The Forest and the Trees
The Essentials Newsletter, Fortieth Edition
In the last edition of this newsletter, I celebrated its two-year anniversary with the ever-relevant forest/trees analogy. I noted that when I think about strategy versus tactics, I like to frame the contrast as the tried and true “forest versus trees” analogy. My perspective is to first think about the forest and then the trees – zooming in and out, depending on the discussion/timeline/thought experiment needed on a particular issue. The fact is that we need both levels of understanding when tackling, well, almost anything. The strategy/forest gives us the “why,” “what” and “when,” while the tactics/trees give us the “how” and the “who.”
The issue, however, is that we get so caught up in the tactics – our heads-down work, our “to do” lists, our technical expertise, our business units, our committee jurisdictions (yes, Congress, I know how you work!) – in short, focusing on the trees only, making it virtually impossible to realize that we are part of a forest, much less to see the forest. Why is this the case? I think human nature is a large part of it. Another aspect is the trendline toward specialization in our work. If you have some time to go back and read all 40 of The Essentials editions, history is very clear on this trendline. Technology, at first simple and based on rudimentary physical principles at the dawn of our basic critical infrastructure (CI) sectors some 7,000 years ago, has advanced at a mind-boggling pace. Such advancements have spurred highly specialized, skilled, professionals to operate our critical infrastructures. The human nature part is that we like to protect our territory because we don’t want to be questioned and/or we want to be “left alone to do our important jobs.” And, we want people (especially our bosses/clients/etc.) to appreciate our expertise so that we keep our jobs.
In terms of the specialization piece, I’ll give you an example from my own life. When I went to college some—uh hmm-35 years ago or so—we were counseled that, unless you wanted to be an engineer, a medical doctor, an artist or a musician, you pretty much should wait to even think about your major until your sophomore year (of college, to be clear!). So, get your requirements done in the liberal arts school of your choice, then start to circle around to your major. In the intervening 35 years, that philosophy has been thrown out the window! My oldest daughter just finished her junior year in high school today and is in the thick of figuring out where to apply to college. Not only is she expected to know what she wants to major in at this point – before even applying to college! -- she almost needs to know what she wants to do with the rest of her life. She’s leaning towards either forensic science or criminology, but depending on which one she picks, different schools will be more or less appealing. She essentially needs to have a sub-specialization of a specialization (law enforcement) already decided at age 17.
That is the issue in a nutshell. To be employable, we must be specialized and even hyper-specialized. No wonder it’s hard for us to see the forest, much less discern that there is anything beyond our tree, or even our tree branch! But we must figure out how to take several steps back and look around. I have some ideas for CI sectors, but none of them are easy and all of them require leadership buy-in:
Cross-sector table-top exercises. The electric sector holds an event called GridEx every other year. It’s a table-top exercise intended to scenario plan the sector’s response to major cyber-physical disruptions. The event is run by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and includes government partners such as the Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security, and others. In recent years, other CI sectors have been invited to participate as well – telecommunications representatives, oil and gas representatives, etc. The understanding, input, and engagement from these sessions has been invaluable to all sectors involved as well as the government. There are other examples, but you get the gist. When the government either sponsors, engages, and/or encourages these activities, it gives private sectors entities permission to spend precious resources (time and otherwise) on them. We need to encourage more of this.
Cross-sector leadership institutes or conferences. What if a utility executive or a financial services executive (and the list goes on) could get an executive leadership certificate in “critical infrastructure leadership?” It could require a basic understanding of all 17 CI sectors, with analyses of the commonalities and differences. Maybe I want to establish this…anyone interested in partnering with me?
Disaster response coordination. Lots of finger-pointing happens after natural disasters. Understandably, to a degree, but one of the most effective elements of our collective response to COVID-19 was the cross-sector collaboration and coordination. That was done very well at the federal level and could be a model to follow, especially for larger disasters. The electric sector has solidified its coordination in recent years, working with the federal government and others and it has been extremely helpful to restoring electricity more efficiently. We could widen that aperture again. As an aside, the lack of understanding of other CI sectors by many in government during the COVID -19 response, especially from the healthcare policy side, was, frankly, stunning. And underscores what I am trying to impart here.
Cross-sectoral shadowing. Could there come a day when someone from one industry goes to another to shadow a colleague for a week? It could be just like what individual companies and sectors do to create understanding across departments and business units. How could we incentivize that?
Cross-stakeholder shadowing. Could we have someone from the Natural Resources Defense Council shadow someone at a utility and vice versa? Ohhh. That sounds very uncomfortable and maybe not feasible, but we should be thinking about it even if we may not yet be able to do it. The same principle could apply to other CI sectors.
I welcome your comments on what else could be considered.
To summarize by stating the obvious, the reason we need to back up and see the forest is so that we can solve for the things that I mentioned in Part I of this edition, published earlier in May. Because we are better stewards of our resources and environment, because we are not forced to adhere to political or religious philosophies with which we do not agree, because we can choose what to study and where to work, as a society we must constantly be arguing, jockeying, and persuading each other when it comes to making difficult decisions. That is free society, organized in a constitutional democracy – messy, but much better than the alternative.
If we, all of us, can take a step back and learn more about other coworkers, departments, CI sectors and even stakeholders, could we figure out ways to optimize these sectors rather than impede them? Could we inspire other countries? Could we win the AI race?