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Thoughts on Doctrinal Review
Ed Hollenshead
From theysaid, January 2005
I've received any number of great questions regarding doctrinal
review... what it is and what it means.
Following is a stab at briefly describing the purpose and process
of doctrinal review....
Doctrine is the body of principles that guides an organization in
the accomplishment of its mission; in our case, fire suppression.
The mission (described in enabling legislation for federal wildland
fire agencies) and the moral ethos of the culture combine to form
guiding principles (moral/ethical and operational), the basic tenets
upon which judgment, decision-making, and behaviors depend.
Combined, these principles form doctrine. Doctrine, then, provides
the framework within which policy, tools and techniques, performance
expectations, and measures of success are derived. It looks
something like this...
The purpose of our (FS) doctrinal review is to perform a self
examination. We need to ensure what we think are our guiding
principles are indeed our guiding principles within the environment
we now operate. Current national differences in operational
philosophy (demonstrated by the debate surrounding firefighter
safety and mission accomplishment) lead me to believe we do not have
a common, well understood, foundational doctrine... that we have no
collective agreement as to what it is we are about in the fire
suppression mission. This effort is proposed to get us to that
point.
Once we agree to a foundational doctrine we have a uniform measure
to evaluate the appropriateness of a behavior, a plan, an action, an
outcome, a policy, and all other aspects of the fire suppression
mission.
Ed Hollenshead requests any input.
He's National Fire Operations Safety Program Manager
Staff State & Private Forestry (WO)
Office USDA Forest Service
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