It has been barely a week since I began serving as your Chief, and I’m already amazed and impressed with your dedication and the value of the service you provide to people and communities. As your Chief, I’ll ask you to think about your work processes and the ways you can evolve and improve that service because in my experience the best ideas about how to do our work better come directly from employees.  

I will also look for ways to improve and evolve the way I and the Executive Leadership Team deliver service to you. One way we will evolve is how we communicate with you. Based on the volume of questions you provided in anticipation of last week’s rescheduled All Employee Call, I realize quarterly calls are insufficient to meet the information needs across our agency. I also realize that the sheer pace of activity in Washington, D.C., and across the country, make Zoom calls impractical. They are also disruptive to those of you who change your busy schedules to attend, only to have them cancelled at the last minute due to the hectic nature of my schedule. Additionally, many of you are not able to attend the calls due to your busy schedules and the nature of your work.

For these reasons, I am evolving how I and the Executive Leadership team will communicate with you. It is clear to me that more frequent communication is necessary in a format accessible to all. Therefore, I am excited to announce a new video series called “Inside the Forest Service: Chat with the Chief” where I will have conversations with employees from the field about the issues important to you all. They will begin tomorrow in place of Chief’s Calls held over Zoom. I will share them monthly in Inside the Forest Service.  

One of the key elements of this new format will be field input and presence. Each month I will have a conversation with a different employee based on questions you submit beforehand. Please watch episode 1 tomorrow with one of our district rangers in the northeast. I hope you are as excited as I am with this new format and see the same value in it as I do.  

Going forward, I will also be visiting with you in the field. I understand that our work happens where you all are, and my staff and I are prioritizing building a schedule to visit each area of the Forest Service and be with you on the ground as much as possible. 

Editor's Note: Provide feedback about this column or suggest topics for future columns by emailing FS-Employee Feedback.