrent job is the most important factor generally,
as you first develop these workload analyses. There may
be some changes. You may have more fires one year than you
have the next. You know that and some of the other jobs
may vary, but generally it is the repetitive work which
will be recurrent. It needs periodic adjustment but not
annually. It is a fixed workload within a district that
is a factor in fixing the size of the district.
Let's consider other aspects of it. The field level jobs
are getting more multi-disciplinary. It's reaching a
point where with increased workloads you need the expertise
of somebody that knows wildlife management right out there
on the district and another one who knows range, and another
who has timber expertise, recreation, etc. We've reached
a point where more experts are staffed at these lower
levels. You want the job done at that ground level to
reflect the expertness of the higher level guidance of the
different disciplines. If you don't have some specialists
who are knowledgeable right on the ground, then you lose
the value of the expertise of the upper levels. You
don't have the communication and you don't have the train
ing and the competence at that ground level to get the
50
job done where it has to be done. So there was the task
of expanding these districts in size to increase the
workload more than previously and justify manning with
greater expertise in different disciplines that are in
terrelated. That's one aspect of it.
The size of forests came into it from that standpoint
too, so that they could justify full-time staff specialists
to help plan and inspect the activities in their fields.
It was a gradual evolution as the workloads grew and
adjustments in unit sizes were made to justify the dif
ferent specialists for the different activities or
disciplines that are related. It's always a part of the
package that gets a multiple-use job done.
We talked about the workload analyses as they were pre
pared out there on the district with the ranger. Now to
correlate the workload analyses was another step, in
which you are looking at it for the purpose of comparing
the workload analysis was used as a basis for an alloca
tion of funds to the regional office level, the national
forest supervisor level, and down to the ranger level, for
the types of jobs we are talking about. This requires
obtaining similar data with the same correlating factors
applied the same way for each unit . For that purpose
correlating factors have to be broader than when you are
only preparing analysis for an individual unit and using
it only on that unit. It's a relative thing between these
51
different organizational units. For example, the
correlating factor for preparing time allowances per
unit for the information and education sector was based
on the population factor and correlated in that manner
.
to insure uniform and reasonable time allowance.
RCL: The units could be of all different sizes.
GDF: Yes, of different sizes. Now, remember that situation
that we discussed previously. I don't know, if it was
when we talked about the differences in unit costs.
That wasn ' t taped, so we'll use a simple example. You
can mark a thousand board feet of timber in less time
for a timber sale in the Northwest, with the large trees
out there, than is the case with the smaller trees in
the South. One needs to mark more trees to get the same
volume and this requires a higher unit time allowance per
MBM marked for sale. In those situations the unit time
allowance for the MBM uniform correlating factor is higher
in the South. It is the unit time factor that is zoned
on a nationwide basis to provide uniform allowances to
timber types with approximately the same size classes and
other conditions. However, the MBM is the correlating
factor that was used in all zones. You are talking about
a thousand board feet of timber and it costs more for
timber sales in the South than it does in the Northwest
with the larger timber.
RCL: I see. So stands would not be ...
.
52
GDF: Uniform. The timber stands vary by timber types, sizes
and other factors, such as how long it takes you to mark
the timber, the supervision of the sale and all the
other breakdowns in the many different jobs. The unit
costs are determined for similar zones. The difference
between this correlated analysis and the "tailor-made"
analysis is that the correlated one is an average and
does not apply to an individual sale on a specific ranger
district. This cost may be somewhat higher or lower than
the average .
Another example is in the public relations field. You
know that contacts will need to be made with the public
for the different groups, different users and different
interests in the forest. It includes writing articles
'
for publication and newspapers, giving talks, and other
relations with the general public. There appears to be
a greater need for public involvement now than in the
past. In fact it is required by legislation. However,
public relations has always been important. I can
remember what Lyle Watts, in Region 9 and later chief of
the Forest Service, said to me one time. We were talking
.
about Region 9 where several new national forests were
being established and others were expanding to new areas.
Lyle stated. "You know the most important job here in
Region 9, at this stage, is the public relations job ."
Even the people that know something about the national
forests, the timber, recreation, fish and wildlife and
53
range resources, and the need for protection and develop
ment have to be kept informed on those activities along
with other items. To insure that a fair and reasonable
allowance was made for the public relations activity it
was correlated on the population factor. The staff time
allowance for this activity also was a deterrent to going
"overboard" on an activity of this nature. Experience
was a factor in determining that allowance. This item is
used as an example for an activity where it would be
difficult to establish precise time allowance. The volume
of business factor used was the number of people in the
particular area.
RCL: I see.
GDF: There is another aspect in what was called the allotment
base. It was divided into two parts. One was what we
called the "base." Periodically you revised that base.
These were jobs which were repetitive from year to year
and didn't change appreciably, but over a period of
years, they needed revision. There were other types of
jobs that we called "project" such as timber sales. They
were jobs for which the volume of business varied from
year to year depending on markets, financing received,
and on priorities of regional and forest allocations.
That part of the workload analysis was changed each year
to adjust for the volume of business allocations. At
one time we kept within the base a certain volume. This
stablized a fixed volume you were going to cut every year
54
regardless. Then above that the remainder was allocated
annually depending on market changes, state of the economy
and other reasons. Many of the foregoing were details of
operation. I 4n ' t know how much you want to get into
detail .
RCL: I don't think we wan,t to go too far. We need a certain
amount of it to understand the nature of what we are
talking abput T I want to ask about transportation. There
always seemed to be a large section in all these analyses
on transportation.
GDF : Yes .
RCL: I can see how that would really be an airea that would
take the greatest amount of management and planning. Can
you tell me how that factor evolved?
GDF: I think we mentioned progressive travel. That gets into
work planning. This is a factor in work plans. Travel
on a district is a big time faptop and needs to be sum
marized by progressive travel. The best way is not to
go out to an area today and out there again tomorrow,
but insofar as possible to get all the jobs done as you
go along. This doesn't apply to a project job such as
marking timber on a sale which would take many man-days.
To develop the travel time allowance one goes over the
location of the routine activities such as inspection of
special uses right there with the ranger. By this method
you see where he has to go and how much time he is going
to be on the job and then he's got a certain number of
55
miles and it will take him a certain number of hours for
travel. The travel time is then expressed as a percent of
the work time and added to give the total time allowances.
They are by districts and in the "correlated allotment
base" an average travel factor is used. For a big area
with twice as much travel but the same volume of work, you
would have twice as much travel time as a factor in pre
paring a tailor-made workload analysis for that district .
RCL: The measurement then is a mile?
GDF: Yes, that's right. You are factoring that back into time.
RCL: It seems like what you would call "common sense."
GDF: Well, it is but you would still be surprised sometimes, if
you don't do some good planning it just doesn't happen.
You think of the many different jobs . . . even say around
the house. Here, I'll draw out a little sketch of some
little things I want to get done and when I want to get
them done. On my list, I've got a call to make this
afternoon after you leave. When you have all the multi
tudinous jobs, you've got to prepare a careful plan for
the district with all these different tasks, the employees
who are going to do them and when to insure accomplishment,
It is work planning. You've got to get that correlated
for the unit .
RCL: And perhaps have common sense. Maybe sense isn't common.
You need some sort of empirical evidence to make an
analysis otherwise such activity has to enter the realm
of chance.
'
56
GDF: You minimize some of these things, Additionally I've
seen this if you do work plans for a month ahead and the
ranger and his assistant do it together, so that they are
together pn what is going to get done, it becomes a con
tract to get those jobs done. You know in the course of
that month something is going to come up and it is going
to change something in the plan. In fact, if they made
that plan and it came out exactly the way it was planned,
you might begin to wonder whether they really recognized
what really needed to be dpne and whether the work plan
controls the maker rather than being a means to help him.
A 100 percent compliance for the ranger and his assistant's
plan for a month might remind you of the fellow who was
an excellent marksman he shot first and drew the target
around where the bullet hit! In simple terms, one
determines the objectives, the jobs needed to reach them,
the best way to do those tasks, what time will be re
quired, and then insures that everybody understands and
does their best to achieve the objective. You can call
the process management by objectives in today's language.
RCL: The basic assumption is, I guess, that it would give
maximum output .
GDF: Give you the maximum output and the highest quality.
Quality is an important part because you've got the
established standards to follow.
RCL: I'd like to talk now about the PWIs Public Works Inven
tories. This is something I have . .
57
GDF: Yes. I think its basis was long-range planning and
deals with long-range development needs for non-recurrent
projects such as reforestation, roads, recreation areas,
etc. , to bring the national forests to a high production
level in multiple-use resource management. It also in
cluded state and private forest lands. This is the non
recurrent work we are talking about here, not the day-
to-day recurrent jobs. The PWI was an outgrowth of the
emergency programs of the 1930s. We wanted to be ready
for any new programs and insure that the labor was used
on the priority projects that contibuted the most to
protection and development needs. Secondly, forestry
is a long-term development job and long-range planning
is essential. Reforestation and silvicultural improve
ment are examples of activities with long-deferred returns
In the PWI all of those development and protection tasks
were compiled by national forests in units of work and
unit costs. Also we needed priorities for those jobs
a coordinated long-range approach. At the time I started
in the Forest Service we had nothing of that nature just
a year-by-year estimate for budget purposes.
RCL: No plan.
GDF: No plan. We had to make those. That was one of the first
jobs I got into. Where are you going to go and what are
you going to do? Look over the reconnaissance of some
of those areas and see what silvicultural, timber stand
improvement work should be done, and get that crew working.
58
We first started out with some clean-up along the road
side, and fire breaks and that type of thing. It was one
way to keep them busy.
RCL: Each day you would decide what you were going to do.
GDF: Not quite on a day-to-day basis but there was no inventory
from which to select priorities, It was something ob
vious . . . you know, "Let's go down there and do that
job." So we began a systematic way of getting that data
together. This gave a sounder basis for appropriations
and other purposes in volume of work, of productive work,
that was needed on those forest areas. That helped us
in many ways during the different programs, particularly
in the depression. It helped us also, as I mentioned to
you, during the accelerated Public Works Program of 1962
and 1963, during what you might call a "recession" rather
than "depression."
RCL: Yes. Is that what they called it?
GDF: Yes. We had the data ready from the PWIs, We knew where
the jobs were and the number that could be employed in
the rural areas on forestry jobs and do productive work.
There were various facets to that program, such as build
ings and other construction activities in the cities as
well as in rural areas. Roads and all the varied public
works were involved in the program. Many of the agencies,
of course, did their best to get in on the program and
receive fund allocations from the accelerated public works
59
appropriation. This included federal, state, and
municipal organizational units all competing for funds.
I handled the program for Secretary Freeman in USDA and
worked with John Baker, assistant secretary of agriculture,
whose agencies included the Forest Service, Soil Conser
vation Service, FHA, and other agencies. The PWI was
of tremendous help and we were ready to start on a week's
notice with almost any potential funding.
RCL: They had this information from the PWIs which was a sort
of workload analysis.
GDF: Yes. It was the Public Works Inventory that supplied
the information.
RCL: To provide you with an estimate of what might be the
norm.
GDF: You knew exactly, at least you had a good estimate. If
you didn't have exact figures it was close enough for the
purpose, such as what acreage needed this kind of treat
ment; where they were located; and what the unit cost
would be for doing those jobs. When funds were allocated,
areas with the greatest unemployment obtained the highest
allocation of funds. The PWI was, I think, a development
within the Forest Service which put us ahead of some
other agencies at that time, including the Department of
the Interior, by having our data readily available and
ready to start work. We could start the next week and
stop the following week. It isn't like building a big
building somewhere that you can't quit in the middle of.
60
With most of the Forest Service projects we could start
promptly and quit promptly gear the work to the availa
bility of funds.
FCL: So having the PWIs available really paid off for the
Forest Service.
GDF: Yes. It helped considerably having that available, plus
the fact that we could mention the productivity of our
projects in returns to the federal government, such as
future timber harvests from planting trees, etc. It
isn't dollars thrown down the drain to keep people busy,
or as they used to say in WPA, "Just raking leaves."
The PWI has served a very useful purpose, In building
the PWI we developed the projects in more detail for
shorter range projects such as priorities in the next
three to five years. For the longer-range periods the
data were more general. To get too detailed on those
longer-range projects would become somewhat of an in
tellectual exercise as conditions, could change in the
interim period. The data were accurate enough for the
purpose .
RCL: . I'd like to know about the development of the Operations
Research team, the OR team.
GDF: What happened was that operations research was developed
during the war. The navy used it for example, to de
termine what the losses would be in convoys with different
numbers of cruisers for protection. It was mostly con
fined, I believe, to military operations at that time.
61
After the war was over, they had a lecture series on
operations research at Johns Hopkins University. I
attended it with Earl Loveridge. He was interested in
it also .
Incidentally, Loveridge never had an automobile of his
own, so I drove him over there. He had figured the costs
in unit costs and so forth, and decided that he'd be
better off and farther ahead to rent when he wanted a
car rather than own a car. He could be right. But he
was that kind of an individual.
A nyway I drove over there and we attended that conference
and the more I thought about operations research, the
more the word "research" rang a bell. I thought we've
got all kinds of research going here in the timber
business, range, fire, and everything else. But we have
nothing going in this administrative field so why not
start it at an experiment station. We've got just exactly
the same responsiblities for research in administration
as research in other activities. Then why shouldn't we
have research in our administrative research units? For
other types of research, we have experimental areas. We've
got all kinds of experimental areas where different tests
of different kinds of species and different types of
cutting, , etc . were made. We could have a national forest,
maybe one in the East and one in the West, and they would
be the experimental forests for operations research and
administration research. Gordon Gray was in the Washington
62
office, Division of Operations at Denver. He and I
designated a national forest in Region 2 and selected
Chet Shields for the staff specialist for administration
on the forest. Gordon Gray, incidentally, was an excellent
specialist in our field and made considerable contributions
to the projects.
RCL: That was a very innovative idea.
GDF : Some of the groups that have been set up in some organiza
tions in the last ten or fifteen years are a part of that
picture. Organization and management, or organization
and methods as it's usually called, contains some of the
elements but not to the extent as in Operations Research.
The Operations Research started out saying that no single
discipline can carry out a project of this kind. You need
to get all different kinds of experts in on it. In the
Forest Service we had people like myself who were foresters
and had been exposed to some of the administrative manage
ment techniques but you had to get some, top people in this
area, and statisticians are important in this field of
operations research. You get into different specialties
but the professionals in management would compose the
nucleus of the Operations Research group. You would
draw on other individuals with different skills for
specific projects and then you'd have a working group
and there is a stimulus and a catalytic effect from ex
perts from different fields getting together and the
effect it has on each other. Most problems or opportunities
63
involve different disciplines. This is important. It
was part of the thinking on getting a group of this type
together.
As stated previously, it was patterned after what the
armed forces had done during the war, where they brought
all the different specialties together that could have
any influence on a solution. If we have these different
shipments cross the ocean and there are this number of
cruisers for protection and the losses are that number of
cargo ships, based on experience records, then one has to
determine statistically a justifiable ratio. If the ratio
is less or more, then it can't be justified and you need
to be able to justify the logistics end of it. It takes
a lot of skill to work out something like that. This
type of approach apparently was the basis for Operations
Research. Some of the things they would tell us about
in the Johns Hopkins classes were applications such as
knowing when crops in a certain area were ready for
harvest and the migratory labor needed in numbers and
in timing for that purpose. You have to determine when
you need to bring labor into the area and how many you
are going to need, and if the season is just a little bit
delayed what is going to happen, and all the different
elements. I had hoped that the Operations Research pro
ject would be justified before the appropriations com
mittee, in the same manner as other research projects.
64
We had a study under way at that time so I applied this
to different areas. Like most projects of this nature,
the results depend on the capacity of the people working
on it. We were fortunate in the selection of employees
for the Operations Research team and they have justified
the project many times and proven its worth. It didn't
go just as I had visualized it in all aspects, but we
got the project under way and that's the important point.
When I was back with the Forest Service a few months ago
as a consultant, I was interested in looking over some
of the different projects assigned to the OR group. I
don't know if I would change that any because after all,
I'm out of date on it. But they can get too many two-
bit jobs assigned. They should always be working on
something really important that deserves the high-level
support of that group. But somebody is presumably setting
the priority and is anxious to get this kind of a job
done quickly and they say, "Let's give it to them." You
run into that, but that is only one aspect of it. The
use of one national forest as an experimental forest
apparently didn't work out too well. But there is a
need for testing and debugging administrative changes
before application on a wide scale and this has always
been done and will continue. One needs to try the ad
ministration change and select some location to test it
before putting it into operation on a service-wide basis.
That's what the only purpose is. You test it.
65
In my judgment the Operations Research Unit established
at the Southwest Experiment Station has made important
contributions to Forest Service administration.
'.
RCL: Does any other part of the government bureaucracy use any
thing like that program of operational research?
GDF: I don't know. I am far out of date now with what the others
are doing. From my experience with a couple of different
departments on some recent jobs, since I retired, I feel
that it is not being used to the extent it should be, I'll
put it that way.
Some of these techniques are in the management field includ
ing 'esprit de corps which is the most important management
consideration. I recall that Orville Freeman, when he was
secretary of agriculture, used to refer to the Forest Service
as the "Marine Corps" of the department. But I believe there
was a higher level of 'esprit de corps,' then than there is
at the present time. I don't mean to infer that the Forest
Service is not a productive organization. Overall it is
still a very effective organization and has considerably
more pressures than during the era we are discussing.
There are a lot of different administrative aspects here
that I don't know whether we've touched on. We mentioned
management by objectives. There is also what is called
"work simplification" and "work improvement suggestions."
Basically we were trying to find the best way of doing the job.
RCL : Yes .
GDF: And simplifying it to the point where one didn't have any
unnecessary steps in the procedures. They have tacked
new names, over the years, on some of these. It's history
66
repeating itself. They talk about the zero-based budget.
We went through that once.
RCL: Would you please tell me about the Deckard Study?
GDF: Yes. During the 1964 to 1966 period, the Bureau of the
Budget was making joint reviews of management practices
and manpower utilization in government agencies, at
the request of the department secretaries. One of these
reviews had been completed in USDA by the joint team of
three members from the Budget Bureau, one from the Civil
Service Commission, and one each from the office of the
secretary and the agency being studied.
The rumor came to me that a high official in the department
had stated that he wanted to see if the Forest Service
management really justified its excellent reputation
and that he was recommending a review of the Forest
Service by the Bureau of the Budget team. It was approved.
The team consisted of Ed Deckard, BOB team leader; Sydney
Freeman, BOB management unit; Ron Landis , BOB budget
examiner (including Forest Service budgets); a CAC repre
sentative (I've forgotten his name); Joe Loftus, secretary's
office. Chief Ed Cliff appointed me as the Forest Service
representative on the team. It was an in-depth study
including trips to various field units. It ran for
several months. The discussions on recommendations covered
all aspects of Forest Service programs. The review gave
an excellent opportunity to introduce proposals from the
Forest Service and obtain the support of the review team
67
for them. Examples of Forest Service proposals were
closing the Central States Experiment Station and the
Region 7 regional office, and establishment of two new
State and Private Forestry regional offices Upper Darby,
Pennsylvania and Atlanta, Georgia.
The consolidations and the establishment of the two new
State and Private Forestry regional offices in the East
provided an opportunity to save some S&PF financing that
was then reallotted for providing administrative manage
ment specialists to work with the state forestry organiza
tions in advising them in this field. Over the years,
the Forest Service had employed specialists to advise
state forestry personnel in the S&PF program area, such
as fire control and technical assistance to woodlot owners.
During that period the state forester organizations had
expanded and there was a definite need to assist them in
the administration field. In fact, in my judgment, there
was a greater need to increase the efficiency of the
state forestry units than in some technical fields. The
expansion of the state forestry organizations, for example,
resulted in their employment of forest fire specialists,
but they were weak in the administrative management field.
The Budget Bureau review of management practices thus
provided an excellent opportunity to extend Forest Service
assistance in increasing management efficiency of the
state organizational units who were allotted federal funds
through the Forest Service for forestry purposes.
68
As a sidelight, it was rumored that the department
official who recommended the study had thought that the
finding would result in cost savings in reduced appro
priations. I still recall the reaction to Ed Cliff's
presentation when increased funding was proposed for
activities such as road construction!
Secretary Freeman wrote to President Johnson telling him
that our -Operations Research group was brought in for
implementation of the results. The reply from President
Johnson to Secretary Freeman and the secretary's ac
colade to the Forest Service speak for themselves.
(See appendix)
Presumably, the team report (called the Deckard Report)
is available to the historians.
RCL: This ends the intervew with Gordon Fox on June 15, 1978.
We will continue tomorrow.
RCL: I think I would like to start today by going back to
personnel involved in Forest Service management technology
There is one person who we haven't covered and his name
doesn't show up too often in the records. That is
Henry Farquhar . Can you tell me what you remember about
him?
GDF: Henry Farquhar, I believe had a forestry background
originally. He had been working in the administrative
management field and was employed by Chief Forester
Silcox to look at the Forest Service organization as a
I
69
whole, but primarily, I believe, he concentrated on the
Washington office. I say this because of the material
that I've seen and from discussions with him. I remember
that the Forest Service had recently been reorganized.
The increased workload, as a result of the Civilian
Conservation Corps and some of these other programs during
1933 to 1940 period, was such that a study became necessary.
It might be that Silcox took an important step in this
reorganization procedure. He was chief under the New Deal,
at a time in which many of the new programs and pressures
were developing increased workload and increased political
pressure to fill the jobs that were created and particu
larly some of the top jobs. This was a pressure that the
Forest Service had not been under before. The Forest
Service at that time was not organized at the top level,
in terms of assistant chiefs, and in delegations to effi
ciently handle the greatly increased and fast moving
programs. In other words, the chief didn't have the
kind of a staff that was needed under the circumstances,
and under that kind of a workload that was hitting him
all at once to get that job done adequately.
RCL: So it was a period of centralized management rather than
decentralize^.
GDF: In the Washington office the big burden fell on the
chief rather than being shared by assistants for the
different programs to spread that workload. So prior to
Farquhar, I think shortly before he became a consultant,
-
70
there was an increase in the number of assistant chiefs,
and Loveridge became one of those for administration, and
Granger was in charge of the national forests. They had
an assistant chief for research and timber. An assistant
chief for State and Private Forestry was the last addition
It was the first time that State and Private Forestry
was recognized with that program stature. The assistant
chiefs were the chief's staff, to give him support on a
staff basis across the board and reduce his workload.
Farquhar came in to study that organization. He had some
voice in the regional set up , but the real study was on
how it was working and what changes needed to be made.
In other words, his work was to perfect the organization.
RCL: Yes.
GDF: My personal opinion is that Farquhar tried to do the
study a little too much alone. He may not have consulted
adequately with members such as Earl Loveridge and
Bill Kramer and some of the others. They weren't always
together on proposals. I recall that Farquhar had a
proposal in which each one of three branches state and
private, research, and national forests would have their
own administrative setup. In other words, they were to
be independent. Loveridge mentioned to me one time that
this was not good organization from his point of view,
and, I think in this case, I will agree with Loveridge.
Loveridge said, "Well, now look, if you go over to the
department, or you go to the appropriation hearings, you
71
would have three units from the Forest Service going
independently to the offices of Personnel, Budget and
Fiscal Management, etc., in the Department of Agriculture,
Budget Bureau, or on the Hill. This will tend to pull
apart the Forest Service organization instead of keeping
it as a coordinated grouping for greater effectiveness.
We need to be sure that we do have that tie-in."
Since my interest was public administration, I would
drop in and talk with Farquhar occasionally during that
1938 to 1939 period that I was in Washington. I recall
just before I left, Silcox had, I believe it was a stroke
it was a heart problem anyway. When I said good-bye to
Farquhar he said to me, "What will happen to all the
work that I have done here, all the organizational
analyses that I have prepared for the Forest Service, if
Silcox should pass away?" When I reached Atlanta on
leaving Washington, a week later, I got the news from
our Forest Service office there that Silcox had died.
I think Farquhar had that situation pretty well sized-up,
because to my knowledge, not much ever did come out of
his studies in the organization and management of the
Forest Service.
RCL: So, his only support really was from Silcox.
GDF: His major support apparently was from Silcox. I'm not sure
what occurred after Silcox 's death. You would have to
obtain that from other sources. Bill Kramer would be
able to fill in the gaps. I went from Washington, D.C.
72
to the position of assistant supervisor at East Tawas ,
Michigan, on the Huron National Forest. I had one or
two letters from Farquhar but then I have lost track of
whatever did happen to him subsequently.
RCL: Did he leave the Forest Service?
GDF: Oh, yes. He was a consultant there at the time.
RCL: Were there, because of the way he was handling it,
animosities with, let's say, Loveridge or any others?
GDF: Well, I think this much--that there was not agreement
on what should be done let's put it that way.
RCL: Do you think it was because of the lack of communication?
GDF: I think part of it was lack of communication, and I think
part because there were definite ideas that were not
reconcilable .
RCL: So it was based on differences on how to approach the
problem.
GDF: That's probably right, or how to solve it and improve
management .
RCL: Now, I'd like to jump to a whole new subject . . . that
will be the use of manuals and files within the Forest
Service, particularly as they reflect changes in develop
ments of management technology.
GDF: The manual and handbook system is one that has grown from
a time when they first had what was called a Use Book.
It was a small handbook. I notice at the present time the
Forest Service has about a twenty-foot shelf of handbooks
and manuals. I was informed in my recent study for the
i
73
Forest Service, that I completed March 1978, that about
4,000 pages were written in the previous year for the
manuals and handbooks. That includes new material which
was required and stimulated by the new laws and regulations
that have been passed and also by revisions to keep the
handbooks and manuals current. At the time that we began
to look closer at what was going into those manuals and
handbooks we had what was called the "four-foot shelf
books" which have now grown to twenty.
The main reason for the manual was that, operating in a
decentralized organization, our field employees need to
know what the policy of the Forest Service is on all the
different activities and different areas they were work
ing in. Basic procedures were established to avoid
plowing the same ground time and time again. You had
those subjects outlined in the "how to do." The hand
books gradually evolved as the area in which the "how
to do" would be placed. The policy and other broader
phases were also in the manual. As they grew in size and
as they were written in different program units, the
result was a big variation in the amount of detail. To
a specialist his activities were most important and he
often tended to write too much detail to be sure that
everything would be the way he would like to have it in
the field. The detail varied by individuals and would
permit greater decentralization in some cases. This would
leave more latitude to the field man's judgment. There
74
was a major job in getting reasonable uniformity in how
far you went in detailing specific procedures and instruc
tions for the jobs and the different activities. The
Forest Service developed, to a large extent under the
saying that "The situation dictates the action."
At that stage, we had a consulting firm, McKenzie and
Company, come in and make a study. We called it the
"paperwork study" because it involved instructions in
manuals and handbooks and their coordination with the
regular correspondence files in communications between the
field and the Washington office. To follow-up on the con
sultant's recommendations and recognizing their importance
in administration of the Forest Service, we brought in
a regional chief of operations, Jim Her, and another
assistant to him, to handle that task. That move gave
high-level direction to coordinate the manuals and hand
books, and to work with and train the program specialists
on how to write, what to put in, and what not to put in
the manuals, so that we were not taking all the judgment
away from the field man. We needed to still recognize
that "the situation dictates the action" in the field and
it is poor organization to attempt to spell out every
thing. The more detail written, the less that is truly
delegated. The best approach is to get employees trained
and retain high 'esprit de corps' in the organization.
The employees should know the policies and general pro
cedures. Then they will carry out the programs in a
1
75
manner that is relatively uniform between districts,
forests, and regions.
RCL: So that it is flexible enough that it will allow a situa
tion to govern action.
GDF: Definitely, because you've got to let that employee make
decisions . . . that's what you hired him for. You want
his judgment to be applied locally.
In the same study, McKenzie and Company looked at the
files and the filing system. They changed the filing
system so that it and the manuals and correspondence
use the same system. They were formulated together. That
was the first time it was done but as an organization grows
the way the Forest Service had been growing and is today,
operating procedures that were "good enough" have to
change with current conditions, and with new programs.
They used to say if you haven't looked at your organiza
tion for five years, you better take a look at it because
conditions change and you've got to change with them. I
don't know of any federal organizations whose programs,
over the years have fluctuated to the extent of Forest
Service operations. The Civilian Conservation Corps, WPA,
NRA, forest fire conditions, accelerated Public Work
Program, timber sales and reforestation, and the present
Job Corps, YACC, and CCC programs are examples. The point
is that these rapid changes have always drawn attention to
Forest Service organization and management and this
emphasis has been a factor in developing its capability.
76
RCL: Yes.
GDF : So this has been a factor in the Forest Service. It's
a different organization in many ways than it was ten
years ago or twenty years or back nearly fifty years ago
when I first had contact with it . There is a tendency
sometimes to think of things as they used to be and not
be realistic. You have to meet today's situations, today's
problems, and you've got to make adjustments to do that.
RCL : Yes .
GDF: This is a factor and has been important in administration
of the Forest Service.
RCL: I came across some material that indicated that there was
another "paperwork study" that was being conducted jointly
with several other agencies, and I think McKenzie was
working on this too. Do you know anything about that?
GDF: I don't recall any "paperwork study" except this one for
which I negotiated the contract with McKenzie and Company.
It set a benchmark because, for the first time in many
years, we contracted with consultants to study our organiza
tion. We also found out that, in the use of consultants,
you get the most from a study of this type if you assign
one or two employees from your own shop to work with them.
It works out best for two reasons. You can get the out
side points of view from the company you hire and get
their input into it, but you can also get the local input.
Our people are more likely to talk frankly to someone from
the outside that we put on the study. With this system
1
77
we obtain an "in-house" input as well as an outside view
from the consultants. You will also obtain better
acceptance by your organization because your own people
provided that input and participated in the study.
RCL: Not just a bunch of "outsiders."
GDF: That's right. The question is raised, what do they know
about the Forest Service? But you've received that
important outside, unbiased study. It is a joint study.
Both the "outside" and "inside" points of view are re
flected in joint recommendations. It is, in my judgment,
the best use of consultants.
One of the recommendations was for associate deputy chiefs
to give more assistance at the top level. Specialization
can be developed to a point that there is a lack of
coordination, lack of control over the technical spe
cialists who are looking at limited activities. There is
a tendency to break the activities down into more special
ized components, and the more you do that the harder it
is to get coordination. This has been brought out
previously as an outgrowth of Taylor's system, which you
are probably aware of.
RCL: Yes. The McKenzie study was published as "Gearing the
Organization to the Job Ahead." In the records there are,
I think, four very large folders of comments made during
your administration on "Gearing the Organization to the
Job Ahead." It is quite a thing to go through that.
Scores of comments were made from the field which were
78
pretty thorough. I think everybody must have made some
sort of comment . There were comments in there several
times saying that it would require too large an increase
in personnel.
GDF : Yes .
RCL : Some said it was too theoretical and wasn't grounded in
reality. Others said it would cause animosity between
the suggested divisions and that there was no reason to
do that. The dissension is very interesting, even though
most, say 80 percent of the survey, approved the study.
It is my guess that, as you've said, people were probably
resisting change.
GDF: It's always hard to get change. There is the uncertainty
factor with change and when you are used to doing things
and you know all the routines and habits it is harder to
effect change. When you introduce a change you are in
troducing something that may have an effect upon the
importance of their jobs and their relationships with others
It is always easier in making a change if you can time it
.
as new persons appear in the jobs. You then won't have
to change the habits of incumbents. "We've been doing
it that way for fifteen years." Also, if you put in
another assistant to the top supervisor, you tend to put
a buffer in between that top man and important specialists
in these technical divisions. Change creates problems
which need to be overcome to get the beneficial results.
79
RCL: Were surveys, like that testing the reactions to the
McKenzie study, common? Were they commonly done?
GDF: I would say that they were not commonly done with outside
consultants like the McKenzie and Company group.
There is another factor to consider in hiring a consulting
company. The company may have an excellent reputation
but at the same time few contributions to any study are
made by the company, per se . The results come from the
particular individuals and their competency, that are
put on a particular study by the company. It isn't the
company that is going to do the job, it's the firm's
consultants. You better look at their pedigrees, back
grounds, and training, and require the individuals with
the types of experience and competence in the areas you
want studied, to be assigned by the consulting firm for
your particular contract.
RCL: You want to match the job with the person who is actually
working on the project and see that the project gets
processed expertly.
GDF: That's right. So when we obtained another contract we
specified the assignment of the same two consultants of
the firm who worked on the first one and they didn't have
to start from scratch because in this first study they
had become familiar with Forest Service operations. I
still recall that, at the end of the last study, the
consultant who was heading it for the firm told me (most
80
of their work, of course, had been with private companies),
that the Forest Service was better organized in its admin
istrative practices than any private company he had ever
studied. Most of their consultancies had been with
private companies.
RCL : Do you remember some of the private companies?
GDF: I can remember one. I believe it was one with a railroad
company that he had just completed. It was one of the
railroads that was not running a deficit. He said, "Look
what happened in our last contract with that company.
There is unionization in the company and they put in a
computer system, which we recommended, for some of their
records . . ."I don't remember if it was for their pay
roll operations or something else, but they couldn't lay
anyone off to reduce their organization. So they continued
the work about as it was being done as well as using the
computers. That's quite a while ago and I remember him
mentioning this item. The Forest Service at that stage
was not unionized.
RCL: Did the McKenzie study result in another reorganization?
GDF: It was implemented, I think. You don't get 100 percent,
probably 75 percent . . . somewhere in that neighborhood.
I can remember in State and Private Forestry they re
commended an associate deputy chief. Bill Swingler was the
deputy chief for State and Private Forestry. He didn't
want an associate; he wouldn't have one. There was one
example. Well, today the Forest Service has at least one
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81
associate in each branch. For effective operation there
needs to be an agreement between the deputy and his
associate on who does what and when. It's important to
do that type of planning to agree on how you are going
to work together.
.
RCL: How real was this critical sentiment? The report was
printed in January of 1960. How long does it take to
implement something like this even to only a certain
percentage of completion?
GDF: I don't know. I think you'd say that we started right
away and how far we went, and how fast, I'd have to really
look at closer. I am sure that, 75 percent of
the recommendations were implemented. It takes awhile
but it was started right away. There was no delay on
starts.
RCL: So perhaps it's still being implemented.
GDF: Well, I feel reasonably sure that now there is no one
around who remembers the details of organization in the
early 1960s and who can compare it in detail with the
current functions, because of the changeover of personnel.
That doesn't mean that the proposals don't keep recurring
to an extent, like the one we were talking about that
has again been recommended now with the increased work
load and increased pressures that are causing it. We are
talking history and there's no point in my getting into
some current recommendations such as those made during
my recent consultancy with the Forest Service. That's not
history.
.
82
RCL: It is ...
GDF: But I think that . . .
RCL: What happens this morning is history. Let's not get into
that.
.
GDF : No . That ' s right .
RCL: Yesterday we discussed job load analyses with descriptions
of workloads and other details.
GDF: And decentralization.
RCL: I think we should get into the annual workloads by forests.
Can you describe how that evolved and was practiced?
GDF: The procedure was developed on a national basis and was
pretty much handled in the Washington office. They
supervised the workload measurements and then available
dollars were allotted, based on that workload, on a per
centage basis to the regions and forests for the amount
of timber to be cut, etc., as we had justified the funds
before the appropriations committee. We seldom received
100 percent. We were allotting it proportionate to the
recurrent normal workload by organizational levels. With
only a percentage, say about 75 percent of the total re
current workload, financed, there was programming need
for annual work plans which would assure that one activity
was not financed about 95 percent and another one about
a 45 percent level. With a multiple-use program a
balance was important. A work plan on an annual basis
also took the pressure off a forest supervisor from regional ,
staff members competing to have their activities given
83
higher priority at the forest level. An annual work
plan based on available funds was, in effect, a contract
between the regional forester and the chief of the Forest
Service and between supervisors and their regional
foresters on the program for the year and against which
their accomplishments could be measured in both quantity
and quality production. Work planning has been an impor
tant management tool in planning what's to be done and
the way it's going to be done. It still recognized that
there would be times during a bad fire season that priority
would need to be given to protection. But essentially
that's the way it was developed and applied.
RCL: So essentially it results in Taylor's goal: you will have
a maximum amount of output from what you have put into it.
GDF: That's essentially it.
RCL: You don't have the waste from poor management planning.
GDF: The work that is being done is still being done with the
funds that are available because that is the way it is
planned.
Then there was another factor and this gets into a little
philosophy too. I can recall thirty or forty years ago
we were talking about manning levels and it was said,
"When we reach the stage of workload expansion and fi
nancing to justify and provide the specialized assistance
at the supervisor and ranger level, and you have the
competence there and in the regional of f ices , then we will
no longer require specialized assistance from the Washington
84
office except for new programs that may be given the
Forest Service in which policies have not yet been de
veloped for field application." The thought was that
for the established programs only generalists who have
a knowledge of the programs would be required in the
Washington office. The secretary of agriculture doesn't
have all the specialists in his office, yet he has the
responsibility for the Forest Service. I believe it was
Don Clark who first explained this reasoning to me. As
mentioned under this proposal you would retain employees
at the upper levels, that were experienced and knowledge
able in Forest Service programs. When one considers
the amount of new legislation that has added to and
changed Forest Service programs in the past few years,
one wonders whether the Forest Service will reach the
stability we assumed would be the ultimate situation in
our long-range discussion and proposals for the Washington
headquarters staffing, in our correlated workload analyses
some forty years ago. As stated, there needs to be less
delegation, until such time as new policies are developed
for new program operations and major procedures are
established. There is often a tendency to hang onto
authority at the top levels for fear of mistakes being
made by delegating to lower echelons. There needs to be
recognition that delegation carries with it a right to
make occasional mistakes. So that's a factor.
RCL: One must also give up a bit of his power.
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85
GDF: One must give up his power of decisions but be held
responsible for results.
RCL: What we are talking about is decentralization.
GDF : Yes .
RCL: Can you discuss a bit about the inspection system check?
GDF: The inspection system has had a few changes since I
retired. I think we will talk about it as it was originally
conceived and implemented. As stated previously there is
a definite need for change in organizational practices
and procedures with passage of time.
RCL: Each man is himself an inspector.
GDF: That's right, because this in effect was the philosophy
that you as the man on the ground are going to have to do
the jobs and the men above you still carry the respon
sibility and must be informed how well the activities are
being performed. Reports furnish some information. The
reports can test the quantity of work as reported but
the quality is something else again. That doesn't show
up in a report. It was found out early that there was a
need for an on-the-ground inspection system to be estab
lished along with the substantial delegations to the field,
on the principle that the "situation dictates the action."
We went to two types of inspections. One is the functional
inspection. An example would be for a timber management
staff member from the higher levels checking on quality
and quantity performance of the timber functional activities
86
such as timber sales, reforestation, etc. They are
specialists reviewing their programs at the lower echelons
to which authority has been delegated. The same applies
to functions such as wildlife and recreation, etc. The
fiscal and accounting and other support activities were
included in the functional inspections and audits. The
purpose is to determine how well the jobs are being done.
You didn't sit in an office when you made those inspections,
you went to look at the jobs on the ground. As Loveridge
used to say, "You go see." There is one story about him,
that while riding along he saw something that didn't look
right in one of the telephone lines. He asked the forest
supervisor for a pair of climbers, and he climbed that
telephone pole to look at a Western Union splice to see
if it had been done correctly. The point is that the
inspector reviewed the results at the "ground level" and
dug deep enough to get the facts.
RCL: Yes.
GDF : In addition to the inspector checking for faulty per
formance in relation to the policy and procedures for
that job, he looked for other aspects. One was whether
the policy and procedures should be changed and he received
the advice of the inspectee on that aspect on what should
be changed in the instructions for improvement. This man
on the ground who is doing the job is the one to tell you
about that need and suggest changes. In other words, an
inspection is more than an "investigation," it is a two-way
' '
87
street and was always considered that way. In fact one
of the reasons they called it "review" instead of "inspec
tion," I notice the term has been changed since I retired,
was to get away from an inference that you are just looking
down somebody's neck.
RCL: I see.
GDF: But additionally you want to find out as a collateral
objective how good a job this fellow is doing and also
what he has done that should be passed along to others.
Improvements should be known and used on service-wide
basis and the innovator should be given credit.
You'd include that aspect in the inspection report. Ad
ditionally, with the collateral objectives the inspector
was given a better reception than if he were only trying
to find poor performance in the inspectee's activities.
There is another type of inspection that we called the
"general inspection." In general inspections out of the
Washington office and regional offices, the inspectors
reveiwed all programs and activities including relation
ships between the Research, National Forest, and State
and Private Forestry branches and their relationships in
turn with the state's administration and with, local
activities and interests. It had an oyerall coordinating
objective.
RCL: They took a broader view.
GDF: As stated, the general inspections included the total
88
picture, an acceptance of Forest Service programs and
relationships with the different groups and organizations
together with suggestions. A regular frequency was set
.
for the functional and the general inspections. We found
that with general inspections there was the task of
writing the reports and they were not getting done promptly
after the inspectors returned to their offices. They
became busy on their regular work. To avoid this delay
we finally added an inspector to the deputy chief of admin
istration staff a general inspector, who accompanied the
deputy chiefs or associate deputy chiefs on general
inspections. I made one, for example, to Region 5 and
General Inspector McKennan accompanied me. Part of his
job was supplying a continuity of approach because there
was a tendency for different individuals to vary what
they would check, sometimes based on personal interests,
and it would result in losing uniformity in inspection
procedures and practices. Russ McKennan furnished that
uniformity, plus carried the burden of doing much of the
writing of inspection reports promptly and eliminating
delay. The general inspector also carried a responsibility
for checking on functional and limited functional in
spections to keep them in accord with the best inspection
procedures, as a part of his job. Inspection was and is
a part of the management systems for the Forest Service.
RCL: Part of the .management is actually coming from the field
in that if they have ideas they percolate up to the top.
89
GDF: Yes. That's where you are going to get most of them.
RCL: Then it's true decentralization, isn't it?
GDF: That's decentralization but who knows better than the
forest officer who is out there doing the job? And as
another factor, after a length of time, no matter what
your ability, you've been away from the direct action
level and one tends to lose contact with field operations.
That's only natural. I thought that I was in the Washing
ton office too long. I did have other contacts and
interests in the international field. There is an advantage
in the rotation system of the armed forces which limited
the tenure at the upper levels and required transfers
to the action sectors on a periodical basis.
RCL : Yes .
GDF: For the top jobs. This hadn't been quite so true after
you got up to a certain level in the Forest Service.
They had rotation but the rotation down the line was on
a promotion basis in career ladders. I never recommended
anyone as chief of operation in a region who had not had
a tour in the Washington office for a couple of years at
least, before he assumed the field job. With the Washington
office tour the candidate gets both points of view and
functions more effectively. He knows some of the problems
in the Washington office as well as in the field. It
works both ways.
RCL: It's probably too bad. Washington, D.C. is quite a bit
different from any of the national forests.
90
'
GDF : Yes. But you see, again, at the middle level some of the
incumbents went back out from here as a forest supervisor
like Gordon Gray, that I mentioned previously and Dave
-
Nordwall also, and then they went back up the ladder to
higher jobs. So there is some rotation at middle levels
but it is not a consistent practice. Both the men mentioned
took a salary cut upon leaving the Washington office.
RCL : Yes .
.
GDF: What we are talking about is the top level. If you really
look at the total organization, you find the Forest Service
working closely together as a unit. It's one organization
and if that feeling and understanding is lost, the Forest
Service is in trouble.
RCL: Sure. That's how people at the bottom informed you and
the people at the top informed the people at the bottom.
They also trained them through correspondence courses.
Could you tell me about them?
GDF: Yes.
RCL: I think it was Peter Keplinger who started this practice?
GDF: Kep , is the one who had the correspondence courses in
administration. Correspondence courses were widely adopted
by the regions. Kep was a personnel officer, a teacher,
and a disciple of Frederick W. Taylor's theory of
scientific management. In Region 9 I can recall taking
correspondence courses and administrative management was
a part of those courses. I recall that in these courses
you had the documents to look up the answers. You could
i
91
look at a handbook or a manual. It was in the manual
but you found it and wrote the answer down. You learned
to use the manuals by that system.
RCL: So there would be a separate worksheet for each manual,
is that the way it worked?
GDF: I think the ones I took were "across-the-board."
RCL: So it required some research.
GDF: You learned to know where to look. I often used to say
that I was not worried about a "four-foot-section of
manuals and handbooks" if you have a good index system
that everyone can use and turn to the page that has the
answer to the questions immediately. Secondly, they
don't have to read through maybe twenty pages to get the
one paragraph or so that they are really looking for.
That it's indexed, and written that way is the important
consideration.
RCL: That's right. How or why did the individual in the field
take a correspondence course?
GDF: It was training, as stated, to become familar with the
manuals and to be informed on "key" Forest Service policies
and practices. Keplinger, I believe, started the courses
in the West. They gave the courses in the wintertime, and
at that time in many locations forest officers weren't
too busy. Everything was pretty well snowed in until the
spring break so they had time to study the manuals and to
take the courses.
92
RCL: I guess I was asking if there was an incentive for taking
these? Do they help the student to get advances?
GDF : I think this is a factor; how much of a factor, I don't
know. But it's fact that if one didn't send the answers,
he was in trouble. How much weight was given to the
grading, versus other things, I don't know. I know that
a much greater weight was given to actual performance
and achievement .
RCL: Sure. I just asked this because it seems it's always
the natural tendency to not do something like that. Study
ing is always a very painful thing for people to do. Were
these courses popular?
GDF: I don't know that I can answer that or not. On the ones
that I used to work on, I didn't have any particular ob
jection to them. In retrospect I'm glad that I took them.
RCL: And those were discontinued after Keplinger left?
GDF: I don't know the extent they have been used in the last
twenty or thirty years. You know that the regions, as I
mentioned for Region 9, developed their own training
centers. In the earlier days there were more correspon
dence courses. The ones that Kep stressed were mostly
in scientific management. They dealt with management, i.e.,
adminstrative mangement .
RCL: Were those commonly applied?
GDF: Yes, I am sure they were. I recall the ones that I took
in Region 9 and they provided a type of training that our
foresters had not been exposed to previously. We talked
1
93
about the Region 9 training school at Eagle River. With
that big program they had to get people trained better in
administration and I know that many of the courses in
cluding the ones I took were on that important subject.
.
There was little time to lose.
RCL: Can you tell me something about the advisory committees?
GDF: The Forest Service, particularly in the national forests,
is dealing with local people and also dealing with
resources that are not only valuable locally but to
citizens at a distance. The different population sectors
are interested in wildlife, recreation, range, timber, and
the protection values of the national forests. One of
the first advisory committees was in the range sector
with permitees as members. They weren't supposed to make
any decisions, but it did give them a chance to put for
ward their points of view on the range resource and also
for them to get the Forest Service point of view. I
made a count of the advisory committees the Department of
Agriculture had several years ago I expect about fifteen
years ago. The Forest Service, as I recall, had 76 per
cent of all the advisory committees within the Department
of Agriculture. You had advisory committees for State
and Private Forestry and for Research. The majority of
them advised on national forest management . They could
be on a national forest level and have members who were
prominent in the different activities the wildlife,
94
.
timber, recreation, range, and others who were just
interested in the environment or some of the broader
aspects.
RCL: Preservationists?
GDF: Preservationists could be involved but it gave a chance
to bring them together and get their points of view and
also served as an educational process both ways. They
would carry it back to their own groups. It was public
involvement . This is more and more in the picture today
as interest in the forest resources develops and the plans
for the resources are under closer scrutiny by all the
special interest groups.
RCL: Public relations has really been an active part of the
Forest Service activities for a long time.
GDF: It has for a long time and it will continue. There has
been increasing public involvement and today public in
volvement is written into legislation. The RARE II Project
is a current example. This present study is of how many
areas and the acreage for new wilderness areas and what
areas will be managed for multiple use. This is a matter
of very considerable interest to the public and particu
larly to certain organizations. I recall Chief McArdle
one time, showing two packs of cards a small one about
one inch thick that listed all the organizations that
were interested in the national forests about twenty-five
years previously and one about six inches thick with the
current special resource interest groups. That last list
95
has continued to grow. From what I hear lately there
seems to be a tremendous amount of planning with public
involvement that is taking considerable time away from
the "doing" job in the field.
RCL: Yes. I know one example that is taking years, and that
is the Mineral King area in the Sierra.
GDF: Yes. And there is a bill pending now, I believe, to turn
it over to the National Park Service.
RCL: Using Mineral King as an example I am not asking for a
specific answer would there be an advisory committee for
that group?
GDF: I think there must have been an advisory group in that
general area. I don't know whether it was specifically
for Mineral King or not. It is probable that they had a
National Forest Advisory Committee and I think it is very
likely that some meetings involved Mineral King.
RCL: Yes, because it seems the sides involved in the dispute
are so diverse and so widespread that it would be impossible
to have a committee. Before Mineral King became a large
issue, it would have been much easier to deal with but
now that area has become sort of a rallying point for
both sides.
GDF: Now consider the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern
Minnesota. There's another one that's been a controversial
subject for years and years and made your Journal of Forest
History the one that I got a few days ago. [April 1978]
.
96
There is an article on the history of the various conflicts
between different interests the local interests, the
interests of people who are not local and there are many
points of view. All of them can't be satisfied.
RCL: The Forest Service should have calluses by now when you
can go all the way back to the conflict between John Muir
and Gifford Pinchot over the Hetch Hetchy. That's really
kind of the birth of the Forest Service; they were born
in controversy.
GDF : Of course, the old saying is, "If you get hit on all
sides of your head, you stand up straighter." I've always
taken the position that if the Forest Service ever reached
the point where there weren't these controversies, the
Forest Service would have lost its reason for existence.
If you don't have those differences of opinion and at the
same time if you ever make a decision and you satisfy, say
the Sierra Club, or the timber industry, 100 percent, you
better take a look at your decision because you are going
to be on a middle course if you are doing a good job. If
that type of controversy doesn't come up again then you
don't need the Forest Service.
RCL: The Forest Service is really managers.
GDF: Right.
RCL: I think that about covers what I had in mind for the
interview. Is there anything else you would like to add?
GDF: The point that came up early on and that's on research and
its proper place in the Forest Service. At one time,
97
research was under the regional forester and it was
really a part of operations and decentralized. There
was a feeling, and some reason for it, of course, that
administration would get a bad fire season and pull out
a lot of people from research into fighting fires and
research would be neglected. It just didn't get con
tinuity and coordination, so it was set up as a separate
branch of the Forest Service, reporting to an assistant
chief who in turn reported to the chief of the Forest
Service. They would have annual meetings between ad
ministration and research and talk over the problems and
what should be researched and administration would get
the input from research and find out where they stood
and they would all collaborate in setting up research
programs. There was coordination but research was not
directly under the other branches after that change.
In research, apparently, in the early days before it
became a separate branch, if a forester wasn't getting
along well in an administrative position on the national
forests, he would be transferred to research. That kind
of a system didn't place the best research employees
into the research units. So that was a change. Earle
Clapp was the head of the Washington Office Research
Organization who really built research. He headed it
up and I remember reading a letter he wrote when he left
research for another position under the chief. He pointed
out that it had to be watched closely so that nothing
happened to research.
