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Feedforward does not seem to occur in natural systems and is omitted in most texts on general systems theory (cf Bayliss 1966:149). It is not futurology, forecasting, or prognostics cf Chapter 1). Like feedback, it too has all of the components of the general system. It is a subsystem actively attempting to see the future and do something today about that perception.
No one can see the future, but no one knows the present with complete certainty. More or less certainty is the problem. Skeptics of feedforward-related work point to inaccurate projections, inability to"predict" a particular scientific breakthrough, or failures to see wars on the horizon or to prevent them. Given, there have been past limitations, technological weaknesses, primitive tools, and powerful skeptics. Nevertheless people do live today with regard to the future as imagined, predicted, and at least hoped for. People get married with promises about the future. Foresters plant trees"knowing" what the trees will do and predicting that the future economic system will not make them look silly. People buy cars and houses, predicting sufficient stable income to pay for them. A person drives a car, predicting there will be no barriers in the road around the next turn. We eat our last candy bar, predicting we will get back from the field in time for supper. We live with one part of our being in the future, perhaps the most human of traits. Genetic codes and mutations appear to take care of the future for non-thoughtful beings but they are products of history. Dare (1975) reminded us that members of biological generations do invest time, effort, and occasionally their lives in enhancing the chances for survival (and eventually reproduction) of their offspring. Such investment he claims is a basic form of kin selection and even non-parental altruism may be explained in terms of natural selection. Whether conscious or not, some behavior (often called altruism) toward successive generations tends to assure survival.
One writer quipped that whenever a manager gets the urge to predict the future, his or her best strategy is to lie down and rest until the feeling goes away! We cannot avoid doing it. We wonder, we hope. We already live in a world influenced by the future. Feedforward recognizes this and formalizes it so it can be used, manipulated, and improved. Feedforward is a specialized subsystem influencing all aspects of a system, making it likely to be optimal over the long run. Simultaneously, it can be seen as a specialized process, suboptimizing a system for the present and long-term future but providing dynamic response to the perceived near future.
What is perceived about the future can (and should, I believe) influence the way objectives are stated and quantified. (If there will surely be no action based on them, no matter how well done, then a Type-1 objective is all that is reasonable.) The future technology, models, and staff can influence what inputs are now made to data management systems. The prospects for "expert" and "rule-based" systems (CAP54) already influence computer languages being learned, schools developed, and staffing. Hopefully, perceived future techniques will influence how feedback and control is developed. Feedforward will ask of itself: which of the current techniques used will be replaced and what should the current subsystem be so that it can respond well and integrate with the new feedforward techniques?
The current parts or activities include:
Some people neither believe the future can be seen, nor that anything can be done about it if it can be seen. There is ample evidence that some are trying, some have succeeded...and that the future may be like the past. Others, distraught by the past and present, suggest that anything different would be worth the perception-and-action effort.
What is distressful? What are the forces influencing forest fauna (when this is being written, and of course they change)? As seen after so many chapters, everything influences or is related to the forest fauna. The following are seen as major types of predictions, future states, that suggest adjustments to be made now to prepare for them:
These currents in social, political, economic and natural resources all co-mingle. They are notable, debatable, all discussible - particularly the estimates of size and timing, and all describable, perhaps in computer models, as they may work their way through our future societies. Faunal and forest agencies, individuals, and companies who ignore them or do not"take the time" to think them through are likely to be ... to put it nicely ... suboptimized.
"The available evidence" said "The Global 2000 Report to the President: Entering the Twenty-First Century", leaves no doubt that the world, including this nation, faces enormous, urgent and complex problems in the decades immediately ahead ... If decisions are delayed until the problems become worse, options for effective action will be severely reduced."
There are many practical ideas for future forest-wildlife-related agencies and corporations. A systems approach, all of the components, can be used in prescribing how to achieve an agency that can maximize net faunal resource benefits for people. Even if never implemented, the following recommendations, taken as a whole, can provide a useful perspective on the scope and potentials of such agencies, thus the faunal resources.
