Who’s In Charge Here?

(Thanks to: Ferris Bueller's Econ teacher, Stimpy, Dancing With The Stars' non-celeb participants, Hubble, Woody and Buzz, Gen. William Odom, Janet Petro, Jared Issacson, Frodo Baggins, US Senate)

Note here that my plan is certainly not to post things every day, but instead at most once or twice each week with a “regular” post by about noon each Friday. But as I am still learning the platform, I am getting in some practice!

Hubble Still Hubble-ing

On a light note (get it, light, ….. you know, like visible light? …. anyone … anyone? sigh.), Hubble found another cool thing — a large galaxy that had been impacted, pretty much through its center by yet another galaxy, a “Blue Dwarf Galaxy” no less! A blue dwarf galaxy is a “small faint low-luminosity cluster galaxy” (so, it is tiny and dim like, say, Stimpy but is made up of young, very hot stars like, say, the unknown partners of the washed up folks on Dancing With The Stars). Anyway, the point is that this impact really hit the middle, the bullseye so to speak, of the big galaxy and left it looking amazingly beautiful (like everything else Hubble sees). And although I am certain you now have a perfect image of the recent discovery and can explain it with perfect scientific accuracy, here’s an article about it just in case.

Who’s In Charge Here?

“I fear the unknown.” That sentiment pretty much characterizes you as human. It isn’t wrong to have that feeling, but I offer that stopping there is maybe not the best path. Of course, during times of significant change, it feels like there is nothing that CAN be known. “Everything” is not only uncertain but changing and changing fast. To make it worse, rumors descend like rain. So, what can you do?

But that isn’t a rhetorical question. It deserves at least an attempt at an answer. An answer I am offering here is: do what we can to make some of the unknown a little more familiar, maybe even (kinda sorta) known, and I suggest starting at the top.

When you are part of an organization, a great place to start during a time of change is to take a moment to understand who is in charge. The basic version of that is at least knowing the person’s name, but you can do more than that, and you should. As an aside, on military bases (I spent a few years on one early in my career), you had to know not only the name but also the face. Some made no big deal of it, but for others it was a case of “woe to the lowly employee who didn’t recognize the base commander and yield the door, the elevator, or the place in line.” (General Odom, are you out there?) So, learn more than that. Learn a bit about the person — after all wouldn’t you want the same?

You aren’t trying to psychoanalyze the person, not trying to compare them to some ideal or standard (your own, past experience, their predecessor, etc). Instead, your first goal here is to understand that somewhere above you will be a person, a human being. The person will have perspectives and opinions and strengths and weaknesses. And while some of that might be “opportunities”, the first real goal is in stepping down from the notion of “Oh no…I am about to be led / impacted by some faceless, nameless system” and into “OK. There will be a new person in charge of things, and this is what that person is probably like and maybe even what they are bringing to the table.” It feels like a tiny wavering thing in the face of chaos, but trust me, it isn’t. Taking a moment to do helps take an unknown off the table, and that is a powerful thing.

So, for my old agency, NASA, there are two names to learn now. The first is Janet Petro, the Acting Administrator who will be in place until the President’s nominee is confirmed by the Senate (still not scheduled so far as I can tell). After approval (absent anything totally unexpected by anyone at all close to such matters), Jared Issacman will become the next NASA administrator. For those of you who are not at NASA, this same exercise is one you can do as well, and you should. The important thing is the attitude you do it with. You are not looking for something to take sides about; you are looking to learn about a new person. Full stop.

Rather than go on and on about either of these folks myself, what I’d like you to do is to use these two articles to introduce yourself to them, since that is the point. Both articles confine themselves to factual stuff, so that is good. You can go further, of course. It is not hard to find videos of each of them giving speeches and videos are even more “personalizing” than articles, but at least take a moment for this. If you do, remember: you don’t do this with a red pen in hand so you can underline what you don’t like. You do this to learn what is known.

Here’s the article about Jared, and here is the article about Janet.

For the policy wonks among you (Bless you, for you are few, the task is heavy, and the way is unclear) you can take an extra step and read the Senate-proposed (but not passed) NASA Authorization Bill of 2024. This is your best insight into what the Senate was thinking when it was thinking about NASA most recently (so it will surely change … but still). Layer that over the fact that the Administrator is an actual person with actual thoughts and opinions whose job is to implement the goals of the President while abiding by the letter of to-be-enacted law, and you start to see what “fog of leadership” really means.

But now, there is less that is unknown, your current and future leaders have become more real, and you are more informed than you were before.

Stay sane. I promise you can.