National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Talented personnel but risk of layoffs and poor management. Funding is reliant on Congressional whims, and with current administration's aversion to anything renewable, sustainable, or strategic, the risk of layoffs is very high. Leadership team is mostly senior researchers who have peaked but still want to do research and are not effective "business" managers. Communication from LT to staff is pretty much one-way and not always transparent. Typical bottlenecks in getting LT attention. LT expresses interest in operating more efficiently but does not devote real resources to supporting that objective. Silos between business management systems persist. Risk management model is immature (projects, systems, institutional) and most decisions seem to be made based on intuition rather than data. Some progress on diversity representation in management but it's been very slow.

Management is present and open to upward mobility

The lab is facing some macroeconomic headwinds that have stymied some current initiatives and caused headcount reduction, but remains strong and is pivoting toward exciting new research

Job security when a new administration is elected.