BCastle wrote:Frank,
Administration is a lot more than simple supervision or following of orders and directives. It is all of that and much more including the creation of organizational goals, as well as the policies and directives and their enforcement. Think of administration as a field like medicine (for a doctor) or law (for lawyers) etc. When I talk about administration, I am completely ignoring a person's title or lack thereof. You can be an administrator (and maybe a very good one) on a small scale supervisory level, or be a very high ranking individual in a mega corporation and not understand administration at all.
The field of administration is growing and evolving still. We have all had the boss that likes to yell and demean you in front of others, even if the problem was his or her doing. That person is an old school heroism supervisor. They are doomed to failure. There is no place for that person in the modern field of administration.
But, in law enforcement (and I suspect most governmental organizations), leadership is most often chosen by attrition. If you are still there long enough for those senior in rank to retire or seek employment elsewhere, you eventually get to be in charge regardless of your abilities and skills or lack thereof.
This sets up the situation I referred to in the first part of my prior post. When you have someone who is unskilled and essentially an ineffective administrator coming into the job because they are the most senior employee, they seldom change their style of doing things. In fact, at that point, they often figure they will do things their way and if someone doesn't like it that's just tough because they are the person who is making the rules.
This lends us to couple bad administration with incompetence of the subject in our minds. Therefore, we come to believe that if someone doesn't know and understand the thing they are responsible to administer, they will not be able to effectively do their job.
This just isn't true. Bad administrators can be unknowledgeable, but so can good administrators. You have to see them as two separate things.
My suggestion is that the folks at the F&WS are competent administrators. However, they appear to have a lower level of knowledge about ginseng than we do. This does not mean they cannot effectively create and administer the ginseng program according to the goals set forth in part by Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Instead, it means that they at times must be educated to the facts of the issues at hand. Understand, that they may not know anything about ginseng diggers except what they see and hear in reports and news releases of guys getting caught poaching ginseng from someplace. Arguably, as with any other area of endeavor, the bad stuff is what makes the news and gets attention. So, they may have a somewhat negative bias against diggers from the start.
The first example might be that you propose to personally finance a wild sim patch in a national forest as long as you can have a lifetime lease and benefit from extra patrols and surveillance at agency cost, all for the price of $500.
A) First, they will see this as a costly deal to them. It is completely inequitable as they are spending MUCH more on protecting something that is arguably only going to benefit you personally and not the citizenry as a whole. Secondly, that assessment being made, it looks from their perspective that you are a selfish SOB looking to get great benefit at taxpayer and agency expense.
A second example might be that you organize a group and represent yourselves professionally to the organization. You come up with a proposal which might include details which is beneficial to the organization. Maybe research on wild sim vs true wild patches. Maybe your organization will provide for the extra patrol not only for your plantings, but for the wild patches there too at your cost (volunteer). In exchange, you may wish for the agency to fund part of the price of the seed or surveillance equipment.
B ) In this case, the agency sees that you are more trying to assist them in their goal of learning more about wild sim vs wild ginseng on forest land. You are willing to help them more than demand things from them. They still might not approve your request, but at least this request doesn’t look as self-centered as the one above.
This would leave you in a better position to negotiate things with this agency, because you have approached them respectfully, reasonably, and professionally. You offer to provide resources for research and maybe some volunteer labor from your organization, and you might find yourself in the loop of helping a good administrator who is essentially unknowledgeable about ginseng, understand what we do better than he or she does currently. This takes time, but the agencies policies may change as a result of partnerships such as this.
Everyone expects and braces for the frontal attack. Never negotiate from that position. Instead, go around and go out of your way to prove that you are not an attacker from which they must defend. Prove yourself and your group to be respectable, responsible, and symbiotic to the organization and you will get much better results I think.
Remember, they are making the rules. You need them to listen to you for those rules to change. They do not have to listen to you if they don't want to. Therefore, suggesting they are incompetent isn't in your best interest.
I will only give a response to two items that you bring up and leave the rest alone as I believe that we have beat the dead horse per see too long. I really don't see the NF Division giving in or even compromising, no matter what tactic or approach you might use. In my experience, they are one of the Agencies nationwide just like an Agency here in East Tennessee that will very seldom compromise and always want it their way or you can take the road. I will say in defense of them, that it is not always the agency who is the problem, it is often the folks that work at the Regional/District offices and the region from where they come!
1. It has all too often been my experience, that some Administrators are only good at three things. That they are only good at shining the chair bottom (seat) with their' butts, good at delegating and good at collecting a paycheck.
2. I have only had one boss yell at me in front of my co-workers and peers! When this happened, I immediately called him down and to meet me outside, where I set him straight. No fist-a-cuffs, I just put him in his place and reminded him of the rules that Bosses and Supervisors must follow. I have supervised many people and many programs in my 59 years on this earth and although I am fairly mild mannered, I will not take crap off of anyone nor will I stand for being wronged! If a Boss or Supervisor has something to say negatively to a subordinate, then it is to be done in private, never in front of the subordinates co-workers and peers and especially not in front of the public or customers. Any Boss or Supervisor that does otherwise regularly, should be fired or at the least, again made a subordinate.
Frank
