On a beautiful spring morning sitting in my office (with all due respect to Robert Duvall), my thoughts turn to the "right of way". I extend my sympathy to those of you in this business who have never experienced the freedom and beauty of the "right of way".
I came late to pipelines. My career in the energy business began in refineries. For a long time I thrilled to watch the big structures of steel and concrete come together in those big plants. My own specialty, control systems, allowed me to exercise creativity and independence, while having a star role in the greater things being done. But the winds of change blow and we find ourselves in places we would never have thought.
And so I came to pipelines; and so I came to the "right of way". After a career of being inside a fence, chance afforded me the opportunity to get outside the fence. After a career spent walking through canyons of concrete and steel, I drove a 4-wheel SUV along the apparently endless right of way of a pipeline crossing open country. After a career spent watching electricians bend conduit, I watched massive D-9 Cats push over big pine trees in the woods of east Texas.
While my arrogance knew no bounds when starting up process units in refineries, I knew my place in the pipeline world. After all, how many people do you know who got stuck in a pipe yard? I can still remember walking over to the foreman of the group unloading pipe to ask for a tow out of the washout where I was high centered. I still have a bias against Ford Explorers on account of that long walk in full view of the grinning crew.
And so now here I am, a manager sitting in an office. Its a corner office, with a great view of foothills of the Rocky Mountains and the occasional hawk that sits in the tree outside. But I miss the morning meeting with the inspectors and strategizing with the right of way agents on landowner negotiations. I miss getting into a pickup and driving out to watch the "firing line". I miss being a little slow when it comes time to close the gate.
Engineering is a dry business. We work with paper and computer screens. It is important work and the success or failure of projects rides on our efforts. But don't miss the opportunity to smell weld smoke in the morning. It makes it all worthwhile.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Monday, May 12, 2008
Gettysburg II
So I am up for another venture into history for insights in the management of people and projects. Gettysburg is such a fertile ground, because it was so important in our country's history, and the story has been so well told by folks such as Michael Shaara and Clifford Dowdey, among many others.
The second day of Gettysburg came early. The Confederates under Robert E. Lee hadn't achieved the success that they might have on the first day because of the unexpected aggressiveness of the Union forces and the unexpected lack of aggressiveness on their own part. But as usual, Lee had a plan and was ready for the second day.
On the left side of the Union's line were some steep wooded hills that could be dominating if held by the Confederates. To that end, Lee met with the man he called "his old warhorse", James Longstreet. Lee's plan called for Longstreet's men to move up from Seminary Ridge and occupy those hills early in the morning of the 2nd Day. The time that Longstreet would move up was fixed at 9 AM that morning.
Meanwhile, Lee would go to the far side of the Confederate line and coordinate with its commander, Dick Ewell. Ewell's had used the discretion Lee gave his senior commanders the day previous to pull up short, leaving the retreating Union Army with a strong defensive position. The old Dick Ewell had been an aggressive hard driving commander in the past. But he had recently taken a bride, and a new appreciation of life may have taken some of the fire out of his belly. Ewell's job today was to fake an assault by the Confederates to distract the Union from what Longstreet was doing on the other side of the line. Lee would be there to ensure that it was done with sufficient energy to be successful in its purpose.
But it seemed Longstreet had other ideas. Longstreet, recently returned from a semi-independent command, now fancied himself a strategist. Upon hearing Lee's orders, he disagreed with the idea and put forward his alternate plan. Lee politely heard him out and re-explained his own reasoning, but then told him to move forward as ordered.
9 AM passed. 10 AM came and went, 11 AM as well. Lee worried that something had happened and rode his horse the 3 miles back to Longstreet. Nearing noon, Lee found Longstreet where he had left him. Longstreet had not moved at all, presented a weak excuse to Lee and began again to argue for his plan of action. The imperturbable Lee heard out Longstreet, but ordered him to attack as originally planned.
Longstreet finally began moving his people into position. One can guess that he did so with a bit of an attitude and not with the dispatch that might have been hoped for. Finally at 4 PM, rather than 9 AM, Longstreet moved forward to occupy the positions that we remember as Little Round Top, the Peach Orchard and the Devil's Den. Students of the Civil War will be familiar with those names as they were scenes of desperate fighting that took so many lives. Longstreet's men were repulsed with heavy losses.
As it happened, the Union forces had got into position only shortly before the Confederates attack. If Longstreet had gone forward at 9 AM, the hills would have been empty and been his without loss. With the high ground in Confederate hands, the Union Army's position was hopeless. They could attack the Confederates in strong defensive positions or retreat, allowing the Confederates to put Washington D.C. under siege.
Lee's position at the end of the 2nd Day is one many managers have found themselves in. You have good people that know their job and do it well. But things have turned to crap, your people aren't following the agreed upon plan, but instead pursue their own agendas. When called to account and forced to comply, they follow the letter of the plan rather than its spirit. What do you do?
