May 28, 2010 Vol. 3, Issue 5

Retired NASA veteran Gus Guastaferro shared lessons learned during his career at the Academy’s second Principal Investigators Forum.

Over his forty-year career, Angelo (Gus) Guastaferro served as a vice president for Lockheed Martin, deputy director of the NASA Ames Research Center, and deputy project manager on the Viking mission to Mars.

1. Never lose your capacity for enthusiasm; never lose your capacity for indignation.
2. Never judge or classify people too quickly, first assume that he or she is good.
3. Never be impressed with wealth or thrown by poverty.
4. If you cannot be generous when it is hard to be, you will not be when it is easy.
5. The greatest builder of confidence is the ability to do something—almost anything—well.
6. When that confidence comes, strive for humility. You are not as good as you think.
7. The way to become truly useful is to seek the best that other brains have to offer. Use them to supplement your own and be prepared to give credit to them when they have helped.
8. The greatest tragedies and personal events stem from misunderstanding.

Guastaferro’s final lesson was simple: Communicate.

Read Gus Guastaferro’s ASK Magazine article “A Lengthy Career’s Lessons on Risk.”