98
RCL: Sure, he became fond of it.
GDF: That's right.
RCL: Now research is one of the main functions of the Forest
Service.
GDF: That's right. They built up because, for one reason
they've had more support. They are not in a controversial
area. They are assisting industry, recreation, and all
the other resource users. They are researching all these
different fields so they are not as vulnerable, you might
say, as certain other national forest activities that are
controversial in support from opposing interest groups.
A build-up in programs needs congressional support and
that depends upon local interest in programs to a great
extent .
In the management field, as the research branch has grown,
there has been increased analysis given to the composition
of the research projects. This has occurred with the
increase in research programs and as the trend was more
to basic research as the "cream was skimmed" off from
applied research. There was further realization of a need
for combinations of research specialists on the projects.
It should not be overlooked that research leadership was
astute and aggressive in promoting projects.
We always used to say that good administrative management
in research consisted of assigning the best man available
to a project, and providing him with the tools needed to
99
do the job, and the encouragement and incentive to find
i
the answers .
Also encouraged were the contacts between the researcher
and the user to help ensure application of the results.
After doing some checking I found that in USDA, one agency
which did not have a research unit had a staff unit whose
mission was to act as a "go-between" with the research
and the operating organization in technology transfers
and research needs.
This separate unit had not functioned effectively and we
decided to leave the contacts between the researcher and
the user as the best practice.
One other comment on research administration should be
included. For many years research was dependent upon
regional office personnel for all support activities.
Finally, the experiment stations reached a size where
they could justify specialist personnel for those activi
ties. There was also a greater need for administrative
management practices. We went to the stations and
analyzed the workload and staffed the units accordingly.
I don't recall the date, but it was when V. L. Hooper was
in charge of research and he was interested in the change
over and wanted assurance that the experiment station
management assistant directors could be given the same
status at meetings, etc., as the chiefs of operations.
The foregoing addition, in my judgment, substantially
strengthened research management.
100
RCL: Everybody views research as being progressive.
GDF: Yes, they aren't subject to a lot of problems such as
.
controversies on the national forests. It gives them a
continuity and gets the job done.
RCL: Well, I guess that's it then. I'd just like to thank
you very much for your participation. You've been very
helpful and hospitable.
GDF: I have enjoyed it and I will be looking forward to getting
a copy of this transcript.
There are other administrative adjustments which facili
tated management that could be discussed. As an example,
involving accounting, at one time we had a limitation on
the cost of individual buildings which was causing pro
blems, particularly in inflation years. Working with the
committee staff members , this limitation was removed. Our
fiscal contact unit had been requiring that the Knutson-
Vandenberg (CKV) funds that were received from the timber
purchasers each sale, for improvement of the cutover
area, must be used on the specific area of that sale or
returned to the timber receipts fund. With thousands
of small sales, a substantial accounting job was involved.
Working with a GAO official, we obtained a ruling that
the estimates made in advance of the sale were an ade
quate basis for a project and if the actual cost was
somewhat higher or lower than the estimate, it could be
paid from a joint KV account. This decision eliminated
a lot of unnecessary accounting at all levels and facilitate
'
101
better timber management. Additionally, the fiscal
control unit had ruled that KV funds could not be used
for any purpose other than "on-the-ground" timber stand
improvement such as felling snags, reforestation and
thinning for stand improvement. The size of the timber
sale program had increased in certain isolated areas
and shelter for the KV crews was essential, especially
in large long-term sales. Regular P&M construction funds
had not been adequate for the total construction job.
We finally obtained a ruling from the USDA General Counsel
that the KV funds could be used for expenditures that
were necessary in carrying out the purposes and intent
of the KV Act. We also had an overall study of accounting
by a consulting firm to up-date procedures. An objective
of the study was to bring into closer alignment the
fiscal accounts with production data so as to provide unit
cost data.
There are other examples that could be listed but the
foregoing illustrates management changes that are made to
improve program performance.
I wish to close this administrative management interview
with the following statement.
The Forest Service owes much of its reputation for ad
ministrative efficiency to the fact that almost since
inception it has been located in the Department of
Agriculture. In my judgment it would have been a "run-
of-the-mill" organization if national forests had
102
remained in the Department of the Interior or even if
that renamed department were to be a Department of
Conservation as recently proposed. For one reason, the
location in a scientific department such as Agriculture
with its emphasis on growing crops and trees are a
crop has kept it in close contact with professional
disciplines as in research, extension, soil conservation,
and others which are related to the Forest Service
mission. Secondly, and this is important, the Forest
Service has been free from political appointments to the
higher level positions and this cannot be said of re
source and other organizational units in USDI . It has
meant that Forest Service employees look forward to career
ladders within the organization based on this performance,
and further, that the tools for evaluating productivity
were available.
The result has been that "espirt de corps" has been high
and that, in my opinion, is the most important element
in an organization. It has been said that the best or
ganization won't work if the employees don't want it to
and that the poorest one will if the employees want it
to. There is a lot of truth in that axiom. There will
always be attempts to transfer the Forest Service else
where in the federal structure it would be a prize to
any department. And if it were transferred there would
be attempts to return it to Agriculture with a much
better rational than for other locations.
i
103
After having been a consultant for several international
and bilateral technical and financial assistance insti
tutions, in over a dozen developing countries, on organization
and management of their renewable natural resources, I am
convinced that forest management in all its multiple-
use values belongs in Agriculture with the charter for
rural development. Forestry and agriculture have almost
a symbiotic relationship in land use, watershed
protection, employment and income sources in planning
and operations in rural areas.
WALTER LEONARD GRAVES June 29, 1978
Ronald C. Larson: Mr. Graves, I would like to start the
interview by asking about your background. We can
treat your subject biographically for a while until
we get to this specific topic which is management
technology. So starting at the beginning, where were
you born and when?
Walter Leonard Graves: I was born in Chicago, Illinois, on
April 27, 1911. We moved away from Chicago quite early
in my life, and my first remembrance is of a small
town in Michigan called St. Helen where I started
grammar school in a one-room schoolhouse. I lived there
until shortly before World War I when we moved to
Kalamazoo, Michigan. After the war, we moved back to
St. Helen where my father ran a little grocery store
for several years, and then we moved to Iowa to
Oskaloosa where I again entered grammar school. After
Oskaloosa we moved seventy-five or a hundred miles
from Oskaloosa to a little town called Wyman, and I
finished elementary school there and also high school.
Upon graduation from high school, in 1929, I entered
college at Ames which is now called Iowa State University
and four years later, in 1933, graduated from Iowa State
with a B. S. degree in lumber marketing.
2
RCL: What made you decide to go into that field?
WLG: I decided on that when I was in junior high school
primarily because I loved the outdoors, and the type
,
of work that a forest ranger did appealed to me greatly.
I didn't change my decision throughout my junior and
senior years in high school, and entered directly into
the College of Forestry at Ames. The reason I majored
in lumber marketing was that I had decided I would like
to go to South America and work for United Fruit. How
ever by the time I graduated, United Fruit was not
hiring any more foresters due to the Depression. I
graduated in June, 1933, and that was right during the
height of the Depression. The CCC camps had just
started at that time and I left for Santa Fe, New
Mexico, the day I graduated from Ames. As a matter
of fact, there were only two of us left in the forestry
graduating class at Ames to receive our diplomas and
to attend the graduation ceremonies. The rest were
already out on jobs with the CCC program. The other
fellow was a Russian who left at the same time I did
for a job out of Tucson, Arizona. At that time we had
our choice of about any place in the United States we
might want to go.
RCL: Do you know his name?
WLG: Nick Ponomerov [possible spelling]. There is quite a
story connected with him. When he entered Ames, he
could speak practically no English. He came directly
from Russia, and they finally found someone on campus
who spoke enough Russian so that he could make his
desires known that he wanted to enroll in the School
of Forestry. He did and his first year at Ames his
sleeping room was the landing between the first and
second floors in the Botany Building. He slept there
at night and did janitorial work in that building.
He lived on stale bread which he could buy at the bakery
for I think it was one or two cents a loaf at that time,
and he'd go down to the college dairy and get butter
milk for a penny a cup. And he pretty much lived on that
during his first year.
RCL: On buttermilk?
WLG: On buttermilk and stale bread. But anyhow just briefly
to continue with him, he finally, because of some dif
ferences of opinion with some of the higher ups in the
Forest Service, resigned from the Forest Service after
he had been in Arizona a few years, went back to school
and got his master's degree and doctor's degree in
forestry or related fields, and then went into the
nursery business in Tucson by starting a nursery in his
backyard. I saw him I guess it was in 1949 or 1950 and
he had the largest nursery in Tucson and was well on his
way to becoming a very rich man. So it was fortunate
for him, I would say, that he did resign from the Forest
Service .
4
RCL: Dedicated person, yes.
WLG: He was quite an individual.
RCL: What was your first assignment in Santa Fe?
WLG: I was a foreman in one of the CC camps. They were hiring
a lot of foresters at that time because they were doing
mostly conservation and erosion control work and timber-
stand improvement work. I was with the CC in 1933 in
a tent camp out of Santa Fe at what is known as Hyde
Park. Then in the fall of 1933 they built two camps
in Santa Fe , one for the Park Service and one for the
Forest Service, side by side, and moved us into that.
About the first of September, 1933 I was assigned to
mark timber for the ranger at Pecos, New Mexico and was
stationed at an elevation of about 11,000 feet up in
the cork bark fir belt. My job was to mark mine props
until snow drove me out in the fall.
During that time the announcement came out about the
Civil Service examinations for junior foresters and,
because I was up there, I got my mail late and I missed
getting, my application in by the deadline. So I went
back to the CC camp that fall. The following year I
had an opportunity to take the examination and along
with 90 percent of those who took it that year, I
flunked the exam.
RCL: Why was that?
WLG: I don't know but I assume because of the difficulty of
5
the exam. Anyway 90 percent of those who took it
flunked it, so the Civil Service lowered the passing
grade five points. I had only missed it by a fraction
of a point and that put me, with a number of others,
over the passing grade and in the middle of the summer
of 1935 I received a temporary appointment on the Pecos
Ranger District, just out of Santa Fe. A year later, I
received my permanent appointment and stayed at Pecos
until 1939.
At that time the Pecos was a rather large ranger dis
trict that had been two ranger districts. When one of
the rangers resigned and went into private business
they consolidated the two districts and I was the
assistant ranger until I got my permanent appointment,
and then instead of dividing the districts, they
divided the work. The senior ranger that was there
took over the range management and fire control and I
took over the timber and recreation. At that time those
were really just the four main activities on the district
I was there until March of 1939 when I was transferred
to another district on the Santa Fe as district ranger.
That was at Coyote, New Mexico, and I was there from
1939 to 1944. In March of 1944 I was moved to Arizona
on the Coconino National Forest at Camp Verde, Arizona.
There we had a summer and winter ranger station. We
had one down in the desert which we occupied in the
winter and then in the summer we moved up on top in
the timber country. This was a very large district
and we had to move twice a year. A year later because
of some differences of opinion I had with my forest
supervisor, I was moved to the Lincoln National Forest
at Capitan, New Mexico, and was there approximately
a year when I was promoted and moved to another ranger
district on the Lincoln National Forest at High Rolls,
New Mexico. I was there about a year or a year and a
half. Then in, let's see, 1948 when I was at High Rolls
I was moved to Albuquerque to the regional office.
Initially when I came to Albuquerque I was on detail
to the Soil Conservation Service for some flood control
studies of the Rio Grande River Basin. I was on that
for about six months and then was moved into the
Division of Range Management in the regional office.
At that time I had thought that my specialty probably
would be range. I was more interested in range than
I was in timber. I wound up being in charge of the
range reseeding program for Region 3 and did some of
the very first reseeding work that was done in the
region. I was in the regional office three years,
from 1948 to 1951.
Then in August, 1951, I was transferred to Taos , New
Mexico, as supervisor of the Carson National Forest.
Of course, this is one of the aims of almost any
forester starting out to become a forest supervisor.
I had always told my wife that if I ever became a
forest supervisor I would like to either go to the
Santa Fe or to Carson National Forest and it turned
out that the Carson was the one that I was sent to.
I was there from 1951 to 1956 and then in June of 1956
I was given the opportunity to transfer to the Wash
ington office in what at that time was the Division of
Operations.
Since I had become a forest supervisor I had become
very interested in the administrative management part
of the Forest Service rather than the resource manage
ment . . . so I jumped at the chance to go even though
it was a horizontal transfer at the time. I knew that
there would be promotions and increases in salary as
time went on. When I went back there, I was told that
probably two years would be the maximum that I would
be in Washington. On the basis of that, we didn't buy
a home there but rented and five years later, we were
still there. We had just about decided to buy a house
when I received word that the chief of operation
position in Region 3 was open. Of course, this is
where I wanted to come and I jumped at the chance. We
came out here in 1961 and remained here until I retired
in 1972. So that pretty well briefly outlines what my
career in the Forest Service came to.
8
RCL : Okay. So, most of your time was really spent in New
Mexico where you live now.
WLG: Yes. I was never in another region except when I was
still in college. I had a summer job in Region 1 in
Montana. Aside from that I spent my entire career here
in Region 3 plus five years in the Washington office.
Also I was never a member of a supervisor's staff.
The normal progression for most Forest Service career
employees was from a ranger position to the supervisor's
office as member of the staff. And then from that
usually into the regional office, although some go from
the supervisor's staff to supervisor. I went from the
ranger district to the regional office and from the
regional office to a supervisor.
RCL: You skipped.
WLG: Skipped just one step there.
RCL: So, in various degrees of formality, you were in manage
ment from the very beginning with the CCC.
WLG: That's right, and particularly once I got into the
ranger district and became a district ranger, because
a district ranger is a generalist. He cannot be a
specialist because he has final responsibility for all
activities on his district and he has working for him
a number specialists in various phases of resources.
RCL: The Forest Service has always promoted foresters to
positions of management rather than bringing in
9
management specialists with a formal degree in manage
ment . I have heard it explained that this works
because everybody in the Forest Service is really
involved in some sort of management; that's what the
Forest Service does.
WLG: Well, I think that is certainly true. I think also
that there was a feeling, back in the early days at
least , that foresters could do anything and everything
in the Forest Service, and since it was a "forest
service" that it should be manned and staffed by
foresters even to the point of doing the engineering
work on road construction and this sort of thing. It
was rather a primitive type of road construction, but
nevertheless the ranger himself or one of his assistants
did much of this. As time went on, the Forest Service
became more specialized and started hiring people who
were really specialists. Also I think that as soon as
a forester became a district ranger he became deeply
involved in the broader phases of administration and
became an administrator through experience rather than
through training.
RCL: Yes. You knew Earl Loveridge personally.
WLG: Yes.
RCL: Can you tell me something about him as a person some
thing about his personality?
WLG: Yes, Loveridge was not an easy man to know and, as a
10
matter of fact, when I knew him I was scared to death
of him. But when I first met Loveridge, I was still an
assistant on a ranger district and to me anybody from
the regional or Washington office was akin to God.
RCL : Yes .
WLG : They were people who were pretty much idolized.
Loveridge, I guess, probably could be considered as
the father of much of the management philosophy in
the Forest Service. Some was good. Some didn't turn
out to be quite so good. I remember one particular
case when I first became an assistant ranger at Pecos.
Loveridge had designed a method of work planning and
accounting for the ranger and his staff which involved
planning work by months broken down into fifteen minute
periods, and then by also accounting for the time the
forest officer spent on these jobs down to fifteen
minute periods. This became an intolerable situation
with the people on the ground trying to record time
down to that brief an interval. It was almost a case
of a clipboard and pencil in one hand and a watch in
the other. Because of the uproar from the field, it
didn't last. As I recall, it was dropped in less than
a year. But, I think that many of the ideas that
Loveridge had were carried on, and there have been many,
many different types of work planning experimented with
and tried in the Forest Service. Some of them worked
11
fairly well, some didn't. It depended to some extent
on the individual who was putting it into effect too.
We went through at least three or four different types
of work planning that I can recall. Everybody agreed
and recognized the fact that, to be efficient, the
ranger should plan his time. The questions was: how
formal should it be? How much detail should there be?
The most successful one that finally evolved was one
that required the ranger to plan his time by priorities
but not try to put time limits on those jobs. There
are certain jobs that had to be done regardless, and
they had to be done at certain times. Other jobs could
be flexible and they could be moved from periods of peak
loads to periods when the work wasn't so heavy and the
workload sort of leveled off for the year. I think that
that one was the most successful really where they
just planned by priorities rather than by trying to say
it would take six hours to do this job and four hours
to do that job, and one hour to do this job, and so on.
And, of course, the time it takes to do a job varies by
an individual anyway.
RCL: Yes, certainly.
WLG: They were interesting theories and some were highly
theoretical. I think the best part about it was that
before any of them were really solidified and put into
effect, there was a lot of feedback from people on the
ground who were responsible for doing this. I think
12
this was one of the strong points. The ranger had an
opportunity to have his input.
RCL: What was he like as a person? He's been described by
Mr. Fox, another interviewee on this project, as being
a very dedicated almost machinelike person.
WLG: He was. He was very brilliant and he was extremely
dedicated to the Forest Service. He was not the warm
type of individual that you instinctively feel close
to, and yet I think he probably supported the people
on the ground when they might have difficulties as well
as anyone.
I had a little experience along that line with Loveridge
while I was supervisor of the Carson. We had a timber
operator who was especially cantankerous and I had lots
of trouble with him. He finally started a political
effort to get me removed from the supervisor's job at
Taos. A retired Forest Service supervisor up there
wrote to Earl Loveridge and protested this and received
a very nice letter from Earl assuring him that they
were not about to remove anyone just because of political
pressure. They would stand by any of their people as
long as they felt they were doing right and he told him
I had been doing right. He would stand behind those
people, no question about it.
I knew his son who was nicknamed "Boots" especially
well. Boots worked for me when he was, I believe,
13
fourteen years old, one summer when I was at Pecos.
His dad sent him out to our ranger district because he
knew the senior ranger, Ranger Johnson, extremely well.
They were very good friends, so he sent Boots out for
the summer and told Boots that he was actually working
for the Forest Service and would be on the payroll.
In actuality, Earl sent the money out to Ranger Johnson,
and Johnson paid Boots each month. But he turned him
over to work for me and I enjoyed it. He was a cocky
little rascal but he was smart and he was willing to
work and we had a lot of fun.
RCL: And he thought he was working for the Forest Service.
WLG: Yes. He thought he was an employee of the Forest Service
at that time.
RCL: Earl Loveridge seems to be a very devoted student of
Frederick Taylor.
WLG: Yes.
RCL: It seems that maybe at the beginning there were problems
in that his application of management sciences was too
strict. Maybe that's because he was basing it upon
Taylor's ideas which were based upon shop practices and
didn't apply so strictly to the Forest Service.
WLG: Yes, could be.
RCL: There were other more subjective factors that would enter
in with the Forest Service. So it was probably just a
matter of time before these things had to evolve.
14
WLG: I think that's right. The Forest Service has always
been willing to try anything. I think that's been one of
their strengths. They have never been completely
satisfied with the status quo, and they were constantly
trying new methods, some of which worked very well.
Some others which we will get into a little later didn't
work quite so well but at least they were tried.
RCL: Yes. It's an experimental field.
WLG: Right.
RCL: Now getting into experiences that you have had in realms
of management technology, one very interesting experiment
was the San Juan Experimental Forest and I know you weren't
involved heavily in that but could you describe what you
remember?
WLG: My memory of the San Juan Experimental Forest is very,
very vague, actually. Ed Schultz, who came to the
Washington office the same time I did, was assigned the
job of carrying through the San Juan study and I got into
it very, very superficially, just around the edges. So,
actually, I am very hazy now as to just what the outcome
of that was. I was not involved deeply enough to really
describe it .
RCL: Okay. Let's go to something that you were deeply involved
in and that would be the McKenzie study. Can you describe
the McKenzie Company and what they did as consultants in
1957 or 1958?
<
15
WLG: Yes. I believe it started in 1957. I am not sure but
I think the decision to have an organizational study was
probably originated by both Gordon Fox and Clare Hendee,
of course, with the approval of the chief and his staff.
RCL: Why is this, do you think?
WLG: Well, I think that there was a feeling that maybe there
was a better way to organize the Forest Service than we
had; that there was a more efficient way of doing
business, or at least we ought to determine if there was
a better way. At first, the thought was that a manage
ment consultant company would be hired or a contract
entered into with them to do the complete study with no
participation by the Forest Service. Then it was decided
that this was not really too good because no management
consulting firm would have all of the insight into the
Forest Service philosophy and history and the way the
Forest Service had operated and developed. So it was
finally decided that the best approach would be to
contract with a company to do this in conjunction with
Forest Service employees who would work right along with
the company from the very beginning in developing the
study plan and carrying the study through and preparing
the report but with a lot of input from the consulting
firm. It was put out for bid, no I guess it was not
actually put out for bid. I think it was a negotiated
contract based on experience and facilities that the
16
various firms had. A number of firms were contacted and
they finally settled on McKenzie & Company. They had
done some previous work for the Forest Service and the
Forest Service knew them in another operation. There
were two members of McKenzie Company that worked on it
constantly. A third member was one of the executives
with the company who came in at intervals.
RCL: You know the names of those people?
WLG : Not anymore . I sure don ' t .
RCL : Okay .
WLG: Then there was Gordon Fox and Clare Hendee and myself.
Joe Pechanec from Research was the other man on the team
since research was going to be covered as well. This
was the group that did most of the work. As I recall,
there was a regional office representative and a forest
supervisor involved in the study also. I'm a little
hazy on that.
RCL: We can look that up anyway.
WLG: To get more of a field participation, as I recall, there
were representatives from the regional offices and the
supervisor's offices. The study plan was developed in
Washington primarily, in conjunction with McKenzie
Company, and then a schedule of field visits was developed
and we started out contacting people at all levels of
the Forest Service. It was an interview type of study
and we got a cross-section of regional office people,
17
forest supervisors and their staff, rangers and Research and
State and Private Forestry employees those being the
three legs of the Forest Service namely State and Private
Forestry, Research and National Forest Administration.
This took several months, just the field portion of the
study, and at intervals during the field portion, the
whole group would get together and discuss what they
found and decide what more was needed, and this sort of
thing, so we didn't go in different directions.
RCL: Could you describe exactly what you were doing in the
field during the research?
WLG: Primarily interviewing people as to what they felt could
be improved in the organization and what they thought
was good and any ideas they might have on what type of
organization would be better than what we had. We were
trying to pinpoint problems that at least had arisen in
people's minds with the idea that once we knew the problem
then maybe we could get a solution for it.
RCL: Yes.
WLG: They were not taped interviews. It was just a matter of
sitting down with the individual and taking notes as
he discussed what he felt the problems were. We had a
cross-section of the whole organization from the ranger
district right through. The final report took several
weeks or months to finally develop, as I recall, and
there were several drafts written which were reviewed by
18
a number of people. As a matter of fact, the first draft
went out to the entire field and we got feedback from all
members of the organization.
This study finally developed several major recommendations,
some of which were put into effect immediately. A lot
were put into effect later on. One of the recommendations,
for example, called for the establishment of deputy
chief positions in the chief's office and that was
implemented rather quickly. They had deputy chiefs and
associate deputies under the deputies.
One recommendation that was put into effect several years
later was that, particularly in the larger regions, we
should consider multiple deputies, the idea being that
there should be not less than three: one deputy for
Administration, one deputy for Resource Management, and
one deputy for State and Private Forestry. The intent
of this was that it would be implemented in the very
largest regions such as Region 5 and Region 6 and
possibly Region 8. This was not too well received by
the field and no attempt was made to pressure the regions
to put it into effect. However, I guess it must have
been in about 1970, the larger regions did go this route,
and in 1972 or 1973 it was decided that all regions
should go in this direction even though some of the
regional foresters objected to it very strenuously.
My own personal feeling is that it was an expense that
could well have been done without. It had interjected
!
19
a layer of organization that was costly, and I didn't
feel, looking at it from the standpoint of a staff man
from the regional office, that it was accomplishing
enough to justify the expense. Now, there was a great
deal of resentment by division chiefs toward this type
of organization because it deprived them of considerable
authority, plus the fact that we all resent and resist
change. There was a very definite lowering of morale
in the Forest Service for quite some time I think prob
ably that has since been pretty well overcome by the
fact that most of us who were in at the time are now
retired, and the younger people are not familiar with
the earlier type of organization so they have no basis
of comparison. They have accepted it pretty well, I
think, but I still feel that maybe the expense could
not be justified.
RCL: Yes.
WLG : I feel objective analysis now would probably pinpoint
this.
RCL: Maybe more time is needed before you can do that too.
WLG: Yes. It would be a difficult thing to measure, and
what are you buying with the money that is spent?
RCL: When the McKenzie study was submitted, and I think it
was given the title "Gearing the Organization for the
Job Ahead," did you have a voice in the recommendations?
WLG: A very minor voice.
20
RCL: Did you dissent at that time?
WLG: I didn't. First of all, I had not been in a position
where I knew how the regional office really functioned.
By the time the recommendations were implemented I was
on the receiving end. Also, I didn't dissent because
at that time I did feel that, in very large regions,
it probably would be a good deal. There was no antici
pation that they would go to every region regardless
of size. For example, in Region 3 before that type of
organization went into effect we had a very small State
and Private organization. We had only two states, one
of which, Arizona, did not have any state forestry
organization whatsoever, the other one, New Mexico, had
a very small one and the State and Private organization
was under the Division of Watershed Management. It's
hard to say whether that's a logical place for it or
not, but anyhow, that's where it was and it consisted,
at first of only one person, and then it got to be two.
Well, when the new organization went into effect and
a deputy for State and Private was established, it just
mushroomed. I couldn't even say how many people are in
the State and Private organization in Region 3 at the
present time. There are many people, and I wouldn't
judge whether they are needed or not since I have been
out of the organization this long. I do know that the
state and private work certainly has grown in the two
states. They have developed their organizations and
'
21
they have grown but when the recommendations were made
the team was thinking more of state and private organiza
tions such as the East where they are very strong. The
state forest service is a very strong organization and
every state has it. Region 8 and Region 9 both have lots
of states and we could see a very definite need there for
something like that, but certainly we didn't visulaize
it in the West. So, really I didn't object to it at the
time.
RCL: You couldn't see all the ramifications.
WLG : No. I had no idea that it was going to go into effect
in all regions. It seemed to be one of those things
that suddenly becomes very popular, and in spite of the
fact that some of the regional foresters thought it
was not the type of organization they wanted, they were
told to have it, and they did.
RCL: That's very interesting. Well, while you were doing
this job you were really functioning as a management
technician in a way.
WLG: That's right.
RCL: Had you had any training in management?
WLG: No formal training, just practical experience, that's
all, plus whatever reading material I could get my hands
on .
RCL: Did you take any of the correspondence courses that
were offered?
22
WLG: No, Not at that time. I don't think I ever took a
correspondence course. I attended a lot of training
courses while I was in Washington and after I came to
Region 3 as chief of operations, but I don't recall any
correspondence courses in management except some of
the resource activities.
RCL: So you really learned through experience.
WLG: That's right. Now, I did take some courses while I
was in Washington through the graduate school there.
RCL: Department of Agriculture?
WLG: Yes, Department of Agriculture Graduate School. They
were management courses and were really very good. I
felt I got a lot of ideas.
RCL: That's a good program to have, really.
WLG : Yes , very good .
RCL: You have had some other practical experience and on-
the-job training with a workload analysis and with a
study of business management in stations which resulted
in a change in station management. Would you explain
that?
WLG: This was made in 1956 and up to that time there had
been no workload study made on the administrative phases
of the research station. There was no formal organiza
tion to handle the business management activities at the
stations. So Gordon Fox and I made the study initially.
I think the first station we went to was Ashley, North
23
Carolina, the Southeastern station and from there we
went to the Southern station at New Orleans. Through
interviews with the members of the research director's
staff and the director himself, we identified the
business management jobs they had to do at the station
level and then arrived at some time requirements to do
those jobs. We got some of the time requirements from
people doing the jobs and some were just based on our
knowledge of how much time it ought to take, and from
this we developed workloads so that we could determine
what kind of staffing they would need. The result of
this study was that a unit of business management was
established at the stations. The man in charge was on
an equal level with the research people who were doing
the various resource and research activities and was
considered a member of the regular staff. Up until
then all they had was what they called administrative
assistants who were Jacks-of-all-trades. They handled
fiscal matters, budgeting, and determined all of the
business management activities in and around the station.
We established the position of "business manager" and
then under him the various staff that he would need to
relieve him of many responsibilities. That has worked
reasonably well, I think. So far as I know, at the
present time they still have this type of an organization
at the stations.
24
RCL: This is probably the first formal creation of an actual
management technology unit.
WLG: I think so. Yes.
RCL: So Loveridge had a certain position and other people
were doing things such as you were in certain positions
but now it has been recognized as a department of the
Forest Service.
WLG: There had been previous workload studies and organization
studies of the ranger districts, national forests, and
regional offices of the Forest Service which were used
to determine the staffing needs in the supervisors'
offices, regional offices, and on the ranger districts.
So the workload analysis was not new, and in the business
management study of the station we used many of the same
techniques as were used in the past. But it was a
completely new organization as far as research was
concerned.
RCL: Personnel rather than physical facilities.
WLG: Right.
RCL: What do you see as the outcome of that in terms of
efficiency, maybe as compared to what you saw as the
outcome of the McKenzie study?
WLG: I think it has been very, very beneficial. First of all,
it allowed a career pattern between Research and National
Forest Administration that had never existed before.
People were moved back and forth and they did not ask a
I
25
man who was trained as a research individual to do the
administrative job since the two are not compatible,
really. The research people did not want to have to
be bothered with details of administrative matters.
That's not what they were trained for. And this, I
think, as a general rule is very well accepted by
research people since it relieved them of all the
responsibilities and worries of the administrative
side of the job. So far as I can tell in talking to
people at the stations after the business organization
was put into effect, it was functioning very well.
.
RCL : It still is, as far as you know.
WLG: As far as I know, it is.
RCL: A very innovative and important study that you had a
good part in was the size of ranger district study.
Could you describe the process in making that study and
the recommendations that resulted?
WLG: I'm not really sure just what finally sparked the idea
that a study was needed as. to the size of ranger districts
and what was needed to determine the optimum size of a
ranger district. But, I know for some time, there had
been a general feeling that the spread in size of
ranger districts was entirely too big and that there
must be some better method of determining size than
; v.->
the hit-or-miss arrangement that was used in the past.
We had ranger districts that employed only one man and
some that had more employees than many of the forest
26
supervisors' offices. The McKenzie study touched on
this problem and I think played a part in the decision
to make the size of ranger district study.
Since I had indicated quite an interest in this type of
thing, I was asked to head up the study. At the time,
I had already been transferred to Region 3 as chief of the
division of operations, but my regional forester agreed
to give me leave-of-absence from my job for whatever
time it took, which we estimated would probably be at
least a year. I was asked to select somebody who I
felt would be of most assistance in making the study
and preferably somebody from a supervisor's office to
give us input from the supervisor ' s level . I asked
for a staff man who had been here in Region 3 and was
presently in California as a deputy supervisor on one
of the forests in northern California. His name was
Ken Norman, and his supervisor agreed to give him a
leave-of-absence in order to make the study, so the
two of us formed the field team and the Management
Sciences staff in Berkeley, headed up by Ernst Valfer,
was brought into the picture also. They directed us
and assisted in developing a study plan for the size
of district study. We worked closely with them in the
development of the study plan, and, of course, through
out the study. The plan was developed in Washington
and before it was put into effect it was reviewed and
27
approved by the chief and his staff, so that there was
complete agreement that this new approach would be
taken. We also selected an advisory committee composed
of two regional foresters and one or two forest super
visors. We felt that we could periodically meet with
this group and discuss what we had found and have them
help direct us. Gordon Fox and Clare Hendee both worked
with us very closely on this as did Chet Shields. How
ever they weren't involved in the field phase of it;
just Ken Norman and I were involved in that. They met
with us at frequent intervals and whenever we met with
our advisory committee.
The study was composed of interviews by Ken Norman and
myself. It seems to me that we selected something like
seventy ranger districts and about ten or twelve national
forests. We also interviewed members of the regional
office staff and people under them. We developed a list
of questions that would point to the problem of the size
of the range district, the type of work the ranger did,
how he and different people felt the organization was
functioning now, and what changes might be needed. After
we developed this list of questions, we went out and
tried it on a forest in California. As a result of that,
several revisions were made and new questions added and
some deleted.
RCL: Which forest was this?
28
WLG: I think it was the Shasta-Trinity . I believe that was
the one we initially tried.
RCL: And you were trying to establish a set form of questions?
WLG: Right. Or at least some parameters on the thing. As
we got into different parts of the country, we would
have different questions which would apply directly to
the type of work they were doing, because the type of
work would vary. For example, on a heavy range district
in Region 4 as compared to a timber district in Region 8
the work was totally different, so we had to gear our
questions . . .
RCL: So it was subject oriented.
WLG: Pretty much, yes. It took about . . . oh, I can't re
member how many months. It took several months just for
the field phase of it. Periodically we would get back
to Berkeley from off our field trips and go over the
material that we had up to that point. Then this was
all put into a computer system at Berkeley the idea
being to see if we could develop some sort of criteria
that would tell us when a district was either too small
or too big. We finally wound up assigning a numerical
value to these districts. Everybody agreed that there
is a point when a ranger district would be too large.
To be ridiculous, we could say if all the districts on
a forest were consolidated it would be too big a district.
Also everybody agreed that there was a point below which
the district was far too small. A one-man district
29
where the ranger was expected to be a specialist
in all the activities that go on in a district just was
not feasible. He couldn't be both a generalist and a
specialist. But those were the problems we were wrestling
with trying to find out what could be measured to
determine this. Now, I don't think we really came up
with anything that was absolutely conclusive, that we
could say, "When it reaches this point, the district is
too small or too large." But we had a gut feeling from
talking with so many people that there was a
spread that would be acceptable and that the one-man
districts should as soon as possible be eliminated. Not
many districts, as they then existed, were too big. As
a matter of fact, as I recall, we did not find any that
we felt were too big at that point in time, but as time
went on they were going to get too big. But then we
thought, well, what is the optimum size? What is the
size that would be most efficient? And, again we could
not come up with anything that was really conclusive.
What we finally developed was a numerical value based
on various things the number of staff the ranger had,
the workload according to various measurements that had
been developed over the years, the types of activities
that he had. These were weighted and given values.
The acreage was a part of it .
RCL: Yes.
'
30
WLG: This did enter into it. We found ranger districts all
the way from one in Region 4 of 750,000 acres down to
districts that had less than 100,000 acres. And we felt
that the district of 750,000 acres, while it had a very
small workload, was probably just physically too large
an area to cover.
RCL: Yes. Was terrain a factor in this too?
WLG: Terrain was a factor as were types of transportation. If
they were strictly by horseback, it was a lot different
than if they had roads. Because of all these various
factors we couldn't really get a concrete handle on the
problem and say, "Now, this is the size," because there
were too many variables. How good it is now, I don't
know. But I do know that a number of districts have
been eliminated through consolidation as a result of
the study. I think that was good. I think we are get
ting more for our money than we did when we had the small,
one-man ranger districts.
Because of the change in the activities that go on in
the ranger districts now as compared to what it was back
in the early days, or the fact that we have special
interest groups that are watching what goes on on every
ranger district now, we need people on the districts
who are specialists in their field men who really know
what they are talking about in recreation management,
watershed management, wildlife management as well as
range and timber. Some of the ranger districts have no
31
timber at all but they all have watersheds and almost
all of them have recreation. Some of them do not have
any range but they have wildlife. So we felt that to
ask one ranger to become a specialist and an expert in
all this was just too much.
RCL: Impossible.
WLG: Yes. So I think it has resulted in more effective use
of the money. There was a strong feeling by some people
in the Forest Service, particularly on range districts,
that the districts should be very small so that the
ranger personally knew all of his permittees, all of his
users, and everything there was to know about his
ranger district. We on the study didn't feel that this
was feasible or that it was practical. But there was a
difference of opinion, particularly between range
management people and others who were on the staffs of the
Washington office and regions. It was an extremely
interesting study and we had lots and lots of feedback
from the people in the field as to how they felt about it-
the rangers themselves. Some were very, very good and
some were pretty shallow. Some of the rangers hadn't
really thought the whole thing through and hadn't
analyzed what they were doing and what their job was,
and those kinds didn't give us too much. Others had done
a lot of thinking and gave us some excellent feedback.
It was, I think, the most interesting study that I have
taken part in.
32
RCL: You mentioned that some of the internal political
problems resulted in more external problems too, didn't
you?
WLG: Yes. As a matter of fact some of the consolidations were
stopped cold, politically. One in particular that in
volved moving only two families in a small district in
Region 9 was stopped by then Vice-President Humphrey,
and it was dropped at that time. Whether it's been
consolidated since then I don't know, but everybody
agreed that it was the most efficient thing to do.
RCL: Yes. Were they afraid of loss of revenue or something?
WLG: Well, it was a small town and the people didn't want to
see any families move out, and they protested to
Humphrey and stopped it .
RCL: What about other internal political problems? I imagine
some people were replaced if things were consolidated.
WLF : Yes. There was a certain amount of resistance, certainly,
to that by a lot of people who didn't want to move.
It didn't result in anybody losing a job or being laid
off or anything like that; it was merely a move into
other positions. But some of them didn't want to move
and they would agitate against it. The ones that were
the easiest to consolidate, of course, were where we had
two rangers headquartered in the same town. This didn't
make sense to us on the study team at all. We could
not see why we would need two rangers and so much
duplication of work. Many times the two rangers occupied
33
the same office building but were wholely separate.
These were the easiest to consolidate and probably
caused the least furor since usually one of the rangers
would be transferred to another ranger district and
the rest of the staff pretty much stayed right in place.
So there was not too much of an impact and the community
was not losing as they were in some others where the
whole group was moved out .
RCL: So the districts' division was rather artificial to begin
with in a lot of ways.
WLG: Yes. Very artificial.
RCL: What was the most difficult consolidation that you can
think of? Maybe that didn't happen right after the
study but did in time. Were there districts that were
to be consolidated where it took a large administrative
change or anything?
WLG: Well, I'm trying to think. The one that comes to mind
as the most difficult was one in this region. It was
two districts on the North Kaibab Forest which is north
of the Grand Canyon. Both districts were headquartered
in the same little town of Fredonia, Arizona, in the
same building, a Forest Service owned building, with one
ranger being on one side and one ranger being on the
other side. Both districts had many of the same main
travel routes to get out to this one great big hunk of
country which was all one contiguous land mass with an
artificial division, and one ranger was responsible for
34
one and one ranger responsible for the other. The same
timber operators cut timber on both ranger districts.
Many of the same grazing permittees grazed livestock on
the districts. I felt as chief of the division of
operation, that there was absolutely no excuse for having
two ranger districts. It was a needless expense that
they could well do without. There were several people
in this region who did not agree with me on this. The
regional forester didn't and we had many discussions on
it but there were not consolidated then. Finally, they
were consolidated in January 1974.
RCL: Okay. When you would give each district numbers
according to different aspects of operation, and it
was quantified through the computers at Berkeley, would
each district end up with a number?
WLG: Yes.
RCL: Like "114" or something like that?
WLG: Yes. I'm a little hazy as to the spread but I think
it was from seven to twelve in other words, seven would
be the smallest desirable district and twelve the largest.
But we pointed out that this was merely an indicator.
If a district measured out as seven, or less than a
seven then that was a district we ought to look at very
carefully to see if it should be consolidated with some
thing else, recognizing that peculiar circumstances exist
on certain districts that might prohibit just mechanical
consolidation.
35
RCL: Yes.
WLG: For example, if you had a five and a two, we did not
say "You've gotta make a seven out of it."
RCL: Yes.
WLG: Or a four and a three, or whatever. But this would
raise a red flag that these are the ones we ought to
look at and we won't be too concerned with those that
are within the parameters, only those that are outside.
RCL: I see.
WLG: Bigger than a twelve or smaller than a seven we better
look at very carefully and see if we should divide or
consolidate them or not. So this is the way it was
used, and each region went through their own districts
and mechanically determined what their numerical value
was. Then the ones that were below and above the limits
were the ones that were studies. I don't think we
found any in our study that were higher so we didn't
have any splits. We did have quite a few consolidations.
RCL: So this gave you a rough idea of the size of workload.
WLG: That's right.
RCL: And then the ones that were . . .
WLG: Workload coupled with land mass were the two main criteria
but also to be considered was the variety of workload.
For example a district with several activities that
were fairly heavy was given more weight than one with
only one or two activities of major consequence.
36
Obviously a district with a heavy workload, in many
activities would require more people and it would be
a larger district even though it might have a smaller
land mass. Land mass was not given as much weight as
workload or the variety of activities.
RCL: The things that would keep the personnel busy.
WLG: Right. A district could have a sizable area that had
nothing going on there, really at least it was such
rough country that there was no grazing, or timber
cutting. There might be a little wildlife, a little
recreation, and a little hunting maybe, but none of the
other activities. That kind of land obviously doesn't
require the attention and the workload. There are
districts, for example, in the South where you can get
to every foot , and that have hundreds and hundreds of
miles of roads as compared to some of the districts in
the West where you have very few roads.
-
RCL: It's rather flat and easily traveled in the South.
WLG: Yes, and as compared to some, for example, which are
wilderness districts with no roads on them. There may
be one or two roads close to the boundary, but none in
side the boundaries. There is one district in the Bob
Marshall Wilderness Area in Region 1 that has a ranger
station right in the heart of the wilderness, and there
is a long pack trip by horseback to get into the ranger
station. The ranger can only function on this district
37
for about five or six months a year. The rest of the
time he is a floater, either helping on other ranger
districts or helping in the supervisor's office, and
has, in effect, only about one-half year's work there.
RCL: How did you select the districts to study?
WLG: They were pretty much selected at random, but it was a
structured randomization, really, because we wanted to
get a spread of districts across the country in dif
ferent geographical locations. We also wanted to have
districts with varying workloads big ones, little ones,
and medium ones. They were selected at random using
workload and geographical locations as criteria in doing
that. In other words, if we got too many districts with
a large workload, we would go back and randomly select
a representative number of small workload districts as
well as geographical location. I'm trying to think
how many districts we had in each region, but my memory
on that is pretty hazy. I believe we hit every region
except Alaska and took a sample within each region. We
did not include Alaska because they were so terrifically
different from anything in the continental United States.
The size of their districts, their activities and every
thing up there is so totally different, we felt they
should not be included. For that reason we just ignored
Region 10.
The number of districts selected in each region varied
depending on the total number of ranger districts within
38
the region. Here in this region, for example, we only
had three or four ranger districts, whereas in Regions 5,
6, and 8 we had ten or twelve. Because we needed to
try and get a handle on the range in size, we had to look
at the real small ones and the real large ones, as well
as the ones which had an average workload and an average
size of land mass. We left it to the staff in Berkeley,
the Management Sciences people to put the material into
the computers and to try to come up with some indices
from that, but we, of course, were in on it. We reviewed
their results and we had a terrific amount of input,
primarily because both of us had been rangers and we
knew what the ranger district job was and the Management
Sciences people did not. They were looking at it purely
from the standpoint of values assigned that could go into
the computer, that could be quantified and identified.
We knew there were a lot of variables and intangibles
which had to be taken into consideration as well. There
was no way you could completely quantify.
RCL: They were doing the abstract and you were doing the real.
WGL: Exactly. Which made a good combination, actually. That
way we didn't get carried away by pure theory, neither
did we get carried away by just the practical aspects of
the job. There was a balancing out which was quite good.
RCL: Before we go on could you briefly describe the Berkeley
unit the Operational Research group, I think they were
called when they began.
39
WGL: Well, when I first knew them they were called Management
Sciences, and their function was to assist administration
in the study of the various management aspects of the
Forest Service regardless of what it may be. They have
gotten very deeply into the budgeting and work planning
aspects, and there have been experiments on forests,
especially in Region 5 where they were close to Berkeley,
setting up some different types of management and budgeting
and staffing on the forests. They have been deeply in
volved in this. The thing is the Management Sciences
group got right into any management study the Washington
office or regional offices proposed. They have people
skilled in the management sciences and a computer expert
who was of great help in telling us what we could get
on to the computer, what we might expect to get out of
it, and this sort of thing. As I understand it, they
are getting somewhat into resources management activities
too and the use of computer in this. I think they are
really a solution to a very definite need. We had only
laymen on our studies before rather than experts in the
management sciences. And, of course, they know where
they can go and they did go to outside groups, UCLA
for one for information and suggestions and advice as
to approaches that could be used on the size of district
study.
RCL: So it is something like the Forest Service's own think
tank.
40
WLG: Yes, very much.
RCL: Very interesting. I think their story is something that
has to be added to this history.
WLG: I would think so because they have been deeply involved
in so many management studies.
RCL: And still are.
WLG : Yes .
RCL: Concurrently with the size of ranger district study
another study was conducted which I think was released
later. This was the size of forest study, which was
based on geographical size as opposed to the size of
ranger district study which was based more on workload.
Could you describe the size of forest study?
WLG: Yes, actually the study was much briefer than the size
of ranger district study. There were not many field
interviews. We tried to approach it from the standpoint
of the amount of staff that a forest supervisor could
handle effectively. The activities that take place on
a national forest, and costs of doing business were
important considerations. Actually, the study really
resulted in little more than consolidations, nothing in
the way of division of forests. No forests were created
as a result .
First of all, to create a forest, or even to do away
with one, requires an act of Congress or executive order.
So in those cases where forests were consolidated, they
still retained their original entity as far as the
41
proclamation setting up those forests was concerned.
In other words, if forests "A" and "B" were consolidated
administratively, they were kept separate on the books
for the payment of monies to the county, based on the
amount of money received for the use of activities like
range management, grazing fees, timber management, and
other activities. Otherwise it could drastically change
the amount of money a county received, depending on.
how much forest land it had in it and the type of revenues
that were received from it. For example, one which
has been in effect for a long, long time is the Shasta-
Trinity. It is still officially on the books as Shasta
Forest and Trinity Forest, ,but they are administered as
one unit. Some have not retained their name as the
Shasta-Trinity did. The Sitgraves Forest, for example,
was eliminated and consolidated with the Apache Forest,
but it is not known as Apache-Sitgraves, it is called
the Apache Forest. But still the proclamation has not
been changed. There has been no act of Congress to change
this and throw it all into one forest.
One of the criteria that was used in the size of forest
study was the number of ranger districts. For example,
a forest with two ranger districts and there are some
really does not have enough to justify two forest
supervisors' offices from the standpoint of supervision,
inspections, etc. that are necessary. The staff that a
supervisor would need to assist him in administering
42
two rangers is not enough to justify a separate organi
zation. As a matter of fact, four is still too small.
On the other hand, twelve, fourteen or sixteen districts,
are so many that a supervisor and his staff cannot
effectively administer it. This was used as one of the
criteria, plus the physical location, the cost of getting
out to the ranger districts, and the cost of doing busi
ness. It was, as I say, a very brief study compared to
the size of ranger district study. First of all, at
that time there were only 124 national forests, but there
were some 800 ranger districts, so sheer physical numbers
and size had a lot to do with the fact that it was a much
briefer study. It did result in consolidation of some
forests, certainly.
RCL: So large savings of money and more efficient operation
were a result .
WLG: As an example, up until the time when the Sitgraves and
Apache were consolidated we had two forest supervisors,
and on the Sitgraves which is the smaller forest, a
relatively small staff compared to the Apache. However,
when they were consolidated, the Apache already had a
deputy supervisor, so they still had one supervisor and
one deputy and the same number of resource staff people
as before the Apache took on the Sitgraves plus the
addition of a few technicians so there was a considerable
savings. Some of the savings was undoubtedly offset by
the additional distance that the supervisor and his staff
43
must now travel to get to those ranger districts that
were on the Sitgraves, but the added cost would certainly
not entirely offset the savings that were made. The
cost of the rental of the building alone was considerable,
as it was a GSA leased building on the Sitgraves and it
was our own building on the Apache. Regardless of
whether we own it or lease it, the cost is there and we
saved the cost of one full office, in addition to the
salaries of a number of staff people. That was the only
consolidation that was made in this region. How many
were made in other regions I don't know. Up until the
time I retired I don't think there had been any, not
even the one here. I can't think of any that I was
aware of in any other region.
RCL: Did the size of ranger district and the size of forest
studies come about as an outgrowth of the McKenzie studies?
WLG: I think they did. Yes, they were an outgrowth of it.
Certainly the McKenzie study gave added emphasis to it.
RCL: So that was part of "Gear ing Up for the Job Ahead."
WLG: Exactly.
RCL: They were done completely by the Forest Service?
.
WLG: Completely in house, yes.
RCL: In 1969 or 1970 a very popular managerial method was
attempted by the Forest Service called "managerial grid."
First explain how that worked, what the managerial grid
was, and then go into how the Forest Service tried to
use it .
44
WLG: Yes, managerial grid was devised primarily, I guess,
by two people who published a book on it. Very brief y,
what the managerial grid amounted to was categorizing
.
managers into specific types. They illustrated this by
a grid which was, as I recall, nine squares across and
nine squares down in other words, 81 squares in total,
beginning 1 through 9 across the top and 1 through 9
down to the bottom. Managers then were categorized.
The four major categories were a 1/1, a 1/9, a 9/1, or
a 9/9. Now a 1/1 manager was one who was a complete
introvert. He didn't have much to say; he neither led
nor pushed really pretty much of a Mr. Milquetoast type
of individual. The 1/9 manager was a combination of
that type and a very aggressive individual at times,
primarily, I guess, because he would get so angry finally
that he would completely flip over and become very
aggressive. The 9/1 manager was the exact opposite of .
the 1/9; the 9/9 manager was the optimal. He was con
siderate of his people, he spoke his mind very clearly
and logically, took advantage of his staff's knowledge,
etc. the ideal type of manager.
The idea behind this was that the manager and his staff
would isolate themselves for several days. As I recall,
it took about five days, eight hours a day, and there
would be no interruptions. No one could leave. There
were no phone calls, no nothing. The group then would
very frankly analyze each individual in the group, the
45
boss and each of the individuals' peers. At times this
got pretty brutal, because it was supposed to be extremely
frank. There was to be no exchange of criticism. In
other words the man who was being analyzed could not be
come defensive and start defending his position. He just
had to sit and listen, the idea being that this would
improve the interaction between the manager and his staff.
I went through this with my regional forester as a member
of his staff, and I went through it then with my own
staff. Before we did this we had a week of training
in managerial grid, at our regional training center. One
of the first requirements, of course, was that we read
the book completely and complete a number of exercises
that went along with it. We went through it at the
training center with supervisors and other members of the
regional office division staffs. Then, after that
training, we went into it with the regional forester.
The result of this, as far as I could determine, was
practically nil. I thought the people who needed it the
most, who didn't use their staff, didn't know how to
delegate, wanted to do everything themselves, really
didn't get anything out of it. It didn't improve them
a bit. Those that already were doing it didn't need
managerial grid and I could see no change except for a
very, very temporary period with our regional forester.