I don't believe there is a textbook answer. To go back to Gettysburg, we can see what Lee did. While we do not know what his thoughts were, we know that he took no public action, made no public criticism of Longstreet. On the following 3rd Day, Lee again entrusted Longstreet with the main action. Once more Longstreet sulked, pressed his own ideas and had to be forced into action. Again he failed, with resulting heavy losses. Again Lee took no public action and kept Longstreet as his chief lieutenant. For the failure of the entire enterprise, Lee accepted full blame and made no public excuses, while praising the performance of his people.
Was Lee correct in his response? Certainly, his overall record on the field would say that he was usually right, but then again, he did lose at Gettysburg. Longstreet was experienced and capable. His standard of performance was high based on any objective job description, a job that had few competent performers on either side. He was steady, but perhaps not the man for inspired performance. When in conflict with his boss, he was not a "team" guy, but pursued his own agendas. What would you have done?
The second day of Gettysburg came early. The Confederates under Robert E. Lee hadn't achieved the success that they might have on the first day because of the unexpected aggressiveness of the Union forces and the unexpected lack of aggressiveness on their own part. But as usual, Lee had a plan and was ready for the second day.
On the left side of the Union's line were some steep wooded hills that could be dominating if held by the Confederates. To that end, Lee met with the man he called "his old warhorse", James Longstreet. Lee's plan called for Longstreet's men to move up from Seminary Ridge and occupy those hills early in the morning of the 2nd Day. The time that Longstreet would move up was fixed at 9 AM that morning.
Meanwhile, Lee would go to the far side of the Confederate line and coordinate with its commander, Dick Ewell. Ewell's had used the discretion Lee gave his senior commanders the day previous to pull up short, leaving the retreating Union Army with a strong defensive position. The old Dick Ewell had been an aggressive hard driving commander in the past. But he had recently taken a bride, and a new appreciation of life may have taken some of the fire out of his belly. Ewell's job today was to fake an assault by the Confederates to distract the Union from what Longstreet was doing on the other side of the line. Lee would be there to ensure that it was done with sufficient energy to be successful in its purpose.
But it seemed Longstreet had other ideas. Longstreet, recently returned from a semi-independent command, now fancied himself a strategist. Upon hearing Lee's orders, he disagreed with the idea and put forward his alternate plan. Lee politely heard him out and re-explained his own reasoning, but then told him to move forward as ordered.
9 AM passed. 10 AM came and went, 11 AM as well. Lee worried that something had happened and rode his horse the 3 miles back to Longstreet. Nearing noon, Lee found Longstreet where he had left him. Longstreet had not moved at all, presented a weak excuse to Lee and began again to argue for his plan of action. The imperturbable Lee heard out Longstreet, but ordered him to attack as originally planned.
Longstreet finally began moving his people into position. One can guess that he did so with a bit of an attitude and not with the dispatch that might have been hoped for. Finally at 4 PM, rather than 9 AM, Longstreet moved forward to occupy the positions that we remember as Little Round Top, the Peach Orchard and the Devil's Den. Students of the Civil War will be familiar with those names as they were scenes of desperate fighting that took so many lives. Longstreet's men were repulsed with heavy losses.
As it happened, the Union forces had got into position only shortly before the Confederates attack. If Longstreet had gone forward at 9 AM, the hills would have been empty and been his without loss. With the high ground in Confederate hands, the Union Army's position was hopeless. They could attack the Confederates in strong defensive positions or retreat, allowing the Confederates to put Washington D.C. under siege.
Lee's position at the end of the 2nd Day is one many managers have found themselves in. You have good people that know their job and do it well. But things have turned to crap, your people aren't following the agreed upon plan, but instead pursue their own agendas. When called to account and forced to comply, they follow the letter of the plan rather than its spirit. What do you do?
I don't believe there is a textbook answer. To go back to Gettysburg, we can see what Lee did. While we do not know what his thoughts were, we know that he took no public action, made no public criticism of Longstreet. On the following 3rd Day, Lee again entrusted Longstreet with the main action. Once more Longstreet sulked, pressed his own ideas and had to be forced into action. Again he failed, with resulting heavy losses. Again Lee took no public action and kept Longstreet as his chief lieutenant. For the failure of the entire enterprise, Lee accepted full blame and made no public excuses, while praising the performance of his people.
Was Lee correct in his response? Certainly, his overall record on the field would say that he was usually right, but then again, he did lose at Gettysburg. Longstreet was experienced and capable. His standard of performance was high based on any objective job description, a job that had few competent performers on either side. He was steady, but perhaps not the man for inspired performance. When in conflict with his boss, he was not a "team" guy, but pursued his own agendas. What would you have done?
Monday, May 5, 2008
Pine Beetles and Stewardship
I just got back from a weekend in the Grand Valley of Colorado, otherwise known as Winter Park. And I am mad. The beautiful green forests are no longer green but an ugly reddish brown, no longer the color of life but instead the color of death. Literally thousands of square miles of pine forest are dead, or dying. An epidemic of tiny beetles and their fungal parasitic host have nearly completed the process of destroying Colorado's pine forests.
