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August 16, 2006

Michael Griffin on leadership

On his role in the decision: "Advisers advise. The administrator, whoever he is in whatever era, has the obligation to decide. That's what I do. We get a lot of advice internally from NASA to the program. The program and the mission director . . . have to at some level decide and . . . if the issue gets big enough, it comes up to me. (Other NASA officials) have the right, have the obligation and have the utter necessity to tell us exactly what they think. But all of that is advice.

"No one else except for the administrator is the administrator. And, fortunately or unfortunately, in this particular time, that is me. I am not trying to persuade people. I am trying to listen as carefully as I can to everything that is being said to me. I try to integrate it all as best I can. I make a decision and then I explain to people what the rationale for that decision was because if I have any holes or flaws in my logic, I want to hear about them."

On dissent: "Some of the senior NASA individuals responsible for particular technical areas, particular disciplines, expressed that they would rather stand down until we had fixed the ice-frost ramps with something better, whereas many others said, 'No, we should go ahead.'

"So we did not have unanimity. Therefore, a decision had to be made. Now, one possible way of making decisions is that unless everybody feels that we should go, then we will stand down. In which case, I don't think for shuttle flights or any other flights, we don't need an administrator. We don't actually make decisions. We just make sure that no one is unhappy. That's not the method that were using."

SPACE.com -- NASA Chief Michael Griffin's STS-121 Flight Rationale Explained

Posted by thdyck on August 16, 2006

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