I couldn't see any change between me and my people as a
result of the managerial grid. So at least we tried it,
46
but it didn't particularly answer our needs. We heard
some rather glowing stories of other federal agencies
particularly, and some private organizations who had
used it who felt it had solved their problems, the
Internal Revenue Service being one of the organizations
which had found it very successful. It swept the Forest
Service pretty much. I think every region went into it,
perhaps some more completely than others. I think that
at least some of the Washington office divisions also
used it, but it died very quickly. It was supposed to
be a continuing thing; however, as staff changed, new
people came in who had not been exposed to it and knew
nothing of what was going on, so it was doomed to die. You
would have had to have a complete retraining program every
time you changed personnel. Frankly, I could see no
results from it other than it sold a lot of books because
everyone who took the course had to buy a book.
RCL: It sounds like it was a reflection of what was going on
in the broader culture with encounter groups and sensi
tivity training, which also died.
WLG: We heard some rather horrifying stories in connection
with managerial grid where people went through it and
it was so traumatic it just about ruined them. Our
regional forester went through it with a group of people
from other agencies before he went through it with us,
and he said there were some in there that it just about
47
ruined. They were told so brutally frankly about some
of their shortcomings . . .
RCL: That they were supposed to forgive, right?
WLG: Right, but human nature just does not work that way.
RCL: I saw some of those forms and it seems the numbers you
mentioned were broken down even farther like MBA type
before 1955, MBA type between 1955 and 1965, and MBA
type 1965 to present which was the highest. How did
that work on the grid itself. Would you then be given
a number?
WLG: Yes, we were identified as to whether we were a 1/9
manager, a 9/9 manager, or 9/1 manager.
RCL: Who did this, the other people?
WLG : Yes .
RCL: How did people come out? Did anyone come out a 1/1?
WLG: No, I don't think anyone came out a 1/1. Most of our
people came out a 9/1.
RCL: That 's ( pretty good.
WGL: Yes, not too bad. We had a great variation, particularly
in the area of delegation where some division chiefs,
for example, just didn't delegate to their subordinates
at all. As a matter of fact, I don't know why they had
subordinates because they just couldn ' t function . Others
would delegate almost too much almost to the point of
.
abdication .
RCL: There appear to be a couple of questionable assumptions
behind this: one, that the individuals participating in
48
the session were in a position to evaluate a person's
leadership ability, that is, that they would know good
from bad; and the other thing is that the underlings
would actually give an honest evaluation of those above
them and vice versa. It seems like there would be a
natural tendency to not go too far and aggravate some
body you would be working with the rest of the time.
WLG: I think that's right, particularly not go too far with
the individual you were working under, your boss. There
was not as much reluctance to speak frankly to your peers
as there was to speak to your superior. Of course, your
superior was right there and went through the whole
thing with you, and human nature being what it is, you
just don't say certain things to your superior, so there
was a reluctance. Frankly, I was amazed at the frank
ness with which a number of the people spoke. For
example, our regional forester, and he recognizes this
and admits it, had a real hot temper and it frequently
got the best of him. We pointed this out to him in no
uncertain terms, and he realized it all right and I
think he made an honest effort to try and control that,
but he had a very short fuse and could explode very
quickly, and did quite often.
RCL: Do you think if you had been able to keep up the program
it would have worked in the end?
WLG: I don't think so. I just don't think it answered the
'
49
needs, or if there was a need for something like this.
First of all, what it was really intended for, as I
view it, was to change people who were not delegating
and not using their staff, to get them to use their
staff properly and to delegate properly, and I don't
think you can change people that easily. You can't put
them through a course an,d get them to flop over. If
they are naturally inclined in one direction, I don't
think this will solve their problem. If they are good
delegators and are utilizing their staff fully, then I
don't see the need for this. It was an experiment that
did kind of sweep the country all right, and any way
you look at it, it is an encounter group, which was
popular at that time. There were many, many different
kinds of these, and this was selected by our personnel
people in Washington as the one they thought had the
most promise. I think the people who decided to put it
into effect really thought it would meet the needs of
the Forest Service, but it didn't. There may be some
instances where people felt it was beneficial, but in
this region, as far as my own personal contact with it
and knowledge of it is concerned, it didn't accomplish
anything. Supposedly every few weeks or months we
were to sit down with our superior and again go through
much of this, a follow-up session, determining what
progress had been made, what improvements and so on.
50
We had about two of those and that was it. It died a
natural death.
RCL: Can you think of examples where it was actually harmful?
WLG: Not personally, I can't. I don't think it actually hurt
anybody in the group that I went through it with, but I
did hear stories. Thinking back, there was one member
of our staff who refused to take it, one member of the
regional foresters staff who did not sit in on it , and I
think one reason was that he was the type of individual
who would not delegate to anybody. He felt so strongly
about it that he was not going to go through any kind of
a course that would change his way of operating and the
regional forester agreed he was close to retirement
anyway. He was the only one who didn't go through it.
RCL: It was required of everyone else?
WLG : Yes .
RCL: It could be a very traumatic experience. That was one
of the reasons for encounter groups the idea was to
break somebody down and to rebuild them again.
WLG: It is very difficult to change a person's character that
quickly.
RCL: Under President Nixon the Forest Service faced a challenge
with his request or demand for a consolidation of regions
that would coalesce with the other federal regions. Can
you describe the efforts that were made to meet those
requirements and the results.
51
Yes. First of all, even prior to that, it had been
tentatively planned within the Forest Service to carry
these studies through to a size of region study also,
as the final study in the total organization. It was
abandoned pretty much when the size of forest study
didn't come up with anything very concrete. Anyhow,
before anything could be done along that line, President
Nixon issued an executive order to the effect that all
federal agencies with regional offices and regional
units in their organization would all have land boundaries
that would coincide. There was a certain amount of logic
in this in that it meant that people who were involved
within a region would go to one central place to do all
of their business with federal agencies in that region.
However, one thing that was not considered was the fact
that most federal agencies deal primarily just with
people, therefore, their boundaries were based on
population, whereas land management agencies such as
the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and to a
lesser degree the Park Service, are based on natural
resources rather than people. It was not compatible
for agencies like the Forest Service to force their
regional boundaries to conform to other agencies. As
a matter of fact, if it had taken place it would have
gone to the point where one of the regions would have
had no Forest Service units whatsoever, and in one
-
52
region in the northwest United States where the number
of forests would have been tremendous, there would
have been something like forty or forty-five national
forests in one region.
At any rate, in response to the directive issued by the
president, I was involved in a rather superficial study
as to what we could do to more nearly conform to the
directive and try to get our regions somewhat in line.
There was actually no field study done on this. It
was merely getting together a number of people in the
Washington office and discussing the pros and cons and
the problems that might arise and the alternative pro
posals. We did come up with a couple of proposals
different from the one the president had directed, one
of which was a possible consolidation of Region 2 which
is primarily Colorado and Wyoming with the New Mexico
part of Region 3, grouping Arizona with California.
The idea was that the types of activities that take
place in New Mexico are more nearly compatible with
types of acitivities in Colorado than they would be with
activities in Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, and the
other southern states.
The proposal according to the president's directive
would have been to consolidate at least New Mexico with
Region 8 out of Atlanta, with possibly a suboffice in
Dallas. There was also a consideration given to re
arranging Region 8 so that a few of the states in Region 8
53
would become consolidated with Texas and New Mexico
with headquarters in Dallas. This would probably have
resulted in the elimination of the regional offices in
Ogden, Utah, and Missoula, Montana, as well as Albuquerque,
and the movement of all of the people in those three
cities to some other location.
The impact on a community of moving that many families,
particularly out of a small town such as Missoula and
Ogden, and even Albuquerque, was terrific, and there was
a real political uproar generated as a result of this.
It had gone to the point where the chief of the Forest
Service had made a trip to the regions and talked to the
people in the regional offices who would be affected by
it and explained what was going to take place. People
were actually preparing themselves to move out of
Albuquerque. This I know from firsthand experience.
Many, many of them, knowing that a move was imminent and
not wanting to move to either Atlanta or Dallas, took
transfers to other western regions. The morale in the
regional office here hit an all-time low during this
period. Nobody felt like really doing anything because
they felt they were going to be moved and whatever they
did would have to be undone or redone after the move
took place anyhow.
The senior senator from Montana really was responsible
for stopping the consolidation of the regions by having
included in the appropriations bill for the Forest Service
54
a provision that no Forest Service appropriated funds
could be used for transfer of regional offices from one
location to another. This effectively stopped it. The
secretary of Agriculture then issued a public statement
that the proposed transfer would be canceled. That's
been the end of it. There has been no more talk of it
even under the reorganization proposed by the Carter
administration.
RCL: It seems like a very arbitrary sort of decision.
WLG: Very much. I think the idea behind it probably was
not too bad. You can't argue with the fact that it would
be more convenient for users who deal with a number of
federal agencies to go to one headquarters town rather
than having to go to two or three different ones, which
they have to do now in many instances. But it was
effectively stopped, and the result was that we had any
number of vacancies to fill here in this regional office
because people, thinking a transfer was to be made, had
already moved out. As a matter of fact, many of the
stenographic force had gotten jobs in other agencies in
anticipation of the fact that there would be no office
here. They could not move because their husbands had
jobs here, and they couldn't be transferred, so they
found jobs elsewhere. The region was down to the point
where some. of the divisions in the regional office had
practically no stenographic help whatsoever maybe one
or two people.
55
RCL: Weren't the other federal agencies also involved in
this?
WLG: Not to any great degree because there weren't many
regional offices here, as I recall. I'm trying to think
the Internal Revenue Service has a district office. The
regional office for Fish and Wildlife Service here is a
small one. I guess they would have been involved. The
Bureau of Land Management is not a regional office here;
I can't think of any others.
RCL: If that were to go through, states like Montana, or even
New Mexico, would end up with hardly any representation.
WLG: Yes. For example, if this office had been moved to Atlanta,
you can imagine the difficulties of people here, users
of the national forests in New Mexico, having to go to
Atlanta, Georgia to do business with the regional office.
RCL: Yes, and New York City would probably qualify for its
own regional office.
WLG: As a matter of fact, I think New York State was just
about a region of its own under the proposal and that's
a state in which we have no national forest lands.
RCL: Well, it probably wouldn't have gone through no matter
what happened.
WLG: It was imminent and if the senator had not stopped it,
I suspect it might have gone through in the West, in
spite of the fact that I am sure the congressional
delegation and the states involved would have been very
much against it.
'
56
RCL: This took place then just about the time you were
getting ready to retire.
x
WLG : Yes .
RCL: You retired in what year?
WLG: I retired in 1972 and this thing started in 1971, I think,
It was after I retired that the chief of the Forest
Service came out here and talked to the people in the
regional office. I went down to the meeting and sat
in because I had just recently retired. At that time it
looked pretty certain that the move was going to take
place. It was in that fall that it was stopped the fall
of 1972, I believe.
RCL: So that really ends your experience in management tech
nology in the Forest Service in the official sense. Do
you have any other comments about what's happening now
regarding things that could develop into administrative
changes?
WLG: That's a difficult question to answer as far as what
changes might take place.
RCL: You mentioned Jimmy Carter's proposal
WLG: The Carter administration's reorganization proposal very
possibly may be put into effect . Several different
proposals have been made and there has been a lot of
feedback from various organizations conservation or
ganizations and resource-oriented groups, as well as the
agencies involved. It wouldn't greatly surprise me if
a Department of Natural Resources were created.
57
RCL: As part of the Park Service?
WLG: Yes, and the Bureau of Land Management, the land management
agencies consolidated into one department. Most of them
are now in the Department of the Interior, with the excep
tion of the Forest Service. This has been tried in almost
every administration, I guess, since I came into the Forest
Service in 1933 and it has been unsuccessful, as we know,
so far. However, the creation of a new department might
be somewhat better received by those wo have opposed the
transfer of the Forest Service to Interior. There is a
certain amount of logic to lumping all of the resource
agencies into one department, all right. You can also argue
that that would do away with some of the checks and balances
that exist now with land management agencies being in
different departments, so there are some pros and cons to
it both ways.
RCL: It would really be a return to the Interior, since in the
very beginning that's where the Forest Service fell.
WLG: Yes. One thing that does bother me a little is that they
keep dragging in some other agencies that are not really
land management agencies that is including them in this
Department of Natural Resources, if that's what it would
be called. Oh, I am thinking of the Geological Survey,
the organization that handles mining, the Maritime Com
mission, and some of these are really not very compatible
certainly with the Forest Service and Bureau of Land
58
Management. The Bureau of Land Management and the Forest
Service are more nearly similar than any other two, I
think. The Park Service's philosophy and objectives and
everything else are totally different.
RCL: In opposition really.
WLG : Very definitely in direct opposition in many instances
such things as no hunting; any harvesting of wildlife is
to be done by Park Service employees rather than the gen
eral public; no livestock use except in certain rare
instances where such use existed before the unit was
designated as a national monument or national park; no
timber cutting. It goes a little bit beyond what I con
sider conservation. I consider conservation to be wise
use of the resources rather than no use, and the Park
Service's philosophy is more nearly oriented toward little
or no use, except recreation. Of course, the wilderness
areas of the Forest Service more nearly approach the
philosophy of the Park Service in that respect, in that
they are primarily recreationally oriented.
RCL: There still are other uses, though.
WLG: Yes there are still over uses livestock grazing, for
example. There are a number of uses that do take place
that are not permitted in the parks. That's not to say
that that shouldn't be their philosophy. Certainly we
need the national parks which are set aside for only that
purpose. No question about it. But the objectives of
<
59
the two agencies are so totally different, I am not sure
there is need to have them in one department.
RCL: One of them may overpower the other. All of this is
speculative and past the area we are trying to cover. I
would like to ask if you have any other comments you would
like to add that have to do with management technology.
WLG: I was thinking back to some of the people I have worked
with, and one who immediately comes to mind is Chet Shields
I first became acquainted with Chet when he was assistant
ranger on the Cibola National Forest and I was here at the
regional office in range management . When I went to the
Carson Forest as supervisor Chet was there on his first
ranger district , so his very first district was under me
as forest supervisor. Actually, the first district that
Chet was assigned to he was only assigned for a very few
months, far less than a year, and it may have been only
a month or two. He never did get out to his district
really before he was transferred to another district on
the Carson Forest.
Then after he had been there for about, oh, four or five
years the opportunity came up for us to recommend someone
for a year's scholarship at Harvard leading to a master's
degree in administration. I recommended Chet for that,
and after discussing it with him he agreed to take it, and
he was selected. He went back to Harvard at about the
time I was transferred to Washington. After he finished
60
his year at Harvard, I believe he went directly to the
San Juan Forest and was involved in the San Juan study.
Then when I came to Albuquerque Chet had been transferred
into the Washington office and he took my place then in
the Division of Administration.
RCL : You wanted to get out , didn ' t you?
WLG: Yes, I wanted to be moved out. I take it back, Chet was
transferred in there while I was still in Washington but
he did not take my place; Clayton Weaver took over the
jobs I had been doing. Then when Ed Schultz was moved
out as division director for Administrative Management ,
or Operations as it used to be called, I was asked to
come back to Washington as division director and I re
fused it and Chet was then put in that job. He went on
to associate deputy under Clare Hendee Gordon Fox was
there first and Chet followed after Gordon retired so
I have watched Chet's career with a great deal of interest.
RCL: You two seem to be pretty good friends.
WLG: Yes, we are good friends. I thought a lot of Chet; I
thought Chet was far and above the best ranger I had on
Carson Forest. Well, I won't say far and above because
I had another ranger there by the name of Alan Lamb who
was equally as good. The two of them were really top
hands. They both went a long way in the Forest Service.
Chet was an exceptional ranger. He had a good understanding
of the problems of the people on his ranger district. He
61
was a very level-headed, cool type of individual. He
didn't let things fluster him or get excited at all. I
thought an awful lot of him and still do.
RCL: Do you have other comments about things you have done
yourself or comments about things that were done outside
yourself in this field? I think we have pretty much
covered the areas that could be considered management
technology that you were involved in, but there were
certain things that you weren't involved in. Can you
comment on that , or even on the general philosophy of the
Forest Service? Maybe an explanation of why they have
been so innovative in this field.
WLG: Well, whether this has a bearing on the progress or the
changes that have taken place in the management aspect
of the Forest Service or not, I don't know, but from way
back in the very beginning the Forest Service was made
up of people who were pretty much individual thinkers and
this type of philosophy was greatly encouraged in the
Forest Service. My experience has been that there were
very few Forest Service people who were ever reluctant
to speak their mind about critical things that were placed
in front of them. It has been the practice of the Forest
Service, as long as I have known it, that any time a new
type of activity was put into effect, whether it be
management technology, resource job or whatever, that the
field would be asked for input and reactions to it. My
62
experience has been that the field responded to that very
well and would give their opinions on whatever it might
be whether they thought it was feasible, whether it would
work and if not, why not. I think this has been one of
the strengths of the Forest Service.
In many respects the Forest Service down through the years
has actually been compared to the Marines in that they
were pretty strict with their people and yet they did have
enough freedom to act on their own. It has been a de
centralized outfit from the very beginning, and again I
think this was one of the strengths. It probably came
about because of the great distances, when the Forest
Service was first established, between the ranger on the
ground and the chief's office and even the forest super
visor and regional office. Because of the slow trans
portation and poor communications we had in those days,
they almost had to decentralize and leave it up to the
man on the ground to pretty much run his own show. This
has been pretty well carried down through the years. I
think a trend is beginning toward more centralization,
quite a little more than we have seen in the past, again
primarily because of the improved communication and
transportation methods so that the ranger now is not
very far from his supervisor, or the regional office, for
that matter.
RCL: And any single forester is really not very far from any
63
other single forester because of the computer center in
Fort Collins, Colorado.
WLG: That's right.
RCL: The whole agency is getting smaller in that sense.
I think over the years, if you are looking to the future,
decentralization will become less of a factor as we get,
for example, closed-circuit television where conferences
can be held without ever moving out of the individual
offices. We see some things like this coming. There have
been some tremendous strides made, all right. I would
say the great majority of them were to the good. Some of
the most notable, of course, have been in the area of
forest fire fighting such as the use of aerial attack
and the use of satellites for detection. We will see
more and more of this. Many of the things we used to do
are already becoming things of the past, fire lookouts,
for example. Before too long I think we will see them
go out of the picture completely.
RCL: Satellites can see the hot spots.
WLG: Yes.
RCL: They can also see insect epidemics, even the beginnings
of the epidemics. So that is another form of management
technology.
WLG: That's right. Infrared photography has made tremendous
changes both in fighting fire and insect infestation.
So the Forest Service that I knew and grew up with is
64
rapidly becoming a thing of the past, and I think that's
probably good, even if I do regret it.
RCL: There is another aspect I think this is more of a general
administrative subject than it is technology, but you
mentioned the Forest Service being compared to the Marine
Corps in esprit de corps and discipline. I know you
probably put in long hours when you were working with the
Forest Service, and now overtime is being paid. Do you
think this will have an effect in making the Forest Service
employees feel separated in terms of being a part of the
larger Forest Service? Do you think they will see them
selves more as individuals?
WLG: I think so. I know that I have already seen a change in
this direction before I retired even more so since I
retired. There is not nearly the esprit de corps today
that there was twenty years ago. The philosophy when I
came into the Service was that we hired out by the year,
not by the day, week or month, but by the year. If it
took seven days a week to do the job, that's what we did.
In the almost forty years I was in the Forest Service,
I didn't ever receive one penny's overtime, and yet I put
in constantly from 15 to 25 percent more time, as a
minimum, even on the regular job aside from fighting fire
every year. I never received, nor expected to receive,
anything for it. Today for anything over eight hours the
individual expects overtime even though it may not be
fighting fire.
i
65
I can cite one instance that brought it home to me very
clearly several years ago--several years before I re
tired. I was here in the regional office and scheduled
to make an operational inspection of one of the forests.
It had always been my practice, if I were to start the
inspection on Monday morning, to leave home Sunday
morning-depending on how far away it was arrive there
that evening and stay until the job was done. If it
took me through the next weekend or whatever, I spent
it. The young man I had selected to go with me when he
found out we were going to leave on Sunday applied for
compensatory time for Sunday in advance. I had to call
him in and give him a little talk about what was ex
pected of him and that I was not about to approve his
compensatory time. If he wanted to stay home on Sunday,
fine, as long as he was at the forest by 8 o'clock
Monday morning it was all right with me. Well, he
changed his mind then, but it just brought home to me
the change in attitude that is taking place. Again, I
am not going to judge whether it's good or bad. I think
it's a trend throughout the country. You get paid for
everything you do and you do only what you're paid for.
I think this is definitely the trend.
RCL: It would probably be difficult for the Forest Service not
to do that when all the rest of the country is swinging
in that direction.
66
WLG: There is no choice. We have to conform. There is no
alternative to it.
RCL: What sort of changes did this require in making up your
budgets and your workload analyses? This must have been
a factor to be contended with.
WLG: Well, I don't think it had too much of an effect on the
workload analysis really because the workload analysis is
based on the length of time it takes to do a job, not
whether it's all done in one day or several days, but on
the total number of hours it would take for an average
individual to perform that job.
RCL: Then your budget is based on that, right?
WLG: Yes. There have been, of course, some tremendous changes
in the budget procedure in the last several years, and
many of these changes have taken place since I retired.
We hear also about zero-based budgets and this sort of
thing. The Management Sciences staff in California has
been deeply involved in what, at the time I retired, was
a new procedure of budgeting and work planning. If you
can interview them, they would be the ones to go into that
in detail. It was a drastic change from anything we had
before in the budget area. It was just beginning when
I retired; they were just getting started in it and I
don't know whether it continued along that line. I
understand it has to a degree but there have obviously
been some major changes in it, so I don't know what the
current method of budgeting really is. They made some
67
tremendous changes just at the time I retired.
Of course, I think as far as the ranger district itself
is concerned, there have been more changes at that level
than at any other level of the Forest Service down through
the years. I think certainly most of these changes were
very definitely needed. When I first started, the ranger
seldom had any permanent help, only temporary help during
the summer. Maybe he would have one assistant, but that
was about the extent of it. When I took over my first
district, which was a fairly large district, I had no
permanent assistants at all. Therefore, I was expected
to become proficient in just about everything from re
pairing telephone lines, clearing trails in the spring
of the year, to doing the more professional timber
management, range management and this sort of thing, and
did it pretty much singlehanded . The ranger today is
almost 100 percent an administrator, and not always is
he a forester as he was in the early days. Of course,
in the very early days they were political appointees,
but as the work became more professional they became
professional foresters.
Today there is no need really for a ranger to be a pro
fessional forester. He should much better be a profes
sional administrator because, particularly in the larger
districts, that's what his job is, in seeing that his
staff does the work. Now, obviously, for a man in charge
68
to be able to administer any unit effectively, he should
have a working knowledge of what's going on in his unit,
whether it be private business, running a store, or what
ever. He should have practical experience, no question
about it. Otherwise, you can't judge how well your
subordinates are doing their work if you don't have some
basis for comparison. But primarily on the larger dis
tricts, I'd say from the average-size district up, they
are administrators now, and generalists, not technicians.
This was one of the bases for our size of ranger district
study and one of the things we very clearly defined in
that study that a ranger now is a generalist and has to
be if he is to effectively administer his district. So
I would say there has been more change there than anywhere
else.
There was major change in the regional offices when they
went from the regional forester-division chief type of
organization to the regional forester, multi-deputy,
staff unit type of organization. This gets into another
whole new area well, it's not new in the Forest Service,
but one which we had not discussed and that is the line
and staff organization and the combination of those, the
line-staff organization, which was so prevalent in the
Forest Service, certainly up until the reorganization of
the regional offices.
Up until that time, using the regional office as an
1
69
example, each member of the regional forester staff was
in charge of a resource or management division; division
of range management, division of timber management,
fiscal management, a man in charge of operation, and so
on. If there were two or three relatively light activities,
particularly two or three compatible resources such as
fish and wildlife and range management, they would be
consolidated, and the man in charge was a full member of
the regional forester staff and was a line officer to his
subordinates. So he was staff to the regional forester,
he was line to his subordinates, and he was line-staff to
the forest supervisor, sort of a three-way proposition.
The theory behind it was that when he was dealing with
the forest supervisor, as far as the activities he headed
up in the regional office he functioned as a line officer.
However, the forest supervisor always had a line of appeal,
if necessary, to the regional forester if he could not
accept what the division chief told him or directed him
to do. I think it functioned quite well. Sure, it had
varying degrees of success depending upon the individual
in charge of the division. A very strong, aggressive
individual was more of a line officer as far as the
supervisor was concerned than one that tended in the other
direction. But the regional forester had a staff of
anywhere from eight or nine to a dozen division chiefs
who advised him and functioned as his immediate subordinates
70
Late in 1972 or early 1973 they changed to the multi-
deputy type of organization which we mentioned earlier
as part of the McKenzie report recommendation for some
of the larger regions. In each region three deputies
were established let me back up just a little. Prior
to that time by several years one deputy was established
here in Region 3, as it was in a number of other regions,
and the division chiefs still maintained their identity.
So there was the regional forester, the deputy regional
forester and the division chiefs and it was a question
then of knowing instinctively, if no other way, whether
or not a division chief would go to the deputy regional
forester with a problem for a decision or to the regional
forester. The regional forester retained certain specific
things as his direct responsibility. One of these was
personnel matters, so there was no question there. If
there was a personnel problem the division chief went to
the regional forester, not to the deputy. From there it
got into areas where it was a little on the hazy side as
to which one you would go to. Of course, there were times
when a division chief would play a little politics in
this respect, and if he felt that the deputy regional
forester might be more persuasive than the regional
forester in getting through something the division chief
was trying to get through, he would go to the deputy. If
he felt that the deputy might hinder it more than help
it, he would go directly to the regional forester. This
71
was the case rather often, I would say. He had no clear-
cut directive as to which individual he went to. But it
worked reasonably well. The more aggressive a regional
forester was and the more he insisted on handling every
thing himself, the less effective the deputy became, of
course, to the point where he was almost just another
high paid division chief.
That was in effect for a relatively few years before they
went to the multi-deputy concept and when they did this,
there was a complete change in the organization of the
regional offices. They changed the nomenclature as well
as the actual functioning of the various resource and
administrative units. They eliminated the division per se
and had staff units with a staff man in charge of each
unit. For example, there would be a timber staff, a range
staff, and so on. They broke up the division of operation
into three: one, was administrative services which took
care of procurement, property management and contracting
and that sort of thing; computer services which was also
a part of the division of operations was broken out; and
budget and work planning were broken out, so that the
division of operations ceased to be in effect and the staff
man in charge of each of these units that I just mentioned
reported directly to the deputy regional forester for
administration. The same thing became true in the other
divisions, however, there was not the diversity in the
72
others. For example, timber management is still timber
management, and recreation and lands were broken apart
so that we had a recreation staff and a land use staff.
The main responsibility that the old division chiefs had
ceased to exist then, and they became almost pure staff.
There was no more responsibility whatsoever with the
national forest. The regional forester then was working
with only three people instead of with the ten to twelve
he had in the past. At first, and I think I mentioned this
earlier, this was not well received, but I think as time
has gone on, it has been accepted or at least tolerated.
RCL: Because new people come in and are not used to anything
else?
WLG: Yes. And it seems to be functioning fairly well, as near
as I can tell from the sidelines, and I don't get involved
at all anymore. I haven't been to the regional office
for six months or a year and probably won't be again, so
what I get is what I hear from individuals, and depending
on who you talk to whether it's good or bad, or mediocre.
But it was a major change, no question about it.
RCL: From what I see it seems that the McKenzie study and the
results from that study probably started the first major
changes in the Forest Service history regarding reorgani
zation and that that might be the signal event of note.
WLG: I think so. I think that's very true. I can't think of
any study prior to that which had the impact of that one.
'
73
I think that was the turning point, all right. It
changed the Washington office; it changed all offices of
the Forest Service. Probably it affected the ranger
districts the least, except that it did generate the size
of district study. This has had some impact on the dis
tricts and has resulted in the elimination of some small
districts, which in my opinion was good. I think this
was long overdue and we needed this sort of thing.
Down through the years I think the Forest Service has
always been willing to examine its own activities or
have someone else examine them, and willing to make changes,
willing to try new things. Invariably there were some
things that did not work out too well or were not too
good, but they had to be tried before this could be
determined. I think we cooperated fully with the Deckard
committee when they made their study and again this was an
interview study.
That resulted in changes too.
Yes.
Several.
Yes. I think the Forest Service has been recognized as
one of the leaders in government in this field, and one
that has been willing to try new things and make changes
and not become so steeped in its own tradition that it
won't consider changes.
It's always been an innovative organization. It's always
74
really been immersed in controversy. It was born in
controversy and it was born out of experimentation, too.
It was a daring type of bureaucracy.
WLG: That's right.
RCL: That has been shown all the way through so that it has
the tradition of experimentation and the tradition of
change.
WLG: Yes.
RCL: Well, I think that just about covers our interview unless
.
you have further comments.
WLG: I can't think of anything else that has any real bearing
on this particular subject. Any of us who have been in
the organization for a long time can reminisce about the
many things that took place, some good, some bad, most
of them interesting whether they were good or bad. As
far as I am personally concerned, it has been an organi
zation that I thoroughly enjoyed and did I have it to do
over again, I don't think I would change very much. The
people I worked with and I met, with few exceptions, were
very fine people and people that you would be proud to
be associated with. It has been a pleasant experience,
not to mention the fact that a ranger district is a great
place to raise children.
RCL : You ' re a lucky man .
WLG: Yes, yes I think that's right. I feel sorry for people
who are in jobs they are unhappy with and dissatisfied
with. I think that satisfaction in a job is just as
75
important as the money, if not more so.
RCL: Sure. With that, on behalf of the Forest History Society
and the Forest Service I want to thank you very much for
your time and the good interview you just gave.
WLG: I appreciate that. I am sure I have said some things
that other people wouldn't agree with, which is fine. I
don't agree with some things other people say either.
RCL: We all do that.
WLG: That's right, but what I have said is my own opinion and
based on my own observations and my own feelings.
RCL: That's what oral history is all about.
CHESTER A. SHIELDS June 21, 1978
Ronald C. Larson: Mr. Shields, since you are just about to
retire, it's probably a good time for this interview
because you can go back and reminisce about your time
in the Forest Service and about the type of job you
were doing. Why don't we start with a bit of your
biographical background such as where were you born
and when?
Chester A. Shields: Ron, I was born at Olathe, Colorado, on
April 18, 1923, on an irrigated farm and orchard owned
by my grandfather who was assisted in the operation of
it by my father. My father, at an early age, contracted
a serious case of diabetes and to get lighter work for
health reasons we moved to Delta, Colorado, and then
when I was four years old to Durango , Colorado what I
really call home. In fact, that's where I am going back
to retire. I attended grade school and high school there.
I was active in music, academic and youth group activities
During that time I came to know a number of people who
worked on the San Juan National Forest. In fact, the
assistant supervisor of the San Juan Forest was one of
the principal adult leaders of the youth group I was
active with. I became quite taken with the personalities
and activities that took place on that forest which
during high school attracted my interest in forestry.
2
I graduated from high school in 1941 and due to the
strong encouragement of my father, and in spite of the
situation with the Depression and so on, I decided to
at least attempt to work my way through forestry school .
Just outside of Durango was, at that time, a small two-
year branch of what is now Colorado State University,
Fort Lewis College. It was located at an old Indian
fort at Hesperus, Colorado, about fifteen miles from
Durango. It was built in the 1880s, a very small college,
The total enrollment was about 129 people. Everybody
lived on campus. But I could take two years of forestry
there. It is now a four-year college and independent
degree-granting school. The campus has been moved to
Durango, with a nice brand new campus. In my sophomore
year there were only two sophomore forestry students so
it meant that the other student and myself sat down at
a table with the professor, as we are with our interview
here, and really learned the subject thoroughly.
In 1942 I enlisted in the army and was called up to
active duty in March 1943. After training in the States,
I went overseas for just short of two years. I served
in the Amphibian Engineers as an enlisted man. We had
landing barge operations on New Guinea, New Britain,
Luzon, and ended up in Japan in October, 1945. I was
discharged and got back home to Durango on New Year's
Eve, 1945. On January 2, 1946, I went back to Fort Lewis.
RCL: I bet you had a celebration.
CAS: Well yes, it was quite a homecoming. I took two more
quarters of work there and then transferred to the main
campus. I had accumulated enough extra credits due to
personal interests in subject matter outside of forestry
that in 1947 I got a bachelor's degree in general science
and arts, and thanks to the G. I. Bill, the next year
I got a master's in forestry. That finished my pre-
Forest Service career, although I did have two summers
of work experience as a laborer, one on. the San Juan
National Forest planting trees and maintaining trails
in 1942 and one summer of fighting fire and maintaining
trails on the Chugach, Alaska, in 1947.
RCL: So those served to fill in your education by the time
you got your M.A.
CAS: That's right. Well, it was an M.F.
RCL: Then once you gotyourM.F. did you go immediately into
the Forest Service?
CAS: Yes, I did. In fact the last quarter of school was a
field quarter, an experimental program they tried for
a short period of time where the entire quarter was
spent with the professors in the field. This was in
addition to forestry summer camp. There were twelve
of us who signed up for this special field quarter.
Most of the time was spent either on or in the vicinity
of the Coconino National Forest in Arizona. I was seeking
4
a job and the professor knew it. He let it be known
that Chet Shields was looking for a job and if they
wanted to size me up, why, more power to them. Towards
the end of the quarter, they approached me and asked
if I would be interested in a job on the large timber
sale that was going on there, a chief's delegated sale.
I said I was if I got a regular Civil Service appoint
ment. I was quite gratified to find that two weeks
later I had physically in-hand an appointment.
RCL: That was great. Then what assignment were you given at
the unit?
CAS: I was a member of a five-man timber sale crew, headed
up by an old-time timber salesman, his assistant, who
was another old-time timber salesman, and three junior
foresters who were in training stages. I was on that
for about nine months. From that point, I was trans
ferred to the Mountainair District of the Cibola
National Forest in New Mexico as assistant ranger and
had that position for eighteen months. From there I
was offered a job as ranger on the Jicarilla Ranger
District on the Carson. This was back in the days when
they still had GS-7 ranger districts. I was a GS-7
ranger for just about five months and then was promoted
to the ranger's job on the Penasco District of the
Carson. I was ranger there about six years. Most of
that time I worked for Forest Supervisor Walt Graves.
In 1956, I was asked by the regional personnel officer
if I would be interested in a fellowship to a graduate
program in Harvard, the major subject being economics
of conservation. This was a program of twelve fellow
ships that was funded by Resources for the Future,
which is a conservation organization, financed at that
time by the Ford Foundation. This was before the
Government Employees Training Act so it entailed going
on leave without pay and being financed through the
fellowship. It sounded attractive so I put in an ap
plication and received recommendation through the
Forest Service and did obtain a fellowship which re
sulted in a master's in public administration at Harvard
About Christmastime, I received a job offer . . .
RCL: T Vas this the Christmas after your Harvard graduation?
CAR: No, during the academic year, Christmastime, 1956. I
received the job offer through the Washington office.
The situation was that they had a requirement for a
management analyst assistant to the forest supervisor
on the San Juan. The supervisor was Gordon Grey.
Gordon had always been a very analytical-minded in
dividual and had worked on activities that pre-dated
the formal management analyst's activities when he was
assigned in Region 3. Ultimately he was transferred to
the Washington office where he was in the peer group
and a contemporary of Gordon Fox. He had five years of
.
experience in the old Division of Operations doing
analytical work. As I understood the story from Gordon
Grey, he and Gordon Fox had many conversations about
ways of improving management technology within the
Forest Service and thought that many of the new systems
that might be desirable or that should be further de
veloped and tested, should be tested in the field
environment to make sure that they operated properly.
As long as there was the concept of experimental forest
for resource management, why not experimental forest
for administrative management or the development of
new management technology for administration? Gordon
Grey told me that this also appeared to be an attractive
way of getting out in the field and having the highly
desirable job of forest supervisor, so he and Gordon
Fox proposed an experimental forest for administrative
management in the East and one in the West. Gordon Fox
would be the supervisor in the East and Gordon Grey in
the West. It apparently sold because Gordon Grey was
made supervisor of the San Juan Forest in southwestern
Colorado for this purpose. But before Gordon Fox could
get anything set up in the East the director of the
division retired and, low and behold, Gordon Fox was
promoted, so there never was one set up in the East.
The San Juan Forest had a very heavy workload. At that
time it had nine ranger districts, and Gordon Grey was
performing his forest supervisor duties plus making
a number of studies. Some of the studies that he was
actively designing and testing were the "ranger dis
trict uniform work planning system" and field tests
of a subject-numeric filing system that would be a
radical change and improvement over the old system that
the Forest Service had had since it started.
Because of the workload the Washington office decided
to recruit a junior analyst to do leg work. Understand
that at this time there were few formally designated
management analysts in the Forest Service except for
a few people who had shown analyst aptitudes . Walt
Graves, who during this period of time transferred to
the Washington office, suggested that I be offered the
job and that surely the education I was acquiring at
Harvard would be usable for this purpose.
I had some mixed feeling about converting from my career
objectives, being a forester, to this type of activity
so I sat down to really analyze whether this was the
kind of an assignment I would like to have. In the
process, I discussed the kind of activity with one of
my professors at Harvard, John Gaus . He found it rather
amusing that I had these particular qualms. He was an
old professional who had done much consulting work as
a management analyst. He said, "Chet, there are two
approaches to this. One is to get somebody who knows
8
what I call the tools of the trade in terms of ana-
lytical techniques and then teach them the organization
that they are going to work with, or you can take some
one who knows the organization and teach him the tools
of the trade. It works fine either way." He said,
"Don't be concerned about it. If you would like me to
help you prepare for this , I would be happy to , " and
he gave me an extracurricular course of reading. But
in the process of thinking about this it became clear
to me that my interests and perhaps aptitudes and my
previous assignments supported this type of assignment.
The individuals I had worked for directly during my
career up to that time had all been analytical minded,
and had set examples of making management analyses that
were applicable on the job, and I found that I had been
making such analyses on my own. So it appeared a very
interesting and challenging area of activity and I
accepted the job. I reported to the San Juan.
Incidentally, I am sure that no one in offering it
realized that they were offering me an assignment in
my hometown. I don't think that it would have made any
difference, but I found it rather interesting to get
that opportunity just out of the blue.
RCL: That must have been another factor in your accepting it.
CAS: Yes, it did offer extra interest. So I converted from
,
forester to management analyst by way of an executive
1
9
training plan which was necessary to change professional
series. Over the next few months I got special training
in terms of job assignments, details, and formal train-
A
ing to fully qualify me in the business management series.
There were several projects on the San Juan at that time.
Two I have already mentioned. Another one was a Ser-
vicewide workload analysis to establish the time
allowances necessary for the ranger's general adminis
tration activities. But one that was quite interesting
was an assignment to write the definition and descrip
tion for the existing Forest Service form of organization
which was called a "line-staff organization."
RCL: How exactly did the San Juan Experimental Forest func
tion? Did you work on specific projects? What sort of
control was being used?
CAS: The forest was no different from any other operating
forest as far as resource managment was concerned, but
it became the test bed for these particular studies. For
example, in the ranger's general administration base all
the rangers of the San Juan forest kept special diaries
of their time for these kinds of activities. Now all
of these projects were conceived as Servicewide activi
ties. Each one of them was approved by the Washington
office. Any special expenses including my salary were
funded specially, directly out of the Washington office
so that although it became a test bed, I found that in
10
extending the applicability I had to take samples of
various ranger districts throughout the United States
where we kept special records. But, of course, I could
physically observe what was taking place on the San
Juan as part of the validation process to be included in
.
a finished report for national application. Each year
as new studies were conceived they were proposed to the
Washington office and they were either approved or re
jected.
During this particular period of time, one of my training
assignments was to participate in an interview of a
district ranger by Professor Herbert Kaufman of Yale
University who was doing a special project for Resources
for the Future concerning the administrative behavior
of forest rangers. He had written his Ph.D. thesis on
this particular subject. It attracted the attention of
Resources for the Future and they contracted him to
write a finished case study. One of his samples was a
district ranger in Region 2. Gordon Grey, my boss, was
aware of this so he arranged for me to be there and ob
serve the interview techniques and gain whatever in
formation might add to my abilities as a management
analyst. I found this a very interesting experience.
I learned considerably from Professor Kaufman, and in
effect I became an additional sample because I was less
than one year from having been a district ranger myself.
11
Also as part of my training experience I had some
details to the Washington office to work with Gordon
Fox, Walt Graves, Ed Shultz, and others, but my prin
cipal assignment was to work on the projects that I
have identified. The first one that I actually com
pleted was a definitive study of line-staff organization
which was intended for use by the Washington office
to publish in the Forest Service manual as the official
description of how the organization was supposed to
operate. I also finished the evaluation of the subject-
numeric filing system.
However, at this time Gordon Grey was promoted to chief
of operation in the Denver regional office. Although
he was replaced by a highly competent forest supervisor,
no one on the forest was a journeyman management analyst
capable of providing me the needed leadership and
descriptions of techniques and instruction. I was still
a junior analyst in terms of experience and knowledge
and I found that I was having great difficulty in con
ducting and completing the studies having to get my
leadership and advice from the Washington office or
by telephone or in writing from Gordon Grey. Eventually
I became frustrated to the extent that even though I
was living in the place that I most wanted to live in
the world, I requested a transfer to Denver so that I
could continue working under Gordon Grey and make
progress on the studies.
12
When I transferred to Denver, I continued the same
assignment of working on Servicewide studies under
the direct supervision of Gordon Grey. We proposed to
continue the field location in the process of conduc
ting the studies, and we developed a year's list of
projects that I could work on. However, the Washington
office decided there was no particular point in con-
tinuing it without the proposition of an experimental
forest as a test bed where processes could be directly
observed. If we were just going to be working from a
headquarters office location it would be better con
trolled and produced out of the Washington office.
After a few months of work I had completed the studies
that were already approved and I was transferred into
the job of management analyst in the regional office
in Denver in charge of the "manual coordination"
project in the region.
RCL: That was the name of the project? Manual coordination?
CAS: The assignment was that of manual coordinator. Now at
this point I would like to introduce a major subject of
development of management technology within the Forest
Service.
RCL: Before we go into that, could you describe Gordon Grey?
Tell me a little bit about him and his role and contribu
tions to the Forest Service.
CAS: Gordon Grey, as I said earlier, was a forester in Region
3 who had a very analytical mind, which apparently was
13
very quickly recognized. He was given assignments in
the area of workload analysis, which used to be a way
of life in the Forest Service ever since Earl Loveridge
introduced workload measurement in 1932. Gordon con-
ducted workload analyses in Region 3 and was recognized
by the Washington office somewhere down the line as
being particularly skilled in this and was transferred
to the Washington office where, as I said, he worked for
about five years. He had a fantastic ability to analyze
figures and facts. His basic interests were internal
administration and finding and developing new and
better and more efficient ways of doing business. During
the time he was in Denver he started looking towards
retirement as soon as he was eligible. He had a long
standing desire to be a lawyer and a special interest
in being a researcher in the area of water rights law
which is a major activity in the state of Colorado.
Many law firms in Denver specialize in water rights.
So he enrolled in the Denver University Law School as
a night student, carried a full academic load, and in
four consecutive years obtained a law degree with a
straight "A" average.
RCL : Oh , man !
CAS: He still had a couple of years to go to qualify for
retirement. He lacked years of service and trans
ferred to the Washington office as a legislative
14
analyst but in about a year's time died of a heart
attack. He was a real pioneer in analytical techniques,
as was Gordon Fox. They were almost two peas in a pod
in those terms. Very analytically minded with tremendous
ability in terms of developing analytical techniques,
methodologies, etcetera to apply to Forest Service
management .
RCL: Okay, so now why don't we go to the time when you were
in Denver and working under Grey. You mentioned that
a new emphasis on management technology was just be
ginning to take place.
CAS: All right.
RCL: What year was this?
CAS: This would be 1959, I960, along in that era. To estab
lish the background, in 1954 Gordon Fox had gotten
approval to make a broad problem identification survey
across the entire Forest Service for paper-work-related
problems, system needs, or ideas for improvement. I
was a district ranger at that time. Walt Graves was my
forest supervisor and the forest was the recipient of
questionnaires asking for our ideas, suggestions, etcetera
We were not even aware of who Gordon Fox was or what was
going on. Neither one of us at that time was working as
a management analyst . This was a tremendously worth
while project that Gordon had conceived and it generated,
as I recall from having transferred to the Washington
15
office and inheriting the files on this, about two file
drawers full of data.
That project identified very many basic problems or
suggestions for improvement that were broadly recognized
by way of citations from these questionnaires which
were distributed throughout the Forest Service on a
sampling basis. For example, the most frequently iden
tified problem and request for change was to do something
about the Forest Service manual. Another suggestion was
to get into automatic data processing in 1954, this
was quite early recognition of this particular need.
Another one was a comprehensive organization study of
the Forest Service, particularly considering the possible
need for greater specialization on the part of Forest
Service personnel. A great many problems and ideas were
identified and a large number were approved as projects
for follow up.
The number one problem that was identified, that of the
Forest Service manual, resulted in a contract with
McKenzie and Company to make a study and recommend a
design for a modern directive system. They recommended
a subject-numeric codification in other words, a
design that would get away from the previous manual
design by Washington office organization identification
in which Timber had their part of the manual and nobody
else could mess with timber, and Fiscal had their part
and so on. The concept was that we have a subject-numeric
16
.
classification that would be primarily for the benefit
of the field operating units of the Forest Service.
The district rangers and the forest supervisors and their
staffs would be able to know, by subject matter, instead
of by Washington office organization, where to find
policies and instructions. It would be a very modern
closed-end design decimal system, not an open-ended
decimal which allows the writer to expand to the extent
that you could never find anything.
A project was approved to implement this and a new segment
of organization was approved in the Washington office to
head it up. In addition, one position was established
in each regional office to be responsible for participating
in the Servicewide project of rewriting, of restructuring
the entire Forest Service manual using this new design.
These positions were determined to be most suitably placed
in the management analyst's classification series. That
was the origin of the management analyst's formal organi
zational identification within the Forest Service. The
people selected for these jobs spent the first year and
a half or so in the Washington office coordinating the
drafting and publishing of the new Forest Service Manual.
Then when they went back to their regional assignments
their job was to coordinate the writing of the regional
supplementation for those manuals.
When I transferred from the Servicewide studies, when
17
they were closed out in Denver, I was reassigned behind
the original manual coordinator in Denver as the manual
coordinator or the management analyst. When that job of
supplementation was done, then I went into the regular
analytical activites of organization design, position
management, paperwork surveys in other words the full
range of internal management improvement using the
technologies that I had learned by experience, etcetera.
Other projects stemmed from the 1954 paperwork survey.
For example, another contract went to McKenzie and
Company to study the Forest Service organization and
recommend the best structure. It was done under Gordon
Fox's direction. Probably the principal result of
that study was restructuring the Forest Service to
staff it with specialists and to organize it so that
you could utilize specialists. This meant, for example,
the departure from the policy of having the ranger dis
trict of such a workload size that one professional
forester with no professional assistants could handle
all of the activities. It meant that at the forest
supervisor's level we would staff with wildlife special
ists, or watershed specialists or whatever complement
would be needed to do the job at that level. The ranger
district would be the doing level; the supervisor's
office would be the planning level; the regional office
would be a broad policy level, plus would have the kind
18
of specialist staff that could not be supported by way
of workloads at the lower levels. So this had a tre
mendous influence on the future staffing of the Forest
Service and how we approached management.
One of the fallout items of the manual study was the
adoption of the subject-numeric classification scheme
into a range of related paperwork systems. We adopted
.
it as the classification scheme for correspondence
designation and filing. The subject-numeric system
that I had responsibility for final field testing was
a predecessor of this but, of course, with different
titles and numbers. We then took the basic subject-
numeric system and adapted it to numbering our forms
so that if the form has a certain number it could re
late to correspondence designations and to the policies
and instructions in the manual.
.
We also had at that time a classification scheme for
a composite job list of all the activities in the Forest
Service so that we could cross reference all these
activities. This coordinated codification of a series
of paperwork systems was a scheme that the experts for
paperwork had for many years insisted was not possible,
that it would result in such a complex situation that
it just wouldn't be workable, particularly in a de
centralized organization.
RCL: These were experts within the Forest Service?
19
CAS: No, experts outside the Forest Service. However, we
have very successfully adopted it and primarily because
we have kept it simple. We did not allow the wide
expansion of certain classifications within the manual.
We used only the broad numerical classification for
form-numbering as far as the basic classification. The
net result has been other federal agencies, state
governments, Canadian, and other foreign governments
coming to the Forest Service and finding out specifically
what our design is and then adapting it directly to their
purpose using their particular subject matter titles,
and so on. It has been an international success.
RCL: Yes. The Forest Service has in many other areas of
management technology been very innovative.
CAS: Yes, that's correct.
While in Denver in the regional office, I had further
involvement in the implementation of the McKenzie or
ganization study. One that I did on assignment to the
Washington office, was to redraft my old line-staff
organization report, which was intended for publishing
in the Forest Service Manual, into the organization
design concepts in the report. Art Grumbine, the chief
of operation in Atlanta, Georgia, and myself got the
assignment. Bob Lake, a district ranger in Region 2
who had shown aptitudes in drafting training lesson
plans, sat alongside us, took our output, and converted
20
it into training lesson plans for use throughout the
Service.
Another involvement I had was with the regional forester
in Denver, Don Clark, who had himself been an analyst
in assignment in years past, and was also a contemporary
of Gordon Grey and Gordon Fox. He had always been in
trigued with the concept of deputies to line officers
and also the concept of assistants. One of the McKenzie
concepts was that of the possibility of having deputy
regional foresters and deputy forest supervisors which
was not at that time an organization element within the
Forest Service. There had been such positions years
before but they had been abandoned. Some of the older
employees of the Forest Service alleged, at least to
me, that the reason they were abandoned was that the
deputies became the power behind the throne, and the
line officers couldn't quite manage or cope with that
kind of situation. Anyway, the regional forester asked
me as a personal project to study the proposition and
to write him an analysis of how those jobs would function
if they were implemented.
I, myself, found this a very intriguing and attractive
concept, and so I did a literature search and talked to
knowledgeable people who I thought would have practical
ideas concerning it. I finally concluded that rather
than submit a report to him, the only way to really
I
21
communicate how they would function would be to draft
job descriptions for such positions, which I did. I
was flattered not only to have his acceptance but to
have him submit them to the Washington office for con
sideration. They were largely adopted as the Service-
wide job description models for those positions.
About this time, I was asked to transfer to the Wash
ington office. This was in early 1963. I was offered
the job of branch chief of Management Studies and
Systems Planning. This was the branch of the old
Division of Administrative Management that was primarily
responsible for developing new management technology
and getting it implemented throughout the Service. The
principal thrust of my assignment on transfer to the
Washington office was to continue the implementation
of the findings of the paperwork survey.
We had many projects going on within the Washington
office to do this. By this time the Forest Service
Manual was pretty fully implemented. We were in the
process of refining some of the subsystems that related
to that such as the form-numbering systems and other
related activities. The organization study was also
pretty fully implemented by this time as far as the
direct conversion of role statements, job descriptions,
and so on, but one of the major, at least what sub
sequently became a major continuing effort, was the
22
early identification of the possibilities of use of
ADP for activities in national forest administration.
