Report from a Workshop on Forest and Rangeland Health
Collaboration: The Central Rockies Workshop
Colorado – South Dakota – Wyoming

Appendix A
Breakout Group Notes on
Benefits and Challenges of Collaboration

Group 1
Benefits of Collaboration

• There aren’t the costs (time and money) spent on lawyers.
• If transparent and inclusive, and people agree, we have succeeded
• Reducing duplication of efforts
• Shared ownership
• Building relationships that are like investments for the immediate project and go on to other projects
• Establishes a network to address related issues
• Shared responsibilities
• Better focus of efforts
• Information sharing
• Opportunities to understand other interests and views
• Discovery of common ground that exists that you might not have been aware of
• Open dialogue exchange
• Better end product
• Better utilization of scarce resources and economies of scale
• Implementation and action
• Able to look at things at more of a landscape level.
• People learn to work together to solve differences without fighting – this provides a broader social benefit
• There’s been a paradigm shift in how we do business in some areas
• It is becoming an established process with ownership and accountability
• People understand connections that they may not have before.

Challenges

• Time consuming
• Maintaining long-term commitment
• Lack of capacity or resources to do it
• Fear of getting bogged down in process
• Cost of developing the resource capacity
• Finding common ground
• Getting decisionmakers to the effort
• Acknowledging the problem or that there is one – public education
• Different legal structures, regulations and authorities
• New way of doing business and somewhat threatening
• Including affected stakeholders
• A generational concern that “Collaboration means consorting with the enemy.” (experience from WWII). Preferred term for these individuals is “cooperation.”
• Historical differences
• Less fun for people who enjoy fighting
• Unwillingness to give at all on your position – holding firm
• Messy processes – not well understood
• Difficult to stick to processes
• Honest differences and priorities and values
• Ego management
• Someone else in the chain of command stopping the process
• Lack of understanding of what collaboration means – misunderstanding feedback – developing something through process
• Definition of collaboration is different within organizations – throwing all money into one pot and prioritizing versus working together and categorizing
• Different levels of collaboration – state, local, etc.
• Time constraints – it will never be easier to fix the ecosystem problems than it is now
• Developing and maintaining trust is very difficult
• Difficult when everyone wants their piece of the pie – territorial
• Facilitating process can be challenging
• Developing a concept of mutuality of respect, trust, and agreement on mutual benefits – a real sense of parity/perceived equality of power.
• Difficult to get diverse groups to sit together and to actually make progress
• Acknowledging resource specialists
• Facts and science vs. emotion
• Negativity
• Hierarchies and Organizational structures make it difficult – responsibilities vary
• Action oriented nature needing to make room for patience and education – change for learning and understanding the collaborative planning process
• Science – mapping; technicians – conveying to the decisionmakers
• Responsibility of getting others together
• Identification of expectations and designing and facilitating a process to meet these – it takes a lot to do this.
• Corporate culture
• There is a feeling at the local level that the national level is not collaborating
• Need to have room to negotiate within laws and policy
• Reporting systems are different between agencies under the Fire Plan.
• Collaboration has only gone so far – related planning processes many not be open to the same collaboration. There seems to be an invisible line.
• Some issues not up for collaboration because the impacts are too severe, such as ATV use, trails use. There is no debate over it. This can be very visible. Some rights have been removed.
• Individual personalities can b lock progress.
• In collaborative processes we tend to work in our own area – not working across areas/disciplines. When we get into fuels reduction planning and community plans, we need to be integrating these.
• The financial/grant part – collaboration and trying to come up with a good focus when money is uncertain. There are different grant cycles, agencies, etc., planning with so many unknowns.

Review:

• Benefits: We are really beginning to see a healthy paradigm shift of how business is conducted in the West. There is a realization that there is no longer the luxury of making unilateral decisions because impacts affect everyone.
• The grassroots are making connections to a higher level
• Established practice/expectation that people can be part of processes.
• Shifts accountability, responsibility and accountability to the whole group.
• Becoming more of the mode of operation.
• Importance of process - participation, ownership responsibility is being added.
• The public does not like to be regulated. The shift is more towards getting things done where people have a choice to influence an outcome rather than merely be subjected to regulation. There is the benefit of how people feel about the outcome, their community, and the government. In a Democracy, how people are treated is really important.
• Westerners feel ownership – place-based information. There is power back in the hands of those on the ground, which is healthy.
• Collaboration reestablished connection with people who live in a place and are most affected by decisions being made. There is recognition of direct input.
• “Value thing” - gives people a seat at the table.
• There is still fear in collaboration of regulation when issues of development are not in the equation. Resource-oriented counties are doing creative things with TDRs and ways to handle sprawl. Cross-boundary issues are bringing us together. Counties are dealing with growth and economic issues. Fires introduced cost realizations to too much growth.
• Through the National Fire Plan’s expectations of collaboration we are expecting collaboration in other for a, though it is not happening enough.
• County commissioners are reluctant to use zoning and controls to control ways and numbers of homebuilding. They are needed and understood.
• Beyond a trend. It is a movement that is occurring. What will happen as we go forward – all planning may ultimately be more integrated and coordinated.
• Aligning timing of processes.