Let me repeat that I am mad. What I see in those dead trees is a failure in stewardship on the part of those we trusted with our public lands. Stewardship is a very important word to me. I grew up on a working farm. My father is a farmer, and as far back as my family is traced, we were farmers. Stewardship is a farmer's virtue. It is a realization that you might own the land today, but it was there before you and will be there after you. It is keeping faith with those who came before you. They held the land in their time and provided stewardship over it such that you can enjoy its bounty today. It is keeping faith with those whom you will pass it onto in the future. As did those who came before you, you want to leave it better than you found it. That is stewardship.
Getting back to my anger, why? Those little pine beetles and fungus spores are simply nature. Contrary to Walt Disney, nature is violent and brutal, with wholesale extinction of entire species almost an anyday affair. Some of my most vivid memories of life on the farm are of late afternoon hail storms that obliterated our crops. I can remember walking out after a late afternoon storm and seeing the ground covered with white ice. The green plants that had been there just minutes before were now no more than a tossed salad. Months of hard work and all the money spent on seed, fertilizer and fuel, gone in just minutes, destroyed by the blind hand of nature.
But I also know that getting angry at nature is silly. Nature does what nature does; it is simply water running downhill. To be angry at what nature does is a useless exercise that only hurts you. Nature certainly is not out to get us. But that does not mean that we must accept what nature does without recourse. Nature can be negotiated with. That is what engineers do. That is what the profession of engineering is about. Water flows downhill, that is nature. But water can be dammed up and used to generate electricity as it flows downhill. That is an engineer's negotiation with nature. I have always seen that as an essential part of stewardship.
But why the anger about pine beetles and dead pine forests? I am angry because it didn't have to be this way. Because the forests have been artificially protected, they are dense, with little diversity and they are old. Forest fires have always been stopped. Logging has not been allowed. Nothing has been allowed. Pine beetles are always around, killing off the weak trees in the forest. But it takes special circumstances to create the near universal kill off we are seeing. Those special circumstances took human intervention. It took human action; or more accurately, human inaction, to create the circumstances that have ruined our pine forests.
Our public lands, our public forests, are being managed by caretakers. Caretakers do not practice stewardship. Caretakers are simply passive managers who erect fences to keep out the world. Caretakers simply deny that time passes and circumstances change. Behind those fences things fall apart and crumble. One of the most powerful forces of nature is entropy, the inexorable process of decay.
Stewards try to make things better, because they are keeping faith with those that came before and those that will come after. Sometimes risks must be taken in the attempt to be better. Caretakers simply keep it from being used and take no risks, ensuring that disaster will eventually happen.
Let me repeat that I am mad. What I see in those dead trees is a failure in stewardship on the part of those we trusted with our public lands. Stewardship is a very important word to me. I grew up on a working farm. My father is a farmer, and as far back as my family is traced, we were farmers. Stewardship is a farmer's virtue. It is a realization that you might own the land today, but it was there before you and will be there after you. It is keeping faith with those who came before you. They held the land in their time and provided stewardship over it such that you can enjoy its bounty today. It is keeping faith with those whom you will pass it onto in the future. As did those who came before you, you want to leave it better than you found it. That is stewardship.
Getting back to my anger, why? Those little pine beetles and fungus spores are simply nature. Contrary to Walt Disney, nature is violent and brutal, with wholesale extinction of entire species almost an anyday affair. Some of my most vivid memories of life on the farm are of late afternoon hail storms that obliterated our crops. I can remember walking out after a late afternoon storm and seeing the ground covered with white ice. The green plants that had been there just minutes before were now no more than a tossed salad. Months of hard work and all the money spent on seed, fertilizer and fuel, gone in just minutes, destroyed by the blind hand of nature.
But I also know that getting angry at nature is silly. Nature does what nature does; it is simply water running downhill. To be angry at what nature does is a useless exercise that only hurts you. Nature certainly is not out to get us. But that does not mean that we must accept what nature does without recourse. Nature can be negotiated with. That is what engineers do. That is what the profession of engineering is about. Water flows downhill, that is nature. But water can be dammed up and used to generate electricity as it flows downhill. That is an engineer's negotiation with nature. I have always seen that as an essential part of stewardship.
But why the anger about pine beetles and dead pine forests? I am angry because it didn't have to be this way. Because the forests have been artificially protected, they are dense, with little diversity and they are old. Forest fires have always been stopped. Logging has not been allowed. Nothing has been allowed. Pine beetles are always around, killing off the weak trees in the forest. But it takes special circumstances to create the near universal kill off we are seeing. Those special circumstances took human intervention. It took human action; or more accurately, human inaction, to create the circumstances that have ruined our pine forests.
Our public lands, our public forests, are being managed by caretakers. Caretakers do not practice stewardship. Caretakers are simply passive managers who erect fences to keep out the world. Caretakers simply deny that time passes and circumstances change. Behind those fences things fall apart and crumble. One of the most powerful forces of nature is entropy, the inexorable process of decay.
Stewards try to make things better, because they are keeping faith with those that came before and those that will come after. Sometimes risks must be taken in the attempt to be better. Caretakers simply keep it from being used and take no risks, ensuring that disaster will eventually happen.
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