RCL: Excuse me, ADP--is that automatic data processing?
CAS: Correct. Up until this time, except for use by
scientists in Forest Service research, we had only
one principal ADP application. That one had existed
for many years. It was the coding and collating of
information from the 929 fire report. Of course, in
that early stage, you couldn't really say that it was
automatic data processing but we did use ADP codifi
cation on these 929 fire reports Servicewide. We had
a small punchcard and tab shop operation in the
Washington office where the data was punched on punch-
cards, tabulated, summarized, and used for analysis
for fire trends and other activities, so it was extremely
rudimentary. At the time I transferred to the Washington
office, a new branch of ADP had just started with a
man by the name of Leonard Butrym who had previously
worked for the Management Studies and Systems Planning
Branch. He became a one-man shop, without even a
secretary, with the assignment to pursue in depth the
need for acquisition of modern computers and implementa
tion of them in the Forest Service.
On completion of our analysis, we had computers in
stalled at San Francisco, Portland, Missoula, Ogden, and
Milwaukee. The other regions apparently did not at
23
that time have enough workload to justify their own
hardware. This gave us reasonably good capability
for three or four years in the future, but it was
obvious that soon we would have Servicewide need for
a really comprehensive ADP support activity. So in
1968, we brought Hobbie Bonnett, our computer admin
istrator from Ogden, Utah, into the Washington office
to head up a Servicewide study of what our total
future needs would be in the ADP area.
Over the next year Bonnett continued this study in
great depth, using consultants and sub-contracts to
assist him, and developed a report that we accepted as
the direction we should go. It was titled "Blueprint
for the Future." It called for the most modern future
concepts and appeared to be exactly what we needed
considering our decentralized organization and the kind
of activities that we had.
About the time that we were getting ready to implement
it, the Department of Agriculture's secretary's office
got very interested in overall departmental needs for
Agriculture agencies and imposed a moratorium on
agencies going in their own direction. So we had to
cancel our implementation efforts and work with the
department in their overall identification of computer
systems for the Department of Agriculture.
Their eventual decision was to centralize it for the
24
whole department. Their concept was to have computer
centers scattered throughout the United States that
would be Department of Agriculture centers, and the
Forest Service would have its computing done at these
centers. Our concept was to have a network of terminals,
some of which would have limited computing capability,
where we could communicate directly with one central
Forest Service computer and get our work done that way.
The department had great difficulty getting approval
for all of their concepts. Eventually they restudied
their system and with the development of new hardware
and technology converted their concept to what we felt
was very close to our own internal design. It would
permit a distributive network of terminals and mini
computers dealing with a central computer, in our case
one at Fort Collins, which is where we had intended to
put ours, and this we all agreed, would satisfy our
needs.
The growth became so extensive in terms of demands by
the field for availability of the new computer technology
that the associate chief, Rex Resler, concluded that we
needed to update our whole analysis of where we were
going and define our policies much more tightly consid
ering the kind of investments that people were wanting
to make. So he established another study in 1975 again
to analyze what our total needs were and appointed a
25
very broad-gauged team to make this particular study.
Headed up by a regional forester, Doug Leisz, the study
was composed of a research station director John Barber;
an ADP technical specialist Hobbie Bonnett; a member of
our management sciences staff Mai Kirby; three technical
representatives from national forest administration
Deputy Regional Forester Jeff Sirnon; Rex Hartgreaves ,
Jim Reid, and myself.
We came up with a recommendation for a substantial ex
pansion of use and a different form of organization to
manage all of the activities. Our report was called
"Systems Development Action Planning Team Report." It
was accepted by John McGuire and his staff, and the form
of organization accepted with it created a new additional
associate deputy chief in the Washington office adminis
tration deputy area and three new staff groups. The new
organization was headed up by Glenn Haney as the new
associate deputy chief, by Hobbie Bonnett as director of
the computer technology staff which is the staff who
deal with the hardware aspects, by John Kennedy for
data management which is the data base activity, and by
Jim Space for computer system applications.
This is a major new thrust in terms of management
technology, and I feel confident that it will be a
prototype for many other government agencies if not
private industry. There are some units which probably
have a similar organization already, but I feel there
26
has been great failure to recognize particularly the
basic importance of the data base management and the
need for that to occur at a relatively senior level.
It does exist at that level in some of the major in
dustrial organizations.
RCL: Can you just give me an example of how the Fort Collins
facilities might be used by somebody in the field?
CAS: The Departmental Computer Center at Fort Collins is
linked by telecommunications with a significant number
of Forest Service field units including all regional
offices, all stations and a significant number of
supervisor's offices. Probably ultimately all super
visor's offices will be hooked into the network so
they can utilize the central computer from their own
installation. Fort Collins is also linked with other
departmental computer centers around the country .
RCL: So it could supply information in regard to records
and also maybe technical information?
CAS: It could do that, of course. One of its major uses is
actually computing activities. For example, they could
do all the computing for our road design activities or
timber computations, etcetera. Any standard type ADP
application can be done there. However, with our design
of a distributive network, much of the smaller scale
activities can in fact now be handled at the local level,
and only those needing capacities of such a large
computer need to go there.
i
27
One of the other significant activities generated
during the time I was branch chief of the Management
Studies and Systems and Planning Branch was the pro
posal that had been conceived in the Washington office
to have a modern management information system. The
system would not necessarily be automated, but where
automated techniques could apply it would use ADP. Of
course this was back in 1963, so my first substantive
responsibility was to describe what such a system would
be, and how we would go about studying the proposition
of coming up with a system. I described in outline
form what the approach would be and what it would
encompass. This was subsequently refined by Max Peterson
who is currently a deputy chief in the Forest Service,
who was in administrative management at that time, and
by John Farrell who was a Washington office employee
with considerable knowledge in this area.
This was approved and staffed with a project staff and
ultimately assigned an acronym INFORM from information
for Management. The project staff were three special
ists. Their budget included enough funds to contract
for analyses from private industry, and over the next
few years we pursued this in considerable detail and
came up with concepts of automated mapping systems and
data retrieval, accomplishment reporting, etcetera. It
eventually got to the point where we were implementing
28
with the project staff and needed additional staffing
to complete the design and to find some mechanism to
complete the implementation. At the point that Associate
Chief Resler assigned the systems management project
for systems development, it became apparent that the new
organization that was just described would be a logical
place to handle this information system by including
it with data base management. So INFORM disappeared as
a separate acronym and is now incorporated within the
systems management organization that we have implemented.
We are going ahead and refining and implementing it
using the same basic concepts.
Another effort, in terms of management improvement, that
I was assigned a role in at this time was the operation
research activites taking place at Berkeley, California.
These activities were conceived two or three years
previously when Ed Schultz, who at the time I went to
the Washington office was director of administrative
management, and the director of the Pacific Southwest
Station. Keith Arnold, Gordon Fox, and others became
very interested in the possibility of the use of
operation research techniques on Forest Service opera
tional problems. This, of course, had been a develop
ment that came out of World War II where you could
analyze a wide range of possible combinations of
activities for analysis and decision making.
29
At the University of California at Berkeley they had
a graduate program that Keith Arnold was aware of,
which appeared to be pretty well developed. A decision
was made to pick out a few possible applications within
the Forest Service and contract with the university to
apply the techniques to see of they would in fact be
successful. The contract was awarded and the university
assigned three of their senior graduate students to the
project, Ernst Valfer, Mai Kirby , and Gideon Schwartzbart
The project appeared to be working very well and Keith
Arnold proposed that we implement our own staff and let
them close that contract and get into business our
selves it appeared to be that successful. We ended
up hiring the three graduate students as Forest Service
employees. My first contact with the Management Sciences
Staff, as it became known, was to go out and become
acquainted with what they were doing, to observe the
progress being made on completion of the contract which
was still in existence with the university, and see
where it led us.
Over the years the Management Sciences Staff has pro
vided a very, very substantial number of outstanding,
completely new developments and improvements in manage
ment technology. It has also been very noticeable that
they have adopted for themselves a role wider than just
use of operation research technology. Their whole
30
approach is to develop something that is directly
usable by management rather than only the pure re
search approach of coming out in publication with
basic knowledge, which you then have to find a way
of applying. They come up with finished applicable
systems which have ranged all the way from communica
tion technology to basic research on ways of determining
the size of units, to engineering applications, for
road networks to you name it.
RCL: Are they assigned subjects to cover or investigate?
CAS: The way their projects are assigned is that annually
we develop a program of work jointly with them. They
report administratively to the research station but the
technical leadership and project sponsorship are from
the chief's staff from Administration in Washington
office. The administrators are their sponsors in terms
of budgets in program formulation, I should say. The
projects are conceived in a variety of ways. In some
cases the Management Sciences staff conceive the pro
jects themselves. In some cases potential projects are
suggested by field people. In other cases Washington
office staff groups conceive projects. Annually we
pull together all of the proposals and make a recom
mendation on how many projects we can staff and fund,
and then the chief approves them and they are assigned
through the station.
31
RCL: How or why are they still in California at the Berkeley
station?
CAS: This is, of course, a very useful working environment
for them. They can divorce themselves from the day- to
day operating crises that are generated in the Washington
office. They have a good body of consultants avail
able to them from the university, from the station, and
from other universities in that geographic area. They
have closely available to them also the regional office
in California and local national forests that they can
use as a test bed for projects. So it does seem a
desirable location for them.
RCL: You have been describing events that took place or
began in 1963. In 1964 you were promoted. Could you
describe that and any other events that took place in
1964?
CAS: Early in 1964, Ed Schultz, who was director, was
promoted to associate deputy chief for National Forest
Protection and Development and I was promoted to di
rector of the Division of Administrative Management .
Hardly before I could get my feet on the ground the
Job Corps, or what ultimately became the Job Corps,
came along. Senator Hubert Humphrey had for two or
three successive years attempted to get a modern version
of the old Civilian Conservation Corps approved in
Congress. When President Kennedy was inaugurated, he
32
looked around for new major initiatives that could
be adopted and this idea was very attractive to him.
He set up a task force under Sergeant Shriver and
one of their efforts was to come up with a CCC-type
program. We still had the background work we had done
for Senator Humphrey; we had a pretty complete design
on hand. We started immediately and it was assigned
to the Administrative Management Division to handle
with Personnel to deal with the personnel type activi
ties, and Engineering to develop facilities.
For that next period of time we stopped practically
all new management technology efforts and devoted our
entire staff to helping with the design and implemen
tation of the new Job Corps program. Then legislation
was passed and we were funded under the old OEO
(Office of Economic Opportunities) organization. A
new segment of organization was approved in the
Washington office and our only efforts in support of
it from that time on were to design or adapt management
technology and activities that the Forest Service had,
to this program. That in itself would justify the
subject of a major interview but that's not the subject
at hand here.
The next major project was when we became the subject
of a management improvement study generated by what was
the predecessor of the Office of Management and Budget.
33
OMB conceived a series of management improvement
projects to be used nationally, whereby they would
go to the departments and bureaus of various depart
ments with a team, study their organization and
management, and come up with substantive recommenda
tions for major improvements. This had been done on
one or more departments of other agencies before they
came to Agriculture. The Forest Service was selected
as one of the Agriculture agencies as well as the
Secretary's office. The team was composed of
Mr. Deckard from OMB, a representative from the
another department, and a Department of Agriculture
person. Originally the approach they had been using
in these studies was to come in and make a completed
study and submit it to the secretary of the department
who then would implement it as he saw fit. However,
in their initial approaches within the Forest Service,
Gordon Fox suggested to Mr. Deckard that a much more
useful product might result if the Forest Service could
work day by day, item by item, with the study team to
help them develop their study report and then jointly
formulate a series of recommendations that we would
submit to the Secretary of Agriculture. This was ac
cepted.
Now this approach of coming up with a joint recommenda
tion, or at least a mutually agreeable product, suggests
34
something that I would like to describe which is a
very constructive and very useful process that we use
deliberately in the Forest Service. The way it operates
is that we deliberately assume a constructive attitude
about any effort for reviewing the Forest Service or
identifying weaknesses or problems or whatever. Our
assumption is that if it is properly done, actions or
recommendations that will come out of an inspection
or investigation or study of the Forest Service can be
useful to the Forest Service. It will provide some
thing that we will be willing to accept and implement
because it will improve the Forest Service. We have
found over many years of applying this principle that
it, in fact, will operate that way if we openly display
this attitude. If we volunteer not only our willingness
to operate in this context but our willingness to help
identify problems, help identify mistakes, or whatever
it will be constructively received. We can then discuss
constructive ways of solving these problems which
usually results in recommendations phrased in terms that
we can willingly accept and implement.
I have not operated outside of the Forest Service to
any extent but I have discussed this proposition with
many people outside of the Forest Service. Apparently
it's not the usual approach in most agencies, but it
helps us so much that we welcome outside people to come
35
and work with us in inspections or whatever. We don't
always agree on the end results but we usually agree on
the majority of it. And it has one other effect that
was particularly noticeable in terms of the study we
have just been talking about. It was that the Forest
Service to this day is still implementing recommendations
that came out of it. I don't know of any recommendations
that we rejected out of hand. We did modify our imple
mentation somewhat but there was not a single one that
in some way or another we did not implement long after
anybody was concerned about asking for progress reports.
RCL: So, in effect, you are using outside bureaus to carry
on as an arm of your own management technology. It
seems like a wise thing to do.
CAS: I guess you could think of it in that way. But it's
awfully difficult sometimes. If you, for example, are
dealing with an investigator who is suspicious, it is
difficult to get him to accept the fact that you are
open and that you want to be constructive about it. If
he does not accept it, it's very difficult to retain
your constructive attitude.
RCL : Sure .
CAS: But, as a matter of deliberate policy and approach we
train our people to operate in this way, and when some
body doesn't want to operate this way we still attempt
to persist in a constructive way. And it is something
36
that I think is well worth preserving. It has a very
great effect in terms of how we come up with improved
ways of doing business.
.
Well, getting back to the management improvement survey,
as I recall there were forty-nine substantive, compre
hensive recommendations involving many different areas
-
of management but twenty-nine of those became the re
sponsibility of my division, Administrative Management,
to implement. They all had very tight deadlines or due
dates for implementation, way beyond our capability to
handle with the staff we had. We also had, of course,
a large backlog of projects which we had been bypassing
because of the efforts we had made on the Job Corps
program design and implementation. Other crises or
unanticipated requests for studies and projects were
also pending. So there was just no way that we could
conceivably deal with those recommendations, and yet
they were priority assignments by the secretary of
agriculture. So I sat down with my staff and analyzed
the expected time required, the staff we needed to do
those jobs, plus the other jobs we already had been
assigned to do, and then went to the deputy chief,
Clare Hendee, and Gordon Fox and said, "Here's what
we have to do; here's what we have to do it with;
here's our estimate of what it will take to do the
job, and I suggest that we need relief on some of the
projects or approvals for expansion of staffing."
37
We sat down and either delayed or totally eliminated
many of the jobs, calculated the need for staffing the
remainder, and then presented our proposal to the chief.
After asking very, very critical questions, he agreed
that, yes, we needed that staffing and approved it.
RCL : How was your approach in the presentation to the chief?
How did you spell out exactly what had to be done and
how much time it would take?
CAS: It was defined in terms of the project identification.
The priority in all cases was already established as
high because the chief had agreed to them with the
secretary. We had an analysis of the time requirements
to the man-month and the time required staffwise based
on our experience of making studies. We also defined
and described the approach that we would take to do
each job and the completion date that we were expected
to abide (which was originally included in the report).
RCL: Was this presented in the form of a graph?
CAS: No, it was more in terms of figures so many man-months
to do such and such a job. Under questioning, he said,
"Well, how are you going to do this job? How are you
going to go about it? What's involved?" I had project
job descriptions for each one and they were accepted
and we went into a recruiting program for people.
There obviously were not enough people within the Forest
Service who were experienced and qualified to do these
38
jobs so we had to accept the fact that we would have
to train quite a few people. We could not strip all of
the regional offices of their knowledge and capability.
We would have to do some work by contract , some by de-
tailers or whatever. So we developed an expanded staff,
all specialists in management analysis, to do this job.
We did recruit some people from outside the Forest
Service. We didn't just automatically assume they had
to be Forest Service people. This then became a
reservoir of administrative management people for the
next period of quite a few years. These were people
who succeeded to positions as chiefs of operations,
deputy regional foresters, or research station directors
of support services. Throughout the Service most of
these people have pretty well succeeded to senior
positions.
RCL: Then you did a lot for the Forest Service through the
Deckard Study.
CAS: That's correct. A number of very significant new de
velopments came out of implementing these recommenda
tions. There were also some fairly traumatic experiences,
one or two of which I would like to relate. One of
them was the determination by the study group that the
Forest Service had more regional level and research
station level units than were justified, which we agreed
was true. The analysis we felt was basically sound.
39
However, we did not agree that it would be wise to
attempt to make all the changes that were recommended.
So we agreed to make a first partial implementation,
and we closed out one research station and one region.
It was a very, very sensitive matter, needless to say
closing out any unit always is and the decisions were
made without any publicity, internally or externally.
The chief, Ed Cliff, was very concerned about the effect
on people. The research station to be closed out had
so few people involved that this could be rather quickly
dealt with, but closing Region 7 involved quite a few
people, and Ed Cliff wanted it done very quickly. We
were troubled by his request for very quick closure
because our judgment indicated that quite a few actions
would be needed and would take time. Many of them were
sequential type actions. You couldn't do everything
simultaneously. Two of the people on the staff, Max
Peterson and Don Smith, decided to use one of the
emerging techniques that we had not really much ex
perience with in an administrative area, and that was
a version of "critical path charting" called PERT.
They sat down and constructed a critical path chart
that showed all of the actions that would be involved:
the personnel actions to close out jobs and transfer
people; the property actions to transfer the property
accountability to other units; the records transfers;
40
a whole range of activities of about six major categories
altogether. They charted these out in the sequence
that would have to take place and assigned the best
judgment time-estimates to do these jobs. It turned
out that the critical path, or the path of activities
that would take the most time which therefore became the
"critical path" so-called, were the personnel actions.
Indications were that it was going to take three to four
times the length of time that the chief wanted and that
it would also involve actions not within control of the
Forest Service. Some actions would require approvals
by department Office of Personnel and also by the Civil
Service Commission.
So the three of us went to the chief, Ed Cliff, and
described to him the process that we would have to go
through, the sequence of events, and our best time
estimates of how long it would take to do the job. We
tracked through the activities with him and pointed
out to him that there was no feasible way to accomplish
it in the short time that he wanted and minimize the
impact on people. We also pointed out some of the
concerns everyone impacted would have, such as knowing
what their job would be and whether they would have a
job at all, and that this was going to take three or
four times as long as he desired.
After he had studied it and asked questions as to what
.
41
was involved, he said, "Well, I guess that's what we
will have to do. Go ahead and do what you have to do."
I use this example to illustrate how administrative
management technology can be a major assistance to an
official who has to deal with a tough situation. This
showed him what he could do and what he could not do
and probably saved him from forcing us into some actions
that we would not be able to accomplish as promised,
which would probably disappoint or upset people much
more than if we said, "Look, it's going to take this
much time. This is the very best we can do."
RCL: Yes. The advantage of management technology is that
it really allows you to do some planning based on
reality rather than just hopeful thinking.
CAS: That's correct. For a number of years I had this
particular critical path chart in my office to use to
illustrate to management analysts how they could pre
sent analyses that would have significant effects on
management that these weren't playthings that you
just used for yourself. Later on we used the same
charting process not only for closing out units but
for setting up new units. We could logically identify
all the jobs that had to be done and which one was the
critical path, which ones we could take more time with,
and so on .
42
RCL: Why don't we continue with the Deckard organizational
study, and discuss some of the spin-offs. Perhaps the
best place to begin would be the size of district study.
CAS: Okay. One of the major thrusts of the management
improvement study that Mr. Deckard headed was the number
and efficiency of organizational units within the Forest
Service. He made a series of recommendations and
provided some analysis suggesting that we might be able
to efficiently administer the Forest Service programs
with many fewer units. That is, the number of ranger
districts, the number of forests, the number of regions,
the number of stations. We've already talked a little
bit about some of the experiences in terms of closing
out Region 7 and one research station. In our inven
tory of studies to be made, we had a proposition to
study the number of ranger districts that we had and
saw this as an opportunity to actively pursue it.
In my own experience and in the experience that we
could identify from a literature search not very much
had been done in terms of studying the relative size
of units, other than manufacturing activities or
mechanical activities that are very much subject to
detailed work measurement. So in attacking this propo
sition, we were applying new approaches to management
technology.
In describing this study I guess I should first clarify
.',
43
what I mean by size. Size could, of course, just mean
a number of acres contained in a ranger district but
really size denotes much more than an area. In reference
to ranger districts, we defined size as a combination
of acres and other indicators such as budget, workload,
staffing, resource production, volumes, levels of use,
and the complexity of multiple-use sustained-yield
management of natural resources. So you can see, in
this context the size is a conglomeration of variables
all of which have an influence on the complexity of
job, and the amount of work that one man or a group of
individuals could accomplish in administering the area
and all the resources on it.
The previous size policy was based strictly on the
amount of work that we could expect a professional
ranger to do. We identified work in two categories
the kind that was possible for anyone to do and the
kind of work that our judgment indicated must be
done by the ranger personally. We called that non-
delegable work. We developed and applied workload
factors to make this determination or evaluation.
RCL: This would be something like the regular workload
analysis?
CAS: It stemmed from that. We used the regular workload
analysis, but we separated it into what we called
base work or nondelegable work which the ranger should
44
do as far as the policy determination. The rest could
be delegated to other district staff. We arbitrarily
determined that the nondelegable work would equal
fifteen hundred hours as determined by the workload
factors that we had. At least fifteen hundred hours
of so-called nondelegable workload was a proper size
workload for a ranger district.
We also decided we wanted to tie the size (size being
this collection of variables) more directly to the
consequences of organizational effectiveness. And in
so doing, we tried to make use of the latest organiza
tion theories related to the technical systems within
which social reaction, work patterns, and job content
are evaluated and related to the technological re
quirements of the job on the ranger district.
To design this study, we pulled together a number of
technically skilled people and experienced managers
to assist in coming up with the basic study approach.
In other words, we sat down and defined the study in
terms of the problem and the constraints within which
we would make the study such as the number of people
we could assign, the data available, the length of time
in which acceptable results could be obtained, when
the final report had to be finished, etc. We included
the first ideas on methodology that would be used to
make the study, and the objectives of the study. We
45
drew very heavily upon the skills of the Management
Sciences staff not only in doing this but ultimately
in participating in the study.
Briefly, the objectives of the study were: one, to
determine whether a relationship exists between size
of ranger districts and district effectiveness; two,
to develop criteria to determine the acceptable range
and size of ranger districts by carrying out Forest
Service program objectives effectively and economically;
and three, to establish procedures for evaluating each
district or combination of districts for desirability
of size change.
Some of the basic assumptions or constraints on the
study, as I stated a while ago, were first, that we
would not re-examine the existing Forest Service or
ganization design or the definition of the district
ranger responsibilities. We, of course, had just
completed basically implementing the new look at our
organization, through the McKenzie study, "Gearing
the Organization to the Job Ahead." We saw no need
to start over again in questioning the particular role
of the ranger district as was defined in that study.
Acceptance of this assumption or constraint for the
study, of course, led to general acceptance of existing
operating and organizational characteristics. We also
were constrained to obtain results in a relatively
46
short time, although ultimately it took us about two
years to complete the basic study.
We organized the study by assigning a good cross-section
of people, management people, from throughout the
Forest Service. The chairman of the actual study group
was Walt Graves who was at this time chief of operations
of Region 3. Others assigned were Ken Norman, who was
chief of the branch of Watersheds in California and the
Management Sciences staff composed at that time of
Frank Bell, Mai Kirby, Gideon Schwartzbart , and, of
course, the chief of the staff, Ernst Valfer.
To guide or steer the study itself, we appointed a
steering committee. It was chaired by Gordon Fox,
associate deputy chief, for Administration, and manned
by Regional Forester Charlie Connaughton from Region 5,
Regional Forester Floyd Iverson from Region 4, Forest
Supervisor John Franson from Mississippi, Regional
Engineer Ward Gano from Portland, and myself as an
ex-officio member.
RCL: Could you explain to me the findings of the size of
ranger district study and then how those findings were
implemented? What difference did it make in the
organization of the Forest Service?
CAS: Very briefly, we found that the most dominant factor
in determining the effectiveness of a ranger district
is the competence of the ranger and his staff. That
47
may sound like a truism and a less than astounding
finding, but we definitely proved this by way of study
and documentation. We also learned and not too sur
prisingly, that the effectiveness of a district is
related to the number of professional employees on
that district. You recall that I mentioned earlier
that one change in our organization policy was to staff
with specialists. Well, one of the consequences is
that if you have some specialists available on your
immediate staff you have greater competence in the
specialty activities.
We discovered that there were some generalized size-
effectiveness relationships. For example, the larger
ranger districts tended to be more effective than the
smaller ones, which correlates with the number of
specialist employees that you might be able to afford.
Also, interestingly enough, the amount of time rangers
spend in the field is independent of district size.
We found by study that on a very tiny district he
spends generally about the same amount of time in the
field as he would spend on a larger district. But
there was a great deal of difference in what he did.
If he had a large district with a staff, he spent this
time on management activities. If he had a very tiny
district, he did considerable technician work. So
there was an interesting relationship there.
48
We also found, not surprisingly, that economies of
scale exist which relate to the cost of operations.
A large operation, as is classically true, had a lower
unit cost of operation. We designed a simulation
model for determining the effects of the various
variables and worked out a formula that could be ap
plied from acquired data in any unit or combination
of units to determine what the relative size index
range was.
We came up with a number of recommendations for the
chief in 1967, and they were adopted and published
in the manual section governing the size of ranger
districts. Briefly the general factors as adopted
were first to consolidate, to the extent feasible,
districts that have headquarters in the same community
We had many districts working in the same community
and we found that the large sized districts, given an
adequate staff, could manage a larger district and
eliminate one headquarters. Another similar recom
mendation was to adjust the districts, to the extent
feasible, to fall within our computed optimum size
range using the simulation size factor that we came
up with. The reason I say to the extent feasible is
that considering the physical characteristics on the
ground in some cases you just can't create additional
acres or something like that to make a district larger.
49
We also recommended that where feasible, the area of
land to be administered should be of a size to support
a staff of at least four employees, including the ranger,
in grades GS-7 and above. Another recommendation was
to attempt to adjust district boundaries so that there
would be enough workload in the major resource functions
to warrant the assignment of a staff man to each major
resource function.
All this size evaluation was to be done under the overall
criteria of giving adequate service to the public, good
solid resource management, and minimum costs of admin
istration not only now but projected ten years into
the future. The net result has been the reduction of the
number of ranger districts.
RCL: Another spin-off of the Deckard study was the size of
forest study as was presented in "Size of Forest Policy
in the Forest Service," dated October, 1971. Could you
discuss that as you have the size of ranger district
study?
CAS: We made the forest size study in sequence with the size
of ranger district study because the ranger district is
the basic ongoing organizational entity and is the
foundation on which we build organizationally in terms
of resource management. So it was not really practical
to study it at the same time or to do it first. We
approached it basically the same way as we did the size
50
of ranger district study, though not with as elaborate
a study design because we had the data already collected
by ranger districts and the ranger district size policy
to build upon.
The basic study was made by Len Lundberg and Gene Hawks.
They had basically the same technical people available
for assistance and consultation that we had for the size
of district study. We established the objectives of
the size of forest study first, which was to determine
the size range that provides acceptable economies of
operation while at the same time meeting Forest Service
criteria for standards of effective service, including
service to the public, service to the national forest
users, permittees, etcetera. We first asked whether
or not there are significant relationships between the
size of a forest and its cost of operation and effec
tiveness. Secondly, we looked at the types and amounts
of one-time costs which would be generally expected
by creating actual adjustments of forest boundaries.
Thirdly, we projected the types and amounts of long-
term and short-term savings, if any, which may
accumulate as a result of adjustment of forest bound
aries .
We felt that if the size of a forest has a definable
relationship with efficiency and effectiveness, then
it should be possible to recommend a size-of-forest
51
policy that sets guidelines for developing more effi
cient and effective forest limits. We did find that
the effectiveness of the forest is in general the
cumulative effectiveness of the ranger districts that
make up a given forest. This, of course, dictated
that before you deal with adjusting any forest boundary
you must first deal with the size and effectiveness
of the ranger districts that might be within that forest
We also determined that the total number of ranger
districts of reasonable size (the size being what we
determined in the ranger district size study) has little
influence on forest effectiveness. In other words, if
you have a few effective districts or if you have a
large number of effective districts, the number by
itself doesn't have much influence on the forest effec
tiveness.
Another finding was the number of ranger districts that
make up a forest does have a significant influence on
the costs of operation. For example, the cost of opera
tion tends to be highest on small forests with small
districts. We also found that forests with a certain
sized budget had a better chance of obtaining optimum
conditions for effective and efficient operations. In
other words, if you don't have enough dollars to do a
certain level of work, there is no way you can be very
efficient. In 1968 dollars, it was $3 million so I
52
suppose you could apply an inflation factor of about
three percent to that today. We also determined that
annual savings from the closing of a forest super
visor's office through combining two or more forests,
usually exceeds one time closing costs in a one-to
two-year period. The size of forest policy that we
developed and recommended was adopted by the Forest
Service in 1969.
Another suggestion in the Deckard management survey
was that we should have had a policy on size of regions,
but considering there were only nine regions, it did
not seem reasonable to invest in a comprehensive study
to develop a policy. (Although if you wanted to make
an adjustment it would end up being a total major
study anyway.) So we did not pursue the proposition
of a study to develop a size of region policy.
A number of months later the Ashe Reorganization
Commission under President Nixon made a study of or
ganization governmentwide and recommended a set of
standard federal regions. Strong efforts were made
at that time for all agencies to conform, and a detailed
study was made by the Forest Service to match as closely
as possible the standard regions. However, Congress
was unwilling to accept the elimination of any regional
offices in the Forest Service and, by way of legislative
language in the appropriations bill, forbade it without
53
their permission. So that went by the wayside.
RCL: I bet it took a lot of your time just to make a pre
sentation, didn't it?
CAS: The size of forest?
RCL: To try to combine the regions into a broader federal
pattern.
CAS: Yes, this was a very difficult experience to go through.
One of the reasons it was particularly difficult for us
was thfit the intent of the concept of standard federal
regions was to decentralize departments and bureaus
headquartered essentially in the Washington area into
field locations. But they started out with social
programs departments whose workloads were based on
resident population, which meant that you had a whole
region encompassing just New England, another region
just for New York State, and quite large regions geo
graphically in the West. The national forest regions
are just the opposite with large acreages where there
are few people. So the literal application would result
in eliminating most of our regions in the West and not
having enough workload to justify additional regions
in the East.
I think it would be a matter of historical interest to
tie to the national forests size policy study a very
interesting study we went into with the Graduate School
of Business Administration at the University of California
54
at Los Angeles. At the time we were designing a study
to deal with the sizes of ranger districts and forests,
l'< / A' r:
Dr. Valfer was working with Dr. Lew Davis at Berkeley
who very soon transferred to UCLA. Lew Davis was in
terested in studying organizations that appeared to
have effective decision-making mechanisms in response
to a changing population of relevant professional groups
from which it draws its managers and senior staff. He
also had in mind to study organizations who were failures
in this regard. In Dr. Davis 's view, the Forest Service
would be an example of an organization that was success
ful in this regard. At the same time we were interested
in studying our forest organization in terms of being
able to respond more effectively to budget pressures,
the increased need for intensive management in face of
increased population, and to provide a mechanism to re
spond to social problems and the changes in professional
ism of the labor force. So it seemed to be a mutually
supportive proposition. We agreed to have a cooperative
research project where the Forest Service would provide
our organization as a subject and test bed, and the
university would provide us with any resulting informa
tion that we could use in our study of forest organi
zation and in development of career ladders for
professional people. Dr. McWhinney headed up the project
for UCLA.
55
RCL: When was this project undertaken?
CAS: It was started in the fall of 1967. A report was
published in May, 1970. Both groups found this a very
interesting project.
The report points out there is probably not much
startling information in the study in terms of the
observations of Forest Service people, but their ob
servations are actually important in understanding the
organization and therefore, should be used in terms
of adjusting the organization's design and for con
trolling the organization. The first observation in
the report was that the Forest Service seemed to have
a very conservative attitude and body of techniques
which applied not only to research management but to
management of the organization. The organization
adapts to change, but it seems to resist rapid change.
As a side comment, I would say that we are conservative
in terms of having to make sure of the direction of
change before we invest in implementing that kind of
change. Another observation was that the organization
seems to reflect the personalities of the kind of
technical people that compose the organization. In
other words, for many years, we had a forestry image
and seemed to be directed by the concepts taught at
forestry or training schools and picked up in the
Forest Service.
56
RCL: That makes sense.
CAS: But interestingly, they also observed that there appears
to be an entirely different breed of individuals en
tering the Service in terms of attitudes and personality
compared to the early members of the Forest Service.
I would suspect that a good part of that comes from our
deliberate policy of staffing with a variety of spe
cialists rather than foresters, to gain better
professionalism in all of the responsibilities that we
have. It has yet to be seen, of course, whether over
the passage of time these people revert to some of the
older attitudes and personality traits. I would say
at this date, 1978, I don't see that reversion.
Some of the broader findings on the conclusions of the
UCLA study were one, that the Forest Service appears
to have a distinctive competence in social and eco
logical management of the land and in environmental
design in the broadest sense. What they are saying is
that the Forest Service has organizational capability
to do a number of things that would not necessarily be
land management. I think since that time, we have done
a number of things which illustrate the capability.
For example, we have been involved in social employ
ment programs, training programs for the socially and
economically deprived, such as the Job Corps, the
Youth Conservation Corps, etcetera. So it is very
57
complimentary to have an organization like this conclude
that the Forest Service was capable of handling an even
bigger job than they were assigned. Second, the report
also strongly urged that decision making be retained as
close to the field as was consistent with the environ
mental conditions. This, of course, is a restatement
of our basic concept of organization that you place the
decision-maker as close to where the decisions are made
as possible. Those acres of land out there in the
national forests are where the decisions need to be made,
/
At least the operating decisions.
The third thing of considerable hindsight interest is
that there are great values to be gained in increasing
the amount of joint decision making particularly for
those decisions directly affecting forest operation.
What they had in mind was greater involvement of a
spectrum of specialists which would result in a better
job of making decisions, but they also suggested that
it would be valuable to include outsiders from govern
ment, industry, and the public. Since that time we
have gone very far in terms of public involvement in
our decision making. We have actually done other
studies of our own on how to accomplish this, how to
make it effective. Since we have gone into consider
able depth with public involvement, there has been
legislation pushing all of the federal government in
this direction.
58
Here again, we were early pioneers in the public
involvement concept in decision making. I like to
use as an example the earliest documented recognition
of this process that I am aware of, which is that
when Gifford Pinchot took over the administration of
the Forest Reserves for the Department of Agriculture
in 1905, he directed that a Forest Service manual of
instructions be developed which was called the Use
Book. He was very explicit in the foreword that it
was not only to be used by the people administering
the organization but to be available to the full public
so they could see the rules and regulations under which
their lands were to be administered and used. So we
had a long tradition in history of the concept of
public involvement in decision making although in those .
days it was quite autocratic in comparison to what we
now view as desirable.
The first finding of the UCLA study was that there should
be mechanisms developed for rapid response to change
demands on the local and national levels, particularly
for timber, but also with regard to jobs for absorption
of funds made available late in the planning period.
All I can say about that is "Amen." We have been
struggling with rapid increases in programs, changes in
programs, the requirement that the public be greatly
involved in the decision making etcetera, etcetera.
We have an ongoing conflict between rapid response and
59
public involvement in that the greater the amount of
joint decision making or whatever, the more time seems
to be necessary and therefore your ability to rapidly
respond seems to be constrained. There is always the
tendency, of course, on the part of many people in the
federal government to centralize decision making but
centralized decision making is not necessarily the
fastest kind of decision making for an organization
with the mission of the Forest Service.
The study also has suggestions for areas of constraint.
One is that care should be taken in developing any
valuative accomplishment measures which rely on peri
odically probing in quantitative form. With the growth
of computers there has been a very strong trend towards
doing just what Professor McWhinney and others sug
gested we ought to restrain.
RCL: There have been problems lately on that subject, haven't
there?
CAS: Yes, and of course, there is a very strong tendency by
the present administration to synthesize as much as
.
possible.
Another proposal for constraint which they suggested
was that we attempt to combat the proposition of letting
the budget accounting system dictate the organization
management of the Forest Service, but use it to serve
as a vehicle of support.
60
This UCLA study was a very interesting body of
research into the socio-technical aspects of the
Forest Service. The insights provided were very
useful to us in applying the size of forest policy
and other organization analyses as well as a sub
stantial body of knowledge which is useful for under
standing how to successfully make decisions in a
multiple-use environment and to utilize specialists.
RCL: I see. Can you give me the full proper name of that
study?
.
CAS: It's "Socio-Technical Systems on Organization Develop
ment Research Program," Graduate School of Business
Administration, Division of Research, University of
California, Los, Angeles.
RCL: Can you give me an example of how this was used by
the Forest Service?
CAS: It was used primarily as a source document. It has
a great deal of information useful for analyzing the
forester career ladder. It contains statistical
information concerning promotions, universities as a
source of professionals, and has a very useful dis
cussion of the use of authority. It also contains
a detailed description of the national forest organi
zation and methodology useful for analyzing the
forest organization.
.
RCL: It would be something like a reference book that
61
maybe you would go back to if you were looking into
some subject relevent to this.
CAS: That's correct, yes. In reviewing it for the purpose
of this interview I rediscovered that it has insights
fully valid today and that it so specifically covered
some of the major aspects that it seems a shame we
don't dust it off and recycle it. However, anyone
wanting to pursue it can find it in the Forest Service
Library.
RCL: . Okay.
CAS: I might mention that UCLA also extended their study
into a second volume called "Technicians in the United
States Forest Service" by one of McWhinney's associates,
James F. Koch. It was published in 1970 also.
RCL: We have been discussing at some length the spin-offs
and ramifications of the Deckard organizational study.
It appears that it was really a turning point for the
Forest Service in that so many other things have fol
lowed. Would you have any sort of comment on its
overall impact?
CAS: It was one turning point in the Forest Service in terms
of administrative management. In terms of resource
management, that went on as it was, but consider that
basically we have only talked about three of the rec
ommendations those dealing with the closing out of
some of the regional installations, the size of forest
62
policy, and the size of ranger district policy. Those
were only three of some twenty-nine recommendations
directed to my division to implement. We would be here
for another week if we explored even superficially the
effects on the Forest Service generated by that par
ticular effort. As I mentioned earlier, we were proud
that we could constructively engage in the formulation
of the findings and, in fact, implement them. Even
though it was a pretty tough job to implement them, it
resulted in some very worthwhile results.
RCL: Going back to 1965, where we left off in your story
with the beginning of the Deckard study, that year
wasn't spent doing just that. You also did a study
of research station support. Could you go into a
discussion of that?
CAS: Yes. For many years we had been struggling with the
best way of providing support service activities. By
this I mean, personnel, procurement, office management,
etcetera, to our research station. Of course, the
primary mission of these stations is scientific research
and publication of the findings. We have tried a great
variety of ways of supporting this activity, all to
considerable dissatisfaction of the researchers. In
1965 we kicked off a project to study in some detail
the best way of providing it. Offhand, I can't re
member all of the participants, but the chairman of the
study group was Keith Arnold who at that time was one
1
63
of the research division directors in the Washington
office, who had previously been director of the station
at Berkeley. Russ Cloninger, of my staff, Don Morton
from one of the field installations and Gideon Schwartzbart
from the Management Science staff were also involved.
We made a very comprehensive survey of the kinds of
support activities needed and the best way of organi
zing them, and produced a study report and recommendations
which were adopted by the Forest Service. Basically
it is still the design that we have today, although
two or three years ago we updated it .
In 1967, the administration became very interested in
a system of program planning and budgeting that had
been developed in the Department of Defense and which
was required to be implemented in all federal agencies
on very short notice. The Forest Service was quite
interested in this because for many years we had had
a rudimentary version of program planning and bud
geting which was basically similar. We thought we
could very usefully and successfully implement this
particular system. The problem was that the system was
not fully designed and tested before it was implemented.
The proposal was that everybody should develop the
necessary implementing details as they went and it was
a very complex large-scale system.
I suspect the Forest Service was at least as successful
'
64
as anybody else in implementing it, and we did positively
attempt to use the required system, but eventually it
fell into complete disuse as a required federal govern-
mentwide system because of this failure to fully develop
and test it before it received such massive application.
Of course, when it was abandoned by the federal govern
ment, we necessarily dropped that version of the system,
although we have continued to use basically the same
principles.
RCL: Was part of the problem the fact that the Defense Depart
ment had a whole different mission than the Forest Service?
CAS: I expect that basically that was part of it but I be
lieve one of the major reasons it failed was that it was
not tested for different missions or different applica
tions. There was such a crises atmosphere to it that
you had to develop it as you went and it just wasn't a
very suitable approach. Wherever we can, we prefer to
fully develop and fully test and de-bug anything before
we implement it as a matter of good principle, although
that is not always possible.
About this same time, in 1967, we started a comprehensive
study on an inspection system. For quite a number of
years various individuals had been suggesting that our
basic inspection control system should be reviewed, up
dated, and hopefully made simpler and more responsive.
This was at the same period of time when we had a large
number of studies under way from the Washington office
1
65
so we asked Region 7 to use a basic study design that
we jointly developed and to make a study of the in
spection system. The design called for a fairly wide
range of alternative approaches. We let this test run
for two or three years and then tried to evaluate it .
I think the basic findings were quite useful but we
were unable at that time to get any agreement generally
throughout the Service as to the best direction to go.
I don't know whether it was the "not invented
here syndrome" or not , but I suspect that may have been
at least part of the problem. So we decided that we
would take what lessons we had learned there, and all
the suggestions we had in hand, and redraft our policy
and instructions and again attempt to get agreement.
Here again we had a problem with getting acceptance
throughout the Service on any of the approaches that
we had, and we were experiencing substantial separation
between the various units in terms of each going his
own way as to how to make inspections. At the same
time we had a very substantial cutback in terms of
personnel, program activities, and so on, such that we
were having difficulty doing all the jobs required of
us. So during this period of time we also cut way
back on the number of inspections. Finally there was
general agreement we couldn't let our inspections
slide any longer. We pulled together a small group of
fifi
\J\J
individuals under my direction, with Howard Beaver as
operating chairman, to take all the material we had
accumulated that is, the Region 1 studies, the two
redrafts we had on policies, and the suggestions on
hand and completely redid it.
Over the next few months we spent considerable time
working on this. We established several basic criteria,
the main one being that the inspection system is the
basic quality control mechanism in the Forest Service.
We concluded that the system which the Forest Service
had been using for the last fifteen or twenty years was
basically sound. Much of the problem was generated
because people were not adhering to the system as it
was intended and designed to be used.
It did have several distinct weaknesses. One was that
there were only a series of single, best recommendations
being formulated by inspectors. They were not formula
ting alternatives for consideration by their own
management . When a manager saw only one set of recom
mendations presented to him he had no way of knowing
in most cases what all of the considerations were and
what the other possibilities for action might be for
correction of deficiencies or whatever unless someone
described them to him verbally.
The first thing we did was to require comprehensive
identification of need for an inspection before it was
67
made and a description of the plan under which it would
be made. We built in a process describing alternative
courses of action for decision making and eliminated
the system of having recommendations in the inspection
itself. Only findings and, as I described, alternatives
for possible actions that could be taken were to be
included. We then added an entirely new part to the
process which was the joint formulation of an action
plan by the unit being inspected and the inspector level,
RCL: Why were recommendations taken out?
CAS: Because, as I explained, the old system didn't fully
describe all the possible ways that action could be
taken. Perhaps more importantly, by experience we found
that when the recommendations were not jointly for
mulated the inspected unit, more often than not, did
not in fact implement the recommendations. For example,
in our old system we had a process of frequent report
ing on accomplishments but often there didn't seem to
be very much accomplishment. More importantly when we
made the next inspection we found inspectors coming up
with the same recommendations. In an effort to change
the old attitude, we decided to have the report
document findings of commissions or descriptions of
situations, and then suggest alternative actions. This
then would be transmitted to the people who had to
make the decisions, the line officer in charge of the
68
unit, and the line officer at the next higher level.
They would then jointly develop an action plan and sign
off on it. It then becomes a contract for action. So
far we found that this is working out as intended.
Another change we made was to attempt to eliminate the
massive paper job of periodically making an elaborate
status report and require only certification of accom
plishment. Those were some of the major changes. With
all of this, we implemented a comprehensive training
program and emphasized the need to catch up on quality
control. We found with the elimination of much of our
scheduled inspections from the years past that our
quality control had suffered.
Another change we made which I think ended up being
cosmetic was that we changed the title of our control
system from inspection to reviews. I would agree that
there was an acceptable reason for changing the title
to give it a more constructive, positive connotation
but on hindsight I rather strongly feel that it was
not worth the cost in terms of getting people to change
their use of language and to find and eliminate all the
references to inspections in the Forest Service Manual
and correspondence. I think in many cases we come up
with valid reasons for changes in nomenclature, and
many times the changes are not actually worth the cost.
RCL : It's merely semantical then?
i
69
CAS: Well, in this case, it was intended to be more than
semantic but I think in fact it ended up being a
semantic change.
RCL: That's right. In early Forest Service administration,
Gifford Pinchot urged very strongly a decentralized
form of management, and this was at a time when it was
rather unique in government agencies. One of the basic,
elements of decentralization in terms of communication
is the inspection, and to a large extent this is a very
historical element in the Forest Service. It is in
teresting to see how it has evolved but it is still
maintained even though it is now called review. Do you
have any comments on the real necessity of reviews to
maintain a workable decentralized administration?
CAS: Yes. You have to have controls to have any efficient
organization. I'd point out that we have many different
aspects to controls. For example, organization design
is a form of control. Recruitment and selection of
people is in fact a very real control for the organi
zation. Reports of accomplishment or whatever are a
very real form of control, but for activities there is
no way that you can determine whether or not the re
sponsibility is being redeemed short of a knowledgeable
person's going out and observing on the ground and
making a quality evaluation. Now if we made all of the
decisions in the Washington office regarding all Forest
70
Service activity, you might not need to go out and
see how it was being done, but I submit that even there
you probably would have to.
Another aspect of this is that the secretary of
Agriculture holds John McGuire, the chief, personally
responsible for what goes on. And John McGuire has to
either go out or have somebody go out and see whether
those responsiblities are being redeemed. Without the
system of going out and inspecting you couldn't really
afford to have the decentralization.
RCL: Could you describe for me the types of reviews now being
conducted?
CAS: We have basically three levels of reviews. The broadest
category is the general management review where we look
at the totality of the management of a selected or
ganization or combination of organizations. This is
made at the national headquarters level and at the
regional level. We also have program reviews of major
program activities such as timber or range, or personnel
or combinations of those, and then we have more de
tailed technical reviews which we call activity reviews.
These are narrowly technical in nature and they are
made at all levels.
I might point out one interesting aspect that may be
somewhat unique to the Forest Service compared to other
organizations and that is that our review system delib
erately is designed not only to look at the unit being
'
71
reviewed but also to look at the effect of the manage
ment or direction from the reviewer level, on the
lower level; and the findings, conclusions, and re
commendations are directed to both levels, which is
in great contrast to, let's say, the military view of
inspection. We also consider the individuals being
reviewed as part of the review team.
RCL: So the process goes down and up goes in both directions
CAS: And the action plan generally includes actions directed
at both levels.
RCL: It is a decentralized form of administration if that
is true. People at the bottom are also running a few
people at the top.
CAS: It certainly has an effect on it, that's right.
RCL: I understand that in 1969 the Forest Service began the
design of a new accounting system. Could you describe
that and how it developed?
CAS: A number of years before 1969, Congress passed a law
requiring an accrual accounting system. The General
Accounting Office was assigned the responsibility for
seeing to it that all federal agencies implemented
such an accounting system. So we set out to design a
system that would fit the requirements. We hired a
consulting firm, Booze, Allen, and Hamilton, to assist
us and pulled together a project team to come up with
a modern accounting system that would fit the full
72
requirements of management. We had in mind to do
some things that were beyond just the basic requirements,
that had we been successful would have been innovative.
We conceived the idea of tying the basic accounting
work to our work planning system. We not only started
the basis for the accounts right with the operational
planning and early on assigned the account numbers, we
planned to continue to use these same numbers through
out the management process , so that ultimately when the
accounting data was transmitted back to the managers,
it would be in terms they could understand relating
specifically to their project activities. So it was
more than just the accrual of financial data, it was
also the accrual of performance data and accomplishments
beyond just the dollars.
As part of this design, we decided that to serve for
a long time in the future, it could be best and most
efficiently handled with one national finance center.
In our studies of this, particularly considering the
lines of telecommunication that would be needed to do
this, plus the mail routes where you had to do it by
mail, we found the Denver area would be most centrally
located to the geographic workload of the Forest
Service. We did not select Denver, because the
Department of Agriculture had a policy of locating
offices in nonmetropolitan areas whenever feasible.
73
Instead we selected Fort Collins, Colorado, which was
a nonmetrpolitan area, and contracted with GSA to have
a lease building built to our specifications which
would contain a national accounting center plus a
national computer center, and it, in fact, was built.
About the time we were completing the design details,
the Department of Agriculture concluded that all the
agencies within Agriculture could best be served by
a centralized departmental finance center; and that
to make it successfull all agencies within Agriculture
should participate. In the spirit of teamwork to make
it successful for all agencies, we agreed to be a
party to a centralized, overall system. In order to
accomplish this a number of things had to be done by
the Department: first the establishment of a physical
location, the acquisition of computer hardware capable
of doing it, and so on. Of course, they were starting
pretty largely from scratch although they did have a
payroll center at New Orleans and selected New Orleans
pretty largely because they already had this partial
operation going there. Over the next number of years
the Department's finance office was implemented.
We stayed with our existing accounting systems pretty
largely up until about a year and a half ago when
the Department was ready to take on our work. At this
time we constituted a task force of specialists who
74
designed a new accounting system. We had learned by
our experience in the intervening years since 1969.
As a result, we modified some of our basic criteria
and found some simplifications that we could implement.
In the beginning of the current fiscal year [1978] we
started pilot testing the system in two regions of the
Forest Service and the Washington office. We called
our new accounting system PAMARS which is an acronym
for Program Accounting and Management Attainment
Reporting System. It contains some modern innovations
beyond what we had originally conceived, but it still
retains the tie to basic work planning and provides a
way of getting very quickly the current managment
attainments of the Forest Service. It will ultimately
provide us with the kind of units of work-dollar costs
that Forest Service management has been desiring and
demanding for quite a number of years. We evaluated
the pilot test this month. The Service has accepted
the system design and is extending the application of
it this next fiscal year. It will be a year and a
half before we will be able to completely implement it
in all our units because we have to acquire additional
telecommunications capability to get all units on line
RCL: So eventually you might have the capability of using
this system to apply to your older techniques of work
load analyses and these other types of things.
