Nasa nominee Isaacman's meeting manifesto: 1 hour cap, no multitasking

Tucked inside of a 62-page manifesto written by President Trump's pick to run space agency is a plan to crack down on the agency's bureaucracy by imposing stringent restrictions on employee meetings

By Sana Pashankar

 

Billionaire Jared Isaacman has a message for Nasa staffers: Say goodbye to long meetings.

.

Tucked inside of a 62-page manifesto written by President Donald Trump’s pick to run the space agency is a plan to crack down on the agency’s bureaucracy by imposing stringent restrictions on employee meetings, a vision that mirrors ally Elon Musk’s efforts to streamline the government earlier this year. 

 

Among the rules: Don’t multitask. Nix meetings with more than 10 people and seek permission directly from Isaacman to hold a confab with more than 20 attendees. Get rid of recurring meetings whenever possible and replace them with email updates. Limit meetings to 1 hour or less and schedule them in 15-minute increments. 

 

Once in a meeting, he says, “depart when your input is complete,” even if the meeting is still going on, according to the document, which was viewed by Bloomberg News. 

 

Trump named Isaacman as his nominee again on Tuesday after a tumultuous consideration process that lasted months. Isaacman crafted the 62-page vision — named Project Athena — while he was first being considered to head the space agency earlier this year. 

 

Trump withdrew that first nomination in June amid a public spat between Musk and the president.

 

The rules also highlight a long-standing pain point pervading companies and other organizations around meeting overload, which increased during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

 

Employees spend roughly 18 hours a week on average in meetings, and they only decline 14 per cent of invites even though they’d prefer to back out of 31 per cent of them, according to a 2022 survey from University of North Carolina at Charlotte professor Steven Rogelberg.

 

Reluctantly going to noncritical meetings wastes about $25,000 per employee annually, and projects out to $101 million a year for any organisation with more than 5,000 employees, Rogelberg estimates. 

 

For Isaacman, the unusually specific meetings requirements and workforce changes reflect a desire to “liberate the agency from needless inefficiencies” and “foster a culture of urgent execution,” according to the plan. 

 

This draft plan could be refined after post-confirmation diligence and Nasa input and “shall not be implemented without consent and approval of President Trump,” the memo said.

 

Isaacman, the founder and executive chairman of Shift4 Payments Inc., has bankrolled and flown on private missions with SpaceX and has ties to Musk, the company’s chief executive officer. 

 

Nasa and the White House didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Isaacman didn’t comment beyond a Nov. 4 post on social media platform X.

 

“Parts of it are now dated, and it was always intended to be a living document refined through data gathering post-confirmation,” he wrote.

 

The document also calls for suspending most boards, committees and all second-in-command roles. The one exception is the Deputy Administrator, a politically appointed position. 

 

To review employees, Isaacman lays out a performance scale of 1 to 5, in which no more than 5 per cent of employees can receive the top score of a 5 or the lowest score of a 1.

 

He also outlines a plan to maintain a hiring freeze. 

 

Elements of the memo were earlier reported by Ars Technica.

 

Nasa lost nearly 4,000 employees through the government’s deferred resignation program earlier in the year, employee losses that some critics say has caused the agency to lose some of its best talent.