Some agencies, to their credit, are already engaged in some of the things listed. There may be ideas and opportunities here even for them. The needs, however, are for whole, integrated agencies, groups of agencies, and new enterprises (such as suggested in Lasting Forests). Not to be achieving well all of the following agency dimensions need not be viewed as a failure. The best achievers in all fields train and study to improve their performance.
100.00 Objectives and Policy
101.00 Publishing, perhaps for framing, but at least for everyone's manual or file, a copy of the legislation creating the agency and stating its responsibility.
102.00 Offering a substantial monetary prize for the best state law student's interpretative paper on that legislation.
103.00 Distributing the winning essay (or excerpts) to all agency staff and other interested parties and to the press.
104.00 Developing with staff and consultants a series of"white papers" or agency analyses of situations, problems, and events likely to occur, given the present trends and policies needed that are associated with each. These might include: effects of alternative timber harvest strategies on hunting, effects of gasoline rationing on shortages, regional changes due to the effects of acid rain, pesticide use, zoonoses, crime rates, private zoos, off-shore oil development, public involvement in wildlife research, and private wildlife enterprises.
105.00 Adopting a stance as "the" environmental agency. All environmental factors affect wildlife; wildlife are integrators of their environment. Not to control (actively) air pollution, water pollution, agricultural land use, powerlines, etc., results virtually in putting the wildlife resource into the hands of everyone else but the faunal resource agency. The agency can offer environmental leadership by:
105.01 Hiring experts in these areas to work with and through them for wildlife.
105.02 Preparing staff reports directed at particular resource management effects on the faunal resource.
105.03 Encouraging all agencies to specify and quantify their effects on wildlife and associated benefits over time.
105.04 Paying partial salaries of agents in other agencies to provide the bridges needed between them and the faunal resource agency.
105.05 Publishing monthly status reports on wildlife as the indicator of state or regional environmental quality.
105.06 Conducting wildlife schools and workshops for other agencies.
105.07 Working through a state environmental protection act, requiring environmental impact statements, and seeing that wildlife becomes an explicit part of such statements.
105.08 Getting federal agencies deeply involved in supporting efforts to achieve all of the above.
106.00 Articulating in a very detailed and quantifiable manner the objectives of the agency. These should become the functional basis of all agency policy and decisions.
107.00 Holding public hearings and gain numerical citizen weights, demands and risk levels for these objectives.
108.00 Reporting at least twice a year to citizens how well their objectives are being achieved.
109.00 Evaluating projects by their effects on these objectives.
110.00 Adopting a dynamic 50-year planning horizon.
111.00 Influencing actively the"context" of faunal resource management through laws, press, conferences, and state and national policy.
112.00 Forming regional agencies with adjacent or nearby agencies.
113.00 Forming an ancillary regional support group to overcome the limitations imposed by state laws and policies.
200.00 Power for the System - Context A
201.00 Seeking a broad base of income, including some from sister agencies.
202.00 Developing a statewide geographic and resource information system.
203.00 Seeking federal research agency assistance.
204.00 Seeking laws that allow funding based on alternative types of income to the agency.
205.00 Seeking general tax funds for broadened citizen health and welfare via wildlife.
206.00 Seeking greater political contacts. Make more inputs to legislation. Initiate appropriate legislation having secondary influences useful to the faunal resource (e.g., public health, irrigation, crop losses).
207.00 Using computer simulation to see the effects of certain proposed legislation of wildlife (e.g., forest or range taxation changes). Testify based on such findings.
208.00 Taking the lead in articulating the energy dynamics of wildlife systems as well as of the state and nation as a system. The agency controlling or having major influence in the energy realm will have control the world tomorrow.
209.00 Coordinating and organizing volunteer efforts to: (1) announce agency-related problems, (2) form taskforces to fight such problems, (3) collect data, (4) do work projects, and (5) raise funds for special projects.