75
CAS: In March, 1971, I was promoted to associate deputy
chief and had, as I imagine you would expect, somewhat
mixed feelings about succeeding to the position that
Gordon Fox had so ably filled for so many years. When
I first met him, why I was not even yet a journeyman
analyst, but having been in the Washington office for
eight years and having been in the acting position
many times I didn't find the transition to be any
problem.
RCL: I bet you felt his shoes were large ones to fill.
CAS: I certainly did.
This latest period of time in my career, being associate
deputy chief has been primarily administrative. When
I changed from my previous job, I was the senior
management analyst but now I became an administrative
officer with a wide range of responsibilities across
the entire spectrum of administration. This left me
very little time to work on any new management technology
projects but gave me the role of providing the means
and support and approvals for others to go ahead and
do the management improvement work.
During this period of time the Management Sciences staff
made great progress and published a large number of
study reports that were implemented. In some other areas
during that time when we had cutbacks, we found ourselves
retrenching and trying just to keep the regular organi
zation running. There was not much time to develop new
76
activities although the review process that we have
talked about and the new accounting system, PAMARS ,
took place during that time.
One activity of historical interest, relates in the
sequence of some of our earlier discussion having to
do with organization design. It has been a principle
of the Forest Service for many years to look periodi
cally at where we are in our organization. For example,
the McKenzie report we talked about is titled "Gearing
the Organization for the Job Ahead." Ten or more years
after that study it was widely felt by Forest Service
management that it was timely, and I am speaking now of
1972 and 1973, to review whether or not we had the right
form of organization considering the changes that had
taken place in the nation and the projected new activities
RCL: What was the title of this study or the report that was
published?
CAS: The study that we made that was printed in July, 1973,
was called "Design for the Future, the Forest Service
Organization Review." It was never officially published.
However, we did complete it to the point of the chief's
staff approval and implementation, and actually had it
reproduced in a draft form that was distributed within
the Service.
This particular study reviewed the role and functions
of all administration levels of the Forest Service,
'
77
although we concluded that at the district level we
did not need any particular review. The role there
was pretty well accepted as it was. We did develop and
evaluate alternative structures for the Washington
office, regions, stations, and areas, and we evaluated
the various alternatives. It resulted in some sub
stantial shifts in the way we were organized at the
Washington office level and in the regional offices.
Probably the biggest change of all was the implemen
tation of the "multiple deputy concept" at the regional
office level, which was introduced as a possibility
back in the McKenzie study. The study was directed by
a steering group chaired by Rex Resler, the associate
chief, and the study team was composed of a wide range
of field people which I chaired. We had analysts from
the Washington office and the field and a wide spectrum
of line officers.
RCL: Jumping ahead a few years to 1977, there is another
aspect of your work that would be considered management
technology, which was a study in work force planning.
CAS: Yes. We had a great demand for accurate, current and
usable work force planning information. We had al
ready approved an effort, to which I have already
alluded, to design a new and better workload measure
ment system, but there were other aspects that needed
to be coordinated at the same time. So we put to
gether a group of representatives from various staffs
78
who had a piece of the action as far as work force
planning is concerned and engaged in a series of
coordination and development efforts. Now what was
involved was a need to coordinate short-range bud
geting work force needs and long-range work force
projections for the Resources Planning Act; inclusion
of the accounting system so we could acquire related
attainment and unit cost figures; and, of course,
the workload measurement system. We also needed to
make sure our recruitment, skills inventory, and
placement planning were coordinated. All this is
intended to pull together the total work force plan
ning needs of the Forest Service. However, typically,
some of the pieces will probably not be fully developed
for another two or three years, particularly the work
load measure part .
RCL: This is really pretty current so it is difficult for
you to give any sort of discussion and certainly no
analysis on its effect or implementation, since it
hasn't come to that point yet.
CAS: That's correct. I failed to mention that the Management
Sciences staff has an approved project that will also
contribute as part of this in the overall project,
particularly in the workload measurement area.
RCL: Well, I think that you have come all the way through
your story. I wish you luck in retirement in Colorado
'
79
and at this point I would like to thank you very much
for your interview, and thank you also on behalf of the
Forest History Society for contributing your share to
this history.
CAS: I've enjoyed it very much. I'm sorry to say that we
have only been able to touch on a few highlights of
the wide-ranging accomplishments of the Forest Service
in management technology.
Regional Oral History Office University of California
The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California
U.S. Forest Service Management Series
Robert H. Torheim
MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY IN THE U.S. FOREST SERVICE:
EXPERIMENTATION AND INNOVATION IN THE FIELD, 1948-1979
An Interview Conducted by
Ann Lage
March 13-14, 1980
Underwritten by the
United States Forest Service
TABLE OP CONTENTS Robert Torheim
INTERVIEW HISTORY
I BACKGROUND IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST 1
Seattle Youth, 1920s-1930s 1
Semlrural setting 2
Influence of the Depression 3
Training in Woodsmanship 4
War and Education 5
Career Choice and Family 6
Career Summary: From Junior Forester to Regional Forester,
1948-1979 8
II RESOURCE AND MULTIPLE-USE MANAGEMENT, 1950s- 1960s 15
A Custodial Role, 1905-1945 15
Wartime and Postwar Predominance of Timber Management Activities 16
Engineers and Foresters: Conflicting Cultures? 19
Strength of the Multiple-Use Ethic 24
Increasing Specialization and Complexity, 1960s- 19 70s 26
Land-Use Planning in the Fifties: Functional Plans 28
Multiple-Use Planning and Its Drawbacks 29
Field Experimentation in New Planning Techniques 33
Public Involvement in the Fifties: Local and Unstructured 34
Public Input: Yaklma Valley Elk 37
William 0. Douglas: Naches District "Assistant Ranger" 38
III LAND MANAGEMENT PLANNING, 1970s 42
National Forest Management Act: Forest Service Input 42
Lolo National Forest Plan, a Case Study 45
From Unit to Forest Planning 46
Public Involvement in Determining Issues 46
Evaluating Public Involvement 48
Forest Plans and the RPA: An Iterative Process 51
Team Management, Conflict or Consensus? 54
Learning the Art of Personnel Management 58
Washington Office Guidance for Land Management 60
Uniform Work Planning; Imposed from Above 61
Land Planning: Experimentation in the Field 62
The Plan and Program Decisions in the Field 65
Allocation and Funding under the RPA 68
The Budgeting and Allocation Process, Pre-1970 69
Power of the Staff in Allocating Funds 71
Motivation for Forest Service Reorganization 73
IV MANAGERIAL METHODS AND STYLES IN THE FOREST SERVICE 77
Hierarchical Structure, Authoritarian Management, 1920- 1950s 77
Pioneer in Scientific Management 78
Autonomy, within Set Limits 80
Postwar Changes 81
"The Way the Rig Ran," an Illustration 83
The Work Planning System in the Field 87
Phasing Out the Diary 89
Participative Management and Management by Objectives 91
Introducing Behavioral Sciences into Management 93
The Managerial Grid Training System 95
Longterm Benefits from Managerial Training 101
Adapting to Change, Dealing with Conflict 103
Cliff and McGuire: Managerial Styles Illustrated 106
V THE FOREST SERVICE ORGANIZATION: CHANGES AND CHALLENGES 109
Reorganization in the Seventies 109
Field Experimentation for Structural Change 111
Multiple Deputies and Line/Staff Adjustments 113
Reaction to Changed Staff Responsibilities 116
From Inspections to Management Reviews 120
A Growing Openness in the Organization 124
The Forest Service on the Defense: Public Involvement 125
Involving the Public in Management Decisions 127
Political Responsibilities of Field Administrators 131
Forest Service Input on Legislative Policy 134
Computers: a Management Tool, a Tool to Manage 140
Management Information Systems 145
A Centralizing Influence 146
Innovative Response to New Technology 147
VI PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT 150
Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity 150
Efforts to Recruit Minorities 151
Employment of Women, a Success Story 155
The Job Corps 159
Lateral Entry and the Promotion of Specialists 161
Employee Dissatisfaction in Region 6 166
Role of Technicians in the Work Force 169
Regional Differences and Washington Office Coordination 171
Fostering and Controlling Innovation in the Field 173
TAPE GUIDE 178
INDEX 179
1
INTERVIEW HISTORY
The Robert Torheim interview is the fourth in a series on the subject
of management technology in the United States Forest Service. Conceived of
by Dr. Ernst Valfer, chief of the Management Sciences Staff of the Forest
Service's Southwest Experiment Station in Berkeley, the interviews explore
changes in the techniques of managing the Forest Service organization over
the past half century. Individual interviewees were selected to represent
various eras of Forest Service managers and to reflect the viewpoints of
the field the ranger districts, forest supervisors, and regional offices
as well as of the Washington office. Taken together, the completed interviews
will offer a broad perspective, based on firsthand experiences, on how the
Forest Service has devised and adapted modern management technologies to fit
the needs of its rapidly growing organization and to respond to the increasing
demands placed on it by federal legislation of the 1960s and 1970s.
Robert Torheim was selected as an interviewee for the series in part
to give the view of a manager whose primary career experience has been in
the field. From this perspective he demonstrates in his interview how
changes in management techniques repeatedly resulted from a felt need at
the field level, experimentation with new methods in the field, and finally
adoption and standardization of the new methods by the Washington office on
a service-wide basis.
For six years from 1965 to 1971, Torheim served in the service's
personnel division, both in the Region 6 office in Portland and In Washington,
D.C. , where he directed employee development and training for the Forest
ii
Service nationwide. His work in personnel coincided with the onset of
Forest Service involvement with the Job Corps and the service's active
efforts to bring minorities and women into the work force. His accounts of
Forest Service efforts to respond to these societal needs is particularly
insightful. Also of special interest are Torheim's views of the art of
"people management," and his account of the Introduction of behavioral
science methods and principles into management, primarily through the
vehicle of the management grid training system. His comments in this area
illuminate one of the ways in which the service has been able to deal with
Increased complexity and conflict as the business of national forest land
management has become a focus of national concern and public involvement in
the sixties and seventies.
Mr. Torheim participated fully in the preparation for this Interview,
exhibiting a clear sense of the purpose of the series and providing the
interviewer with a well organized and thoughtful outline of suggested topics.
The interview was conducted on March 13 and 14, 1980, in the Region 6 offices
in Portland, Oregon, close to the suburb of Beaverton, where Torheim now
lives with his wife, Marjean. The three lengthy interview sessions proceeded
in an orderly and concise fashion, covering all the topics as planned. Mr.
Torheim made no substantive changes in the text during the editing process.
The cooperative and quietly efficient manner in which Mr. Torheim joined in
the entire interviewing process exemplifies for the interviewer the skill of
participative management which Mr. Torheim describes so well in the text of
this Interview.
Ann Lage
,__- In tend, ewer /Editor
August 11, 1980
Berkeley, California
1
I BACKGROUND IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
[Interview 1: March 13, 1980]*!
Seattle Youth, 19208-19308
Lage: This is an interview with Robert Torheim who has recently retired
as regional forester for Region 1 of the U.S'. Forest Service.
Today's date is March 13, 1980, and I am Ann Lage from the Regional
Oral History Office of The Bancroft Library. The subject of this
series of interviews is management technology in the Forest
Service. We're going to start out with something a little closer
to home, with some discussion of your personal background. Do you
want to tell me where you were born, and when, and what type of
community it was?
Torheim: I was born in Seattle, Washington, February 18, 1923. I was
really living out on the fringes of the city near the University
of Washington which now of course is right in the middle of town,
but at that time it was on the fringe of rural; it was on the edge
MThis
begun or
symbol indicates that a tape or a segment of a tape has
. or ended. For a guide to the tapes see page 178.
Torheim: of suburbia as we know it today. It was suburbia creeping
into the fringes of the farm lands and cutover timber lands.
Lage: What did your father do?
Torheim: My father was an immigrant from Norway. He was a steel worker
building buildings all over Seattle and the Northwest. My mother
was a registered nurse, an immigrant from Sweden. She worked
part-time as a surgical nurse. My growing up days were mostly in
the Depression.
Semirural Setting
Lage: So your father's occupation wasn't rural? You were oriented
'
toward the city?
Torheim: Well, sort of. Tou have to know Seattle. Seattle was a large
city with a small town atmosphere. Living out in the fringes,
we lived close enough to a dairy just three blocks away, a very
large dairy, that I worked at milking cows and delivering milk.
So you see it was a mix. In fact, if you go west of Portland
where I live now it's still that way. You'll find dairies inter
mingled with creeping suburbia. Our family was oriented to the
outdoors, though, because my father was a native of the fjords of
"
Norway, way back, from a little farm. My mother was from northern
Sweden in the forested area, so the orientation was much toward
the salt water and the forests.
Lage: How about brothers and sisters?
Torheim: I had one brother two years younger than me.
Lage: Did your family enjoy outdoor activities? Did you hunt or fish?
Torheim: Yes, both; more oriented toward salt water Puget Sound. We used
to fill the boat with salmon before there was any kind of limit.
But then we lived on salmon year around. That was our principal
source of protein, in fact, during the Depression.
Lage: So it wasn't just for fun.
Torheim: We enjoyed it, but it was more than for fun and, as people did,
we traded. Our neighbors had a chicken farm so we traded salmon
to them for eggs. There was a lot of that.
Influence of the Depression
Lage: Now, you mentioned the Depression. Would you say that this had a
lasting effect on your own perceptions?
Torheim: I think so, quite profound, because our family had some tough
times during the Depression as did all our neighbors. It was very
much a coalescing and a gathering together of people in the
community for self-support. It was kind of a tough time.
Lage: I would think it would affect your vision of the government's
role and maybe of the Forest Service's role.
Torheim: Probably. I have never thought of it that way, but I suppose
those imprints were made. Sure, they had to be.
Lage: Different from someone raised in the fifties.
Torheim: Oh, very much, yes.
Lage: Shall we go into your education?
Torheim: All right. I went to grade school and high school there north
of Seattle near the university. I wasn't sure what I wanted to
take, however, but I knew I was going to the university. I didn't
have any money. So at age seventeen I enrolled in the Civilian
Conservation Corps and was a $30-a-month enrollee for a year. It
wasn't very far from Seattle just by pure chance. It was at North
Bend, which is east of Seattle near Snoqualmie Pass in the
Snoqualmie National Forest, the North Bend ranger district. I
got quite well acquainted then with the Forest Service.
Training in Woodsmanship
Torheim: Prior to that time, during high school, I spent a lot of spare
time in the mountains, also that same area hiking, fishing.
Lage: Was that common among youth in your neighborhood?
Torheim: Yes, we all did that. It was very common. This was kind of an
evolutionary process, I suppose, in retrospect, finding one's way
into the forest. So I knew much about woodsmanship and much about
getting along in the forest before I even graduated from high
school. Then I belonged to a conservation club in high school.
We planted trees each spring on the Snoqualmie National Forest.
This was all part of it too. Many of us did this.
Lage: Was your first contact with the Forest Service with the CCC?
Torheim: No, my first contact was as a hiker backpackers they call them
today, but we were hikers. Fishing, hitting the mountain lakes,
going crosscountry, and climb ing mountains and that sort of thing.
Torheim: We used to have to get fire permits from the ranger. We used to
run into trail crews. I knew quite a bit about the Forest Service
from these contacts.
.'
Lage: They were very visible in these areas.
Torheim: Very visible, and I knew all about the difference between national
forests and national parks. I used to hike in Rainier and Olympic
National Parks too by the way. So I didn't have to have a course
in the difference, [laughs] But I really wasn't thinking at that
time of a career necessarily. That was solidified in the CCCs.
When I was an enrollee then I was saving part of my money. I was
saving $22 out of the $30. It was required that you send $22 of
the $30 home, and my father was banking it for me. So when I got
out of the CCC camp, I worked for a while for a bank as a messenger,
and then I enrolled in the University of Washington in 1941 in
forestry. I had enough for my tuition, and then I worked part-
time to keep me going. It gave me a start.
War and Education
Lage: Then the war intervened. Was that after college?
Torheim: No, it was in the middle like happened to so many people. I got
through my freshman year at the University of Washington. Then
I got through the fall quarter of my sophomore year. Now, to
show you how lucky one can be, I was among the first group of
teenagers to be drafted in Seattle. Nineteen-year olds and
eighteen-year olds had to register for the draft in 1942 in the
Torheim: summer while I was working in the Forest Service at Skykomish,
Washington as a student. By golly, the first group that was
selected out of those eighteen and nineteen-year olds was in
January of '43, and I was in that first group, so we all got our
picture in the Seattle Times the first teenagers to be drafted.
That's the only thing I ever won! [laughter] 1 went off to war
then.
Lage: And then returned to the University of Washington afterwards?
Torheim: Yes, I came back in November of 1945 and simply picked up where
I left off.
Lage: No change of purpose?
Torheim: No, no, I was eager to get my discharge and get on with finishing
my education, and 1 did. 1 worked again seasonally for the Forest
Service while going to school and graduated in 1948.
,
Career Choice and Family
Lage: Did you ever have any other thoughts of what you might do? Was
the Forest Service the first real
Torheim: 1 took courses in high school, college preparation courses, that
would prepare me for either science or, well, we called it business
then. I was torn between whether I was going to be a business
administration major or something related to the outdoors. It
might have been fisheries; the university offered a fisheries
course. Now, I spent lots of time as a kid on the campus. We
lived only a mile and a half from campus, so I used to prowl
Torhelm: around the College of Fisheries and the College of Forestry,
and I knew all about the texts they used and stuff.
Lage: This was an early interest.
Torheim: Yea, a very early interest but it wasn't solidified really until
I was in the CCC camp and began to work in the forest, doing
forestry work and seeing the men in it who are foremen, what
they were doing.
Lage: Did the type of individual seem particularly appealing to you?
Torheim: Oh, yes, yes, very much, and the type of organization, the quality
of the people, and the kind of work of course.
Lage: You really knew what you were getting into probably more than most
young people do.
Torheim: Very much, yes. Then the seasonal experiences as a student really
solidified it.
Lage: As you look back on it, are you glad that this was your career
choice?
Torheim: Oh, yes, 1 should say so.
Lage: You don* t have regrets?
Torheim: None whatsoever. I should say not. I'd do it all over again if
that were possible, sure.
Lage: How about your own family? Do you have children?
Torheim: Yes.
Lage: What lines have they taken?
Torheim: Well, this is not unusual I understand. Neither of them are
interested in forestry as a career and aren't pursuing it, but
much of their free time is spent in outdoor pursuits, which is
8
Torhelm: interesting. Our daughter graduated from Oregon State University
in political science. She had thoughts of going on to law school,
but then she got married and has two children. She's moved
around a lot and happens by chance to live here in Portland now,
but they'll probably move on to other things. So we have two
grandchildren and are rather close for the first time, and that's
kind of pleasant. She works too. She's an administrative
assistant for an insurance company.
Lage: You have a son also?
Torheim: Our son has always been in Portland since we first lived here.
He went back to Washington, D.C., with us for a couple of years
and then upon graduation from high school came right back. He went
to school and took communications television and radio. Now he
is in radio advertising for a local radio station here. He's
married, and they have a little daughter. So we have three
grandchildren, all right here in Portland, which is very unusual
for us Forest Service types who usually are scattered around,
[laughs] But that's just pure chance.
Career Summary! From Junioir Forester to Regional Forester,
1948-1979
^^^^^M^^BMM^H^BM
Lage: Why don't you give us a brief outline of the direction your career
took, and then we can go on to specifics when we cover different
topics?
'- ' ''l^t
Torheim: Okay. In getting into the Forest Service I had to come the route
that everybody does by taking the civil service examination. But
actually I evolved Into the Forest Service, and this was not
unusual with a number of Forest Service people who live somewhere
near the national forest and became acquainted with it. My
experience wasn't all that different. The CCC experience was a
little bit different, but many of my contemporaries that I went
to high school and college with had exactly the same experience.
By the time that we got our civil service appointments upon
graduation, we were already in the outfit so to speak. Our
seasonal work responsibilities were quite broad.
By pure chance again, my first appointment as junior forester
was on the North Bend district of the Snoqualmie Forest where I had
been a CCC enrollee.
Lage: It was just chance?
Torheim: Yes, I had not worked there seasonally at all. But I had worked
on the Snoqualmie. So I worked there, and we got married, my wife
Marjean and I, in that same year, 1948. I worked as a timber
management assistant for that district, an assistant to the ranger
for timber management work, and I was there for five years. People
didn't advance so rapidly then as they do today in the Forest
Service.
Then I was appointed as district ranger at Nachea, which is
also In the Snoqualmie, or was at that time, but on the east side
of the Cascade Mountains, a completely different kind of district
10
Torheim: but a very interesting one. I was there three years. Then I
moved from there to the Olympic Peninsula, the wettest part of
the United States outside of Alaska or Hawaii, at the Quinault
Ranger Station which is about fifty miles north of Aberdeen and
adjacent to Olympic National Park. The average annual rainfall
there is between 140 and 180 inches. We used to say it rained
twelve to fifteen feet, which it does. It's very, very wet.
I was ranger there for less than three years. Then I moved
to a dry climate again, to southern Oregon (Medford, Oregon)
and became the staff assistant to the forest supervisor for fire
control, range management, and watershed activities.
Lage: What was that forest?
Torheim: That's the Rogue River National Forest. There we went down to
twenty inches annual precipitation and got dried out a little bit.
By the way, this was a typical career pattern from assistant
ranger to ranger, probably two districts or more, to staff. I
was there for five years and like most people I was aspiring to be
a forest supervisor. But I began to see working as principal
staff to the supervisor that a lot of the managerial problems
were not about things; they were about people, and I knew very
little about people management. So I decided to take a side step
in my career, and I applied for a job here in the regional office
in Portland in the division of personnel management. There was a
vacancy there as a placement officer. This was 1965, and by chance
this was when Job Corps came along, so I was involved right off
1
11
Torhelm: the bat in recruiting for Job Corps. I specialized in that for
about close to six months. Then I was promoted to the branch chief
for employee development and training.
Lage: Had you yourself had training for this kind of people management?
Torhelm; No.
Lage: It was just an interest?
Torhelm: It was an interest. I had no formal training. Now, the Job that
I competed for and was promoted to was employee development.
Having been in fire control, which was the principal training
activity in the Forest Service, I had lots of experience in
training and in safety. So technically I was quite well prepared
for that. That's how I got to be chief of the branch of training
as we called it. I was in that Job for almost three years. Then
I was selected for the national Job in Washington as the employee
development officer for the whole Forest Service in the division
of personnel management in Washington.
Lage: Was that about in '68?
Torheim: That was '68, yes; Washington, D.C. , '68. Of course, one doesn't
plan all the steps in one's career. There's an awful lot of luck,
when openings occur, and when you're qualified at a particular
time. I was in Washington, D.C., only two years before the
opening in the regional office in Portland as a regional personnel
officer came up, and I was selected for that.
Page: Are these jobs that you hear of and apply for?
13
Lage: In Portland?
Torhelm: Right here, yes, in Portland. So I moved then back into line
Jobs, from staff to line.
Lage: You're going to have to elaborate on that terminology at some
point.
Torheim: Staff jobs are jobs that are responsible for certain programs.
Line jobs are generalist Jobs that manage a unit. The line jobs
in the Forest Service are district ranger, which manages a ranger
district, a part of a national forest; a forest supervisor who
manages a national forest; a regional forester who manages a
region; and a chief who manages all the Forest Service. So there's
a very direct and short line from the ranger to the chief.
Now, the deputies who fill the same box, so to speak, are
also line; they just help to do the same Job.
Lage: Then you have the staff.
Torheim: The staff then serves as program managers for each of the program
areas, and this is true throughout the Forest Service.
Lage: But isn't that one of the new changes?
Torheim; Well, yes. There's a change in responsibility. When we talk
about organization we can go into that, and I'll describe that
in some detail, a profound change in functioning, yes, and the
change in nomenclature from assistant regional forester to
director really is an example of that.
Anyway, I became the deputy regional forester for Region 6.
Then the reorganization took place (and we can go into that in
more detail) which resulted in Region 6 having three deputies
14
Torheim: instead of the one a deputy for resources, for administration,
and for State and Private Forestry. So I became then (as other
deputy regional foresters in the country, most of them anyway), the
deputy for resources. I was in that job from 1974 until 1976.
In 1976 I was selected to be the regional forester for Region 1
in Missoula, Montana.
Lage: That was the first time you had had any contact with Region 1.
Torheim: It was the first time I had worked in Region 1, yes.
Lage: Is that unusual?
Torheim: A little bit. Yes, a little bit. The usual route of travel is
/
for a person to have spent some time in at least two regions and
the Washington office. I had spent my regional time in one region
and the Washington office and that's not typical.
Lage: At some point we may also want to discuss differences in regions.
Torheim: Yes, there are conspicuous differences in regions and they are
just as noticeable as the differences in society in different parts
of our country.
Then I was regional forester in Montana for three years and
I retired last June, 1979. That's the whole story.
Lage: That's a good outline. We're getting the background built up here.
So your formal career was about thirty years or more.
Torheim: It was more than that. With my seasonal time, my total time with
the Forest Service was thirty- two years. Then I was in the army
for three, so my total federal service was thirty-five years.
15
II RESOURCE AND MULTIPLE-USE MANAGEMENT, 1950s- 1960s
A Custodial Role, 1905-1945
Lage: You've seen a lot of changes in the Forest Service, particularly,
you said, since World War II.
Torheim: Particularly since World War II. That's when the Forest Service
itself changed, of course, as far as its mission not mission so
much but level of activity I should say.
Lage: Why don't you give us an overview of that change, and that will
give us a good picture to build on.
Torheim: All right, I'll see if I can do it concisely. The Forest Service
from its beginnings in 1905 until World War II was principally
occupied with protecting the national forest and serving the
users of the national forests. Commodity production from the
national forests, particularly timber, was not a big activity.
It was in some national forests prior to World War I, and it
was in the twenties. But then after the Depression occurred in
1929 it trickled to almost nothing, part of the reason being
that the demand for timber and forest products was low enough
that it was public policy to have the private sector provide
16
Torheim: that and not have the government compete with the private sector,
which was having trouble enough keeping its head above water.
Lage: So the private sector really preferred that the government maintain
just a protective role.
Torheim: Yes , particularly during those tough economic times when the
public timber wasn't needed, at least in the short run. Of
course, the plan was (and it was public policy) that these forests
would be available later when it was needed. So as far as timber
management was concerned, or timber production, it didn't really
amount to a whole lot from 1905 until 1945.
On the other hand, the Forest Service did produce much forage
for cattle and sheep and horses during all of this period and even
prior to the creation of the national forests. So grazing was a
very large activity in the western national forests, and that was
a commodity. And also public recreation concessionnaires (we
called them special use permittees) as they are today with resorts
and campgrounds and hot springs and ski areas .
Wartime and Postwar Predominance of Timber Management Activities
Torheim: The big change, though, started during World War II when the demand
for timber rose dramatically during the war years. Certain
specialty products were removed from the national forests. Noble
fir, for example, to make airplanes to make mosquito bombers was
one type of logging activity that was really related to the needs
of the war.
17
Lage: Sitka spruce
Torheim: Sitka spruce was a World War I activity for the same reason, by
the way. There was some of that in World War II also, but not
like there was in World War I up on the Olympic Peninsula and in
Western Oregon where the army did the logging actually, the spruce
division. Noble fir is a limited range species that has many of
the characteristics of spruce in that it's lightweight but it's
very strong. It was used to make the plywood that the mosquito
bomber out of Britain was made of and other things too, I'm sure.
It had the characteristic of great strength. It had a very narrow
range from the Columbia River north on the west side of the Cascade
Mountains .
Anyway, the Forest Service in many places got into timber
management activities during these war years. Immediately after
the war the timber activity began to increase dramatically. The
demand for housing is what triggered that. You see, with all of
this low activity during the thirties and the need then for veterans
and others establishing new families, the housing market picked up
very dramatically. Also, with the rise of the standard of living,
the use of paper products (which is correlated to standard of
living) rose also.
So then the public forests were needed, and private industry
began to bid on national forest timber sales , and the Congress
began to appropriate money to manage the timber and sell the timber.
That increased the activity on the ranger districts, particularly
18
Torheim: those that had a large resource of timber to manage. The budgets
became larger, and Congress appropriated more money for us. That
made the Forest Service grow then over time, but pretty much on
the timber forests. In the Rocky Mountains and the desert Southwest
these activities didn't Increase at the rate they did particularly
on the West Coast, Region 6 especially, Region 5 in California,
Region 1 in Montana and northern Idaho, and in Region A. That's
where the level of activity really increased substantially. It
didn't happen overnight.
It's this level of activity and this change that took place,
from an outfit that protected the national forests, mostly from
fire, and provided service to the recreation user, to a business,
particularly the business of selling timber preparing timber for
sale and selling it and then being sure that the resource is
perpetuated under sustained yield principles over time. That
brought about reforestation programs, and, of course, all the
research and state and private forestry activities that were
related to timber management.
Lage: Did that require a different sort of preparation for the rangers
or had the ranger always had a lot of diversified preparation?
Torheim: Well, this is interesting. It depends on where you went to
school. If you went to school at Oregon State, the University of
California or the University of Washington you could land on your
feet, as we used to say, because you got well-prepared in those
universities to manage timber. If you didn't, it was difficult.
19
Torheim: These timber management districts began to generate a lot of
'
dollars. The Congress appropriated dollars to produce timber
sales. They began to get larger staffs and more technicians and
more foresters, so these so-called timber forests and timber ranger
districts became rather sizeable business enterprises. In the
.
meantime the bulk of the Forest Service in terms of numbers of
national forests for example, the Rocky Mountains and the southwest
and other parts of the country in the East and South didn't have
this same accelerated activity. It was substantially larger than
it was prior to World War II, but there was not this dramatic
change in activity. So we found that the Regions 6, 5, and 1 grew
very much faster in terms of people and budget than did the other
regions in the Forest Service.
That meant that the recruiting activity picked up dramatically
in the forestry schools. So you found a ranger then, who prior to
the war would have himself and an assistant ranger and maybe a
part-time clerk and a fire control seasonal person, soon had a staff.
That was the job that I had. I was the timber management assistant
in a rather sizeable ranger district. I had assistants to help me
and students in the summer.
_
7 - ,
Engineers and Foresters: Conflicting Cultures?
Torheim: They began to get engineers to build roads. Foresters used to do
all of this. I was well checked out and had an education in logging
engineering, as did most of my contemporaries. So I used to do
20
Torheim: the whole job. I'd cruise the timber, and I'd lay out the roads
and the whole works. Then we began to get in tougher country,
'
and the Forest Service began to get engineers to help build these
roads. Actually, they were much more technically able to do this.
We didn't think so at first, I must say! There was a lot of
conflict between foresters and engineers that lasted for a number
of years.
.
Lage: Did the engineers bring a background of any forestry?
.
Torheim: No.
Lage: Or did they come out of forestry schools?
Torheim: No. A few did. There were a few logging engineers who took the
engineering jobs, but the Civil Service Commission never recognized
logging engineering as a professional specialty. There was great
conflict over this between the Forest Service and the Civil
Service Commission for a long time. The forestry schools that
taught logging engineering failed to get the Civil Service to
recognize it as a distinct profession. The closest profession to
logging engineering was civil engineering, but it lacked the
.
emphasis on applying engineering technology in a forest environment.
Still, civil engineers could qualify on Civil Service examinations
(and logging engineers could not) , so the Forest Service got civil
engineers. The logging engineer got a lot of civil engineering
education, but the civil engineer, of course, got more structural
education, and they were better able to do other things besides
road engineering.
21
Torheim: There was a lot of conflict between the engineers and foresters.
Many engineers had trouble working under the direction of a
forester. So in many places, engineers were assigned to the
supervisor's office, and they worked out in the forest. Well,
the ranger didn't think he had control then or the ability to
coordinate the engineering and the forestry activity on a given
timber sale.
Then [there] were the pure cultural differences. It was
thought, rightly or wrongly, that engineers had no land ethic.
All they wanted to do was build a superhighway, and the forester
would oftentimes want to modify that. But the rules of engineering
were quite stringent, so there was a lot of conflict.
Lage: Who would make the final decision in a case like that? The
higher-ups would have been the foresters.
Torheim: Yes, but engineering was by that time developing a very powerful
subculture in the outfit, and I must say that the managers who
were foresters didn't really enter into that. They decided that
if engineers were hired to do engineering jobs, they were more
expert than foresters, so by edict they were determined to be the
ones who were even directive in that activity. You have to under
stand something about our old organization, what it used to be.
Staff people, both at the forest headquarters and regional office
.
really were line/staff in that they had a directive role in their
staff function. I'd like to talk about this a little later on when
we talk about budget because that's where the power was.
22
Torheim: So the district ranger then had to field all of these staff inputs
as if they were line directed. The penalty you paid for not
[doing this] was not being able to get sufficient budgets to carry
out a job because there was always this club. That line/ staff role
was an interesting one.
At any rate, this happened particularly 1 would say in
engineering, and it also happened in fiscal management accounting
particularly where managers who were not foresters let these staff
people and probably rightly so because they were all very excellent
people kind of run it. The ranger's input was often in conflict
with the staff's. On many national forests, the style of management
of the supervisor was such that he really paid more attention to
the staff's input in a conflict situation than the ranger's input.
Now, this differed with people, but there were a lot of managers
who operated that way. So rangers had to be very light on their
feet and very adept at trying to work their way through the staff
communication and staff human relations roles to make their rig run.
Lage: You sound like this was where you began to see the people management
was important.
Torheim: You bet! If you got in trouble with the staff person you were
in trouble because there was nobody to take the ranger's side.
So it was difficult. Now, that's the human part of it. In
retrospect, as far as managing the public's business getting the
best use of the public's dollar and treating the land right this
worked okay because these staff people were terribly responsible.
23
Torheim: They weren't out just to do the ranger in. They were really
working from a base of expertise and what they thought was really
for the best. The ranger, being a generalise, couldn't be an
expert in all of these things, even though he took logging
1
engineering and knew how to build roads.
Lage: But he, as you say, did have more of a land ethic.
Torheim: Yes, but that's funny. When you really got to poking into it,
I discovered that there were many engineers who had a greater
land ethic than a forester. It's an individual characteristic. I
also discovered that many engineers who chose Forest Service careers
rather than construction in private Industry did so because they
had a feeling for the land. That's the way it really turned out.
So this was myth.
Lage: Could the ranger have also been more "lost in the forest"
thinking about timber management rather than land ethic?
Torheim: Yes, right, and this is where the term "sawlog" forester became
such an epithet from certain interest groups. But these kinds of
absolutes when you dig into them really don't stand up, as we
know. But anyway, if you have those perceptions, you work around
and work in the context of those perceptions , and it does affect
your behavior. So it did affect our behavior.
24
Strength of the Multiple-Use Ethic
Torheim: Anyway, these timber management districts and forests I don't
know what percentage of the total forest activity or national
forest activity there would be but [it was] rather small in terms
of numbers. Just think, we're talking about the west side of the
Cascade Mountains in Northern California and the Sierras, some of
the eastern Washington, eastern Oregon, Idaho, and Montana, and
that's it.
Lage: Not typical Forest Service.
Torheim: No, but the people working in these areas thought that was typical
Forest Service. I used to meet people on fires. The great
melting pot was on fires. You went to a fire and people came from
all over the country, and then you began to be able to compare your
activities with activities on ranger districts in the South or the
Rocky Mountains or wherever. Then you began to learn that there
were a lot of people and I'm speaking about people at the ranger
district level early in their careerwho really would never move,
they said, to Region 6. "That big timber activity simply dominates
everything, and you really can't be a multiple-use forester, can
you?" they would say. Then we would say, "What's your budget?
How many people do you have?" So there was a lot of bantering
that took place. But even the bantering had some elements of
serious thought behind it.
Lage: Would you agree that multiple-use ethic wasn't as strong in these
regions?
25
.
Torhelm: I think that varied. I would say this. In my own experience it
was hard to maintain the multiple-use ethic on a district that
had a high quota for timber production but still didn't have the
numbers of people and budget to carry it out. I'm speaking now
of the early fifties, that period right after the war when the
Congress really didn't provide all of the dollars that were needed,
but yet we had a contract with the administration, with the Congress,
to produce certain allowable cuts of timber. The way we got that
job done (and we, of course, would never do that today), we would
locate timber sales on paper after a general reconnaissance of the
lay of the land. Then the timber purchaser, the successful
purchaser in the auction, would lay out the timber sale according
to our paper location with their own people and then would lay out
the road entirely with their own people.
Lage: This would be the private
Torheim: Private sector. We had no people to do that. Then we would have
to approve it. They had to go by the plan. That's quite different
from the way it was done later where the Forest Service people
actually did all of the layout, marked it on the ground, and the
whole works. However, the demand for lumber and plywood was so
great that was the only way we could get the job done. This didn't
last for very many years , but it shows you the kind of innovative
activity that took place in order to get those kinds of timber on
the market, at least in western Washington and in western Oregon.
26
Increasing Specialization and Complexity. 19608-19 70s
Lage: Was the time of this intense activity through the sixties?
Torheim: Oh, do you mean the timber management activity? It goes on today.
Lage: It was continuous?
Torheim: Oh, yes, very much so.
Torheim: No, but then the phase change took place this way. Keep in mind
that the numbers of people on the ranger district were still
relatively small, and they were foresters and engineers. But
then as we moved along in improving our multiple-use management
activities, and as the Congress became more willing to appropriate
other dollars, we began to hire other disciplines soil scientists,
wildlife biologists, fisheries biologists, landscape architects.
In the business management field, we began to hire accountants
more than just clerical types. So then the job of managing became
more complex to coordinate all of this activity.
Again, these activities that generated the need for these
other specialties, were principally timber sale activities, so
they occurred first on the timber sale districts. This is what
caused the expansion of the numbers of people. That's still the
case because the principal activity on the land which creates a
need for these specialties is the removal of the vegetative crop,
principally timber, and the rehabilitation of it, and starting
the new crop so that it's compatible with all of the other resources
on that forest.
i
27
Torhelm: This was an evolutionary thing. The engineers came along in the
fifties. The other specialties, in any number anyway as I
described to you, started coming along in the early sixties and
continue today. Now we're even hiring sociologists as this thing
evolves. The complex nature of management, the society and its
complexities and all the Forest Service has simply been part and
parcel of that. But think of the difference of a district ranger
in 1938 managing 400,000 acres he and one assistant and some
part- time help compared with that same district today, in say
a westside Oregon or westslde Washington district or other places,
which probably has fifty or sixty people. Of course, they are
doing more, but that's the difference.
Lage: Now, they're doing more. Are we measuring this by how much timber
is being produced or other demands on the land?
Torheim: It's quality. I described to you the laying out of the timber
sale on paper and then the purchaser building the road in and
taking care of the layout on the ground. There was little or no
thought, I mean no intense thought, given to soil erosion, to
stream siltation, to the effects on wildlife, to the visual
appearance. All of those things now are part of preparing a
timber sale, and that's vastly more complex than it used to be,
and the trade-offs. Also, the land that was entered in those
early years were the lower slopes, the easy country as we call it.
Now timber sales are laid out in very difficult terrain
where the chances of damage to the resources are very great unless
you have some really highly technical decisions made. So that's
28
Torheim: the difference. It's really of quality more than of quantity.
The laws that Congress has passed over the years (and we'll talk
about some of these later), the Environmental Policy Act, the
Resources Planning Act, and the National Forest Management Act,
have also generated Judicially decreed requirements on the land.
Land-Use Planning_in the Fifties^: Functional Plans
Lage: Okay, if you think it's the time to do this, give us an example
of how a land-use planning effort was undertaken in one of the
earlier periods. Then we can see the increasing complexity in a
later period.
Torheim: I'll give that a try. The planning that was done and the forester
has done this way back since the very earliest days and I'd say
up into the fifties were what we called functional plans; they
were resource plans. On a ranger district we would have a timber
management plan, and a very good one. It would lay out the inventory
of the resource and how over periods of time this resource would be
harvested and managed and regenerated.
Lage: It covered the district?
Torheim: It covered what we called working circles. The district was
divided up into geographical units that were most logically
managed for timber production let's say. They were called working
circles. This is a piece of forestry jargon. It's still used, but
not very much. But there would be a timber management plan for
each of these working circles, subunits of ranger districts.
'
29
Torhelm: Then we'd have a recreation plan, including how summer homes are
to be managed and ski areas and campgrounds and dispersed
recreation and so forth. We'd have a wildlife management plan
and a fisheries management plan (again all by the various
resources), and range management plans and very intensive plans, I
should say.
Lage: Who developed these plans?
Torheim: These were developed by the ranger with, of course, assistance
from the experts in the supervisor's office. A large part of the
staff role was to help with these plans. The supervisor would
approve these plans. The ranger didn't have ultimate approval.
So they were really the supervisor's plans for the ranger
district, prepared by the ranger and the staff.
Multiple-Use Planning and Its Drawbacks
Lage: Did the various functional plans intermesh?
Torheim: That's the next job! Do they intermesh? Well, in the fifties the
vehicle [for coordinating the plans] was designed, and this varied
according to regions. Region 4, the Intermountain region, was
probably one of the leaders along with some others in the Rocky
Mountains in what we called multiple-use planning. Then this
became national policy. This was the vehicle for coordinating
all of these plans so that you didn't engage in some timber
management activity that would have a detrimental effect on
30
Torheim: wildlife, for example. The allocations were made as to which
areas of the ranger district were to be managed for these
particular uses and where the coordination would be done between
uses effectively. You could, for example, harvest some timber and
maybe improve the wildlife habitat as a result. So you would
use silvi cultural techniques then to enhance wildlife. That's an
example.
But curiously enough, the multiple-use plan was made entirely
by the ranger. I say "curiously" in retrospect. It didn't seem
curious at the time. You'd have the resource plans approved by
the forest supervisor, and yet the ranger had responsibility for
the multiple-use plan to coordinate all of this.
Lage: What time period are we talking about? After the Multiple-Use
Act in 1960 or before?
Torheim: No, before. Usually the laws emanated from things already started
by the Forest Service, and the laws were passed to make that public
policy.
Lage: So the ranger devises on his own the
Torheim: No, no. Nothing was devised on one's own. We had manuals and
handbooks galore. They were originally conceived in that
fashion, but soon, as the Forest Service has done for all the
years , things developed in the field that are good practice become
policy and then it becomes standing operation procedure. That's
the way this happened. Albeit there were differences between regions
31
Torheim: as to the form that these took, but the multiple-use plan was
the coordinating mechanism, and I'd say a pretty good on*. Then
the Multiple-Use Act came along and required this. So it became
the law to do this.
Well, it worked fine except that what really happened so
often was that the multiple-use plan was really never used ouch
because the conflicts between uses would overpower the multiple-
use plan. For example, in a timber district you'd be substantially
budgeted for timber, but you were under-budgeted for the other
activities. The Congress was unwilling and still to this day is
reluctant really to balance out the budgeting between the various
resources. It's not nearly as bad as it was, but gosh, the money
we got for wildlife, for recreation, for range management was a
mere pittance compared to the budget for timber management.
Lage: The plan was there but more on paper?
Torheim: Yes, it was difficult to actually do the coordination, particularly
on the timber district, because, with that overpowering timber
management budget, and with the budget comes a goal to produce
the timber it was very difficult to still do anything effective
in the other areas . This was solved later on with the concurrence
of the Office of Management and Budget and the Congress by putting into
the cost of timber sale activity those coordinating costs which
many of us in the field thought should have been in a long time
before that. I'm really speaking of history now. This doesn't
occur so much today. But before, they were all separate pieces you
see.
32
Torheim: The forest supervisor really wasn't pushing the multiple-use
plan so hard either for the same reasons. It was the ranger's
responsibility. In the sixties, as it frequently happens in the
Forest Service, as I mentioned before, dissatisfaction began to
occur at the ranger district and forest level about this way of
doing business. In the Forest Service, changes most often take
place from the bottom up rather than the top down. That's just a
natural organizational phenomenon, but this is especially
prevalent in the Forest Service. This dissatisfaction then, as
it usually is, was not turned into disruptive organizational
activity, but into suggestions for change. The Forest Service
typically has done this, too: people would experiment on a given
forest or a given ranger district with a different way of doing
things before it was adopted [nationwide] .
So Region 5 and to some extent Region 6 and I imagine other
places in the Forest Service too the informal communication system
was getting the word through decided that there needs to be a
better way of planning, that land allocation just wasn't getting
done through the multiple-use planning process. As we moved ahead
In timber sales, for example, you just had to accept what happened
rather than laying out way ahead of time just exactly how the
resources were going to be allocated. The multiple-use plan wasn't
really serving as a coordination mechanism.
Lage: Was it pretty much a yearly plan also?
'
33
Torheim: No. These were long-range plans. Timber management plans are
ten years. Other plans have various planning periods. The
multiple-use plan was revised periodically too. It's not static.
Field Experimentation in New Planning Techniques
Torheim: In the later sixties, then, this dissatisfaction resulted in
certain forests, probably on their own actually in many cases,
experimenting with something different, until finally in the
seventies Region 1 and Region 6 and probably some other regions
too began to experiment with land management planning that was
really allocating the resources by planning units rather than
having a multiple-use plan do that. So that whole drainages would
be planned for all of their resource activities. Then the thought
was that someday we could put all of these together, all of the
resource allocations together, instead of having a separate plan.
That's just now coming to be under law, interestingly enough.
But this began to take place and after some experimentation
and some differences and the natural conflicts that arise when
there are differences between how regions go about it, the
Washington office took this over then and said, "This is how
we're going to do land management planning."
But there were still differences between regions, and some
regions had gotten in so deep (particularly Region 1) that they
had great trouble modifying to a general land-use planning format
that the chief wanted for the whole country.
34
Lage: Is there a difference between land-use planning and land
management planning?
Torheim: Yes, my nomenclature is a little bit loose. It's really land
management planning and "use" is probably too specific. We kind
of use this jargon pretty loosely. It's land management or
resource management planning, that's really what it is.
Public Involvement in the Fifties; Local and_Unstructured
Lage: Let me ask you another question about the earlier period to get
a contrast because public involvement becomes so important in the
later period. What kind of input was there from the public in,
say, the fifties in developing these plans?
Torheim: Very little.
Lage: Of any sort?
Torheim: Yes, it was very local and not structured. The Forest Service
through its decentralized organization has always been very close
to the public it serves, but over the earlier years mostly
locally. So local people who were interested of course were
involved sometimes more informally than formally and state
legislators for their district If_ they were interested. But it
was only on an "if you are Interested" basis.
Lage: Were they involved in the sense of having a conference with the
district ranger?
35
Torheim: No, not so much. It was kind of "what do you think about this?"
.
and "do you have some inputs to make here?" Most of this was
really done over the years in the range management plan because
the user had so much influence upon how that plan was carried out.
Probably in range management planning the user had more to say
than anybody else.
Timber management planning varied some according to the
interest of local people. That was usually through organized
recreationists outdoor clubs, sportsmen's clubs, and this sort
of thing. Then where there was conflict, these kinds of people
representing their group would get involved, again in kind of an
informal way. The ranger would go down and meet with the group
and get their input and probably make some modifications. But
it was not structured, and it was done because the ranger was so
close to the action and the people as well.
Lage: Would the ranger develop contacts deliberately with, say,
mountaineering groups?
Torheim: Oh yes, yes, and this varied again.
Lage: So they knew the people?
Torheim: Yes, but I would say that the forest users probably had the most
influence. The public at large was not well represented and
didn't seem to be interested. This, as a ranger, used to worry
me and others. We used to try all kinds of techniques to get the
public interested in the management of the national forest, and
36
Torheim: we were always frustrated that we couldn't get that Interest
generated. And now look how it Is! They're so interested that
you can hardly figure out how to handle it.
Lage: Now you're frustrated that they are interested!
Torheim: Yes, it's hard to manage. We used to talk among ourselves a lot
about this and we would devise all kinds of I & E (information
and education) techniques that were well established in all regions.
Lage: What was your reason for wanting to get them involved? Did you
think you would come up with a better plan?
Torheim: Yes, and we thought that since we were serving the public, and
they were our employers, they should have that interest. We felt
that just a few of us working on a ranger district shouldn't be
making all of these decisions simply by ourselves. We wanted a
broader base of understanding.
But we didn't really invite their interest as we look back
in retrospect. We didn't invite involvement. We usually made up
our minds what we thought ought to be done as professionals, and
then we went out and tried to sell people on it and say, "don't
you agree?" or "isn't this good stuff?" A lot of them would, as
a matter of fact. Not all. As I say, occasionally there was
conflict and we really honestly tried to solve that. But we had
no techniques for doing that. It was rather crudely done, albeit
we surely made the attempt.
##
37
Lage: I was interested in what you were saying about public input in
the earlier times, in the fifties. The impression I've gotten
through reading was that foresters sort of fell back on their
expertise and didn' t want the public involved that much and
resented it at the later date when the public more or less
demanded it.
Torheim: In my experience, just the opposite is true. Now, that's not
to say it might be true somewhere, but quite the opposite. I
don't mean just my personal managerial responsibility, but I mean
all the other people I knew in the units I worked on were that way.
Let me give you an example, and this would be typical.
Public Input: Yakima Valley Elk
Torheim: When I was ranger at Naches on the east side of the Snoqualmie in
the Yakima Valley, one of our biggest resources there was a large
herd of Rocky Mountain elk well, several herds. Now, we worked
closely with the Washington State Department of Game in managing
those animals, the state being responsible for managing the
animals and the Forest Service being responsible for the habitat.
So we had to work very close together, and there was always danger
of the elk getting too numerous and overgrazing their habitat.
To help us, and the Washington State Department of Game too,
to get some feedback on hunting seasons and the condition of the
range and the numbers of animals, we would typically, with the
Washington state game representatives, go to the Yakima Sportsmen's
38
Torheim: Club. We wouldn't wait for an invitation. We would go there
annually or more frequently and get their feedback. We would
have elk feeding stations in the winter on the national forest
and we would invite citizens to come out. But it would usually
be sportsmen. We had an annual elk count. Again it would be
sportsmen. We never got any feedback from anybody else, except
the organized Yakima Sportsmen's Club.
Lage: Who were interested in hunting.
Torheim: Yes, and the propagation and perpetuation of these elk. We and
the state knew that the newspapers and the radio stations would
certainly be interested and would cover it. But we could never
get whoever the public-at-large was. There was a pub lic-at- large,
but they weren't organized to communicate. We had a few individuals,
and they were motivated people who didn't belong to anything, and
they would give me plenty of feedback. William Douglas was one
of these, Justice Douglas.
Lage: On this particular issue?
Torheim: On every issue. Justice Douglas was interested in the Naches
district, particularly because he had his summer home at Goose
Prairie. But it was difficult to get input from the public.
William 0. Douglas; Naches District "Assistant Ranger"
Lage: Do you have anything further you want to say about those early
experiences with Justice Douglas?
39
Torheim: As most folks knew, Justice Douglas grew up in Yakima and his
interest in the mountains were just like mine as a young person.
