Early in my career, at NASA, I became a manager of organizations that consisted of scientists and computational specialists. Among my friends, management was looked down upon; it was not “science.” I had not aspired to management, but there I was.

Organizations, such as departments or branches, need managers, –  chairs and heads. Among scientists, the purpose of these managers is often viewed as, primarily, administrative.  There is an overhead of accountability, performance evaluations, and planning, and someone needs to do that for the sake of the organization. It becomes part of “service” in the career portfolio.

There are, also, in chairs and heads some intangibles, for example, a history of quality research and knowing the important problems to work on. This helps to establish the culture of the organization. However, it is unusual for such a manager to be expected to pull together an organization of scientists to work on common problems and products.

My recruitment into management was not to be an administrator.  I was being asked to take on something more strategic.

The problem, succinctly, was that interdisciplinary, organized scientific activities were becoming a NASA priority.  Though there were individuals and small groups doing research in relevant broad subject areas, the efforts were fragmented. Taken as a whole, they were incomplete. Minimally, more communication and coordination were needed; however, there was a general feeling that there needed to be an organization, which worked collectively on goals and products that addressed Agency and National priorities.

This feeling was bolstered by National Academy of Sciences’ reports that motivated the aspiration of more coordinated scientific organizations in the U.S. A basic question was whether an organization could be more than its individual parts.

I had had some success in a large simulation effort to combine atmospheric chemistry and global circulation models. That success followed from an intuitive systems perspective. I was naturally motivated by how the system, as a whole, fit together, as opposed to being motivated by focused curiosity on some particular part of the system. I analyzed the different parts of the system and then focused on lagging parts of the system.  I became a generalist, or perhaps, interdisciplinary.

In addition to a simple-minded effort to manage and balance resources, I took a broader look at how the organization needed to function, holistically, to achieve its goals. It was apparent that individual’s activities needed to be more than “coordinated” to provide what was being expected by funders. There were product-interested “customers” who wanted concrete data and knowledge for their research and applications.

From this early success, I was asked to define an effort in data assimilation.  At the start, there were a number of organizational issues to be addressed.

  1. There was a desire, by NASA,  to start a large, new effort, in this case, focused on data assimilation.
  2. There were external reports that motivated the new effort as being of strategic importance not only to NASA, but to the Nation’s scientific enterprise.
  3. There was an expectation of specific outcomes, products, for example,
    1. Proving the usefulness of NASA observations to contribute to National priorities such as weather forecasting
    2. Improving the usability of NASA observations so that they were being used by other Agencies that have operational missions
    3. Providing data sets that were usable by other researchers
    4. Advancing scientific excellence in the field of data assimilation
  4. There was existing capacity, which was deemed insufficient in some fundamental ways.
  5. The insufficiencies were such that the Agency managers did not have confidence in investing to grow the existing capacity.
  6. There was the intuition that structural changes were required to both motivate and justify additional investment by the Agency.

Subsequently, the Data Assimilation Office was formed, and I was its initial leader. There were formidable organizational challenges, as well as major scientific and technical challenges.

My decision to take on this problem turned out to be one of the most defining decisions of my career. Because of perceived success, I was asked to lead or advise on other efforts with similar initial challenges. The challenges, described above, are ubiquitous and persistent in the U.S. science culture.

The purpose of these blogs is to organize and expose my experiences in changing organizations. The goal is to provide insights from my experiences that might inform others who decide to take on similar problems of organizational change.