RE: Decisions Suited to Collaborative Efforts

[John Stephens <stephens@iogmail.iog.unc.edu>]

I want to add to Ms. Kinter's comment about outside vs. inside facilitation of EPA collaborative efforts.

I simply want to draw attention to a useful article and resource about the challenges of USEPA staff, and other government officials, managing collaborative process. My summary of the article follows, and is simply one piece of a key resource in the field:

----------------------------------------------

Making collaboration work: lessons from innovation in natural resource management / Julia M. Wondolleck and Steven  L. Yaffee.   Washington, D.C.: Island Press, c2000.

John Stephens, Institute of Government, UNC-Chapel Hill
= = == 
Article Summary by John Stephens,
Institute of Government, UNC-Chapel Hill
August 1999

Wondolleck, Julia M. and Clare M. Ryan (1999), 
What Hat Do I Wear Now?: An Examination of Agency Roles in Collaborative Processes. NEGOTIATION JOURNAL 15 (2) [April], 117-133.

How do state agency personnel participate effectively in a consensus decision-making process when their agency is the ultimate decision-maker? Wondolleck and Ryan review dozens of collaborative processes and propose a vision of three hats that agency representatives must wear: that of leader, partner and stakeholder.

The authors note that the new participation/decisionmaking paradigm embodied by regulatory negotiation, collaborative resource management plans, and the like are causing confusion for state agency leaders. Their "three-hats" model is based on a review of three studies of federal agencies experience: USEPA's work in five reg-negs; the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service, US Department of Interior Fish and Wildlife Service, and the US Department of Interior Bureau of Land Management in 40 collaborative resource management processes; and the Forest Service's experience in mediation of 20 administrative appeals of forest plans.

For agency participant (AP) wearing the leader hat, Wondolleck and Ryan do not find much useful literature on collaborative leadership for public agencies. They cite the leader role including initiation of the collaborative process, and leading by example on the norms and behavior of agreement-seeking. Three specific realms of leadership are: process, issues and decisions to be made. Process covers the logistics of hiring a facilitator, setting the timeline and tone, and trying to keep people committed. Issues leadership calls for a preliminary analysis of the issues, setting limits of the substantive dimension of the work, helping produce issue papers, and safeguarding forthright discussion and accurate representation of various participants' views. For decision leadership, the agency does have additional responsibility given its position of authority. The AP must signal support for the consensus process and the ability to engineer final trade-offs as well as show a commitment for follow-through on the outcome.

AP as partner calls for a hat that emphasizes the togetherness of how all participants should work. Demonstrations of being open-minded, flexible, willingness to listen and to teach and be taught constitute this hat. Wondolleck and Ryan believe this hat is the most challenging one because it is least consistent with traditional agency procedures, and the role of technical expert. They also identify the tension between alignment as a partner in a stakeholder group and identification with the norms and expectations of one's agency. Finally, of the three hats, the authors think leader vs. partner holds the greatest tension.

AP as stakeholder calls for clarity about the interests and needs for the agency's satisfaction in a consensus process. Persuasion is a key function of this hat, along with guardianship for the broad public interest, consistency with current laws and regulations, and supporting organizational and professional needs. Wondolleck and Ryan emphasize the need for thorough preparation about the interests the agency must satisfy, combined with flexibility on the means of satisfying those interests.

The authors explicitly call for agency participants to NOT combine a facilitator role with the hats they must wear. Two different people from the same agency could divide responsibilities, with one being the facilitator. However, Wondolleck and Ryan see this as a risky approach. 

Wondolleck and Ryan close the article by arguing that the three roles are distinct: their vision is for agency participants to balance, and to not merge, the roles. The only specific guidance on such balancing is for agency participants to explicitly recognize the distinct roles and to transition between them in a manner transparent to their fellow participants in the collaborative process.