He would come back frequently, and he kept a particular Interest
in the Naches and Tieton districts, these two Yakima Valley
districts in the Snoqualmie forest. I remember one instance. As
I told you earlier, we used to have trouble getting budget dollars
for things other than timber. The Naches district had over 450
miles of trail to maintain, and I was trying also to reconstruct
some trails that were left from the old mining days and were
unsafe. There was one trail in particular that went from Goose
Prairie up to American Ridge. It served this general area
including a Boy Scout camp and a lot of recreationists, and it
just happened that Bill Douglas's place was nearby too.
So by golly, I remember that it didn't look like I was going
to get the dollars for that. I hope later on we talk about the
budgeting process, how it used to be and how it is today, because
it's terribly important to learn about that in the context of
history. [see pages 69-73]
Anyway, this was on my work list, and I submitted it for a
couple of years to the supervisor and never got a nickel. Then
it turned out that all of a sudden I got some moneythe whole
amount to reconstruct this trail. This is how it happened. I
don't think that the supervisor ever believed me when I said I
didn't lobby Bill Douglas for these dollars. But what happened
was that two women owned the Double K Dude Ranch (and still do)
40
Torheim: at Goose Prairie, and they were interested in perpetuating the
trails and improving them because they took guests every year,
including the American Forestry Association Trail Riders, on
simmer trips. This trail would be a much safer trail for their
use and for the Boy Scouts. They were old friends of Justice
Douglas. They lobbied him. Justice Douglas went to the chief
of the Forest Service, who then went to the regional forester, and
somehow an agreement was made that the Naches district ought to
get these dollars.
Now, the sad thing is though that no extra money was
appropriated by the Congress, so it had to come out of somebody
else's hide. I never knew whose, but the supervisor had this tough
choice. So it didn't help the Forest Service any, but it was
interesting to see that somehow the influence of Justice Douglas
made it possible for me to construct that trail, which was very
much in the public interest as far as I was concerned.
Lage: Well, that's public input.
Torheim: Yes, that's public input. I guess some would say today that that's
special interest input, [laughs] But that's the great American
process. Apparently, for $6,000 or something like that, nobody
really wanted to get Justice Douglas's back up. It wasn't really
worth that, I guess.
Another personal sort of thing. Justice Douglas in the summer
used to travel a lot as we all know. He took hikes here and there.
He used to occasionally go overseas. One summer (I think it was
i
41
Torhelm: about 1955 1 would guess) he came back from Nepal, and he wrote
me a letter. He asked me if I would go up into the Bumping River
country come fall and collect some bear grass seed. He had been
traveling in Nepal, and he saw some country that looked just like
the Cascade Mountains east of Mount Rainier. He was just sure that
bear grass would grow very well there. So he had contacted some
botanist over there who thought the same thing. So by golly, he
asked me if I'd collect some bear grass seed, and then he gave me
the address that I should send it to, which I did. But I never
did hear whether that bear grass grew or notl [laughter]
That's the way he was very direct and he'd always relate to
that part of the country.
Lage: So he knew you directly from your activities
Torheim: Yes, he knew every ranger there. No matter how long you were
there, he would get acquainted with each one that came along.
I am sure other rangers have had similar experiences. No, he was
a very human person to deal with. He spent a lot of time in the
district horseback trips and that sort of thing. He was very
interested in the management of the district, very much wilderness-
oriented as we know, and somewhat opposed, I think although he used
to go about it in rather left-handed ways but rather opposed to
commodity use of the forest. He wanted to be sure it didn't
dominate the activities. He was a great proponent of wilderness.
It was kind of interesting. I used to call him my assistant
ranger because he kept very close track of everything that happened
in that district. Well, that's just a little aside!
42
III LAND MANAGEMENT PLANNING, 1970s
National Forest Management Act; Forest Service Input
Lage: We were comparing the early planning efforts with the later
planning efforts.
Torheim: Of course, then that brings it up-to-date. The important thing
is that it was really an evolution from resource planning, which
goes way back to the early beginnings of the Forest Service and
was essentially that until the fifties, to the first attempt to
'
coordinate these resource plans into multiple-use plans, the
passage of the law by the Congress which legalized that [the
.
Multiple Use Act, 1960], and now the National Forest Management
Act [1976] which further legalizes but spells out very specifically
how this planning should take place.
All these processes were developed from the ground up and
finally formed into legislation by the Congress using the
experimentation of the field, not designed at upper levels and
then handed down to be implemented, which is interesting.
Lage: So you would say the Resources Planning Act and the National Forest
Management Act grew out of the experience and needs of the grassroots
Forest Service.
43
Torheim: That's exactly the case, you bet.
Lage: So the Forest Service was in agreement with the new requirements
placed on them.
Torheim: Absolutely; we helped formulate them. The Congress added its own
dimension to them, though, that makes it different. For example,
the Congress in the National Forest Management Act was quite
specific. The National Forest Management Act, of course, emanated
from that problem with the Organic Act in the Monongahela case,
put the urgency behind having something like that as law. Had
we not gotten that case and the act, I would venture to say
that the process would be essentially the same.
The RPA [the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources
Planning Act, 1974] grew out of an earlier effort by the Forest
Service to put together a program of work planning and budgeting
over time an environmental program for the future that actually
the congressmen picked up in whole and made into the Resources
Planning Act, again with the help of the Department of Agriculture
and the support of the administration. The Forest Service doesn't
do it all by themselves. I suspect that lots of legislation comes
about in that fashion. The Clark-McNary Act did way back in 1924.
Lage: Then there's other input as well, I'm sure.
Torheim: Yes, and that's what makes the difference. The flavor of it then
becomes more public because other interest groups get to make
an input, and that's the way it should be.
44
Lage: That's an interesting evolution. It certainly made a difference
in the way things are done.
Torheim: Yes, I think it's for the better because it does put into law, and into
regulations that emanate from the law, the way the national forests
should be allocated and managed. That takes away a lot of the
worry that many of us had about making these kinds of decisions
without the public policy being defined, and it should be.
Lage: Do you think that your view is the typical one, that you welcome
a more rigid
Torheim: Oh, yes. Well, it's not so rigid. As a matter of principle I
think most of us would agree. There are some individual differences
of opinion on the specifics because, particularly on the National
Forest Management Act there was great conflict among the user groups
and interest groups about how the regulations should be stated.
But that was because there was so much conflict in the way the
legislation was put together, a tremendous conflict. So the
legislation was a compromise by the Congress. Then the interest
groups sought to get regulations formulated out of the legislation
that would espouse their own point of view. So this again became
compromise. So at least I think it makes it better for the manager
on the ground in these complex times to know what the direction is.
1
45
Lolo National Forest Plan, a Case Study
Lage: Do you think we can take a recent land planning effort that you've
been involved in and talk about how experts are used, how the
public is involved, and how the data is gathered? Would that be
useful?
Torheim: Yes, we could give it a shot. I wonder how to narrow down the
universe. It becomes such a complex thing. Let's see, where
should I start? I was involved right up until the day I retired
in the land management planning effort for the Lolo National
Forest in western Montana. I just learned here last week that
J
it's about to be completed, and it will be the first plan completed
in the United States under the National Forest Management Act.
Lage: The National Forest Management Act was in '76, so this planning
effort went on for several years.
Torheim: Oh, yes. It's a perpetual thing. Of course, the National Forest
Management Act caused many changes to be made, so in spite of the
act being passed in '76, the regulations under which the activity
is carried out didn't take place until just a little over a year
ago. The regulations are the trigger, not the law. So this is
quick; we did this in anticipation that the regulations would be
coming out soon.
The Lolo was selected. Each region, by the way had one or
two forests selected and agreed to by the chief to be the first.
Well, there is inherent competition between units of the Forest
.
46
Torheim: Service. So many of us, being in Region 1 and being the "Number-one
region," were insisting that we have the number- one plan. We broke
our backs a bit to do that. But that's just the natural competition.
From Unit to Forest Planning
Torheim: First off, the plans [formerly] were not made by entire forests,
but by taking units of land on a national forest. Some forests
had as many as twenty or more units. Then there was kind of a
forest plan that put them together so to speak. Well, the National
Forest Management Act required and by the way we were already
evolving toward that that a plan be made for each national forest.
Then you could have sub-units naturally, but the plan would be for
the forest. Then there would also be a regional plan to put all
of the forest plans together. In addition to that, the plan was
related to RPA [Resources Planning Act] and eventually to the
budget process. So it all becomes one system.
In the Lolo Forest they were nearly completed with their unit
plans, as we call them. So we took and bagged those all up and
devised a system to put the unit plans together and make the
forest plan.
Public Involvement in Determining Issues
Torheim: Now, the forest plan is built around what we call issues. That's
the starting point. The issues introduce the public to the process.
The issues come out like this: What are the areas of concern in
47
Torheim: the Lolo Forest that you, the public, either organized or not,
consider to be those things that need to be dealt with in an
allocation plan? They can be very specific, such as "what are
we going to do with the Rattlesnake Creek; should it be wilderness
or it should it not be wilderness?" to as broad a topic as "what
should the allowable harvest levels, annual timber cuts, be on
the forest as a whole?" and then everything in between.
These issues were first generated by the forest supervisor
and his staff and myself as regional forester and his staff. The
forest supervisor and I came to a tentative agreement of what are
the issues. Then the forest supervisor goes to the public in formal
meetings and lays this out with a lot of homework, of course, and a
lot of publicity and [makes] very much available the issue that he's
generated to them, and gets feedback then.
Lage: Tell me who the public is?
Torheim: The public is anybody who wishes to come.
Lage: Is this a public meeting?
Torheim: Public meetings were scattered all over the Lolo Forest at the
smallest communities to give everybody a chance to come in.
Usually they are formulated into workshops. You have to have a
mechanism. People just don't come and work unless you have some
way of doing it. So the technique that we used, and many other
units do this for this kind of public input, is to have a workshop.
People will gather together. Most times the groups in the workshops
are made up of people with conflicting interests. So this
generates some synergism, and you get a pretty good answer from them.
48
Lage: Are you looking for data from them?
Torheim: Not at this stage. We are saying, "What are the Issues? Let's
agree on the Issues." Of course, the public is invited to write
in. A lot of people don't want to attend meetings and make inputs
in that way and many do.
Lage: How do you reach the public to invite them?
Torheim: It's done through public notice, and mailing lists, and the
newspapers, the radios. If anybody is interested, there is plenty
of opportunity and plenty of time. I must say at least in the
state of Montana, with the very high level of interest in national
forest management, it wasn't difficult. It varies throughout the
country. The same in northern Idaho, which is part of our region,
and North Dakota, so we had no problems with that.
Evaluating Public Involvement
Torheim: But at any rate, this generation of issues then is very important
because it is what eventually the plan will speak to. Then the
supervisor gets all this input and formulates a new set of issues
based on the public input. There is some sophisticated approach
made to counting public input because it's such a laundry list,
and this has been developed over time.
Lage: Is this a regional development?
Torheim: No, this is national. The processes of evaluating public input
have been pretty well generated through Forest Service efforts
with external help from the universities, because there is no
I
49
Torheim: body of knowledge that we could draw on at all. I remember when
we first began public involvement, public input, in the RARE I
process Roadless Area Review and Evaluation how we naively
went (and I went personally) to the University of Oregon, the
sociology department. We said, "Now, Mr. and Ms. Sociologist , why
don't you help us out?" They said, "There is no body of knowledge
here. We can createwaysof gathering public input. We know all
about questionnaires, and we know about polls, but then you have
to evaluate it."
Anyway, this has changed over time. The university has
become interested. There has been some research and that sort
of thing. So anyway, public input is evaluated, and the issues
then are finalized to a number that can be dealt with. For the
Lolo Forest, I think it was something between twelve and twenty
issues. Then this is circulated again. We say, "These are the
issues. How do you feel about these now?"
Lage: Again are they variable in terms of the breadth of the issues?
It p-*n be a very specific question or
Torheim: Yes, most of them are broad so they can be dealt with because the
objective is land allocation. But each forest usually has what
we call a sensitive area or an area of high public Interest, where
the interest is so intense it has to be set aside. The Rattlesnake
Creek, even though it's one drainage, had national interest even
in its allocation so that it was set aside as a special area for
consideration in the planning process.
50
Torheim: I can't get into all of the technical details of the process,
but anyway, these issues then really formed the skeletal framework
for designing the plan because it would speak to these, and land
allocations must be made to give some solution to these issues.
Then [comes] the process of inventory which is still difficult,
and assigning the objective of the plan and then the RPA (what we
call desegregation of goals, of mostly outputs) has to be
integrated into that. So it's a very integrative process that
only computers can do. There is a lot of alchemy that takes place
here unless you are a computer technologist.
At any rate, the important thing is that the regional
forester personally and the forest supervisor personally sit down
at check points along the way of making these decisions and all
along the way there is public input at periodic intervals. So
that's the system. Of course, I left before it was finalized,
but the plan, as I say, will be coming out. It will, along with
the forests and the other regions that were selected initially,
become the model. Naturally, the interest groups that had much
input into the National Forest Management Act the outdoor interest
groups, the Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club, and the commodity
interest groups are all watching this very carefully. So it's
done in a big glass bowl intentionally. They're all watching
this, so I'm sure a good product will come out.
51
Torheim: Now, think how different that is from the multiple-use plan that
was created at the ranger district, signed off by the ranger with
probably the local input from ranchers and forest products people
and some recreationlsts, compared now with each plan being a
.
national sort of thing.
Forest Plans and the RPA; An Iterative Process
Torheim: Now then, the regional plan is really built out of the RPA and
drives the forest plans. The difficult chores are to take the
commodity outputs and service outputs of the Resources Planning
Act and then desegregate them to the forests within the context of
their land resource base that gives them the ability to carry it
out. It is very complex.
Lage: Are the output levels predetermined before you start on your forest
plan?
Torheim: Well, they're negotiated between the regional forester and the
forest supervisors. The regions' output levels came out of RPA
before the National Forest Management Act. It has to be an
iterative process to distribute the outputs to each national forest.
Lage: Iterative?
Torheim: Yes, where you have to cut and fit, so to speak, and you kind of
work your way up In Increments, and it develops. You bounce one
against the other and keep building, instead of empirically where
you [develop output levels] just by formula. It's a mathematical
52
Torheim: way of negotiating I guess you might say. The important underlying
principle is that the product and service output levels must be
realistic and compatible with the capability of the natural resources
on the forest to produce and provide.
Lage: This is all computer-based I would gather.
Torheim: Oh, the data and the varieties of data are so complex that without
the computer none of this could be done. But to reduce it to
what the Congress intendedthe Congress intended that the Forest
Service budget be not just an annual thing but be a five-year thing
based on ten-year assessments of the resource base in the country,
and that certain outputs should be made and funded using good cost
accounting principles, but within the ability of the land to
produce those outputs. That's what the plan does. So the plan
then allocates according
Lage: Is this the regional plan?
Torheim: The forest plan. The main plans are the forest plans. The
regional plan is simply an umbrella to put them together for
communicating with the Congress and the chief and the president.
So it's usefulness, then, when the forest plans are put together,
is to take the RPA outputs and actually allocate them to the
forest, only again within the context of its ability to produce.
It becomes then a two-way vehicle; it allocates the resource, and
then it forms the basis for Congress to appropriate the dollars to
carry it out.
Lage: We're talking about a number of different resources here.
i
53
Torheim: Oh yes, all of the resources in the national forests, every one
of them.
.
Lage: They're all put into dollar value, recreation, wilderness...
Torheim: That's where it becomes difficult and probably always will be.
The outputs for timber and for grazing are finite and easy to
compute, easy to identify. But what about recreation, dispersed
recreation? How are you going to evaluate that number of
visitors in the wilderness, for example? The wilderness doesn't
even have to be a wilderness. Is that a measure? Wildlife
habitat? How do you put a dollar value? A lot of these unit
measurements are still being developed through research.
Lage: Is the public involved in those determinations, like how do we
judge the value of the wilderness?
Torheim: Oh my, yes, I should say so. The Wilderness Society and the Sierra
Club are clear up to their necks in this. We rely heavily on the
public. The public is very much in the Forest Service's business,
and I think this is terribly healthy. It's working very well,
especially now that Forest Service managers have become very
comfortable with dealing with the public. I don't mean comfortable
meaning no conflict; I mean comfortable in the manager's ability
to deal with the conflicts that naturally emanate from different
interest groups.
Lage: Was that a difficult process, having them become comfortable?
Torheim: On my, it was terrible.
Lage: Do you think they are comfortable now?
54
Torheim: Oh, yes. I mean comfortable with their ability to carry it out.
Conflict I wouldn't say is ever comfortable, but conflict has
become a way of doing business. In fact, you'll find now managers
are even inviting conflict and stimulating conflict. Now, I
don't mean disruptive conflicts. I mean differences in points of
view that really result in a better decision. Some of our managers
even go out and invite conflict by structuring public inputs so
people of different points of view can get together. So this is a
pretty mature way.
Team Management, Conflict or Consensus?
Lage: Could this give the expert a little more power also? If you have
conflicting interests balancing off against each other, does the
expert get to come in with his point of view?
Torheim: Yes, this is a dilemma. This is the modern management dilemma in
the Forest Service, if I understand what you're talking about.
Maybe we could digress a little bit here. I mentioned earlier that
the forester had an education and experience to do everything in
managing resources, but as the job became more complex and the
stakes became higher, and the Congress appropriated dollars for
higher quality of work, we began to employ other professions.
Then the ranger's Job became ultimately more complex, to take the
input from these experts and come up with a consensus to result
in a plan of action.
55
Torheim: As long as there were just a few for example, I told you about
the conflict between the engineer and the forester
.
M
Torheim: two people can usually resolve then what course of action to
take, particularly, say, on a timber sale for a road location,
albeit sometimes the engineer would, with his support from the
supervisor's office, win out.
Let's compare that with the ranger district later on. It
had a wildlife biologist, a soil scientist, and a landscape
architect. Well, let's just use those for examples. Now, all
of them participate as a team to put together a timber sale or any
other activity that has an impact on the land. Their job is to
come together with a consensus for a plan of action. But when you
think about it, these expert specialists came from different
backgrounds of education. They didn 1 t learn in their professional
discipline leading to a baccalaureate degree in school, that they
had to compromise, as they would call it, their professional
opinion. They learned quite the opposite to stick with their
professional opinion and with great conviction see that it's
carried out.
The problem with resource management is, though, being very
complex, certain trade-offs have to be made. You can't manage,
for example, a timber sale strictly to get the maximum wildlife
because you probably couldn't even build a road to it to get the
timber out. There has to be a consensus of opinion that optimizes
56
Torhein: all of those activities. So you have these people working
together on the ranger's staff, men and women as a team, and
they'll not come to a decision because they have all of these
minority reports. Well, the ranger sends them back. He can't
arbitrate between all of these, so he sends them back. Then they
come up with a consensus finally, and it becomes a report. But
then some of them will go outside of the organization and lobby
in the public arena quietly for their own position, usually through
an interest group that really supports the maximizing of their
particular resource.
Lage: So you have people from within the organization?
Torheim: Yes, this is very foreign in the Forest Service, but it's under
standable when you get a mix of people like this. I think it's
the way society is heading too in many ways with more and more
specialists; these people with great conviction really believe it's
unethical to compromise, as they say, their professional judgment.
They honestly feel that this plan is going off in the wrong
direction.
So think of the dilemma, then, of the manager trying to get
all of this together and then dealing with the conflict that
results generated by some of his own people. I don't mean to say
that this happens all the time, but there's enough of this
activity around that it's something every ranger with any kind
of business activity at all has to deal with periodically. That's
quite different, you see, from what it used to be.
57
Lage: Is that officially forbidden in the organization, this going
outside and lobbying?
Torheim: Well, what can you do?
Lage: Is it frowned upon?
Torheim: Certainly. It's an anti-organizational activity, but it's not
illegal. It's not something you can fire somebody for unless
they're overt about it. The way society is today there is some
condoning of that. It's usually looked on by some as whistle
blowing. So the interest group that supports this minority opinion
would fight to the bitter end to keep this employee from being
fired, naturally . So that usually never becomes an issue. I don't
want to convey the idea that this is happening all over the place,
and it's all disruptive. I don't mean that at all. But the point
I'm trying to make is that there has to be a change, and it's
taking place slowly.
The first thing that has to change is (and I used to advise
college deans that were in the resources field), they've got to
begin at the college level to educate the specialists that they
may wind up (whether it's private or public) in team types of
activity because that's the way the world is put together today,
with experts, and that they will have to come to a consensus if
they want to work in an organization. At the same time, I used
to encourage our forest supervisors and district rangers to learn
how to manage' this. Some would just draw the curtain and blow.
They have to anticipate it. They .have to give the specialists some
time to learn the process, and they themselves have to learn about
the process of team activity, that it is difficult.
.
58
Learning the Art of Personnel Management
Torheim: Now, this is just 180 degrees away from where the Forest Service
used to be. It used to be that would be completely not tolerated.
In fact, the ranger would just not be a ranger if he could not
really run the rig, so to speak, and keep his people in line.
Lage: So there's a lot more people-managing?
Torheim: Yes, it's tougher now and much more complex. But again, it
illustrates that the art of management has to be relearned, and
there has to be a continuing kind of learning about this as things
crop up.
Lage: Is the ranger given specific training, personnel training in
managing his staff?
Torheim: Yes, more so than it used to be. It used to be just learned by
experience. I expect maybe that's still the most learning that
takes place, except a lot of this is on-the-job training and also
there are a lot of continuing education opportunities and learning
by experience and, oh, some of them come now with pretty broad
backgrounds from universities more than technical training. But
it's mostly learned really on the job.
Lage: Is the ranger's job now a higher level job than it was?
Torheim: Oh, yes.
Lage: You must work many years before you become a ranger now.
Torheim: That varies some. I worked five years and became a ranger. But
my grade level was GS-9. That's the entrance level for some people
today. If they have a master's degree it can be.
59
Lage: How long would the average person work today before becoming a
.
ranger?
Torheim: Probably ten years. There are exceptions all over the map, but
I'd say probably ten years. Now, that's not true in some ranger
districts in the Rocky Mountains and the Southwest where they
still have a rather low level of activity in terms of people and
resources. There probably are many people making ranger in five
years there, but they would have to move off to other places
before they could really move on to a higher grade level. Now
we have three levels of ranger depending on the work load grade
11, 12, and 13.
Lage: You'd almost have to.
Torheim: Yes, that's how the change has taken place.
Lage: If you have several experts working under you, and you are
coordinating their activity.
Torheim: When I started, we had two kinds of rangers. We had what we called
the subprofessional ranger and a professional ranger. You see,
when a lot of the folks came into the Forest Service, starting in
the very beginning days of the Forest Service and up into the
thirties, they didn't have to be college graduates to get a sub-
professional assignment that might even lead to ranger. So we
had two kinds. We had the SPs and the Ps. Many of these sub-
professionals, right after World War II, were converted to
professional positions.
60
Lage: Would this be the time to talk in any more detail about computers
and their use in land planning? How the various computer programs
are devised and how they are accpeted?
Torheim: 1 think I'd like to talk about computers from the point of view
of management and not limit it to land-use planning. There's
kind of a story chapter on computers whenever that would be
appropriate. We'll talk about the management of information systems,
which includes computers.
Washington Office Guidance for Land Management
--
Lage: I'm looking forward to that. To finish up our discussion about
land planning, what has been the guidance on these plans from the
Washington office? 1 read a very interesting pamphlet that the GAO
put out (I think it was in '78)* where they analyze the progress
the Forest Service had made toward fulfilling the RPA. They were
a little critical of the fact that the land planning effort seemed
to be going off in all different directions, and there wasn't
enough guidance. Now, would you agree with that?
Torheim: Oh yes, very much. In my judgment I don't think that on a national
basis we really got hold of this as fast as we should. Things
were moving so rapidly though, it's not hard to understand. As I
*General Accounting Office, The National Forest Better Planning
Needed to Improve Resource Management, 1978.
i
61
Torheim: described earlier, these changes in planning techniques and the
change from multiple-use planning to land management planning
were born of frustration at the field level, that the multiple-
use planning process was not working like it should. So the Forest
Service being very decentralized, of course, is quite capable of
'
beginning experimentation without any blessing from on high as
long as you stay within your budget, and a complex unit can do
that. Now, there is informal communication that takes place so
this isn't done in secret, but it just doesn't have holy water on
it. It isn't in the manual is what I'm saying. So usually,
through the informal process and oftentimes formalized by letter
if not in the manual, the unit or region or forest would be given
license to experiment and try it out. And that's pretty good. I
think if an organization isn't willing to experiment, then change
never does come about, any kind of meaningful change that the
outfit will accept.
"
Uniform Work Planning; Imposed from Above
Torheim: In the 1960s we had a system called "uniform work planning." It
was developed at the top levels of the Forest Service and passed
down to be implemented. It was a new way of doing work planning
as compared to the old way which I guess we'll talk about a little
later. I'll just use this illustratively.
-
Lage: Give me a date on it also.
'
)
62
Torheim: I'm just getting the date 1959. I was just leaving the ranger
district and going to the staff job on the Rogue River. My
district at Quinault was one of the experimental districts, but
again this was formalized experimental (top-down). I remember
I couldn't move to the Rogue River until I completed that uniform
work planning. The next year then I was in a staff role and it
was SOP standard operation procedure.
But by golly, through the years of uniform work planning,
which weren't too many, it was changed every year. It was never
accepted in the field. It was done by rote simply as part of the
budget and allocation process and put in the drawer and left.
Lage: It didn't relate to the program decision?
Torheim: No, because you could go ahead anyway, and cuff records were kept.
The field didn't see that it was useful to the carrying out of
their business, although I am sure it was useful at higher levels
perhaps for budget development; I would guess it could be. So I
think probably in that experience (and I don't know this for sure,
but I think so) enough people were dissatisfied that it conveyed
the idea that really things ought to start from the bottom, up.
.
-
Land Planning: Experimentation in the Field
Torheim: Also, and I'm sure we'll talk about this later, we began to get
behavioral science inputs into our techniques of management. We
probably overdid it a little bit because one of the principles
there is participative type of management to let the user be
i
63
Torheim: involved in the development. As often happens when you take on
a new technique, you go too far.
Putting this together (and I'm making some assumptions here),
there was great license given informally and to some degree
formally, for regions and forests to experiment with land management
planning because it was agreed that multiple-use planning was not
working. So as a result, Region 1 getting started the first,
t
eager, had hundreds of units. Some of our national forests in
Region 1 had as many as fifty or sixty units or more. Just think
how long that would take, small units of land.
Lage: Each one developing a plan?
Torheim: Each one developing a plan, a full blown plan for that.
Lage: This is what time period?
Torheim: This is in the early seventies, '74, '73 and on into '76, until the
National Forest Management Act came along. Other regions, like
Region 6 here, had not that many but quite a few and then elected
on their own to consolidate because they saw that it wasn't
working. Then the method of the technology of planning, was not
well developed. So there was experimentation in this and this
was done differently all over the place.
'
Lage: A different computer program?
Torheim: Oh, yes, different computer programs with high ownership in your
own methodology the not-invented-here complex, the NIH factor,
all that, all the things that organizations characteristically go
through when they're free to do their own thing and then later
64
Torheim: find they have to put it together. They have a high sense of
ownership because they put so much into it of their own
creativity, and that's something that you can't pull back too
well. So this is the way it went, and that's why I mentioned
earlier that I think the passage of the National Forest Management
Act and RPA and the regulations, the need to get some uniformity,
were things that people accepted because nobody liked this lack
of uniformity. That's why the forests, including the Lolo in
Region 1 that I mentioned, were selected with the regional
foresters, the forest supervisors, and the chief together, to be
formally the first forests. It was under the guidance of the
Washington office to put it together.
Lage: And serve as an example.
Torheim: You bet, and this was done nationally. All these forests were
doing their first plan, but it was coordinated and communicated
between regions.
Lage: When you moved from Region 6 to Region 1, did you notice a big
change?
Torheim: Oh yes, oh yes. We had some changes to make, some of which were
already underway.
Lage: What types of differences were there in the land planning?
Torheim: Region 1 having gotten the first start had all of the small unit
plans. The supervisors were not terribly satisfied with it, but
they had gone so far they were reluctant to change. Some forests
that hadn't gotten much of a start didn't have any trouble. But
65
Tor-helm: what we did was to consolidate units drastically. That was
'
started before I got there. Then, interestingly enough, we had
two forests that all this time unit planning was being done, were
doing a forest plan. This was the Beaver Head National Forest in
Montana and the Willamette National Forest in Oregon. This was
1
done, formally approved by the chief as an experiment, while
unit planning was going on to see how the forest plan might work
.
out. Concurrently with this, the timber management plan was being
done on the forest at the same time. So there was, you see, a
little background even before the requirement in the National
Forest Management Act. But this was done by design.
.
The Plan and Program Decisions in the Field
Lage: How did these elaborate land management plans relate to the
decisions that the rangers are going to make, the program decisions
in the field?
Torheim: They relate very well, and when they're completed probably even
better. Even the multiple-use plan did to that extent, although
as the resource management job became more complex it became less
useful, but the multiple-use plan did that too. It relates when
it comes to doing an activity on the ground and I'll keep referring
to timber management not because that's the only activity of the
Forest Service, but because probably it has the most profound effect
on all of the resources, and it does take the coordination of all
of the resources, and because it's in a short enough period of time
66
Torheim: that you can see the results. But it doesn't mean the other
resources aren't involved too.
The timber management plan and all of the other resource
plans now, under this new system, need to be subordinated to the
'
land management plan. In other words, the land management plan
makes the allocation, and then the resource plan is carried out.
But of course, realistically it doesn't happen that way entirely
.
because the timber management plan, having been generated over
time, contributes to the decisions made in the land allocations,
so they're together. But eventually when that first plan is done,
then the resource plans will reflect back on the land management
plan.
Lage: Will the resource plans still be long term?
Torheim: Yes.
Lage: Will they cover the same time periods as the land management
plan?
Torheim: Yes, right, and they will be part of the land management plan.
That's the important thing. They'll be chapters of it so to
speak, yes. But this initial goal, you see, has to put the two
together so it's not quite a classic model yet, but that's the
way it will be. In fact, that's the way it is working. A timber
sale, for example, would be guided by the timber management plan.
The timber management plan, though, was guided by the land
management plan which allocated this particular area for timber
use, but also speaks to the other resources and how they too
67
Torheim: should be allocated, so that the trade-off that I talked about
earlier are made In that timber sale to optimize all of the
resources according to the plan. Or sometimes one resource is
maximized if it's a critical resource.
So the land management plan then really guides it. Now,
another interesting feature is that the public who had a large
hand In this is going to be looking over the manager's shoulder
to be sure it's carried out that way, and I think that's very
healthy. There's a lot at stake.
Lage: So how might the district ranger's role be changed or altered in
some way by the land management process? Does the district
ranger then have less discretion than he used to in managing the
district?
Torheim: Yes, less independent, un thought-out discretion because the plan
is a forest plan. But the ranger, if it's done right, had a hand
in its preparation. He didn't actually prepare it, because that's
the supervisor's and staff's job, but you can't do it without the
ranger's participation because he has the most intimate knowledge
of the land and he has to make inputs at both the inventory stage
and trade-off stage when it comes to optimizing various resources.
So he should, if it's done right, regard it as his plan because
he had a hand in putting it together.
Now I think, just people being people, this might not always
come out in the classical sense because certainly I think I would
have to expect that there would be some rangers who would be
68
Torheim: somewhat less interested in a plan than some others, and there
might be some forests that would involve the rangers more than
some other forests. You know all the human foibles that you get
into in organizations. But that's the way it's supposed to work.
I know in putting together the Lolo plan that the entire forest
was very much involved and the rangers indeed did feel ownership
of that plan to carry it out.
Allocation and Funding under the RPA
Torheim: The real proof of the pudding though is in the allocation and
funding process. If the allocation of funds out of the budget
doesn't come somewhat close to the plan or at least follow the
plan in the trade-offs between resources, there's a danger it
seems to me then that cynicism will develop in the field. The
cynicism would result in "the plan is just a paper plan." I
hope that doesn't happen. I think with the RPA it's not so likely
to happen.
Lage: If it happens is it because Congress doesn't come through with
funding?
Torheim: We can't lay it all on the Congress because the Congress in recent
years has been more generous than the administrations have been.
The Congress has seen fit in the last several years to appropriate
more dollars for national forest management than the administration
.
has put in the budget.
69
Lage: When the plans are being developed, what attention is paid to
the promise of getting them funded? Do you have an eye to that?
Torheim: Yes, the RPA Is the guide for that, and It's five years out. The
president adopts the RPA and presents It to the Congress, and
that's a five-year program. So that's really the benefit of the
RPA. It used to be In annual Increments.
Lage: When you're doing the land management plan, you're going to have
some Idea of what funding you'll have?
Torheim: Yes, that's correct. Yes, integrated into it. The RPA is
integrated into that. That's an important part of it.
.
The Budgeting and Allocation Process, Pre-1970
Torheim: Perhaps, Ann, this would be a good time to describe the old process
of budgeting, do you think, as compared to what we just talked
about?
Lage: Yes, 1 think it fits right into it.
Torheim: It's quite different. It's tremendously different. When I was on
the ranger district (and this is typical) . This would take us
from the very early days of the Forest Service up to the end of
the sixties, the budgeting and allocation process was essentially
the same. The ranger really had nothing to do with it formally.
Now, informally the ranger would communicate (and I'll elaborate
on that a little bit) , the basis for getting work done on the
ground was through what we called a "project work inventory."
70
Torheim: This was an inventory of jobs to be done, all kinds of jobs on
the national forest as monies became available to do them.
The difficulty was prioritizing, or to translate them into
budget requests. This was done, but the ranger was really never
much involved in that. That wasn't the ranger's role. So the
staff then played an important part beginning at the forest level
to put together budget proposals, but really the job was done
mostly at the Washington office and the regional office. It was
done by staff who then were line/staff. As I mentioned before,
they had directive authority for their particular activity like
fire, timber, wildlife, range and so forth.
Each ranger district had a work load analysis which was
used to budget the basic management activities on the district.
This was called the "base funding level." The work load analysis
was updated periodically. Project activities, such as recreation
facilities construction, range revegetation , and timber sales
were summarized in the project work inventory. These were budgeted
on an annual basis. The region and forest line/staff had great
influence on the budgeting and allocation of these "project" funds.
The problem that the ranger faced was that each year, at the
beginning of the fiscal year, he'd get dollars, and they'd all be
labeled as to what they could be used for. His job then was to
make those dollars work. Now, they would vary from year to year
sometimes and wouldn't always equate with the work force that he
had, and there was great trouble financing the work force. Many
1
71
Torhelm: people had to be laid off in the winter or work on other activities.
The ranger was cutting and fitting, and then his goals were
determined by the dollars that came down to him. He didn't have
goals that were financed and a contract made as it is today through
a plan.
*
Power of the Staff in Allocating Funds
Torheim: So here's where the problem came in. A good ranger would negotiate
Informally with staff people in the supervisor's office. He would
convince through deed mostly and guile if he didn't do it entirely,
that the dollars allocated to the district were really producing
a lot of timber sales. My unit cost was low, and my quality was
high, and so really if the forest supervisor wants to spend his
bucks wisely it should be on my district. He should fund me with
the full amount that I think 1 need.
.
Lage: So you're in competition with your fellow rangers.
Torheim: I'm in competition, right, but the staff is the key. He's the
guy that doles out the money. When it finally comes, it comes
out of the appropriation and was dealt out all down the line. Then
it was up to the supervisor through his staff to allocate it to
the districts, and that's when you got your bucks.
Lage: But each staff member had a particular interest. Is that right?
Torheim: Yes, but the monies came that way. You see, the monies still do
[come] from the Congress with labels on them you know, fire money,
wildlife money, timber money, recreation money and so forth.
72
Lage: Then each staff person could give so much fire money to each
district?
Torheim: Yes, right.
.
Lage: That sounds like a lot of politicking.
Torheim: It was.
##
Torheim: The ranger then, of course, had the duty to get along with the
staff person, but he also had the duty to get a high quality job
done, at least cost on the ground. I mean you couldn't just talk
your way into getting dollars. So there was a lot of effort made
to do a good job, and particularly to convince the staff. Now,
sometimes interpersonal relationships, in spite of the quality you
might be accomplishing, would interfere, as it does in human
endeavor, so really you didn't want to get all crossed up with the
staff person because he might then get negative vibrations about
you and might not really agree with you that the quality is all
that good. So negotiation on the same basis was done between the
supervisor, but through his staff with counterparts (the assistant
regional foresters in the regional office) and they with the
Washington people. So the staff people, from the Washington level
down through the forest, were quite powerful, and there was a lot
of job satisfaction to being a staff person that way because you
were expert in the field, and you helped the ranger, but you also
had a little power which you lost [in the seventies] when you were
no longer line, that you had as a director of activities in a staff
position.
73
Torhelm: I don't mean to caricaturize this really, but that's just the
way that it worked. Well, it worked quite well actually as far
as getting the job done because the staff people got there because
they were experts. Really it was not too hard then for a ranger
to move into a staff job with that kind of a role because he can
kind of play ranger for six districts instead of one, although
there is a lot of conflict that goes with this. But he could do
it; he had the authority.
Lage: It sounds like you people do have a good background in conflict
resolutions!
Torheim: Oh yes, and what I don't want to do is caricaturize this. I'm
emphasizing this only because that ingredient of management is
not written about much but really is what makes the rig run. It
also keeps people's interest up, instills loyalty and has a lot
of good features. But then as the world around us became more
complicated, this kind of thing became more disruptive. It got
too big. When you have a small number of people and a small
output , you could live with this . But gosh , you couldn ' t live
with this system very well when you had big outputs and lots of
people to finance. It's just an awful job.
Motivation for Forest Service Reorganization
Torheim: So tomorrow I'm sure we'll get to talk more about reorganization,
but let me introduce it this way. One of the motivating forces
for reorganization was to change this staff role from line/staff
74
Torheim: to staff, and take the directive role out of staff, but put the
responsibility then with the line more directly. One of the
necessities was to devise a new budgeting system and a new work
planning system that would get away from this negotiation between
line and staff.
Lage: So the staff of the supervisor no longer could allocate the
money to the rangers.
Torheim: No.
Lage: And the supervisor himself allocated it?
Torheim: Yes, but it's done now through a system, a planning-budgeting-
programming system, and that's the difference.
Lage: What effect did that have on the morale of the organization?
Torheim: Well, it affected a lot of staff people very negatively. They
thought that the really important features of their job were cut
out. The assistant regional forester for fire management became
a director of fire management. Some other changes took place, too,
in that their roles were described as not being directive anymore.
So they felt, "Well, god, the forest supervisor can do any damn
thing he wants, and all he'll do is he'll just throw quality out
of the window in favor of production and by golly the regional
forester won't even know what's happening." Well, it didn't
,,
really.
Lage: What responsibility did they have then?
Torheim: No, let's take an example, the fire one again. The fire management
director used to be able to tell the forest supervisor, to direct
him to do this, to do that. The fire management director would
75
Torheim: also allocate the dollars to the forest supervisor. The new role
was that he could not direct the supervisor to do anything. The
regional forester and deputies could direct. The budgeting and
,
the fund allocation was done through the regional forester and
deputies and was done through the system that we'll talk about
tomorrow.
Now, his input was that of an expert. You know the realities
of life are that a supervisor and the people on the ground who
wanted to do the best quality would certainly do nothing to
alienate that staff man and prevent him from coming out, he and
his staff, to help them do a good job because that's where the
expertise lies.
Some people perhaps overplayed this directive versus non-
directive role and that's been sorted out. People are more
comfortable in their roles now than they used to be, I'm sure.
But for the transition period where one day a person was assistant
regional forester for fire management and the next day he was
director of fire management and seemingly didn't have much of
this authority anymore but only really functioned as an expert
to the forest and, of course, the staff person to carry out the
regional forester's policy, for instance some people were in
their own head really dramatizing it, and so it took away a lot
of job satisfaction. This occurred at the Washington level as
well.
Lage: They had the same change then?
76
Torheim: Yes, they had the same change.
Lage: Was this related to putting extra deputies in?
Torheim: Yes, it was all part of a massive reorganization in the Forest
Service from top to bottom. But this is a budget example only,
Tomorrow we can talk about some of the other things around
reorganization .
Lage: And more about how the new budget
Torheim: Yes, and the new system. We need to talk about how the new
system works.
Lage: Okay, shall we stop here?
Torheim: Yes, okay.
I
77
!
'
IV MANAGERIAL METHODS AND STYLES IN THE FOREST SERVICE
[Interview 2: March 14, 1980]##
Hierarchical Structure. Authoritarian Management, 1920-1950s
Lage: We were going to start out this morning talking about managerial
styles and how they've changed.
Torheim: Okay, let's see how we can handle this. Oh, a bit of historical
perspective first of all that even precedes my interest in the
Forest Service. The Forest Service in the twenties, right after
World War I, adopted a lot of the style and organizational
structure of the military. There was good reason for this. Many
of the folks in the Forest Service who were in high management
executive positions served in the military during World War I.
Many of them schooled in forestry or engineering had served in
the military. So their management styles were already well-honed
to the military experience. Also, the type of work the Forest
Service did, and especially fire control, lent itself well to
the military style of organization and management techniques.
So although not patterned directly, there was a lot of the
military influence on the development of the managerial systems
and styles during the twenties.
78
Lage: Did you have career officers coming in?
Torheim: No, they were people with experiences like my own in World War II,
,
who were foresters and had been in the Forest Service and then
went off to war and came back. Others had a military experience
and went to school after World War I. But significantly, they
were in the policy making positions and the Forest Service was
very young yet, you see, and so a style and techniques were
still being put together. Even the Forest Service uniform to
begin with was a military type of uniform.
Pioneer in Scientific Management
Torheim: Then along about the beginning of the thirties and into the
thirties, the Forest Service executives began to adopt early for
a government agency, it seems to me, some of the scientific
management techniques that were developed even prior to World War I
and during the twenties. They fit well with the Forest Service
mission and with the early military type of organization I spoke
about .
The Forest Service even then in the thirties pioneered (for
government anyway) much of the management techniques, and they
were things like directive systems (formal), work load measurement,
and planning that emanated from that, project work inventories
and that sort of thing. The Forest Service was very decentralized
early in the game, so this worked well too. So the Forest Service
"
in many ways, for the government at least, did some pioneer
application of scientific management principles.
79
Torhelm: Now then, these principles really were built on a hierarchical
style of management where you had goals to achieve and people
certainly needed to put their personal goals and their
organizational goals together. Authoritarian type of management
was very acceptable. The line and the staff, which came from the
military, really could function that way to get work done at the
lowest level through policy established at the highest level,
through quick communication. It worked quite well.
The type of people that came into the Forest Service fit
this too. A lot of them were woods people and hard-working people,
who put in long hours and had a dedication to the job and the land,
and weren't in it for money. So it was a highly structured
organization. Managers, by today's standards I would say, were
rather authoritarian. I don't mean that's negative, but that was
perfect for the times.
Then the CCC, the Civilian Conservation Corps, came into
being about this same time. So that made the Forest Service a
much larger organization very suddenly. Much of the CCC program
was conducted on the national forests, and it was handled by the
military. So there was a big rush of work to do with all of this
manpower, and the Forest Service was well prepared to do that. So
this simply enhanced the need for this kind of management and the
very structured way of communicating, and the directive system
being put together, and the manual, and how we do things.
80
Autonomy, within Set Limits
Torheim: Yet there was a lot of personal responsibility given in the
decentralized organization to the person in the field. So there
was a lot of job satisfaction, even with authoritarian-type
management.
Lage: It seems almost in conflict. I'm sure it wasn't in reality.
Torheim: Not if people accept this, that's fine.
Lage: Authoritarian, and yet a lot of autonomy at the same time.
Torheim: Oh yes, right, autonomy as far as making decisions in the field
within the structure of the manual policy. Then the inspection
system kept that thing glued together, a very structured inspection
system. That inspection system was used not only to check out
quality and quantity of activity, but it also was kind of a
coaching tool. It wasn't just an audit. It was used for
coaching and for training people certainly, and it worked very
well. The CCC program also brought about quite a structured
approach to training and the Forest Service mission, especially
in fire control which required (and still does) a very military
type of organization to respond immediately to the emergency helped
[reinforce this approach]. The Forest Service culture was much
influenced by the fire job in these years because most of the job
was protection of the national forests.
So it was all very fine, very satisfying. This increase of
activity in the CCC days of the thirties caused forestry schools
to blossom and bloom because there was great demand for foresters.
81
Torheim: So the Forest Service grew quite rapidly in that period between
1932 and 1942. I came on the scene then, as I mentioned, about
1940 and '41 and '42, in that period.
Postwar Changes
Torheim: Then my perceptions and those of my peers of what kind of management
the Forest Service had is where I pick up the thread. It was
obvious that these were dedicated, hard-working men, these forest
supervisors and district rangers, that they brooked no nonsense.
You either toed the line or you got out, and that was okay. You
knew exactly where you stood.
After World War II then, most of us rejected the military
life. Of course, the whole society was that way. We got our
discharge, we got out, we went back to school, we finished, we got
out and went to work. And then we began to wonder a little bit
about this style of management. I know I did, and I know my peers
did (the new junior foresters that were coming into the outfit) .
We began to I don't say we didn't accept it. We did, but we
began to wonder really if that's the way it should be. For
example, if a district ranger failed on a forest fire in some way
made some gross management error he was really forced to leave
the service in many cases.
Lage: I didn't realize it was that severe.
82
Torheim: Yes, I don't mean he was fired summarily because the civil
service system provided due process. But they could make it so
uncomfortable that usually a man would seek other employment, or
sometimes if he didn't he'd be relegated to a rather disagreeable
assignment. We observed this in Region 6. I know we had certain
Siberias, so to speak, where rangers would be moved, usually
because they failed on a fire.
On the other hand, if you succeeded in the fire game you
moved very rapidly through the outfit.
Lage: So fire control really dominated
Torheim: Very much, very much. There was a period in the thirties and into
the forties when many of the Forest Service executives earned their
spurs so to speak early in their careers in fire fighting and fire
management. It's a very difficult and demanding job and a very
fine way to learn how to manage people and programs.
Lage: In that style though.
Torheim: In that style, yes, that's the difference. There were all kinds
of managers, but generally the theme was very authoritarian. In
other words , they demanded that people do things the way they
should and the way that they wanted them to do. The supervisor
i
was really the person who called the shots.
Lage: Is this the forest supervisor you're speaking of.
Torheim: Yes, when I say supervisor I mean forest supervisor.
Lage: Did the ranger himself follow this type of style?
83
Torheim: Yes, that's right. But of course, there were a few who didn't
and there was always some conflict. Those rangers that really
had trouble with that kind of style, who wanted to play it a
little looser or use more of their Imagination or depart from the
manual really got in trouble very quickly.
"The Way the Rig Ran," an Illustration
Torheim: Let me give you an example with some names. This is not an
aberration either because I'm sure there were lots of similar
stories like this. There was a ranger at Naches on the Snoqualmie
who preceded me. His name was Horace Cooper. Coop was a well-
loved ranger by other rangers and all, but forest superviors had
an awfully hard time with Coop because he didn't fit this mold.
He was a fellow who really regarded the manual as something that
guided his activity, but his view of the manual was that if it
didn't say in the manual "thou shalt not," it was okay. So he read
the manual in quite a different way from most people. However,
his objective was to do a good job of management and he did on the
ground.
Lage: How old a man was he? Was he in your age group?
Torheim: No, he's half a generation ahead of me. Coop lives here in
Portland. I suppose he's about seventy today. We all know him
well and love him dearly. He's just a great person, and he tells
these stories on himself, by the way, so I don't feel uncomfortable
about telling this. But it's illustrative of management style.
84
Torhelm: This was about 1950, I don't know the exact date, but I was a young
forester on the North Bend district so we all knew this story, and
Coop used to tell it. The forest supervisor was a man named Herb
Plumb who came along in the Forest Service early in the game before
World War I. He was typical of many forest supervisors. He
retired about 1952 or '53 or somewhere in there and is now dead.
Well, Herb ran a tight ship. He had been on other national
forests and in the RO [Regional Office]. He was a fine man, but
he was two different personalities. Off the job he was a very
fine social person and just a real fine human being. On the job
he was really a martinet. He ran a tight ship. He and Coop had
opposite personalities, so we had trouble!
The rangers' grades for a long time were P-2 on many districts.
P-l ("P" means professional) was the entrance grade for professionals
and P-2 was ranger. As the work load increased after World War II
though, the classification of some of these jobs caused them to go
up. So some ranger districts became P-3. The Naches district
being a large district rated a P-3. So one day Herb Plumb drove
over to Naches, and he had in his pocket Cooper's P-3 promotion.
He got to Coop's office (which later became mine), and it looked
across the ranger station compound to the ranger's house. Herb
Plumb walked into the office, greeted Coop, and exchanged a little
small talk. The he looked out the window, and he saw a new
breezeway had been constructed between the house and the garage,
which was separate. Now, this is in country that's twenty below
zero and four feet of snow for about four months!
85
Torheim: So he said to Coop, "Coop, did you build that breezeway?" Coop
said, "Yes, I built that breezeway." Herb said, "I didn't approve
of that." Now, think about that! Today a forest supervisor
wouldn't know one way or other whether a ranger was building a
.
breezeway, but that's the way it was. Herb, like many of his
peers at that time, knew every facet of every job on the ranger
district. He spent a lot of time in the field. Of course, you
have to put this in the context of Coop being a maverick and
probably Herb also held a rather tight rein on his use of funds.
So then they got into a discussion of no approval and what
kind of funds did you use and that sort of thing. It turned out
that Coop was in the soup one more time with Herb Plumb. So Herb
took the promotion out of his briefcase and showed it to Coop, tore
it to pieces and threw it in the wastebasket, and Coop never got
his P-3 until some time later.
.
That's illustrative of that style of management. Coop just
didn't follow the processes properly. I'm sure he did a good job
with the breezeway because we lived in the house later on, and you
could walk, even when the snow was quite deep, from the woodshed
.
garage to the house, [laughs] But there are lots of stories
around like this, and if you talk to other people, you will find
other national forests had the same kind of management style and
behavior and the strict adherence to manual instructions and these
same kinds of things. So that was the way the rig ran.
86
Torheim: Now then, as these folks that had been forest supervisors and the
like during the twenties and thirties retired, then the Forest
Service's new managers began to change. That's because times had
changed. Younger people coming up, and many of them having been
in the war, didn't ascribe to that kind of management. So there
was evolution In a way from the authoritarian-type of management
to, oh, more of a humanistic I would say [type]. Some of them,
as you typically find, some of them went over the brink a little
bit and got, as a reaction to authoritarian management, a little
too humanistic-- some of us thought anyway, if that's possible.
But really there was a mix during the fifties because so many of
the scientific management type of people and some of the newer
people were all kind of mixed together. This was the state of
affairs until the sixties really.
At the same time, the Forest Service really stuck with the
manual and the directive system, and they still do. The use of
work load measurement was refined. Uniform work planning came
into being. These were really merely extensions of scientific
management principles with humanist ics kind of built into the mix,
which meant that the ranger began to participate a little more with
the supervisor in planning together Instead of being directed from
on high.
1
87
The Work Planning System in the Field
Lage: Do you want to say more about how the work load analysis and the
planning system worked, from the viewpoint of the field?
