Notes From NASA Deputy Administrator Garver's Farewell Reception
Keith’s note: A farewell reception was held at NASA Headquarters on Thursday for NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver. In addition to the long list of thank yous to staff and friends, Garver had some parting observations and recollections to share.
Garver said that she had three personal objectives while at NASA: “to try and align NASA with national objectives; to provide value to taxpayers; and to try and be a consistent leader.”
Responding to criticism she said that people had characterized her as just pushing change for the sake of change, being the “commercial crew girl” or “asteroid girl”. She chalked this off as being the outcome of having worked to advance her overall goals.
As for her relationship with Charlie Bolden she said they they had “the best relationship team of any NASA Administrator and Deputy in my history and I’ve seen a lot of them”, that she “learned so much from Bolden”.
Garver reflected back to her efforts before being nominated to be Deputy Administrator – specifically leading the Obama transition team in 2008 following the election. She noted that she and her team had a “rocky start” and that she was “the only member of the entire transition team that had to deal with an agency head (Mike Griffin) who was openly hostile to the team and who had instructed his folks not to share information with us.” Garver noted that Griffin “had a campaign headed by his wife that sought to try to keep him in his position.” She joked that this whole drama ended up giving her more visibility within the senior leadership of the transition team than might otherwise have been the case.
Garver closed with a top ten list of things she had learned as NASA’s Deputy Administrator:
10. Most people love NASA
9. Most people do not like change.
8. NASA really does not do anything all by itself and partners with a variety of organizations and institutions on virtually everything
7. You can’t choose the time you asked to serve. It was not easy to serve at a time when the shuttle was being shut down and large programs were being cancelled.
6. There are only a thousand or so days until the 2016 election.
5. Nothing is more important than our people.
4. Women have come a long way at NASA but they still. have an even longer way to go
3. Not everyone seems to like politics as much as I do.
2. The job of the NASA Deputy Administrator is not to make decisions but rather to try and influence these decisions.
1. NASA is that the part of the human spirit that exists in all of us.
I was fortunate enough to be able to attend Lori’s “reaching escape velocity” party. Charlie, Robert and others were genuinely moved by the role she played in trying to help all the career rocket scientists understand that real taxpayers pay for their adventures. Here’s hoping the Administration names a good replacement soon, and that the Senate doesn’t stand in the way.
With the Washington Post search tool, do a search on “NASA feudal” (those two words, no quotes). An excerpt follows from the Q&A article, below. GRC will announce some internal restructuring soon and ARC has some of their own but it is more likely to be gerrymandering that strengthens those with power within those centers. I suspect Garver had had enough of the struggle with the feudal organization which begins at HQ and resides at each Center. Fiefdoms exist at division, branches or codes and down to group levels. The grabs for money and power get pretty trashy. Sterner refers to Administrator attempts to change the system. Consider how there were managerial “changes” made to address the Challenger disaster. Within the span of a dozen years, the system returned which led to another tragedy (perhaps never left). Right now the struggle within NASA does not immediately risk lives but it does and will lead to lost opportunities and doubling the cost of space exploration with American tax dollars. It is difficulty to lay blame on Garver and Bolden for the ills within NASA. Washington corruption and NASA’s feudal organization has made creating and executing plans very difficult. Both are fine individuals that love NASA. But I would have to admit that NASA needs tougher top leaders to deal with the system below. I think that what the aerospace industry perceives, i.e. this NASA organizational mess, the funding chaos and low salaries of the top two positions, now leads to no one with the needed caliber stepping forward for the job.
Eric Sterner : (Washington Post, Q&A, July 2011)
“NASA as a whole” is kind of an oxymoron. It really does have a feudal organizational structure. Associate Administrators, usually responsible for budgetary management, are kind of like courtiers around the Administrator-king. Center Directors are something like Barons of old. It got so bad at one point that Dan Goldin–administrator in the 90s–felt compelled to launch a “One NASA” campaign. Mike Griffin came up with a management structure to sort all that out, but it’s a constant battle.”
IMHO many at NASA showed poor judgement by rejecting her leadership.
I think you are assuming that her leadership was consistent and/or was done while showing some respect for her colleagues or co-workers. There were times when she effectively ignored what other orgs had to say or was outright dismissive of the efforts of NASA employees who were trying to do their jobs. As someone at the lower level, I was not impressed by her.
Interesting that Garver continues to voice her opinion about the rocket scientist Dr. Griffin; he of course continues to exert negative influence today-in fact I would say that the whole of the NASA human space effort continues to collapse still as a result of Griffin’s detrimental efforts. Of course, not to Garver’s or Bolden’s credit, they failed to turn that detrimental situation around.
Griffin wounded NASA in several ways, both as director and after leaving it. I find it hard to figure out what drives him. Ego? Lobbying? Ideology? It’s certainly not science or idealism. It’s a good thing for him his wife runs a PR shop.
“You can’t choose the time you[‘re] asked to serve..” Yes. To slightly paraphrase (because I don’t remember the exact words of the script) what Gandalf told Frodo in “LOTR [the film],” “We cannot choose the time in which we live; we can only do [the best] we can with the time that we have.”
And she did.