Be a Thinker, Not a Doer

Bill Gabbert

When I was a fire management officer, I had an appointment with the assistant superintendent of Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore to brief him about the prescribed fire we were going to ignite in the park in a few days. But when I walked into Bill Supernaugh's office, I found him looking out the window with his feet up on his desk. He and I got along well, so I felt comfortable smiling and saying, “Oh sorry, I didn't know you were busy. I'll come back later,” and half-turning to walk away.

He pointed to a chair and told me to sit down. In our pre-business banter, he explained that he was thinking, something that he felt was important for a manager in his position, supervising the operations of a large work force and a big chunk of public land. Taking time to think gave him the opportunity to mull over the issues of the day and strategize about the direction the park would take. He said a person in his position was more of a thinker than a doer.

I wanted to slink down into my chair and disappear — what he said made perfect sense, and I was giving him a hard time. I was there to brief him about a project I was going to do, and he was going to take my information and think about it, then either approve it, ask for more information, or give me advice about how to do it differently, if at all.

At 5 a.m. on Aug. 26, 1992, Hurricane Andrew made landfall, clobbering south Florida and national parks including Everglades, Big Cypress and Biscayne Bay. Early the next morning, I was driving through Homestead with other members of an incident management team, trying to navigate on back roads over downed power lines and other debris. The first power line was scary, but then we realized there was no electricity anywhere. Navigation was difficult because all of the road and street signs and many of the usual landmarks were gone. Even someone who was familiar with the area was disoriented.

We were a Type-1 all-hazard incident management team with a mission to rescue park employees and restore the infrastructure. It was a huge job, and after a few days as planning section chief, I felt a little overwhelmed. There was a lot to do and not enough time in the day to get it all done. I confessed my situation to our incident commander, Rick Gale. “Order the personnel you need to get the job done,” he responded. “You are paid to think, not do.”

After that, I made time to think. Occasionally I even put my feet up on a desk.

Until he retired from the day-to-day operations, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates scheduled for himself a twice-yearly Think Week. He would take a helicopter or float plane to his secret lakeside cabin just to think — by himself and barring all outside visitors. He would rarely leave the cabin during the week except for an occasional walk on the beach, having a caretaker slip him two simple meals a day, Diet Coke and Orange Crush.

Think Week was legendary in Microsoft. Gates would pore over about 100 papers written by company executives, researchers, managers and developers who hoped to obtain approval for their new project or for a new direction for the organization. Gates wrote comments on the papers could green light a new technology that millions of people would use, or that could send Microsoft into new markets. He had to be careful what he wrote, after finding that a casual, “Hey, cool, looks good” could result in 20 people being assigned to a project.

Barack Obama appears to understand how important it is to set aside time to think. Here is part of an accidentally captured conversation between Obama and British Conservative Party Leader, David Cameron. Cameron asks Obama if he will be taking any time off for a vacation this summer:

Cameron: Do you have a break at all?

Obama: I have not. I am going to take a week in August. But I agree with you that somebody, somebody who had worked in the White House who — not Clinton himself, but somebody who had been close to the process — said that should we be successful, that actually the most important thing you need to do is to have big chunks of time during the day when all you're doing is thinking. And the biggest mistake that a lot of these folks make is just feeling as if you have to be …

Cameron: These guys just chalk your diary up.

Obama: Right.… In 15 minute increments and …

Cameron: We call it the dentist waiting room. You have to scrap that because you've got to have time.

Yes. You have to have time to think. Those of us in the emergency management business too often see time to think as a luxury we don't have. This is true at times, when split second decisions can have life-long or even life-dependent outcomes. But when initial-attack becomes extended attack, morphing into a long-duration incident, thinking is not a luxury. It is a necessity.

Bill Gabbert is the owner of Sagacity Wildfire Services and the blog Wildfire Today at http://WildfireToday.blogspot.com. He previously served as the executive director of the International Association of Wildland Fire.