Torheim: Yes, I'll try that. I probably don't remember all of the details
as much as those who have studied it more. The work planning
system first of all, you got your fund allocations and then the
ranger and his staff would put together an annual program of work
based on the budget and the allocation of funds, and it was in
much detail. We had ledger-type forms to use. So these were put
together and became the gross work planning for the year. Now,
these were backed up by project work plans, so the detail was there.
Lage: How did they relate to these longer range functional plans?
Torheim: Not very closely because the fund allocation drove the whole
system, and that was an annual thing. Sometimes it went up and
down like a yoyo.
-
Lage: So the other functional programs that we talked about were more
like dreams?
Torheim: Well, they were wish lists, yes. But they guided the activity. We
didn't stray from those, but we only did the increments of those
plans which the funding permitted and it would vary.
Lage: So they were long-range goals which may or may not be worked towards,
depending on the budget?
.
Torheim: Yes, if you didn't make it this year on your trail construction
program, you hoped to get money next year and get a little
farther. Sometimes you kept slipping back, which we did in
88
Torheim: campground activity. Campground Improvements were built In the
CCC days. We didn't get the money to maintain them, and this Is
still a problem, by the way.
It was very structured, but worked quite well I must say. The
project work Inventory that each ranger district had was a list
of things to be done that was updated periodically. So you had
lots of things to dip Into that were real and you could cost them
out. Then the work plan for the year was put together and all of
your people were funded. Many of them were only funded for part
of the year and only worked part of the year. We had lots of
seasonal employees.
Then that was translated into monthly work plans. We sat
down the ranger and his people each month and made a monthly
work plan by day, everyday what you were going to do everyday
and out of what fund you were going to work and what you were
going to accomplish. Then you'd have a contract so to speak with
the forest supervisor. The staff, of course, would join in too
in the supervisor's office. But that was your contract and at the
end of the month you went down through it with your people, and
you checked off in red what you accomplished and what you didn't,
and you made a new plan and picked up those things or some things
would cancel out or change or you had a fire and you had to delay
the whole thing and do it all over. But it was done by days.
i
89
.
Phasing Out the Diary
..
Torheim: Then for many years, Forest Service employees kept daily diaries.
The daily diary served a number of purposes. For one thing, it
.
was used to account for your time on your work plan, to account
for your time on the payroll sheet, and to let the supervisor
and the staff know, if you Just sent the diary in every month, what
you did. Then it was used for future work planning as well how
long does it take to do a job? It also served as a useful record
and reminder, particularly for rangers in their contacts with
permittees, if there is a dispute or something later on, or if
you want to recall something.
So all of us, or most of us, made diaries for many years.
Many of these are in the archives yet today. They form a useful
source of history.
'
Lage: Would you say that would be an accurate historical record? Did
people really put down exactly what they did?
Torheim: That would vary with the individual. Some people were very
creative about their diary writing.
Lage: [laughs] I like your terminology.
Torheim: Yes, some people didn't like to write diaries. I remember one
fellow who had his clerk write his diary all the time. He would
tell the clerk periodically what he did.
Torheim: But generally the diary was used appropriately. I know in my own
.
experience, I didn't make lengthy narratives (that wasn't the
intent of the diary), but I noted, and I know my colleagues that
90
Torheim: I worked with did, what we did during the day. We put down the
functions account too if that were appropriate.
Lage: Was that well accepted or did people gripe about it?
Torheim: It was well accepted until the fifties again. We began to change,
and there was a lot of dissatisfaction about the diary, as we
moved along particularly in the fifties and sixties, and finally
the diary was abandoned. You know, we'd never think that the
diary would be abandoned. But it didn't get abandoned without
pressure from the bottom. It got abandoned because it wasn't a
useful tool anymore, and we got into a different kind of work
planning.
Lage: Was it abandoned along with the work load analysis and other
things that it tied in with?
Torheim: Sort of. I probably am a little fuzzy on the history, and it
didn't just stop forthwith. It varied. Again, experimentation
took place. Most change in the Forest Service begins with
experimentation. Only certain individuals were required to keep
a diary. Then for a while selected positions just for historical
purposes kept the diary. Then finally it was just wiped out
completely. By that time, though, there were things to replace
it like a little modified budgeting process, more participation
up and down the line, a uniform work planning system which was a
pretty good one but didn't work because it was developed at the top.
But in a way, this was an evolutionary period between the
more directive type of management and the I use the word
"authoritarian* 1 for lack of a better word but more directive
91
Torheim: really is what I'm talking about. I don't mean authoritarian
in a negative context at all. It was simply that the person who
was forest supervisor or ranger had a lot of power and exercised
it overall, I'd say, wisely.
'
Participative Management and Management by Objectives
Torheim: There was an evolution then, you see, between this type of work
planning I was talking about and the present system which is
related to land management planning and is much more complex and
it's computer-based.
Lage: Can we get into a description of that?
Torheim: Yes, I probably won't go into it in detail because it is quite
detailed, but let's compare it with where we were.
Lage: Is that management by objectives?
Torheim: Yes, it's all tied together. The system is still being perfected,
of course. But generally speaking, the budget is now put together
three years out, and it's even more than that. It just gets a
little less accurate as you move out, but it's tied to the Resources
Planning Act, which is a five-year plan.
In land management planning the ability of the land to
produce or provide services is considered. The interesting
difference though is that the ranger and the forest supervisor
participate together with their staffs in the formulation of these
plans and budgets out over time, based on objectives that are also
jointly agreed on up and down the line, and related to the RPA.
92
Torhelm: The Congress, having passed the RPA, has a certain commitment to
fund at these levels, that didn't exist before. There is still
conflict between the executive branch and the legislative branch
though when it comes to trying to beat inflation and prioritizing
this. At any rate, it's quite different in that respect.
Then the ranger having participated (and it's updated
annually) in the objectives to be accomplished and the funding
required to do that and the people power to accomplish it has
ownership. Then there are no surprises. You get funding
estimates that are fairly close to the budgets that were submitted.
So you can really plan out ahead instead of just starting from
scratch each year.
Now, they always don't turn out exactly that way because
priorities aren't always the same at the national level. At any
rate, it works quite differently then, so that the ranger indeed,
in comparison with the past, can really be participative in the
formulation of the budgets which resulted in fund allocation, and
then he can expect that over a period of time they'll generally
be carried out.
Lage: Does he have any more discretion in how he's going to use the
money that year or is it still allocated
Torheim: He has more discretion. There are certain rules of the game, and
most -of them are by law and regulation on fund integrity, because
it relates to how the Congress appropriates the money. Those
rules are well known. But there is more discretion in putting
I
93
Torhelm: together the budget within those guidelines by far. As compared
with the way it used to be, when it was done really at the
supervisor's office and at the regional office's level and simply
handed to the ranger. He didn't participate formally like he
does today. [He] merely competed for funds, as we talked about.
The staff assists the ranger doing that and doesn't direct
him. I don't think they play quite as many interpersonal games
as there used to be.
Lage: So the ranger before, it sounds as if he did have some power, but
it was on the informal level of gamemanship.
Torheim: Well, yes. He didn't think he had power when it came to fund
allocation because the staff really had command of that. But
that's not true anymore. It's in the line now between the super
visor and the ranger, with much help from the staff. The staff
really makes it work. That's the basic difference I'd say.
Lage: Is there a milestone date or approximate time span for these
changes to more participative management?
Torheim: Approximately 1965 to the present.
Introducing Behavioral Sciences into Management
Torheim: Now, management styles, of course, have changed, too, to make this
possible. Again, they're evolutionary, and they change among
people. One of the profound events in my judgment that took place
in the Forest Service and made the Forest Service managers able
to cope with the rapid change in the social structure in the country
94
Torheim: and recent legislation was the introduction of behavioral sciences
into management. This happened again, as it often does, not in
a planned "let's do this" sort of a way, but again through
individuals becoming interested, and then the time was right.
I think I can describe that to you because I was a part of
that activity. Keep in mind the background again of new people
coming into the organization, many having been in the military,
the old style of management disappearing and new kinds of people
coming into the Forest Service, more than foresters other
disciplines that's all part of the background.
In 1964, the director of personnel management in Washington
was a man named Hy Lyman who had come up through the ranks and had
always been interested in management as a science and an art and
was interested in the business of management, in addition to having
been forest supervisor and ranger and all those sorts of things.
So he had a more than usual interest in this subject. (He was
director of personnel management.)
The people in personnel at that time in the regions and in
the Washington office, were not all personnel types. When I say
that I mean professionals with an education and background in
personnel. The Forest Service had quite a mix, and I was one of
those. They had lots of foresters who had moved over to personnel
management [who] really had experiences in the field personally
too. Among those there were also some professional personnel
people who were being moved into the outfit. They had a greater
Torheim: and deeper knowledge of personnel systems and of human behavior
and psychology.
Lage: They came out of the business schools?
Torheim: Right, or they came out of political science or all kinds of
places liberal arts types. So there was this mix. The training
arm of the Forest Service was used during this period to effect
change. They were kind of a licensed change agent. Now, I say
this only in perspective because it didn't seem so at the time,
but as I look back now it seems that this was the focal point.
That's where the interface took place between people who had
technical backgrounds like myself, and people who were coming
in new in the outfit from universities and [who] had contact with
behavioral sciences.
Lage: When you say "the training arm" was that a certain division?
Torheim: Yes, it's part of personnel management employee development and
training still is there, and most personnel departments have that.
The Forest Service was always very strong in training and still is.
The Managerial Grid Training System
Torheim: It just happened that the kind of mix of people that were interested
in this happened to be in the right places for something to happen,
and it happened this way. Hy Lyman and some of the folks in
personnel management, and some of the interested other staff people
in Washington went to a managerial grid seminar. This seemed to
put all of their latent feelings about organization management into
96
Torheim: a formal focus in a laboratory setting, highly structured, that
they could understand. It seemed like it would surely work well
for the Forest Service in these changing times, of trying to get
the various disciplines working together (they weren't just
foresters anymore), team action, participative management, and it
seemed good to them.
They selected a couple of regions who had regional foresters
that were known to be people who were also interested in management
and experimentation and might be willing to try it out. So they
went to Region 1 where Neil Rahm was the regional forester. Neil
had always been interested in the business of management. In fact,
:
he was kind of an experimenter himself, and the region was a region
that had that kind of culture. So with some help from the
Washington office then, Region 1 was going to try out the managerial
grid with groups of people and see how that would work.
Regions compete, and so some of the other regions also thought
it would be a good idea. I was the chief of the employee development
branch in Region 6, and Dan Bulfer was the regional personnel
officer. He was an old fire man and trainer and everything else.
He didn't like to see Region 1 going off into something he thought
was pretty good and not have big Region 6 also have an opportunity
to do that. I was new in heading up the training branch, and I
kind of felt like Dan did. This looked interesting to me, and we
had a group of people in the region who had also been kind of
chipping away at old traditions. You can't do this just in the
97
Torheim: regional office. These were forest supervisors and rangers, and
they were all well known to us.
Our regional forester was Herb Stone. Herb was near retire
ment and had been around a long time. Herb was a very open -minded
man who liked to try new things too, so Dan's job, with our staff's
help, was to convince Herb that this would be a good idea to
experiment with, and he bought it.
Then some other regions here and there got involved too.
Some regions thought this was a bunch of junk and just rejected it
completely. Anyway, this caught fire. What helped it along, in
my judgment too, was the Job Corps that came into the Forest
Service's realm of responsibility at exactly the same time. It
was a very difficult program for us to manage because it was really
a social program. It wasn't like the CCC program. We thought it
was going to be. But it was really to permit young men unemploy-
ables to become employable. It wasn't to get work done in the
woods.
They came from the darndest social background and troubles
and, gosh, we had all of the human problems you can possibly
imagine.
Lage: Did you have rangers in charge of Job Corps people, or did you have
specially trained people?
Torheim: Well, we had a mix. In Region 6 anyway, we chose our very best
young managers in the field to go into Job Corps and manage
these centers, and it was a good thing we did. But the Job Corps
,
Torheim: staff weren't from our culture at all. They were educators, they
were sociologists, they were psychologists, they were people
from the penal institutions all over the country. They were the
people that came into the Job Corps to do the work. They were
managed, though, by Forest Service managers. We selected young
managers that we felt might go on up, and they just weren't
equipped, especially to work with this disparate group of people,
to run a center (Job Corps camp) .
So the managerial grid and the introduction of behavioral
sciences through this method seemed to work very well, and it
coalesced and made it possible for these units to work together
to accomplish their goals.
Lage: So you used Che managerial grid in the Job Corps units?
Torheim: You bet, right.
Lage: How did it work? Can you tell us more about what the managerial
grid is?
Torheim: Yes, the managerial grid was simply a system of training managers
in what I call participative management. Now, that's an over
simplification, but it's a way of learning how to work together
with people to accomplish the organization's goals. It teaches
teamwork, and it teaches the synergism of people getting together
without all having the answer and through the synergistic
interactions of this group, it can come up with better answers
than the sum of the whole. Of course, this fit the Forest Service
needs to a "T" because this was the way the Forest Service worked.
99
Torhelm: We never had a vehicle to do It, nor did we have the understanding
of how people functioned this way.
There were some elements of sensitivity training in it which
later were at least modified by us. A lot of people rejected it
- '
on that basis. 1 must say it wasn't a large part of the managerial
grid, but at least it caused people to interact with each other
on a personal basis to see how they really felt about each other
working in a team.
Lage: How did that go over? I think this is referred to in one of the
other interviews where he describes it as sort of a lengthy session
'
of several days of interaction.
Torheim: It was very, very, very tiring. But if you think it was tiring for
the participants, you ought to see how tiring it was for those of
us who conducted it. We conducted many dozens of training seminars.
Lage: I would think it would be very hard for sort of a traditional
Forest Service type to accept.
Torheim: That's why it was hard on the people conducting it. It just tore
the outfit apart sometimes. People had well-established niches
or they had pretty solid coats of armor around their personalities,
and it was just all laid out. We modified it in Region 6 though
because that didn't seem to be terribly important. We didn't
want people to modify their behavior, and we didn't think it was
'
possible. We felt the psychologists were wrong there. It turned
out that that's the way it worked best.
100
Torhelm: One thing you could do with the managerial grid was to actually
modify it to suit your own needs. Now, the first seminars were
simply to learn. The real payoff in managerial grid though was
the subsequent follow-ups where you worked with actual working
groups. The first session was a laboratory mixed bag of people
from all kinds of units. The real payoff though was in what we
called "phase 2s" and "phase 3s" and on, where you dealt with a
facilitator. The training people and others learned to act as
facilitators. You worked with an actual group, a ranger and his
staff, a forest supervisor and his staff, or groups of people that
worked together. They worked on real life problems and, with the
aid of the facilitator, learned how to work them out together
better.
Lage: You were sort of along while they were doing their routine work
to help them?
Torheim: Yes, we had sessions, but they'd bring to the sessions the real
life things they were working with, and that was the payoff. If
there hadn't been a managerial grid, I suppose over time some
other techniques [would have been] used. But that opened whole
new doors. It opened up the outfit to the use of consultants
from universities, other than the forestry faculty. It got us
into schools of business, of public administration. It got us
into private industry, which was also doing the same thing, by
the way.
101
Longterm Benefits from Managerial Training
.' /^ - ^
Torheim: It just opened up the interaction of managers at all levels to the
world around them much larger than just managing the national
forests, and that was a profound change. Coupled with the Job
Corps, and the selection of our best people in this cauldron of
management activity who now had moved up to executive positions ,
it put the Forest Service in fine shape for the resource conflicts
which have come along since then, particularly in the wilderness
issue and timber management issues and that sort of thing.
Lage: Would you say it was more successful in training your younger
people rather than changing the behavior of more established
people?
Torheim: Yes, it didn't change the basic behavior of the established, but
many of the established people really modified their behavior
within the context of this because it worked. Another thing you
saw was that people out on the outer fringes, the typical change
agents, were going a little too fast. They were leaving folks
behind, so they had to kind of back off. There's a tendency, at
least in the Forest Service there always has been, that when you
get something new that works, we just jump over the cliff. Then
you find out you jumped too far and too fast and you haul yourself
at least halfway back up to reality and then get on with it. We
did this too. A lot of it was over done. This turned off a lot
of people, particularly the critics who said it wouldn't work.
102
Torheim: But Che payoff was, at least to getting the whole organization
into this way of thinking, is that it became a way of doing
business. I don't mean only the managerial grid, because that
was just a vehicle to learn, but the participative type of
management, the ability to deal with conflict, the ability to
understand group interaction and what's really happening to your
group, and then stop the action and critique it and say, "We're
getting all hung up" that was a new business. Usually you kept
all of this inside of you and hoped you could work it out through
your force of personality or intellect. It particularly fostered
an ability to deal externally with conflict and not be all torn
up about it or go into a shell, but actually nurture it with the
idea that this is going to work out good.
This all came about over a period of time up through the
latter half of the sixties and into the seventies as a way of
doing business. But what really Institutionalized this way of
managing was that those managers who really had accepted behavioral
science techniques as a way of managing seemed to be the ones who
were getting promoted. They were the ones that were actually
producing and getting credit because they were better managers.
This became very obvious then [that] this is a way of doing
business. The heads of the agencies the chief and the staff and
the forest supervisors and the regional foresters accepted this
too. So again, it started really from the bottom up.
103
Torheim: The last folks, I would say, to really accept this as a change
of style were the people at the Washington office. But that's
only natural. The felt need was at the ranger district level.
You had new people. You had a whole mix of people other than
foresters. The conflicts were there, and could be dealt with.
And the younger people, the people that are always
tapping on the egg shell. In my judgment (and I think others,
probably in my peer group, would support that), I think that was
a milestone of change in the way the Forest Service has done its
business.
Adapting to Change, Dealing with Conflict
Lage: I would think that your peer group would be a key group, as the
ones who came in under the old style, but had to adapt.
Torheim: Yes.
Lage: Did you find that a lot of them fell by the wayside? If they had
been attracted to a certain style in the Forest Service, how well
did they do when it changed so drastically?
Torheim: That was a highly individual thing, I'm sure. It's hard for me
to say. I don't know of anybody falling by the wayside so to
speak, although there must be some who did. When I was in personnel
management, I began to learn about these things personally for the
first time. You don't otherwise so much, but in personnel management
lots of people came to consult with me about their careers. It
had nothing to do with change so much but just careers in general.
104
Torheim: There were a lot of people who were not achieving their career
expectations, and this is true in any organization. But I was
never so aware of that until people would come to see me because
of my job. We'd have a chance to talk and look at the alternatives.
I think perhaps this abrupt change I shouldn't say abrupt, but
a rather short span of time anyway this change from a more
structured type of management style to a more open style really
did trouble some people and made it difficult for them to move up
because they were already locked into the old style of management.
That was standard procedure for them.
Lage: Also, I think it fits with a certain personality structure that's
hard to change.
Torheim: Yes, that's right. It's awfully complex and in an organization
as you move along, a lot of it's pure chance. One doesn't take
his or her career and design it and then proceed. He may have
some goals but, gee, there's an awful lot of chance! It walks
you around from here to there as you move along. But that's
life; that's what makes it exciting. I'm sure this happened too.
At any rate, this is the way the Forest Service does business
today and it's really not labeled; it's understood. I suppose
as time goes on, there will be further evolutionary changes as
society changes. But it's made the Forest Service very adaptable
over the years. The Forest Service has adapted quickly to the
norms of society and the society that it serves. That's been the
strength of the Forest Service.
105
Lage: Do you think this helped in dealing with all the increased level
of public involvement?
Torheim: Very much, and that's how the Forest Service actually became a
leader in government in public involvement in a field that was
never touched.
Lage: Some of the same skills
Torheim: The same skills, yes; the ability to deal in conflict situations,
the ability to understand the group process and the communication
process, and the ability to actually create synergism to get the
best answers. That's all a spin-off from the adoption of
behavioral science techniques. This is most unusual to me because
foresters, engineers, and biologists of various kinds, which really
make up the bulk of the Forest Service work force, had zero
education, most of us, in these fields. So, many of us were boning
up. 1 read psychology books. I attended classes, seminars. All
of us did for these kinds of subjects that we never got in school.
Lage: Has any of this filtered down to the professional schools so
that they do train
Torheim: Oh, sure, sure. Still not so much, but then the Forest Service
picks this up by continuing these as inhouse training programs.
It was pretty exciting to get into these fields because I used
to consider these as rather theoretical ivory tower sorts of
activities and probably would have, too, if I had taken it on
campus. But if you can apply it to your real job and see
immediately whether it works or doesn't, that does make it pretty
106
Torheim: exciting and makes it useful. So this is what took place and
then, of course, getting into the conflicts that emanated from
special interest groups having different views about how the
public lands should be classified and all, there was work to
do with these new techniques. I guess that's about my view of
it anyway.
* j
Cliff and McGuire; Managerial Styles Illustrated/^
Lage: You had something you wanted to add on differences in style.
Torheim: Just a little personalized input to illustrate changes in
management style we were talking about. Ed [Edward P.] Cliff
was chief of the Forest Service [1962-1972] had come up through
the organization in the traditional way we had spoken about. He
was a very capable forest supervisor in southern Oregon. He came
up through experiences with a heavy fire forest, lots of
management problems in the thirties with arson and everything else
in this forest. He was a good manager. He worked his way up as
regional forester and through the ranks and eventually to chief
in the characteristic way.
[He was] well-liked by everybody. We knew exactly where
Ed stood, the typical espouser of scientific management principles.
When I was in the Washington office I used to on occasion attend
chief and staff meetings in Ed Cliff's office. Ed had a rectangular
table, and each of the deputy chiefs had their chairs around this
rectangular table. Then Ed managed the meeting. They always sat
'
107
Torheim: in the same chairs. The associate deputy chiefs had chairs away
from the table and generally kind of behind their deputies. Then
those of us in staff roles would come in to make certain inputs
on certain items of the agenda. We sat in kind of a peanut
gallery off to one side. Now, this wasn't a big room. It was a
rather small room. But it was very structured. The interaction
then was also quite formal. I don't mean stuffy, but rules were
certainly well understood if not written down [chuckles] on how
one communicated. It worked quite well.
There was a real shift when John McGuire succeeded Ed Cliff
[1972], and this was noticeable to all.
Lage: Were you in Washington?
Torheim: No, I was in the field then. I was deputy regional forester in
Region 6, but we go back frequently to Washington and deal with
the chief. John McGuire was one of the early people in the
behavioral science input to management. He was director of the
southwestern experiment station at Berkeley. He was quite an
espouser of new principles of management. He had come out of
research and so he was a little closer to the field later in
his career. His personal style was different, too. But it was
quite noticeable what John did differently then about these chief
and staff meetings. He didn't use a rectangular table. It was
gone. He had a very large circular table in the middle of his
room, and he and his deputies sat around the circular table, so
they were interacting eyeball to eyeball. It was a low coffee-
type table.
108
Torheim: Then the others, the associate deputies and those of us who had
come in to make inputs, we just sat casually around where we
wanted to pick a chair. John then stimulated conflict and
conversation. In fact, one of his techniques was if they weren't
getting enough input on the problem to be solved he would be a
devil's advocate or he would say something that was certainly
challengeable and stimulating. That's the research approach, by
the way.
So it's an interesting difference in styles even to the very
furniture in the chief's office. [laughter]
Lage: Were you quite aware he was only playing the devil's advocate,
or you weren't quite sure?
Torheim: Oh, yes, quite sure. He always used that technique very openly
no games.
Lage: He came out of the research branch?
Torheim: Yes, most of his career was in research.
Lage: Was that unusual?
Torheim: No, Ed Cliff's predecessor, Dick McArdle was also out of research.
Chiefs have come both from administration and research. Well, I
thought that was just a little story illustrative really of a
small part of management activity, but it expresses not only a
little difference in personnel but a little difference in managerial
style to be more at harmony with the way the outfit was moving.
109
V THE FOREST SERVICE ORGANIZATION: CHANGES AND CHALLENGES
-
Reorganization in the Seventies)^
Lage: Should we move to more discussion of the reorganization in the
Forest Service?
Torheim: Yes, let's do that. I'll probably have a little trouble with
dates and all, but I can get into the general area. The Forest
Service had, as we talked about earlier, the line/staff type of
organization with the assistant forest supervisors and assistant
regional foresters having line direction in their activities. We
talked about that quite a little bit. Now then, as we moved along
with getting more and more different kinds of people in the
organization, beginning to introduce behavioral science principles
into management, the drifting away of scientific management and
more authoritarian type of management, and learned more about the
participative approach to getting the job done better through team
action, it soon became obvious that the line/staff organization
wasn't working all that well.
110
Torheim: Land management planning had an influence on it, too. There was
a lot of what we called functionalism. Functional ism (and it's
not a very good word, but for lack of a better one I'll use it)
meant that we dealt with a bag full of functional activities with
strong, directive staff members pushing their activity at the
expense (now, this is a bit of a caricature) , but at the expense
of the other activity. The supervisor had a lot of trouble
sorting out all of this direction he was getting from assistant
regional foresters who were pushing their own program, and
likewise the ranger was having trouble sorting out priorities
among all the direction he was getting, from the various forest
staff members, and playing the budget and fund allocation game
.
at the same time.
This wasn't working well, as the job became more complex
land management planning, trade-offs, increased work force,
and that sort of thing and our increased awareness about what
was happening to us. So it looked like maybe a different kind
of organization was needed. Also, at the same time, with the
tremendous increase in work load brought about by new legislation
and more public interest in national forests, the ranger couldn't
keep track of everything in a big district anymore personally.
The forest supervisor couldn't run every ranger district like he
used to either. He couldn't keep track of all this stuff. All
the public job public involvement and contacts with the public
this is all part of the things that were happening in the sixties.
Ill
Torhelm: The generic term for the managerial grid system and the introduction
of behavioral science was called organization development. This
was the generic term for all of this activity we talked about
earlier. The objective there was to improve your organization
along the lines that you thought needed improving.
Lage: Was there a particular individual who was connected with pushing
this?
Torheim: No, this was pushed from all directions, and that's what's
interesting about it. It's kind of like I described the move
for multiple-use planning to land management planning. There was
a general overall feeling of dissatisfaction. No individual
pushed it at all. It was at the field by the way, at the field
level.
Field Experimentation for Structural Change
Torheim: Again, experimentation seemed to be the way to make this change,
if necessary, work out. Some forests were selected by the chief
and the regional foresters to do experimentation. One of them
was the Eldorado National Forest in California, and there were
some others too. But they began to experiment with organization
change, a little different type of staff alignment, more deputy
supervisors and that sort of thing.
Again, [with] the intense Interest and competition and need,
other regions wanted to get in on it too. So here we go again!
which is healthy. In every region there is always a forest, a
112
Torheim: change-agent forest, somebody willing to try. So it turned out
that several regions, with or without blessings from the
Washington office, began to do some organizational experimentation
not going outside of the directives from the chief, but really
teetering on the edge.
After a while, the chief acquiesced (let me put it that way)
because a lot of people had already started organization change
without the blessing of the chief, so the chief said, "Okay,
let's try this." We found several regions trying organization
change, but it wasn't well-directed, kind of like the land
management planning, and it got out of hand. But I think in
retrospect it was useful because it caused a lot of experimentation
to take place.
Lage: Where were you as an observer? How were you involved in this?
Torheim: I was deputy regional forester in Region 6. We had some forests
in Region 6, and I guess every region did, that were trying
.
different ways of organizing. With the informal communication
systems between regions and forests, these supervisors would talk
to each other, and they'd get new ideas. I don't mean anything
dramatic was happening, but we were trying to learn how to change
and cope with all of these ways of doing business. Usually on
the forest level, it was decided to consolidate the various
resource activities so the forest supervisor wouldn't have so
many subordinates. In some of these big forests, the supervisor
would have thirteen staff people and six rangers all reporting
to the forest supervisor. So that was where the problems were
in the larger forests.
113
Torheim: The upshot of this was that this [experimentation] couldn't go on,
so the chief grabbed hold of the thing and kind of stopped the
action of experimentation and based on the experimentation, laid
out some organizational structures for forests that would be okay.
They could work within these various organization patterns. Then
eventually this was done for the regions as well. They were done
together. This happened about 1972.
Multiple Deputies and Line/Staff Adjustments
Lage: What was the actual outcome?
Torheim: The basic change was, in most cases well, all of the regions
were organized the same. (Let's start with the region.) I'll
talk about the western regions because the eastern regions have
a little different responsibilities for state and private
forestry. But the western regions typically had a regional forester
and a deputy regional forester. The regional forester and deputy
occupied the top management slot as a unit, the typical alter-ego
deputy type.
Then there were assistant regional foresters for each of
these activities that we've talked about, not just in resources
but also in business management and state and private forestry.
Now, that was quite a span of control when you think of all of
those staff people reporting to the regional forester and deputy,
plus all of the forest supervisors. There can be as many as
thirty or forty people. The new structure consolidated the assistant
114
Torheim: regional foresters Into groups under multiple deputies. So the
job that I had as deputy for Region 6 was changed to deputy
for resources, which meant I was responsible for all of the
resource management activity, but not for state and private
forestry anymore and not for business management. There were
two other deputies that handled that, one state and private and
one in administration. This was the same organization for all
of the western regions.
Lage: Then the staff people would report to you?
Torheim: Yes, the staff people reported to me. Now, at the same time
the role of the staff, or the assistant regional foresters, was
changed. They were no longer assistant regional foresters. They
were called directors of timber management, directors of fire,
directors of wildlife and so forth. The line/staff was eliminated;
they were staff. So they could not direct a [forest] supervisor.
The deputy's job was to coordinate this activity, so that policy
and personnel selection and budget formulation was done through
the deputy, from the forest supervisor through the deputy. Of
course, the interaction takes place, but the responsibility [lay
with the deputy] , and conflict was resolved that way.
Now, the forests were organized a little similarly, but
forests differ in size and mission and geographical location. In
essence the roles of the staff people on the forests (the assistant
forest supervisors) were changed also. That was a profound change.
Lage: You mentioned yesterday that these staff people had had personnel
L.
1
powers the selection of personnel.
115
Torheim: Yes .
Lage: How did that work?
Torheim: Say a. region was going to select a forest staff person or a
forest supervisor within the authority of the regional forester.
Typically, this would be done with a selection committee made
up of the regional forester and all of the assistant regional
foresters in the staff organization with input from personnel,
maybe some input from the forest supervisor and maybe not, it
depends on how that particular region was managed.
If the selection was to be, say, for a forest staff person
in range management, the assistant regional forester for range
management really had the most say about that and very frequently
it was his recommendation that prevailed. Sometimes that was not
acceptable to the forest supervisor, but he had to take it anyway.
Also, the review of promotion rosters and the general
personnel activity was done that way, again with the assistant
regional forester in charge of the activity, having the dominant
say about the people who were moving along in the field in his
activity. Again, frequently there would be conflict not always,
but sometimes.
With the new role of directors then, they didn't have this
kind of clout so to speak. They would advise the regional forester
about who they thought ought to be selected, but then there would
be a smaller group probably just a few of the assistant regional
foresters. It depended on the system that was used, but it would
be a smaller group, and he would just recommend. He wouldn't veto.
116
Torheim: Before the reorganization, the assistant regional forester had an
out-and-out veto maybe not formally written down but by golly,
if he didn't approve, the regional forester absolutely wouldn't
go along with the choice.
There was more debate and then in many cases the supervisor
had something to say about it. He could make an input. Sometimes
he was overruled, but at least he was part and parcel to the
decision-making process, instead of wondering who they were going
to send him. So this changed it.
That had really been a job-satisfying activity for the
assistant regional foresters, that many of them felt they had
lost. There was a sense that they should watch the people coming
along in their activity and keep close track of them, and they
had lots to say about the future of the technical expertise in
the outfit, particularly in the staff roles. Then in selecting
line people like supervisors they had a lot to say too. Sometimes
if an assistant regional forester didn't think that a person was
suitable they weren't selected. The regional forester paid close
attention to his staff in these matters, again often to the
dissatisfaction of the supervisor. This was shifted around.
f
Reaction to Changed Staff Responsibilities
Torheim: Again, many of the now-called "directors" thought that the supervisors
had just rejected them, that it was just a matter now between the
regional forester and the supervisors and they were just clear out.
1
117
Torhelm: They weren't even asked anymore. Now, this is a caricature
again, but some of them felt pretty strongly that way.
Lage: You must have seen this at close hand from your job.
Torheim: I was very much involved with this, yes. I was an arbiter lots
of time between the staff person the director and the supervisor.
Again this was an individual thing. Lots of people were, in fact,
quite comfortable with this change.
The other power loss (job satisfaction) that many directors
felt was the inability to influence fund allocation. Some felt
very strongly that the funds should go to those supervisors who,
in the judgment of the director, were making the best use of those
funds. After the reorganization, of course, it was more
formalized. All the directors did was to recommend, and then the
deputy would make the decision. Then we moved over toward a
more management by objectives kind of thing.
A number of directors at all levels and this was true at
the forest level among the staff people, the Washington office
level, and the regions, it was an individual thing felt that
their job was much diluted. I noticed, however, that this wasn't
9
universally true. Some of the former assistant regional foresters
moved over to the director role or changed their way of operating
quite easily and comfortably.
Lage: Did some move up to the deputy role as well?
Torheim: Yes, oh sure, but there aren't too many of those jobs. But what I
think 1 noticed mostly was that people coming into the director's
jobs for the first time, with their role established before they
118
Torheim: got the job, had no trouble at all with it. So over time this
was taken care of.
What interested me was that we were very much aware of this,
because we had a greater sensitivity of how to work together, we
actually critiqued this problem, talked about it. It was there.
In years past, that would have been kind of underground. You
wouldn't have talked about that kind of a personal thing. No,
we put it up on top of the table and dealt with it.
Lage: With the individuals involved?
Torheim: Oh sure, you bet. We talked about it, how we were going to
overcome this. So that was kind of a healthy way of dealing with
it.
Lage: Was it effective in bringing planning in a more unified
Torheim: Yes, I think you'd be honest to say though that there are still
some who would say, "No, it didn't do anything." That's an
individual judgment. My own judgment is that after the trauma of
change was overcome, it works well now. But some other things
have happened. Some of the supervisors finally realized that they
had indeed pulled away from the staff "Gee, this is great; my
shackles are gone" and they quit communicating with staff directors.
What they discovered was that the quality of work on the ground
that the director and his staff can help them achieve was missing.
Then they began to have a self-awareness that if they didn't
really open up the lines of communication between their staff and
the expert staff in the regional office, they were going to [lose]
quality thereby. So they got back together so to speak!
'
119
Lage: The staff person for timber management in the regional office
didn' t have a line at all to the staff person for timber management
in the supervisor's office. That wasn't a direct line either.
Torheim: Yes, it was; informally, a very direct line. You bet. In the
old system that was a directive line as well. In the new system
that's a consultative line and a quality control line. But you
see why the supervisor and ranger sometimes felt that the staff
was really running the show because he had direct staff
communication from Washington to the regional office to the
forest, and the ranger was directed to perform. The regional
forester and the forest supervisor never got involved. Now, that
would be a worst case example, but it could happen.
But any organization structure change by itself isn't good
enough unless the people make it work. There's the old cliche
that a good bunch of people can make any organization structure
function. I think that's still true. But what interests me is
that this change was brought about through field dissatisfaction
and a felt need by the field. It wasn't imposed by the Washington
office. In fact, the Washington came along somewhat reluctantly
I would say after the fact. But that's okay. I think effective
change is made only that way.
Lage: The sense I get is that the dissatisfaction on the field level
was related to the change in their missions, the new needs.
Torheim: The new need. Not so much mission change, but the greater
complexities of managing the national forests public awareness,
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Torheim: new legislation, a different mix of people instead of just
foresters, Job Corps they were all together.
Lage: It's such a complicated
Torheim: Complicated; yes, very complex.
From Inspections to Management Reviews
Lage: We haven' t talked about the inspection system and the way that
that changed. Is this a good place to go into it?
Torheim: Yes, it would be involved. The inspection system in the Forest
Service was a very useful tool in management and really has kept
the outfit together getting the job done rather uniformly and
well I think, between regions and from top to bottom. That was
developed, of course, out of the scientific management principles
of the twenties, the militaristic background of management and
some of the good things that come out of that kind of management
.
activity. The Forest Service used the inspection system for more
than just quality and quantity control as we mentioned earlier.
It was also used for training.
##
Torheim: The inspection system was quite structured. Generally it was made
up of several kinds, but the principal kinds of inspections were
first of all functional inspections. These were inspections carried
out in a functional activity like wildlife management or watershed
management or fire or timber. [It was] conducted by the staff
person at all levels, by the way. The Washington office inspected
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Torhelm: the region, the region inspected the forest, and the forest the
ranger district. So functional inspections were carried out on
a regular programmatic basis periodically over time. That's the
way the Forest Service really maintained quality control and
perpetuated training because there was lots to be learned this
way.
Lage: Was this a tense event for the ranger?
Torheim: Let me talk about styles again. I'll describe the types of
inspection, and then I'll tell you how they were really carried
out. Within the functional there was also a limited functional.
Take fire management. A general function will be all of the
activities in fire. A limited functional might be a slash burning
activity (a piece of the fire activity).
Then there were the G.I.I.'s (general integrating inspections)
at all levels, which looked periodically at the whole management
picture all activities together. Then there were special audits
required often by law personnel audits and fiscal audits
principally. So this was all part of the inspection system.
With all the background that we talked about earlier, that
inspection system didn't work well within the context of the new
organization, the new way of managing the Forest Service and
the moving away from functionalism with all of its board fence
syndrome to a more team- oriented way and integrative way of
managing. This time again, there was experimentation at the field
level in various ways of changing inspections. Certain regions
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Torheim: like Region 1 were selected formally by the chief, in this
instance, to try out some new ways of inspecting. The upshot is
that out of this experimentation and a really felt need again,
the inspection system was changed to put together management
reviews mostly based not Just on periodic scheduling but on
perceived need. Also it was a participative type. Really the
change was made more in how it's done rather than what was done.
Let me describe the way that the other inspections were
carried out. With the old type of inspection carried out from
one level of the hierarchy down one notch, naturally you'd find
the problems of gamesmanship and some of the negative things,
along with all of the positive things that occurred. Now, I want
to say right at the outset that I always thought personally the
inspection system had many more positive things than negative.
But the problems that would come about would be the usual problems
of trying to show your best face and not really laying out your
problems much. Problems should be discovered by the inspector
this was the inspec tee's point of view, if you want to carry it
to the utmost.
If you generated problems or demonstrated problems to the
inspector sometimes really you didn't get much help. All you got
was a poor report, and then you had trouble crawling out of the
hole. Now, compare that with the present type. The present
type of inspection is a problem-generating activity by the
inspecting group and the inspectee who work together as a team,
and it's problem-solution.
'
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Lage: So the ranger wouldn't feel threatened to bring up the fact that
he had a problem.
Torheim: No, there's no threat. Right, that's the whole objective. So
there's a complete change in how that's done.
Lage: Now, it really happens that way? The ranger is not looked at
critically because he hasn't been able to solve his particular
problem.
Torheim: No. Besides, it's no surprise. If a supervisor and the regional
people are doing their job, they know currently how a performance
is taking place anyway through informal visits and the usual
interaction, so there aren't any surprises. Usually there are truly
management problems that need solving, and they're laid out. The
old system was based more on discovery. Now, again that's a
generalization that wasn't always carried out that way by individuals.
Certain individuals didn't believe in that and had a personality
and a way of looking at the world around them that permitted them
to actually do problem solving even under the old system. We had
certain people who were candid and above board that could make
even the old system work well. But generally it didn't fit the
new way of managing. In my judgment, the new system (the
management reviews and the program reviews) are working quite well.
Now, keep in mind that also under the old system, the
assistant regional forester and staff people generally were
directive. Remember, they had line direction, so there was a
high level of threat there to one's career. There still is a
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Torheim: threat if you don't perform, but it's based really on that
performance and not on discovery and game playing that might
take place.
A Growing Openness in the Organization
Lage: Now, the other thing that occurs to me (and this may be wrong) ,
as you describe the new plan, you're describing it from the
point of view of a higher-up, whereas you were down in the bottom
of the barrel during the older system. Do you think that you're
in touch enough with how a ranger perceives it now ?
Torheim: No, I'm not naive enough to believe that. One of the prices you
pay as you move up in the hierarchy is that you don't really get
all of the bad news from below. You have to really understand
that or you can't function. So I'm sure there must be all kinds
of problems that people are solving today, too. There always will
be and that will cause further change in the future. It's only
natural that if you have something to do with instituting and
installing new ways of doing business you have a lot of ownership
and you feel good and positive about it, and you're sure it must
be working beautifully at all levels. But it's probably not!
[laughs] So I don't deny that.
Lage: On the other hand, if it's not as authoritarian an organization,
you probably know more about what's going on.
Torheim: I think so, and we've had enough external feedback, I think, to
reinforce that. One of the things that you get from almost any
consultant that comes into the outfit or, even the public, is the
125
Torhelm: openness of the Forest Service, the willingness to lay things out
In the open, the nonthreatenlng atmosphere and kind of a general
aura of constructive candor that seems to be an Inherent
characteristic of the outfit. So I think people feed back better
than they used to.
* .
Also, the young people in the outfit aren't inhibited.
They're not overwhelmed by organization. I was kind of overwhelmed
by just the organization itself when I came in the expertise of
everybody, and where I sat, and that sort of thing. The young
people I've met with today, they just lay it out. My children
do that, too. So there's a different social conscience and social
behavior in the nation that the organization has too.
Lage: Less fear of authority maybe.
Torheim: I think so and just a general more openness. I think so.
The Forest Service on_the Defense; Public Involvement
Lage: Some of the reading that I've done sort of contradicts a couple
of things you've said. In reading about public involvement, for
instance, a couple of the studies that were made mentioned that
the Forest Service was terribly defensive in dealing with the
public and very threatened. Now, this of course was back say
'
in the earlier part of the seventies.
Torhelm: That's true. We had a real tough time in the organization to
really get aware that the good things that we thought we were
doing in managing the national forests really weren't thought to
126
Torhelm: be so good. We felt sincerely that they were. Besides, as 1
mentioned earlier, the Forest Service always was getting pretty
good feedback but it was pretty small feedback, as we talked
about yesterday and not really much feedback by people who
didn't agreed with the way we managed; mostly by people who
agreed. So it was kind of a shock to us in the outfit, who were
convinced that we were doing a good job, to hear from so many
people all of a sudden, practically, that all was not that well.
So, yes, we got defensive. Then we sought to find a way to
prove to the public that things were okay. But I think the turning
point was when we got into a massive public involvement effort
nationwide for the first time, or western regionwide, in the so-
called RASE I, The Roadless Area Review and Evaluation, for the
first time, trying to segregate out wilderness for the future.
That was the most massive attempt at public involvement
that any government agency or private agency as far as I know had
ever engaged in. We were pure amateurs at it. But we had a
dedicated purpose to really make it work. That changed everything
in my judgment. Then we really got feedback honest feedback
from a broad spectrum of the public. Because of the new ways
of managing, we didn't find conflict so threatening. Now, many
individuals did for a while, but it became more
Lage: You get de-sensitized to that kind of thing.
Torheim: Well, it didn't seem so personally threatening because you could
work on the issues , and we used to take it personally because
when you work with forests or live in the forest, you have a lot
127
Torheim: of ownership as to how that land is managed and you feel that if
people are criticizing land management, they're criticizing you
personally. We got over that and got to working with jhings
of course you can't get away from people. You still have personal
responsibility for your actions but at least you could get down
to dealing with conflict on a land allocation issue for the merits
of the case by various interest groups. So, yes, this was a
tough change but I think the Forest Service accomplished it. It
took several years.
Lage: But there is still a lot of attacks, and you still are in a
defensive posture.
Involving the Public in Management Decisions
Torheim: I think there always will be. I think that's healthy. It's the
way society is put together. I know this is an oral history, but
if you want to look ahead a little bit, here's my judgment of
where we're headed just briefly, and I think it's the way we ought
to go.
As I mentioned earlier, the public generally was not
interested for many years directly in what we were doing in
managing national forests. Then they became terribly interested
particularly in the land allocation issue and resource allocation
issue. This is continuing today, but I see that the land allocation
issue through legislation and land management planning is going to
be dealt with pretty soon. What I see then on the horizon is
128
Torheim: that the public interest groups will begin to be watching how
the national forests are managed are they being managed to a
quality standard and are they being managed within the confines
of the law and the land management plans and the resource plans.
So I think we will see a transition, I think a Very healthy one,
for the ranger having segments of the public watching how he does
his business everyday.
Lage: Do you mean how he cuts his timber?
Torheim: You bet some of the nitty gritty.
Lage: You don't find that threatening?
Torheim: Oh, no. I think that's healthy. In fact, we were preparing our
people for that in Region 1 just before I retired. We were
actually preparing for that. It won't happen all of a sudden, but
we see some evidence of that already. Why not get ready for it?
.
So we found rangers inviting more and more people and interest
groups right out to the woods to see what we're doing here.
Lage: When you invite them up there is it kind of a "show me" effort?
Torheim: It used to be, it used to be. Now, we invite criticism. It used
to be. Gosh, it used to be a "show me" trip and you put your
best foot forward, and you showed all of the good things you did
and put up signs and the whole works. No, no. [laughs] No more!
And I think that's great. That's the way it should be.
Lage: So maybe you're involving them a little more in some of the
'
problems that you have as well.
129
Torheim: Sure, that's what public Involvement is all about. It should be
an integral facet of the management activity the way you do
business and beyond the land management planning, eventually,
as I think anyway, into the actual techniques of management.
Lage: That's a long way from considering the forester as the expert.
Torheim: Right.
Lage: Do you think the public is becoming more expert in the field?
Is that one reason that you are able to
Torheim: Those who are interested enough to do it, certainly are, I should
say. Take a look at forestry courses and classes on the campuses
today. It used to be that only forestry majors were in forestry
classes, and they were darn small classes, many of them. Now
forestry classes are huge classes on many campuses because there
are lots of nonmajors taking forestry electives or taking minors
in forestry. There are also people taking forestry who never
intend to practice forestry, just like people who take law but
never become lawyers or whatever. When I say "forestry" I mean
in the broadest sense.
Other resource courses too wildlife biology, soil science.
There are not just professionals in these courses anymore. So
that, plus the general interest of lots of people, plus the
organized groups that make it their business to kind of watch how
the public lands are managed.
Lage: How do you feel after one of these plans has been developed in
such an intricate fashion with all of the public involvement and
then it's set aside by a court decision?
130
Torheim: Oh, I feel very neutral about that and wish we could have done
better. I used to feel defeated and [that it was a] disaster.
No more! That's part of the process. Now, I don't mean to say
that one gets cynical about it because you do feel disappointed.
But what you do is go back and find out where it went haywire
and do it again. That's been done many times.
Lage: It sounds as if at least you personally are able to really step
back and take a more objective view.
Torheim: Yes, and I think our managers are. The people who hurt on those
kinds of things are the technicians who really put their soul
and body into that. The managers today in the Forest Service, if
he or she can't take that, they can't be managers. They have to
regroup their forces. But it's easy to see where the technicians
.
who put all of their professionalism and technology into those
plans really feel put down. Particularly the pesticide issue,
where they know through scientific evidence that 2, 4-D is
absolutely not toxic. The professional can show you the scientific
literature for thirty years on this. What they don't realize is
that it's not a scientific question. It's a political question.
That's tough for the technologist and scientist. It's really
tough. But if the manager doesn't believe it's a political issue
and deal with it politically, I mean with a small "p," as well as
a large "p," then he'll miss the boat. He won't get the job done.
So that's what it's all about. I guess we're philosophizing a
little here! [laughs]
131
Political Responsibilities of Field Administrators
Lage: We talked just briefly yesterday about the political responsi
bilities of field administrators, and we were going to discuss
that further. What were you talking about?
Torheim: Let's take it in an historical perspective again. First off,
I want to say again that there has been, historically, marked
differences between regions. So I'm going to speak really for
the western regions and my own experience, particularly Region 6
and Region 1. The job of dealing with members of Congress in
particular (the senators and the representatives) , at least in
my experience in the western regions, was handled for many years
quite closely by the regional forester and his immediate staff and
by maybe a selected supervisor now and then, but again closely
directed by the regional forester. Now, the reason for this was
that it was thought that the supervisors and rangers had little
opportunity to get very sophisticated in dealing with members
of Congress and might really step across the boundary of the
separation of powers or would get into a political hassle and put
themselves in jeopardy as professionals when they really are
carrying out the mandates of Congress. So the general feeling
in the field then was that we should not be political, so to
speak, and we shouldn't really have any oral communication.
Now, that doesn't mean that when congressmen come out to the
district that you don't show them around, but they were usually
escorted by the regional forester or by the forest supervisor.
132
Torheim: So I would say that the communication in the field with members
of Congress was extremely limited. In the seventies, with the
proliferation of new laws and with the increased public interest
in the national forest and all of the conflicts and special
interest groups, congressmen began to get (in the West anyway)
terrifically sensitized by national forest issues. In fact,
they became campaign Issues very often. In Region 6 this meant
that the regional forester even hung on more tightly to that.
Charlie Connaughton, who was regional forester, and Herb Stone
before him, both espoused this philosophy not to put the field
folks in jeopardy.
The level of activity became so great, finally, and the
members of Congress themselves began to communicate informally
with forest supervisors that this became very hard to manage.
Lage: Would the members of Congress be trying to affect policy on the
forest?
Torheim: No, not really. No, they don't do that. But you can fall into a
trap. I'll give you some examples as we go along, particularly on
when you have interest groups that have different opinions and
the congressmen were trying to sort them out.
Charlie retired in 1971 and Rex Resler became regional
forester and I became deputy, as we talked about earlier. Then
we began to think and, of course, this had been developing while
Charlie was regional forester, too that we really ought to find
a way for our supervisors to communicate with the members of
'
133
Torheim: Congress. For Instance, all the congressional constituent mail
used to have to come right to the regional office and be signed
off here every one of them. I was doing a lot of this.
Lage: Any mall to a congressman they would send straight on over to
the Forest Service?
Torheim: Yes, indeed. You bet. A congressman would write to a forest
supervisor sometimes (or staff) asking about this problem this
constituent was unhappy or wanted information. That supervisor
would send a copy of that letter right away to the regional
office. He would write a draft reply, and it would come to the
regional office for my or the regional forester's signature, and
then go back to the member of Congress. We kept tight control, and
that was to be sure things were done properly.
We were having trouble being responsive. The communication
time began to lengthen because there was such a volume of this
activity. All these things were happening gradually. So Rex and
myself and the supervisors and the assistant regional foresters
put on our thinking caps about how we might want to change this.
We decided we ought to really find some way for the forest
supervisors to respond directly. So we opened the manual a crack
and permitted the supervisors to respond to some things but not
to others. Then we let them get a little experience, and we had
some training sessions in congressional relations and all. Anyway,
finally over time, that's opened up now so that there's free
communication between forest supervisors (not so often rangers)
134
Torheim: and members of Congress and their staffs. It's quite normal
and it's not controlled. The timing is controlled, but at least
the communications can 'be made directly now formally between the
forest supervisor and members of Congress.
Lage: But you don't find the congressman I would think they would have
a tendency, if there's a lot of constituent dissatisfaction, to
try to influence your policy directly.