210.00 Gaining major media control to influence publics. Seek professional assistance on behavioral modification.
300.00 Image - Context B
301.00 Gaining increased visibility by having personable employees attend agency and public meetings.
302.00 Seeking field staff improvement of personal image including clothing, vehicles, etc.
303.00 Using modern letterhead.
304.00 Making offices conspicuous.
305.00 Improving on signing and sign quality.
306.00 Encouraging high-quality research output presentations at national meetings.
307.00 Publishing booklets of regional or national interest.
308.00 Promoting a handsome or pretty "his-or-her-figure" as a personal image for the agency, press, TV, and public gatherings. Give people a"face" to whom they can relate (at least a logo).
309.00 Creating news events such as first stocking, lake clean-ups, or visits by distinguished national workers with the faunal resource.
310.00 Publishing a weekly environmental quality index series for all state newspapers.
311.00 Creating letter writing flurries in major newspapers.
312.00 Calling press conferences for agency policy releases or pronouncements.
313.00 Changing the public concept of the agency from a game to a total faunal resource agency, perhaps later to all wildlife.
400.00 Inputs
401.00 Seeking consultants' advice on research fund allocation.
402.00 Insisting on research being justified at every turn based on it producing inputs to decision making.
403.00 Improving research planning by:
403.01 Holding conferences and workshops
403.02 Gaining advice from consultants
403.03 Using sophisticated research fund allocation aids
403.04 Developing a dynamic 10-year plan of research
404.00 Distinguishing clearly between inventory and research and allocating funds to each according to importance and need.
405.00 Requiring annual research progress reports expressed in terms of findings per dollar spent, conclusions per dollar, and publications per dollar; known uses; and savings or production resulting from use of past research.
406.00 Hiring consulting groups to do project research. Do not limit research to the capabilities of the present staff.
407.00 Utilizing fully an environmental information system.
408.00 Taking over broad scale operation of such systems. Information is power.
409.00 Using information to make inputs to other agency decisions. Make wildlife a dominant part of all state-level decisions.
410.00 Developing a full-scale environmental library service (not a library). Have a small staff serve the information needs of the field staff, leaders, and others. Utilize various information services.
411.00 Employing a"transfer" person, one responsible for aiding in maximizing transfer of knowledge into practice. Research, computer systems, and ideas of others should be pumped out into the field for application. The field must do this on their own, but assistance and rewards (or incentives) are needed.
412.00 Gaining a privately supported research foundation, perhaps from annual contributions from county damage funds, sports clubs, wills, etc., that can be used in innovative ways to initiate novel, risky ideas, to hire special consultants, and to move the research program ahead. Utilize a distinguished "board of directors" for the foundation to assure quality research expenditures.
413.00 Requiring all staff to turn over all files at retirement or dismissal. Tape recordings, photos, interviews, etc., are essential to capture the knowledge of years of experience to benefit future managers. With replacement rates known, a system should be designed to capture this agency "investment." Computer maps can be used to aid in collecting spatial data.
500.00 Processes
501.00 Using MAST (a Pittman-Robertson budget allocation system) or similar system (Lobdell 1972). Such use can reduce red tape and improve long-term planning
502.00 Using MAST to demonstrate what other agencies should be doing, thereby achieving state or provincial leadership.
503.00 Using computers for personnel payrolls, but also for personnel planning, personnel training schedules, research analyses, environmental simulation, justification of recommendations and decisions, processing public participation, ecological monitoring, environmental impact statement analyses and comparisons, equipment inventory, maintenance scheduling and replacement, land needs analyses (relative to goals), forest management and inventory, harvest predictions, inter-regional planning, various modeling and optimization efforts, education deer management, pest control management, watershed management, personnel management.
504.00 Using and encouraging short-term, high-intensity task forces to develop solutions to major problems.
505.00 Emphasizing involvement in mass-effect decisions that have impacts on wildlife, e.g., power lines, energy policy, highways. Infiltrate (openly or otherwise) all such agencies, legislative action, committees, or review processes.
