I keep hearing a quote lately that goes something like, "When the only tool you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail." It's been attributed both to Mark Twain and to the Buddha, and while I don't think either of these fellows was a watershed specialist, they could have been talking about us in 1995.

If watershed management is to be done well, many and varied specialties must be brought to bear-trans-disciplinary or even omni-disciplinary approaches. Between us we have more than just a hammer. Is this observation obvious?" Yes. Are we good at doing cross-disciplinary science and management? I don't think so. In fact, we're terrible at it- for a variety of reasons.

Recent efforts in watershed analysis are revealing, quite dramatically, just how hard it is to merge specialists to conduct analysis work. What's been done before, under the rubric of "interdisciplinary teams," has usually been nothing more than simultaneous mono-disciplinary work. We have not figured out how to get past the many hurdles and really blend our different talents, skills, and knowledge.

What does it take to make this work? Lots of things, most of them based on combinations of awareness and willingness.

We need to be aware that there is much to be gained by collaborating with people who have very diverse contributions, and be willing to allow the time and space for them. Being aware that most everyone wants to be respected can help our willingness to seek mutual success, instead of pointless but habitual competition.

Because of our specialties and unique points of view, we need to become aware of the conflicts and barriers that will arise, that they are normal, and be willing to work to overcome them. They can be overcome. We should be aware that our specialties have their place, but are not the whole picture or even necessarily the most important part; and be willing to allow others to contribute and broaden the frame, right from the beginning.

We need to be aware that people of various specialties have things they can teach us, and we them, and be willing to teach and learn from each other. The understanding of ecosystems, for example, seems to be mostly in the links and interactions between established disciplines, and they cannot be discovered within the confines of well-established domains of inquiry and knowledge. There so much to find here, yet we've hardly started looking. We can learn to teach, and learn from teaching. There's all sorts of ways to do this, but one must be willing to start. What was that line? I've got a hammer and you've got a bell, and we've got some things to learn, and we'll understand? Maybe.

We need to be aware that this process is often not easy or comfortable, and that we can lose it if we retreat into our comfort zones. We must be willing to march into the cold wet wilderness areas, where we have not mastered all the literature, or the well established "thinking," and be willing to make fools of ourselves in order to enter fresh, unexplored territory. The Buddha might have said that anything that hurts your ego is good for you, even though it feels bad at the time. After all, just consider how little you can build with just a hammer.

Turns out there is not much written on this topic. There's lots of stuff on team dynamics and team building and such, but not about why disciplines have trouble getting anywhere together and how we might transcend these difficulties. The article that starts on page 1 was independently recommended to me by Drs. Leslie Reid, Terry Roelofs, and Andre Lehre. They have been looking into this topic and I expect we'll see some interesting contributions soon. I found this article so valuable I wanted to share it with the WMC. If you know of other works that address this topic, please drop me a note with the references.

You might have noticed that it's been since November that you had a new issue of the Newsletter in your hands. Well, the spirit of volunteerism seems to have been a bit quiescent in our organization this year. The inflow of contributions for the Newsletter has been, shall I say, ephemeral. I'll piece it together, but I need parts, and that's up to you. C'mon folks, you surely have things your colleagues would appreciate you sharing. Think of something right now that you can queue up for an upcoming issue. It's part of teaching each other, sharing with each other. Fortunately we have a lot more than just a hammer in our collective toolbox.

-Ed.