Torheim: Oh, of course, and they do. That's always been the case because
if you get a letter from a congressman about a problem, you're
sure as heck going to find out what it's about. Many constituents
use the congressman for leverage. That's okay. That's just
another input. Now, that's on things . It's "this special use
permit" or "this road" or "this timber sale" or "my contract,"
that sort of thing. Those are pretty straight forward.
Forest Service Input on Legislative Policy
Torheim: The other increased level of activity in the political arena,
though, has occurred in the policy formulation in legislative
business, and that's a little more tricky. We didn't get involved
in that at all much until recent years. That was closely held by
the Washington office and, of course, still is. There are some
definite routes to travel because in legislation in particular,
the Forest Service being part of the executive branch then
testifies for the president on positions. So you can't take
positions in the field. Everybody understands that. But it's
135
Torheim: awfully easy to get in a bind if you're not careful. This has
happened most recently with all of the wilderness legislation
because there is so much of it and because the expertise really
is at the forest level, that the forest supervisors now are
frequently called upon to testify at hearings, to give technical
information. They had to be careful that they keep it to
technical and not to positions. Members of Congress are very
sensitive to this too.
The real bind though is when the member of Congress gets
in trouble with constituents when he tries to sort out some
middle ground between polarized positions on wilderness, for
example. Here's an example. The Alpine Lakes wilderness legislation
in the state of Washington on the Snoqualmie and Wenatchee forests
was in the hopper while I was deputy regional forester in Region 6.
The member of Congress in whose district this was mostly located
was Representative Lloyd Meads from Everett, Washington. Lloyd
was putting a piece of legislation through the house, and there
was a companion bill in the Senate that Senator [Henry] Jackson
was sponsoring, to create an Alpine Lakes wilderness.
The Forest Service had a plan this is a very typical case
the Forest Service had done its study and had a plan. The timber
industry and other commodity users had put together a coalition
and working group. They came up with a plan for an Alpine Lakes
wilderness that was quite a bit smaller than the Forest Service
plan. The Federation of Western Outdoor Clubs and the Sierra Club
136
Torheim: and others put together a similar working group and they came up
with a wilderness proposal much larger than the Forest Service.
This is very typical. This has been repeated in many pieces of
wilderness legislation. Nobody disagreed that some of the Alpine
Lakes area should be wilderness. This is north of Mount Rainier,
very beautiful country. The question is how large should it be?
The congressman then had really three positions he could
take to produce a bill. Naturally, he was trying to seek the
compromise position. Without getting into all of the details,
frequently the Forest Service study is typically somewhere in
between, so that generally they use the Forest Service study and
then build their legislation out of that; then through public
hearings [they] will modify it. It never gets to be as large as
the wilderness interest group wants, nor does it ever become as
small as the commodity interests want typically.
The problem is though that the congressman or senator latches
onto the Forest Service study, and this becomes the basis for a
bill. A lot of the public interest groups and the members of
them attack the Forest Service then because that's the one
that he selected. Well, everybody knows that it's not necessarily
going to come out that way, but that's a convenient one for him
to select because it's typically in the middle. So then the lobbying
goes on and the forest supervisor is attacked in editorials not
always attacked but it's espoused to be the Forest Service position.
It really isn't at that point because the Forest Service hasn't
been called upon to testify yet.
137
Torheim: But anyway, there's an awful lot of lobbying going on at this
stage of the game. The forest supervisor gets accused of
generating wrong information "his study information data is no
good" by both parties. So it puts you in a bind, a national
public bind, that in the past our supervisors never experienced
at all. So they've got to handle this quite astutely, and I must
say that most of the time they do. But they have to really know
and learn about the legislative process and the political process.
So now our supervisors are very sophisticated in this area.
We have training sessions for all of our forest supervisors
nationwide in Washington where they actually visit committees
of Congress and get accustomed to them. Many of them have visited
congressmen annually to keep them updated on what's going on. I
think they do a marvelous job. Now, this interestingly enough is
not new to the supervisors in the East and the South. They've been
doing this for years.
##
Torheim: In the West the national forests were created out of the public
domain and in any given state there are a number of national
forests. In the South and the East, the national forests were
created under the Weeks law through purchase of private land
(much of it went back to counties for taxes) and other purchases
and donations. So for example, the southern region, with head
quarters in Atlanta, extends all the way from Texas to Virginia.
The eastern region, with headquarters in Milwaukee, extends all
the way from Maine to Minnesota and West Virginia.
138
Torhelm: So supervisors really have to represent the regional forester
in their states. The regional forester couldn't take care of
that many members of Congress. So they characteristically dealt
on a state basis as an arm of the regional forester with the
members of Congress. Now, of course, the issues there over these
years were mostly local issues pertaining to that national forest.
In the West, because of the wilderness issue and the need to
allocate these lands, they were national problems on the western
national forests. So that's why everything was held so closely
until finally the volume of activity got so big, the forest
supervisor had to be expert in dealing with it. So that's the
reason.
Lage: As you describe that process, how the Forest Service became
Involved and is now involved in the political process, it sounds
as if the Forest Service takes a very passive role they're drawn
into it, and then they have a need to be able to testify. Is that
always the case or does the supervisor ever try to promote his
plan through the political process?
Torheim: No, no, he certainly doesn't do that. You have to really make
that distinction because that can turn on you. That's not the role
of the supervisor. The role of the supervisor is to keep the
member of Congress informed and to make technical input in a formal
way. The Washington office takes on the chore at committee
hearings in Washington to represent the administration, but
frequently the supervisor will go back and assist from a technical
1
139
Torheim: point of view. But he really has to be sure that he stays in that
role.
Now, this sometimes is difficult, and that's the dilemma,
because in high spirited debate, one interest group or another
will accuse the forest supervisor of lobbying for his position.
That may not be true, but they try and make a case that way. The
supervisor really has to establish a record of not having done
that. There's been many times in the heat of debate with polarized
groups who feel very strongly about their position, and the member
of Congress trying to sort this out and satisfy both sides, [that]
the heat really becomes more intense than the light. It takes
a very astute forest supervisor not to get defensive about his
study plan and start lobbying for that.
Lage: I would think that would be hard to do.
Torheim: Yes, he really has to know the political process. He has to know
his role, and he has to stay with it. Sometimes that doesn't work
out so good. They slip a little bit in the heat of the battle,
and we have to pull back. But that's a new role for the western
supervisor, and a very high risk role, that our folks as managers
had never learned and had to learn through doing. Now we have
training programs, hopefully before they become supervisors or
soon after, to become acquainted with it.
Lage: The supervisor's job sounds a lot more difficult than it used to be.
Torheim: It really is. Oh, I should say so.
140
Computers; A Management Tool, a ToojL to Manage
Lage: We wanted to get into the question of computers and I thought you
had a very interesting way of describing computers "a management
tool, a tool to manage." What brought that characterization to
mind?
Torhelm: It's just my perception, I guess. But it's an interesting story
and, as I've come to learn over time, not really peculiar to the
Forest Service. But here's the way it happened with the Forest
Service. A computer was used by the Forest Service pretty early
in the game when it became part of getting the job done as an
accounting tool, like a big calculator. Most regions had computers
not too long after World War II, but again they were used for
payroll, engineering, road design, and mathematical types of things.
So they were really run by the technicians and they were budgeted
for getting technical work done.
Most of us didn't know anything about computers. We had no
education in that, and we (managers, generalists) regarded the
computer to simply be a number-crunching rig. Of course, as we
all know, the technology of information systems and computer
technology have advanced quite rapidly, and the machines became
cheaper. Then the new people graduating from the universities
came into the outfit with an education in computer programming
and computer technology so things were changing at the bottom.
We found, at least when I first was aware of it, when I was a
staff person on the Rogue River National Forest, some of the
i
141
Torheim: new foresters coming out to ranger districts wondered why there
was no computer.
Lage: How early was this? This was quite a while ago?
Torheim: 1961, 1962, in there. They had learned how to use computers.
Computers were then beginning to be a little smaller. So that
was my first insight that computers might even possibly be used
on the forests. I thought they were things you used up in Portland
or Washington or in the bank. Then first the technology developed
rapidly. The first thing we did in Region 6, the first change that
I can recall, was that we got into what we call "desk top"
computers. These purchases were closely controlled so again it
.
was done on an experimental basis. It was done for road design
mostly (that was well adapted) and other kinds of activity-
management planning, where you had lots of data, was done on
computers. But still a central computer system was doing most
of the work.
Then we got to the point where the computers were costing an
awful lot of money. By that time, I was in the regional office
and working on budgets and things and, gosh, it was clear into
the early seventies when I was deputy regional forester that Rex
Resler and I suddenly called a halt.
What we realized was when we looked at our budget, and we
were trying to make savings here and there, that decisions we
had made years ago (or somebody had) about the use of computers
had mortgaged our souls for the future. Because once you put
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Torheim: activities that used to be done by hand on the computer, you've
lost the hand technology and you're wholly dependent on that
computer to get the job done, or you designed your output needs
to be more complex than they were and they can't possibly go back
to hand cranking. So what we discovered was that decisions made
at lower levels of the organization in project work requiring
computers had mortgaged our opportunity to make any changes for
the future. So we just had to stop to understand what was
happening.
Well, this was happening simultaneously all over the outfit.
I've learned since that industry had the same problem. The
technicians had been managing the computers because it was
regarded to be a tool to get the job done, and really its costs
were not even being paid attention to [by] management, or decisions
weren't being made in terms of priority or how the dollars were
going to be used. Should we really get a new computer for this
national forest, or should these dollars go for some other activity?
Lage: Do you mean this is more in terms of the purchase of computers
rather than in the types of programs?
Torheim: Yes, and then the maintenance of them afterwards too.
Lage: But didn't they become essential in your land planning as it got
more complicated?
Torheim: Of course, but by that time we had gotten hold of the management
of it. The point is that the managers were not managing the use
and the funding of computer technology. It was just kind of a
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Torheim: given in the budget and then everything else was subordinate
to it because we were locked in.
About that time, the Department of Agriculture was trying to do
the same thing department-wide to get hold of it. So there were
lots of stops and goes, and that's been happening periodically
since, trying to get a management handle on it. The technology
was advancing so rapidly, too, that the small computer $10,000
or less became very feasible at the ranger district level.
Then we had to find ways to link these computers, to make
the most of our money. Then we had the internal arguments about
centralized computer systems versus distributive networks, with
the department pushing for a centralized system and decentralized
organizations like the Forest Service pushing for distributive
networks, using outside and internal computers in a mixed network.
The upshot of all this was that a lot of managers really got
turned off by computers "stop the action right now; this thing is
a monster." They didn't understand it either. I know that we
felt that this thing had really gotten away from us because we
had abdicated our management role. We spent lots of time working
on the fleet of equipment (trucks and cars and all of that stuff) ,
and how we managed that in cost-effective ways in deciding whether
we were going to acquire new ones or not, but we just let this
computer thing run itself with the technicians telling us that we
got to have this computer for this! [laughter]
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Torheim: This was felt service-wide, so the chief put together a study and
I think now each region and the Washington office too have
management involvement completely. There are all kinds of
management committees to get the technologist and the manager
together, and then management by objectives has helped so we can
look out to the future. Also, of course, the technology of
information systems has been simplified a lot so you don't have to
put huge million dollar investments anymore into incremental
change, into hardware.
So that's the small story of computers. As I say, it's been
repeated, I'm sure, in many organizations but the Forest Service
was awfully slow to pick up on it [laughs] until it became a
crisis.
Lage: What about the proliferation of computer programs throughout the
service? It sounds like there again was an instance where the
decentralized development may have had some benefits, but also
was inefficient.
Torheim: The benefit is, it stimulates creativity but it isn't always
cost effective when you find that regions are re-inventing the
wheel. But it does stimulate creativity. The trick is to find
the middle ground where you can stimulate creativity by giving
opportunity for experimentation, but then when you find something
.
that works, let's spread it around a bit so everybody doesn't
have to spend their own developmental time and dollars. That's
really what's taking place now. It's going to be a while before
it's all fixed, though, because a lot of people have ownership
in these programs.
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Lage: Yes, and the other thing I think would be difficult is managers
without a lot of knowledge of computer technology having to make
the decisions or evaluate them.
Management Information Systems
Torheim: The job ahead, and this has taken place now visibly for the first
time, is the use of computers for management information. Still,
the dominant use of computers in the Forest Service until very
recently has been for a number crunching, as I call it.
Lage: What do you mean by that?
Torheim: Taking a mass of data and getting mathematical solutions, whether
they be for payroll or for engineering design, weather information,
cost accounting and that sort of thing. Now they're being used
more for management information systems linked to land-use
planning and the budgeting process.
'
Lage: How does that work?
Torheim: Well, it's terribly complex and I probably don't understand all
of it myself, but you can take the data that you generate
(inventory data) and you can ask the "what if" questions and
assemble data in various ways for different management objectives.
Computers nowadays even print out in real words instead of numbers.
Lage: So it prints out possible alternatives?
Torheim: It prints out possible alternatives, so you can select alternatives
or mix and match them and it does it very rapidly. And it does
more than that. Word processing regions now are communicating by
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Torheim: computer. Mary was telling me here in Region 6, and Region 1 was
headed this way, that when they write a circular memorandum to
go to national forests, they just put it on their computer in
Portland. Then periodically during the day, forests will simply
interrogate the computer with their terminals and see what the
letters of the day were in the mail.
Lage: So it's a communication system as well.
Torheim: Yes, that's good. But there's a tendency, if you're not careful
to let the technicians use it as a toy that's darn expensive,
particularly when lower parts of the organization have the most
knowledge, and they're pushing the top to fund some of these
things which they sincerely believe will work well. This was the
dilemma that we were in in the Forest Service, but I think it's
being managed much better now. It took some organization change,
too, to do that, by the way, and get the managers more involved
instead of Just putting it off in a subunit, technical subunits,
of the organization.
.
A Centralizing Influence
Lage: Does the use of the computer affect the organization? I think
you're saying some of this too, but does it make it more
centralized or does it allow it to be less centralized, or can
you pretty well control that effect?
Torheim: You can do it both ways.
Lage: Do you feel like you can control the computer?
147
Torheim: Yes, you can control its use and what it's used for better. I
guess in many ways it has a tendency to centralize. In fact,
looking ahead a little bit, I see the Forest Service probably
moving back to more centralization in certain activities, simply
because of the complexity and cost. I don't mean the organization
generally to become that way. We talked earlier about all of the
experimentation that took place in the past in reorganization and
in work planning systems and land planning. That was not very
efficient. So the changes for the future and even in the recent
past have become a little more centralized and a little more
organized than simply saying let's see what the next push from
the field is. That's evident in land management planning emanating
from the National Forest Management Act. I think that's been done
very well.
Lage: Do you think that's a good thing? Or will that lead to less
experimentation and change?
Torheim: Well, I don't know but I think it will still permit experimentation
or change but more organized and directed. I think so,. but we'll
have to wait and see. That's future oral history! [chuckles]
Innovative Response to New Technology
Lage: Are there any other communication systems that you might comment
on for instance, use of satellites or are there other new technical
advancements that have changed the way the Forest Service operates?
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Torheim: Of course, all of the communication systems and transportation
systems that society in general has. The Forest Service has
spanned transportation all the way from horseback to the jet
airplane. Satellites are used not directly by the Forest Service
to my knowledge anyway, but the resource inventory and mapping
is done now by satellite using NASA equipment. The Forest
Service has had an ongoing program with NASA in Houston to adapt
NASA technology to the Forest Service, for instance. That's
mostly in the mapping and inventory area.
Lage: So you use NASA experts or do you have Forest Service
Torheim: We have Forest Service people on board as liaison, and they take
new technology and adapt it. They're mostly engineering people.
It's an ongoing program. It's been several years. There are a
lot of technical changes in fire [fighting] the use of aircraft,
infrared imagery, of course fire retardants out of airplanes.
Lage: Would you describe the Forest Service as an innovative organization?
Does it pick up on these new technical advancements?
Torheim: Yes, very much, very much within the confines of budget, of
course. We have development arms in the Forest Service, not
only in ongoing research, but we also have development centers
for equipment in California at San Dimas and at Missoula. We're
very active in developing equipment that private industry then
picks up on if there's a market for it and manufactures.
Lage: The Forest Service itself has developed the equipment?
149
Torheim: Yes, it's those kinds of things for which there isn't enough
market because it's so specialized that industry would not make
capital investments. So the Forest Service has these small
equipment development centers and is funded by the Congress.
It's small scale trail diggers, for example, special tools for
fire fighting, safety equipment for fire. Nobody else does this
except the Forest Service. But that's not a large part of our
business.
Lage: You mentioned that you didn't have too much to contribute on the
subject of mathematical models.
Torheim: Not really, except as it's used in land management planning and
budgeting and the computer's end product. I was not, of course,
the developer of any of those things. But they were useful tools,
and so I fostered their development. That's the manager's job
anyway. You have to see what the end product is and if it's
useful. Then you make it possible for the innovators to get their
job done. If roadblocks are in the way, you knock them down.
Then if after the periodic checks it fails, you go back and try
it over again, but [managers don't get involved] in the technology
itself.
150
VI PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT
Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity
Lage: We're going to turn now to the question of personnel management
and particularly you have mentioned you wanted to talk about
civil tights and equal opportunity.
Torheim: The Forest Service has had great trouble trying to get a better
representation of the population in its work force mix. A lot
of it is historical. The Forest Service, because of the nature of
its work and the types of people who were attracted to it from
the very beginning, turned out to be mostly white Anglo-Saxon
Protestant males. The business was woods work and forestry. So
.
for many years it was really a single-profession, male outfit.
There were many women in the organization, but mostly in support
roles, in administration roles, clerical roles. I expect very
Important roles, but they were not well represented throughout
the work force at all.
Also, in most of the Forest Service, there were very few
black people, Chicanes, or other minorities very few Indians
surprisingly, even though the national forest are adjacent to all
151
Torheim: kinds of Indian reservations. No particular attempt was made to
attract people women and minorities to the work force because
the nature of the business was that people sought^ jobs. There
was no social awareness or even concept of reaching out, which
there is today. That was true in society as a whole, and the
Forest Service was no different.
Now then, when the Civil Rights law was passed, and it became
a matter of public policy to begin to expand the work force to
represent the population better, the Forest Service, with its
gung ho attitude of getting things done, plunged right in. But
even today, the Forest Service has done poorly in this regard, and
you just can't believe how much effort has been put into doing
this. I've been troubled by this for a long time because we did
put so much effort [in it] , and anything else that we did in the
Forest Service with this kind of effort usually produced results.
This has not happened in getting better representation in the
work force.
Efforts to Recruit Minorities
Lage: What type of effort are we talking about? What kinds of things
were done?
Torheim: We conducted nationwide, probably the first among government
agencies, a very highly sophisticated sensitivity program, first
of all, on the culture of minorities, what they're all about from
a manager's point of view; how to attract minorities Into the work
152
Torheim: force. You see, many Forest Service people, as we were discussing
with my wife Mar jean last night, lived out in the woods and really
had no contact with people other than people who looked just like
themselves and had the same value systems. Very few inner city
people wanted to work in the woods. They didn't like it. It
wasn't part of their culture, and they were not even much involved
in recreation activities in the forest.
So we thought it necessary, first of all, to have an internal
training program.
Lage: Was this when you were in Washington?
Torheim: Yes, and then later on when I was back out in the region again. We
started this in the sixties, and it accelerated in the seventies.
The Forest Service was characteristically low man on the totem
pole in the Department of Agriculture in achieving its minority
mix goals, and the Department of Agriculture was low in government.
So we were the lowest of the low.
It was easy to rationalize this, but we didn't do that
because we had a job to do. We approached it just like achieving
any other goal, and managers really worked their tails off to
accomplish this but with disappointing results. So it became
terribly frustrating.
Then we employed minorities in staff positions to help us
do this. We set up civil rights groups in regional offices and
in the Washington office. We began to reach out. We had
sophisticated recruiting programs to reach out and get people.
153
Torheim: We had great trouble finding qualified people who wanted to work
for us. There was great competition to get female and black,
particularly, professionals. We couldn't compete with the pay
that industry was giving. We'd get some aboard, and they'd do
well, and they'd go off to another agency who would offer them
better jobs.
Lage: Were the people you were able to recruit did they tend not to be
in forestry? Did they tend to be in business?
Torheim: Yes, right, you couldn't find forestry students who were black or
female for a long time. So then we began to work with the
universities and encouraged them to recruit minority students
themselves and we would provide work for them.
II
Torheim: As I was saying, this was frustrating and continues to be to
quite an extent in achieving minority goals. The effort the
Forest Service made continues. I think we were quite innovative
in putting together structured civil rights training programs and
using some of the techniques we used out of behavioral science
to see if we couldn't get our attitudes turned around and get our
people acquainted with what it takes to have minorities on the
payroll and what it takes to attract them to our kind of business.
We even, on a service-wide basis, used the southern region
to recruit black people because, after all, Montana had no chance
of getting black people. They just don't live there. So we were
attempting to get people out of the South and Chicanos out of the
154
Torheim: the Southwest. There was some success at that. But again, with
such cultural change, people didn't stay long. They found another
job later on back where they used to live, and they would take it.
Lage: 1 would think you would have more success with Indians or Chicanes
that might have more ties to the land.
Torheim: That very thing was done. We faced reality then and decided that
really Region 1 should concentrate on the Indian population
because, after all, there are lots of employable Indian young
people that live close to national forests. It's right within
their own culture, close to their homes, and they don't have to
go through cultural shock necessarily. So this is what Region 1
is doing now. It isn't realistic to encourage people unless they
want to and some do now. There are some who do and who do very
well. So this is the thrust in Region 1, and it's beginning to
work quite well, with lots of help from the forest supervisors.
Lage: Have there been any particular problems connected with such
things as different time concepts among some of the people
employed?
Torheim: Yes, that's true. You have to understand the culture of the society
from which these people are entering the work force. In Region 1
we contacted the community colleges, and we made a contract with
the tribes. The tribal councils are very interested in getting
their young people into the community colleges. Then we would
provide the work for them, even while they were in school, and
this seems to be working well. They're close to home. The
155
Torheim: community colleges were even willing to put on training programs
right on their reservation. This is the way it's finally working
now.
Lage: Would they come in in technician roles?
Torheim: Yes, they'd be technicians. It wasn't realistic, right at the
outset, to encourage people to go to professional schools because
you really have to make it visible that there is a career, and
you have to get enough Indian people into your work force to make
that real, not just theoretical. It was easier to do something
in the short term and, besides, there was an employment problem
for these young men and women. So it met all those needs. I hope
this continues to work well.
In the other regions, Region 6, of course, has a mixed
population. I don't know how they're doing now but we were having
troubles retaining people once we got them because they would go
onto other work, which is okay. The goal should be to give
them opportunity and not necessarily to stay in your own outfit.
But still it's not going along like it should and I don't know
really why. I suppose it's going to take a while.
Employment of Women, a Success Story
Torheim: This is not true with women. The employment of women in the
Forest Service is an utter success story compared with where we
were. I don't say that the goal achievement is as high as it
should be, but compared with where we were and the progress that's
156
Torheim: being made, I think it's working well. We have women graduates
now in forestry that come into the work force just the same as
men and in wildlife biology, landscape architecture, archeology,
you name it. The big gap is the lack of women in managerial
roles. As I was mentioning to you earlier, the first woman
ranger has been appointed in Region 2 (Colorado). I think this
is just one of many to come.
We have moved some professional women from other places from
private industry and universities directly into the work force,
but at rather high grade levels. The Forest Service has been
doing this for years.
Lage: In what types of work?
Torheim: The chief archeologists in Region 6 and in Region 1 are women.
They're at grade 13 or 14. The personnel officer, administrative
officers for forests, are more and more women. But we don't have
any women forest supervisors. That's what I'm talking about. We
have one director of information in San Francisco who has been
there for a couple of years, a woman. But I'm talking about women
in the mainstream of policy formulation and generalized management,
and those are line jobs. But I think that will come as more and
more women enter the work force. It's common now to have women
in all kinds of jobs at the ranger district and forest level.
Lage: Is this well-accepted from this predominantly male organization?
Torheim: I think this is an individual thing. My perception is that it's
so common now, it's accepted as an organizational norm. I think
some people still have personal Kang-ups about it.
i
157
Lage: Did you have the kind of training for that as you did for minority
employees?
Torheim: Yes, we did. Yes, we had a lot of problems. When we first began
to bring women into the work force, in traditional male roles,
we had a lot of opposition by some forest supervisors and rangers
and particularly the wives of Forest Service professionals. There
were really uprisings.
Lage: That's interesting. Men do work with women in other settings.
Torheim: The forest setting, though, is a little different. It's a pair
working together, small groups, much on their own; women living
in bunk houses for which we were not prepared. Now we build bunk
houses for men and women. There are all of these hang- up s that
people get into, not so much on what happened but what they
anticipate might happen that kind of thinking. Wives who really
didn't want their husbands to go out in the morning in a pickup
with a female partner on a timber cruising job, something like
that. They would say, "I didn't want that to happen."
Then the response to that would be that forest supervisors
and rangers would not place women in roles like that. So
therefore, they couldn't get women to work in the forests because
those were the jobs. But this was overcome through experience.
So now I perceive that it's pretty well accepted as far as women
in the work force is concerned. Getting women into managerial
roles is the next step, but we're doing that. The way to
accomplish things is through goal establishment. Characteristically
158
Torheim: in Region 1, we exceeded our goals annually in the hiring and
upward mobility of women. It was no trouble at all.
'
Lage: You found women eager to get into it?
Torheim: Yes, women were eager. They were competent. They were willing
to make the transition. They had an understanding that this was
a difficult thing for them to be accepted in the work force and
they performed as we expected them to outstandingly. Put that
all together and it's not too hard finally to get acceptance.
But, gee, it took a long time. So I see that continuing, and now
if you look at the colleges of forestry and in other natural
resource curricula at universities, you'll see in some of them
as much as 50 percent women.
So I think we re on the way. Now, if we could only integrate
blacks, Chicanos, and Indians, particularly, into the work force
in a similar manner I think we would then achieve the social goals
we are supposed to achieve. But I think that will come. It's
just a little slow and the Forest Service has had great difficulty
in spite of massive energy.
Lage: Now, you, I can tell, have been committed to this goal. Was the
commitment as widespread? Was there a difference between age
groups in the degree of commitment?
Torheim: Not once it became organization policy. We had trouble with
commitment originally because the people didn't think it was
possible. Since they didn't think it was possible then if they
had personal biases against it, they could put that right together
159
Torheim: with seeing to It that It became Impossible. It takes more
than just, "Well, our door is open." It takes a commitment
to go out and bring people to your threshold and Invite them
In and then nurture them while they're In. A lot of our folks
wouldn't take that step. They didn't think that was right.
People, if they were motivated, as they were, to get into an
organization should compete equally and find their own way.
We had difficulty overcoming that.
However, once it became a matter of the Forest Service's
reputation and the chief's reputation, and esprit de corps of
where we are a "can-do" outfit and we were a "no-do" outfit,
then even the people who were having trouble personally set that
aside and began to achieve this objective for organizational
purposes.
The Job Corps
.
Lage: Did the Job Corps provide you any help in this?
,
Torheim: The Job Corps was a great help In this, yes. At least it got our
people acquainted with women and minorities in a work environment.
Still the work environment wasn't quite the same.
Lage: What about developing interest, like so many people came in
through the CCC?
Torheim: The Job Corps didn't do that. We thought it was going to. We
thought, gee, you'll have so many black people and Chicanes as
Job Corps enrollees and, boy, when they graduate they 11 come
160
Torheim: right into the Forest Service. They were so far behind, even
when they graduated, they couldn't even qualify for the smallest
Job. There were some, and a lot didn't want to I must say too.
A lot of them weren't trained for that. The education in Job
Corps was not in natural resources. It was to be a cook, to be
a carpenter, to be a painter, and we didn't emply those kind of
people.
Lage: So the Job Corps wasn't oriented to natural resources?
Torheim: No, it provided a natural resource environment to learn other
things .
Lage: Did it take them out for the most part into the forests?
Torheim: Oh, yes, that's where they lived, yes. It was a good environment,
an excellent environment.
Lage: That's interesting that they picked that environment, and yet they
weren't training them for that kind of a life. There is some
mystique about that environment.
Torheim: Because the original objectives of the Job Corps were not that
clear, it was thought that we would provide them woods work, and
that was the reason for putting them out there, and making them
employable through learning the world of work. It became
evident though that that wasn't a skill that was marketable, and
we had to provide them with the kinds of job skills that were
marketable. That became the trades heavy equipment operators,
for instance. Then we began to, with contracts with the unions,
put together a really meaningful trade apprentice program. That's
161
Torheim: what it Is. It serves them better. They can go back into their
own environment and get a job. In fact, with the apprentice
program you were guaranteed a job. So it changed. Then the
character of the people who came into the Job Corps changed
too. So it was different.
Anyway, I'd say that women's role in the Forest Service is
moving along quite well, albeit slowly. At least it's easy to
see where it's headed. It's not so easy for me to see where
<
we're headed, at least in the western regions, with minorities
yet, but it will come.
Lateral Entry and the Promotion of Specialists
Lage: You mentioned lateral entry into the profession and that might be
something we should follow up on. Hasn't there been sort of a
traditional objection to it?
Torheim: Yes , that ' s changed a lot in recent years , but yes , when it was
really foresters who were the largest professional body in the
Forest Service, you started from scratch and worked your way up;
everybody did. When we began to introduce other disciplines in
the Forest Service, though, we had to have instant expertise. So
we had to hire people at all levels. For example, we had to have
soil scientists who were truly professionals. We went to
universities and hired some to take on the director jobs and
upper staff jobs and the same with wildlife biologists and
fishery biologists. We got them from the state game and fish
162
Torheim: departments. We picked up people from the Park Service, the
visitor information services naturalists, that sort of thing.
It wasn't until we began to have a need for these other
disciplines that we moved people laterally into the Forest
Service.
Lage: What about laterally at higher levels? Say, into personnel
management in Washington.
Torheim: Oh, we've done that, yes. Oh, yes, and that continues too;
not as much, but yes, there's some of that too, much more than
it used to be. That used to be rare. Now, just because of the
nature of the experience necessary, it isn't done maybe as much
as some agencies do, but still it's not a bit uncommon. It's
also not as uncommon if somebody leaves the Forest Service and
then comes back. It used to be that that was it. If a person
would resign from the Forest Service and go to work for private
industry or the state or somewhere, they really weren't welcome
back. But that's not true anymore.
Lage: That was disloyalty?
Torheim: No, no, in fact, in many instances it's an excellent broadening
for them and they're oftentimes welcomed back if their performance
was good when they left and their performance was good where
they worked during that time.
Lage: At the higher levels, is it still the foresters who get the higher
jobs?
163
Torheim: Our chief of the forest service now Is an engineer. That's the
first time. Max Peterson Is a civil engineer.
Lage: Was there any objection to that on traditional grounds?
Torheim: No, not that I know of. The Society of American Foresters didn't
rise up in arms or anything like that. We've had a regional
forester, as I remember, who was an engineer, at one time.
Engineers who have been in the outfit long enough have had the
same experiences as foresters.
Lage: They've come up the traditional way?
Torheim: Yes, as Max has. 1 would say though that, yes, most of them are
foresters and probably will continue to be because the profession
of forestry leads in that direction. But as these other
disciplines begin to work their way up from the specialist role
into the managerial role I'm speaking of the wildlife biologists,
the fishery biologists, soil scientists, and landscape architects
and others I think we'll see them assume the generalist roles
.
more and more. It's just natural.
Lage: More into the managerial end of it?
Torheim: Yes, and it's a personal choice. Lots of professionals in a
specialty really don't want to be in a generalist role. That
brings up a problem that I and others have tried to solve for
years and it hasn't been solved yet. Because of the civil service
classification system, you <" achieve financial compensation in
increments of Increase only by movement upward in the hierarchy,
not by becoming more proficient in your profession. There are
.
limits on that. I'll give some examples.
164
.
Torheim: A wildlife biologist can work up in his or her specialty to
about grade 12 or 13, maybe 14 at the very most. But if they've
gone that route, then that's the end of it for them. If they
want to achieve higher level grades though, they had to make a
decision sometime back when they were a GS-11 or 12 that they
would move over to a more generalist position, which they could,
like a forest supervisor and ranger or whatever. Then they
could achieve higher grades up in the managerial roles.
That forces a specialist to make a decision at that earlier
time if they want to be the very best wildlife biologist in the
Forest Service or if they want to get compensated a little better
in the future and be a generalist. Now, private industry handles
this in a very effective way which I wish the government would
emulate, and that is, why shouldn't an expert wildlife biologist,
who wants to remain in that specialty be paid according to his or
her expertise rather than where that person sits in the hierarchy?
It's conceivable, for example, that a director of wildlife
management in a regional office might have some expert employees
getting more pay than the director. Research does this. Research
scientists are compensated not on the basis of where they sit
In the research hierarchy, but on their expertise.
Lage: What about that director himself, the director of wildlife
management? Isn't he an expert in that field?
Torheim: Not so much. When he moves there he's not so much anymore. He's
getting to be program manager. Anyway, the principle is that if
we could somehow compensate people for their expertise we would
165
Torheim: not force them off Into generalist roles just to achieve better
compensation. We could provide distinct career ladders for
those people who want to choose between either being an expert
specialist or being a generalist. It shouldn't have to be
movement upward in the hierarchy to achieve pay compensation
commensurate with their expertise. You should be able to do it
with your specialty. This will happen someday. It happened in
research many years ago, but we just haven't made the grade. But
the Forest Service is still working at it.
Lage: How does the research division feed back into your specialists?
Torheim: There's a technology transfer mechanism. Research in the Forest
Service does research not just for the Forest Service in forestry
but for the nation as a whole private industry and the states
and other federal agencies, as well, and internationally. So the
Forest Service is one client. But the Forest Service is
responsible for the forestry research in the United States. Then
there are mechanisms to link the research knowledge to the
practitioner and it's done through the staff people sometimes
well and sometimes less than well. That's a whole subject in
itself technology transfer and some of the problems that are
attendant thereto. But that's the way it's done. I think that's
about the story on the intent of integrating more of society's
representatives in the work force of the Forest Service.
166
Employee Dissatisfaction in Region 6##
Lage: I read a UCLA study report (which pointed out that Region 6 had the
highest level of employee dissatisfaction ranger dissatisfaction
with their job. You said you had some explanation for that.
Torheim: Region 6 got trapped a little bit, and it had to work its way out
of the trap. It came about this way. With the rapid increase in
timber management activities (timber sale programs) in Region 6
with the national need for housing, the region began to be funded
by the Congress with rather substantial Increases to put more
timber on the market. Therefore, the region began to employ
foresters, as many as 80 to 120 a year and some years more.
So during a period of about 1957 or '59 somewhere up until
about 1965 or '67 (a period there of seven or eight years), large
numbers of foresters were coming into Region 6. They were being
recruited to do this job. Then the timber sale program was brought
up to the sustained yield levels and it flattened out. The region
then had a large number of forestry graduates. The way you work
your way up in the Forest Service is to work your way up in the
hierarchy. That's the way the classification system is. So
traditionally, you'd have to work your way up from an entrance
level of GS-5 or GS-7 and GS-9 working in a specialty and then
*William McWhinney, The National Forest; Its Organization and
Its Professionals. 1970, p. 137.
167
Torheim: you'd have to go to GS-11 as a district ranger or maybe a
forest staff.
But there were so many people at this entrance level (GS-5,
7, and 9) that there weren't enough jobs for them to move up in
any reasonable span of time to GS-11. In fact, many of them
weren't even able to get out of GS-7. So there was a tremendous
blockage.
This caused an awful problem. These folks couldn't really
find employment in other regions either because the high level
of activity was mostly in Region 5 and Region 6. Region 5 had
a similar problem. It just wasn't in the same dimension.
I was in personnel management at the time that we began to
really consider this as being an issue. This was 1966. So
Region 6 tackled the problem and decided that we needed to do
something about it. So we worked out an elaborate system with
other regions and with the Washington office to find other
assignments for these people. We had to do that.
The other thing that we had to do was begin to put. technicians
in the work force. What we discovered we had done was to hire
foresters and really were putting them in technician-type jobs
because they could land on their feet so to speak, particularly
if you graduated from a western school! So we had foresters that
were really not promotable because they were in technician jobs.
Lage: But their expectations were higher.
168
Torheim: Yes, right, of course they were. Then we had some foresters that
we hired who truly weren't foresters. They were indeed technicians,
even though they had a forestry degree. So we had to sort out
those folks and redirect their careers. We were taking any forester
who graduated there for such a long time. Anyway, with all of this
we began to then tackle the problem. We worked with the community
colleges in Oregon and Washington and helped them strengthen
their technician programs, their two-year associate degree
programs. We worked closely with them. We found opportunities
for foresters to move on to other regions in some cases. Some
were moved into technician jobs and sought careers found careers
moving up the technician ladder.
Lage: How far can you move up the technician ladder?
Torheim: Well, not very far compared to professionals but then some people
want to be specialists and be very good at a narrower job. So
we found some of those who really were more comfortable doing that
not a great number, but some were. Then we almost stopped the
recruiting of new foresters until we got this sorted out. But
there, was a period there of about five years when there was
tremendous dissatisfaction by this great pool of GS-7s, essentially
foresters.
Then as we began to sort this out and get people distributed
better in the work force (and of course retirements and people
moving on helped too) , we designed a different kind of recruiting
system on a much lower level and a planned experience program for
1
169
Torhelm: new foresters so when they came into the work force, they knew
that if their performance justified [it] , that they could work
their way up to a journeyman grade in five years, and if they
couldn't they ought to go out. So that's kind of the way it
works now. It's changed a lot because the work load is different
now. It's more diversified and the levels of recruitment are
much lower. There are personnel ceilings now. So that was a
temporary thing that we tackled, but it wa a great concern to
the service as a whole even though most of the problem was in
Region 6.
Role of Technicians^ in the Work Force
Lage: You mentioned the technicians. Has the role of the technician
changed over the years?
Torheim: Yes, the junior colleges (the community colleges) have done a
marvelous job of educating technicians to a very high level of
competence. So the Forest Service really has many technicians,
not just in forestry but in engineering and in the business-
management activities as well.
Lage: These work under rangers primarily?
Torheim: Right, mostly.
Lage: How is the relationship between the professional arm and the
technician?
Torheim: The technician is the doing arm; they're the experts. In timber,
for example, they would cruise the timber and lay out the timber
sales and do the technical work of that kind. The forester would
170
Torheim: prescribe the kind of silvl cultural techniques to use the latest
professional technology to regenerate timber and that sort of
thing. The technician would raise the trees in the nursery. In
fire management the technician is really highly skilled in fire
fighting, fire management, forest fuels work and that sort of
thing.
The professional is in the policy area, new technology, the
translation of research results into new ways of doing business.
They are two jobs. Early in a person's career, a professional
might well be working for a skilled technician of a much higher
grade. They work together, and technicians train new foresters
so to speak, and other professionals as well.
Lage: Does that create some ill feeling?
Torheim: Well, no. I suppose there might be some individuals. That was
true when I started in the Forest Service too, by the way. We
didn't call them technicians. The oldtimers that really ran the
district trained all of the new professionals in how to do things.
We would impart our knowledge of more theoretical things and that
sort of thing to technicians. It's always been a very close
relationship.
One of the changes that's taken place, however, between
technicians of today and the past is that technicians today are
much more mobile than they used to be. The technician of the past
for many years was usually a local person who grew up in the
same locale as the ranger station that he worked at, oftentimes
-
171
Torheim: lived Just down the road or had a small ranch; very often worked
only seasonally, but never had any idea of moving because their
roots were firmly there where they worked. That kind of
identified the technician. Now, that was great. That kind of
tenure when the professionals were moving around a lot really
kept the warp and the woof of the outfit together.
That's not true anymore. There's some of that, but we find
now that technicians move readily from one region to another, from
one forest to another, just the same as anybody else. But for
those who don't wish to, there is still a fine career with tenure
being very much a plus, if they keep up with the technology of
the business.
Regional Differences and Washington Office Coordination^
Lage: I wanted to go back again to some other questions on some of the
things we've already covered. I was telling you about the GAO
study of '78 that seemed to indicate that the integrating of all
the aspects of the RFA had fallen short, at least by '78. They
mentioned that in Washington the headquarters groups for RFA
budget and programming, and land management planning were
uncoordinated, were separate.
Torheim: We felt this in the field as well. Of course, it's quite complex
and the organization to carry it out wasn't fully developed.
The goal was to integrate the RPA and the land management planning
172
Torheim: under the National Forest Management Act, to distribute the
national RPA goals then to each national forest, and assist them
through the regional plan, and then have those mesh with the
ability of the lands in that forest to produce those goals. That's
a tall order.
At the same time, the techniques for doing that were still
being developed. But it was not done in a coordinated fashion
at the Washington office level. So as typically happens in the
Forest Service, the regions then have a tendency to go off on
their own and make it work. This is happening less and less as
_
this becomes an established way of doing business. It's now
become okay for regions to do that and the chief will actually
select a region or two to do the experimentation for the Forest
Service. We're doing that in Region 1. I suppose that in the
past Region 1 might have, just on its own, as we did in land
management planning, say, "We're going to go out and make a
product and see if the rest of the service will accept it."
Now it's a little better managed and regions are actually
selected to do that. So we were doing that in Region 1. The
inherent competition though, again, between regions makes other
regions want to also reach out and see if they can't do it too.
So they were doing this. So a forest was selected for each region
this time to experiment. Our region developed the computer program
to do this very job of integrating. So when the GAO made its
remarks, they were appropriate. The will to integrate it was there,
1
173
Torheim: but it hadn't been achieved yet. So it was partially achieved.
On those forests where land management plans had been essentially
completed, they were being used (although crudely) to formulate
budgets and then to see if we couldn't get the RPA goals at
least in part distributed downward through that plan.
But with the new forest plans, now, it looks like RPA and
land management planning will get together in the system that was
envisioned originally. This will take a little while.
Fostering and Controlling Innovation in the Field
Lage: It sounds from what you've said that Region 1 is particularly
Innovative. Is that true?
Torheim; In certain areas. Each region is innovative in different things
I suppose. Region 3 was the most innovative region to my knowledge
when we were doing work planning. They had a very sophisticated
system which was adopted by the regions later on, and they probably
did better. Region 4 was a leader in the Forest Service in
multiple-use planning. Each region will kind of pick up on
something that they're particularly Interested in and had probably
some experts or people interested also a regional forester and
other managers who thought that that was a good thing to do.
So this was one of the strengths of the Forest Service in
my judgment; it just needed to be managed a little bit. Occasionally
we would go out and get so innovative individually and so
possessive of our own innovative ability that we would find each
174
Torheim: region inventing its own wheel. That's counter-productive and
expensive. The service has kind of gathered all that up, and
the field feels good about that. The field used to complain
about this, that "we don't really all have to do our own thing."
On the other hand, it's a fine line about how far do you let
innovation go and make it manageable without stifling creativity
which I think can be managed.
Lage: You mentioned that the Forest Service has a reputation in
Washington for being very innovative and that other agencies come
to them as an example.
Torheim: Yes, I experienced that a lot in personnel practices and training,
employee development, organization development, especially, but
not limited to that; Forest Service work planning techniques
[have been] adopted by other agencies. The Forest Service has
been a leader in using modern management techniques to get
government business done.
Lage: Then why did they have this openness? It's been described as kind
of a closed organization coming from, in the past, basically, one
profession and yet they've been open to using techniques outside
their field.
f
Torheim: I think it's well, I can only speculate one thing is the very
nature of managing the public lands and natural resources, it's
something that's being developed as you go. There is no body of
precise knowledge, like mathematics or engineering, that permits
you to manage and integrate any trade-offs between natural
1
175
Torhelm: resources. So the person in the field has to use basic education
and ecology and the biological sciences and apply all of them and
like a big grand organ with some kind of plan, of course, and
whatever research knowledge is available to make it work. So
there is a way of looking at the job to be done that isn't
precisely defined. Couple that with a decentralized organization
that puts personal responsibility at the lowest level of the
organization for significant achievement. I think you have the
ingredients then that stimulate creativity and willingness to
.
innovate or try new things.
Coupled with that, the policy of transferring people from
one unit to another and to Washington from the field and back has
a tendency to disseminate this kind of thinking from the bottom
of the organization to the top. Then the esprit de corps and good
feedback that accompanies that, perpetuates it, 1 think. The living
close to your job, the close amalgamation between family life and
the job itself in the early part of most people's career
contributes to that feeling also, and the willingness to work
more than eight hours a day, the willingness for wives to pitch
in and kind of live the same job life their husband does, at least
for that part of your career when you're in a ranger district.
Lage: Is this still current today?
Torheim: Yes, to a lesser extent than it once was, but there is much of
this still there. Let me put that altogether. That's the
ingredients that make up the culture of an organization over time,
176
Torhelm: I would guess, so a lot of it becomes kind of subliminal really.
You just pick it up as you would any culture in any organization
or society. So I think probably that's speculation, but in my
judgment [it's] what makes the outfit tick.
Lage: From what you've said the field has been the leader in so many
of the changes and the innovations, and the Washington office
sort of comes along afterwards.
Torheim: Yes, that's right in some things. 1 don't think that's unusual
either because the felt need is at the field level. Now, the
Washington level has a different mission too. As every Washington
office does in government, they had a difficult job of making
the span from the legislative process (the political process) to
the administrative process. In other words, translating the laws
and regulations into how the job is to be done. So they lived in
a world that was quite different from the field world which is
getting jobs done on the land and dealing with the users directly.
So it's hard for Washington office people to even find time to
get into their heads the field needs on a day-to-day basis. Now,
this is, of course, worked at very strenuously through visits to
the field, the management review system, and the simple process of
moving people back and forth keeps a sense of reality at that
level. So that's not unusual. In fact, I think it's healthy for
innovation to really come from the field level.
177
Torheim: The key though is not letting it go wild, but accepting that and
managing it. I see the Forest Service doing that more now by
actually designating regions, even at their own suggestion, to
experiment, and then "let's monitor it and we'll help you with it
and other regions can look in your window while you're doing it."
That's becoming the accepted way of doing business now and I'm
.
glad to see that.
Lage: Is there anything else you think we need to add to this picture of
management technology?
Torheim: I think we've covered about all I know and probably a lot of stuff
1 don't know! [laughter]
Lage: That's good! That's what oral history is all about. Okay, let's
sign off then.
Transcriber: Michelle Stafford
Final Typist: Keiko Sugimoto
178
TAPE GUIDE Robert Torheim
.
Interview 1: March 13, 1980
tape 1, side A
tape 1, side B
tape 2, side A 36
tape 2, side B
tape 3, side A 72
Interview 2: March 14, 1980
tape 3, side A (continued)
tape 3, side B 89
insert from tape 5, side A 106
tape 4, side A 109
tape 4, side B 120
tape 5, side A 137
tape 5, side B 153
insert from tape 4, side A 166
resume tape 5, side B 171
179
INDEX Robert Torheim
budget. See organizational management, budget allocation process
Bulfer, Dan, 96
Civilian Conservation Corps, 4, 5, 7, 9, 79
Civil Service Commission, conflict with Forest Service, 20
Cliff, Edward P., 106-107
communication systems, 147-148
computers :
centralizing influence, 146-147
and management information, 145-146
management problems with, 140-145
conflict management and resolution, 53-54, 56-57, 101-106
Congress, U.S.:
and Forest Service budget, 19, 31, 68-69, 92
Forest Service dealings with, 131-139
and legislation re national forests, 42-44
Depression, 1930s, influence of, 3
diaries , 89-90
Douglas, William 0., 38-41
engineers in Forest Service, 19-21, 23
fire control, influence on Forest Service management, 77, 80
Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act. See Resources
Planning Act
forestry schools and education, 18-20
Forest Service, United States
custodial role, pre-World War II, 15-16
field experimentation and Influence, 30, 32-33, 42, 60-64, 111-113, 121,
172-174, 176-177
increasing size and complexity of, 26-28
regional differences, 24-26, 33, 64, 137-138, 173
specialization in, 19-23, 26-28, 54-57, 161-165
timber management, predominance of, 16-19
Washington office, 60, 64, 171-174
See also organizational management, personnel management, land and
resource planning techniques
grazing on national forests. See range management
180
inspection system, 80, 120-124. See also management reviews
Job Corps, 11, 97-19, 159-161
land and resource planning techniques:
functional planning, 28
land management planning, 33-34, 45-51, 62-68
multiple-use planning, 29-33
See also individual resources, i.e., timber management
legislation:
effect on Forest Service, 30-33, 46, 110
Forest Service influence on, 134-139
Lolo National Forest plan, 45-51
Lyman, Hy, 94, 95
McGuire, John, 107-108
management by objectives. See organizational management
management reviews, 122-124
managerial grid training system, 95-100
manual and directive system, 7, 8, 86
mathematical models, use of, 149
Multiple Use Act, 30-31, 42
multiple-use ethic, 24-26
National Forest Management Act, 42, 44, 45, 64, 65
organizational management
budget and allocation process, 21-22, 39-40, 62, 68-76, 87-89
line/staff positions, 13, 21-23, 69-73, 113-119
management by objectives, 91-93
reorganization, 1970s, 13, 73-76, 109-120
scientific management techniques, 78-80, 87-91, 106, 120
personnel management
authoritarian management, 77-86, 106-107
employee training, 95-100, 137, 139, 153
minority hiring, 150-155
participative management, 62, 92-108
promotion and demotion, 11-12, 14, 58-59, 81-85, 104, 116, 161-169
women, employment of, 155-159
pesticide use on national forests, 130
political responsibilities of field administrators, 131-139
project work inventory, 69-71, 78, 88
181
public involvement in land allocation and management, 105, 127-128
Forest Service reaction to, 125-127, 129-130
systematic input and evaluation, 46-51, 53-54
user influence, 34-41
Rahm, Neil, 96
range management, 16, 35
ranger grades and responsibilities, 58-59, 67-73, 81-85, 166-169
recreational uses of national forests, 4-5, 16
Resler, Rexford, 132, 141
Resources Planning Act (RPA) , 42-43, 91-92
scientific management. See organizational management
Seattle, Washington, 1-3
Stone, Herbert, 97
technicians, 168, 169-171
technology, innovative use of, 143-147. See also computers
timber management, 16-19, 25-33
Torheim, Robert H.
career summary, 8-14
Civilian Conservation Corps enrollee, 5, 7
education, 5-6
wife and children, 7-8
youth and family, 1-5
uniform work planning, 61-62, 86
work load measurement, 78, 86, 87
World War II, 5-6
influence on Forest Service, 16-17
Yakima Valley elk management, 37-38
Ann Lage
1963: B.A., history, honors graduate, University of
California, Berkeley
1965: M.A., history, University of California, Berkeley
1966: Post-graduate studies, American history; Junior
College Teaching Credential , history , University
of California, Berkeley
1970-1974: Interviewer/member, Sierra Club History Committee
1974-Present: Coordinator/Editor, Sierra Club Oral History
Project
Coordinator, Sierra Club Archives Development Project
Liaison, Sierra Club Archives, Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley
Research Consultant, conservation history, Sierra Club
1978-Present: Co-Chalrman, Sierra Club History Committee
1976-Present: Interviewer/Editor, conservation affairs,
Regional Oral History Office, University of California,
Berkeley