506.00 Establishing criteria for priority action such as:
506.01 acreage affected
506.02 time of effects
506.03 people affected (health and others)
506.04 people likely to be affected
506.05 location in watershed (high or low)
506.06 system changes likely
506.07 irretrievable losses of wildlife
507.00 Promoting at all levels a systems approach to all aspects of agency and state performance.
508.00 Developing project or problem subunits within the agency and staff. Give an expert or leader both responsibility and recognition for effective handling of such problems. Subunits are needed as psychological ladders upon which employees may find rewards of various sorts.
509.00 Emphasizing efficiency of operations but especially cost effectiveness Require justifications in terms of optimization principles related to objectives.
510.00 Adopting an agency energy conservation policy and implement it. This should include maximum energy conservation in all facilities, passive energy use in new construction, use of alternative energy, use of energy-efficient materials, use of energy efficient transportation, improved transportation planning, reduced energy costs for maintenance, etc. To sell an agency policy for the future, leadership is needed. It will come from somewhere; it could be the wildlife agency. (People pay leaders; such a role could become the source of new funds for diversification.)
511.00 Executing a major planning function such as The Trevey
512.00 Quantifying production functions (Chapter 7). These are essential in management and should be a major task of research. The questions: How much of some resource do I get if I spend (or apply) x? or What yields do I get over time? are the primary process questions. These should be documented.
513.00 Subsidizing private efforts to develop and expand the Guild Concept (Chapter 15).
600.00 Feedback
601.00 Rewarding efficiency, but most of all, rewarding cost effectiveness.
602.00 Making the basis for merit and other salary raises explicit (and not merely the criterion of having put in time). Require salary increases to be justified in detail (not just relative to other agencies).
603.00 Hiring at least once every 5 years a three-person team of auditors or overseers to examine all aspects of operation and make observations.
604.00 Requesting the a governor or other leader to authorize a general accounting office inspection followed by detailed suggestions by that group about the entire agency operation.
605.00 Conducting comparisons with adjacent state commissioners in periodic conferences or at least shared reports. ("How well are we doing?" relatively speaking.)
606.00 Utilizing a data storage system so past mistakes are not repeated.
607.00 Requiring that the "experience bank" (413.00 and 606.00) be used before any major project is authorized.
608.00 Hiring a keeper, an ombudsman, or an inspector general with power to comment on, criticize, and suggest improvements in all aspects of agency performance.
609.00 Encouraging open public comment about the agency performance, including an expanded"Letters to the Editor" approach.
700.00 Feedforward
701.00 Developing strong predictive capabilities.
702.00 Having staff develop scenarios of the future.
703.00 Having conferences on the future of the state's or province's environment.
704.00 Developing simulators of future budgetary situations and discuss the results and possible strategies. Develop written summaries on: "what to do if scenario x came true."
705.00 Orienting at least 60 percent of research efforts to gaining probability of occurrence capabilities.
706.00 Sending staff to conferences about the future and requiring reports (e.g., audio tapes to run while employees are traveling).
707.00 Sponsoring mock crisis situations and having staff meet and respond in realistic training sessions.
708.00 Rewarding writers of provocative futuristic staff reports and published articles.
The predominant practice of current forest faunal system management is nested within a diverse, large-agency environment once strongly game-oriented. That orientation has been changing for over a decade (1995) and requires no further name changes (e.g., to "conservation biology"), just continued evolution as is typical in agencies. There is strength in these agencies that can be exercised effectively when it is coordinated and interwoven as a total system with clear objectives. The hypothesis on the horizon, yet to be tested, is that the modern, sophisticated wildland enterprise can significantly improve wildland resource management and benefits resulting from it. The agency strength can be potentiated by effective work with forest enterprises and new for-profit organizations. The forest fauna will fare well within such systems. There is much to be done.
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Last revision May 18, 2001.