Collaborating to Break Free of the Forest Management Rigidity Trap: Listening, Learning and Leading in the Development of the 2012 Forest Service Planning Rul

The US Forest Service has embarked on new approaches to collaboration that surpass the traditional requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of review and comment on public documents. Decades of litigation, adversarial relationships, and legal gridlock from layers of policies, procedures and regulations represent a rigidity trap that has stalled several attempts to revise the 1982 planning rule. In 2009 the Forest Service initiated an open and collaborative process for developing a new Forest Planning Rule that would engage a wide range of stakeholders in the process. The planning rule team adopted an attitude of listening that allowed them to be open to new knowledge, creating opportunities to learn during collaboration. The planning rule team had a mindset of "walking the talk" on collaboration that allowed the process to reflect the principles of effective participation and collaboration in the literature, such as the DIAD model of collaborative rationality. This research explores the agency's willingness to try a new approach to developing a rule in order to solve the longstanding challenge of updating the rule. Examining the collaborative rule development process provides insights about how double loop learning, manifested in the collaborative process to develop the rule, allowed the agency to break free of a rigidity trap dominated by rational planning processes. This study indicates adaptive capacity is enhanced by a posture of listening which can lead to the type of double loop learning that brings about new understanding, new knowledge, and new solutions by constructing that knowledge along with stakeholders in a collaborative process.