Group 2 – Benefits/Challenges

Benefits

• Better understanding of the concerns of others
• Education
• You often find common ground
• Sharing resources
• Breaks down social and political barriers
• Opportunity to talk with “adversaries” to try to influence
• Creative solutions
• Broadens support
• Develop relationships and communication paths that will help in other projects
• Enlarges decision space
• Collective learning
• Scale of treatment will be wider (National Fire Plan)
• Collaboration is necessary – to obtain and improve buy-in
• Improves the likelihood of success
• Creates group power and collective mentality
• Advocacy
• More defensible solutions
• Saves time and money over the long haul. Less court time too.
• Let’s everybody be part of the solution
• Diverse viewpoints, resources brought to bear – helps solve complex problems/projects

Challenges

• Creates unrealistic expectations
• Group-think
• Loss of focus on goals and targets
• No guarantee of resolving issues, given the time and energy investment
• Getting all the parties to the table
• Problems continue to mount during the long period of time it takes…e.g. forest continue to burn.
• Disingenuous conveners/processes
• Long time frames may lose participants over time
• Getting decision-makers to the table
• Staying on schedule
• Willingness of decision-makers to stretch decision space
• Lack of trust
• People unwilling to compromise
• Need strong charter, formal structure
• Money, logistics, general support
• Laws, rules, regulations
• Uncertainties external to the process
• Good effective facilitation
• All parties not represented at the table – not invited, absentee landowners
• Knowing when a process has failed
• Process timing may not be tied/synchronized with budget windows, budget process

Summary of greatest benefits/challenges

• Benefits – education, rapport, support, and sharing knowledge/resources
• Challenges – time, hard work, and uncertain outcomes

Group 3 – Benefits and Challenges

What is collaboration?

• Operating from a consistent baseline of information
• Getting players to the table
• Working together to achieve a common goal (may have to work through it)
• Selfless commitment
• Participating in good faith – sums it up!
• Sharing of information, beliefs, ideals and values
• Listening with an open mind
• Constant communication
• Needs flexibility
• Identifies common interest as well as goals
• Commitment of time and resources
• Builds respect, trust and relationships
• Get right decision makers

Benefits of Collaborating:

• Cost effective and efficient
• Pooled resources
• Create political influence
• Builds relationships and trust
• Gets real work done on the ground
• Builds networks
• Builds accountability
• Educates community of interest and place about issues
• Solves problems
• Tends to be synergistic
• Fun and creative
• Identifies common goals/interests

Challenges of Collaborations:

• Continuity and consistency
• Fosters out of the box solutions
• Identifies BMPs
• Increases transparencies of processes and policies – enhances understanding
• Promotes all inclusiveness
• Create a sustained commitment to solve problems
• Supports risk taking
• Overcoming personality conflicts
• Continuous communication
• Listening with an open mind
• Clear goals defined
• How to get key stakeholders at the table
• Staying at the table when things aren’t moving fast
• Get people engaged and current that aren’t actively involved
• Education
• Diversity of opinions
• Add “non” to benefits
• Long-term benefits can cause short-term challenges
• Sometimes benefits and challenges are the same thing
• Overcoming political boundaries (administrative and organizational too)
• Commitment of resources and time available
• Getting right people at table and keeping them there – successfully convening the process
• Willing to share decision space
• Commitments need to be followed through
• Overcoming miss-trust
• Accepting failure
• Making all this work within institutional policies, culture and interpretation
• Defining the issue – more people harder to define and stay on tract
• Helpful to have a facilitator staffing
• Knowing limitations
• Saying “I can’t do that” rather than “lets see how we can make that happen”
• Funding – adequate resources
• Effective utilizing skills
• Finding expertise – not necessarily in-house
• Effectively involving everyone
• Getting through funding processes (i.e. contracting)
• Persistence
• End result won’t be unanimous view point

General observations about challenges and benefits:

• 2 pages of benefits, 4 of challenges – could be an understanding of benefits, but challenges reflect experience
• Collaborate to understand everyone’s common thread
• Challenges not insurmountable
• Depends upon group-if they want to get it done, challenges won’t matter
• Is there ever a time we don’t collaborate?
• Something’s don’t need to collaborate on
• Collaboration can be “grudging consent)
• Honest and upfront on your line
• Find common thread
• Everyone needs to walk out supporting decision or end result