The effects of air pollution will be felt by lots and lots of people around this country and ultimately around the globe. Now its in their interest to continue to be able to pollute because they can make shortterm profits and everyone else will bear the costs. Think about it. They are able to amass the lobbyist to go to washington, to influence the lawmakers, influence the regulators to do everything they can to maintain their opportunities to foul the air and poison the water. In order to promote shortterm profits. Everyone else who has to pay the price on matt doesnt have that same kind of organized ability to make their voices heard in the same way with lobbyists and lawyers in washington. And so for me this is just one more example of how we have inequality, how we have a rigged system where a handful are able to reap the benefits and the cost of everyone else. I think that Climate Change like economic inequality are both symptoms of the same problem. On this Holiday Weekend on booktv on cspan2 here are some of the programs to look for. Booktv sat down with Martha Johnson to discuss her experiences as a minister at her of the General Services. In the aftermath of her leaving the wake of the gsa las vegas conference scandal. This is about half an hour. Host joining us now on booktv on cspan2 is Martha Johnson. Martha johnson in the past would have you done for a living . Guest have done a lot of different things. Twothirds of my career has been the corporate world. Ive been in business large and small, automotive, architecture, consulting and about a third of my career has been the public sector, public service. I worked all eight years for president clinton in that administration and i had a couple of years serving president obama. So its been a little bit of everything and it has given me i think a real understanding of large and small organizations and their cultures and their effectiveness and performance. Host what was your last job for the federal government . Guest my last job with the federal government was administrator of the General Services administration which is a massive infrastructure Mount Organization about 90 billion and scope and size and we handled real estate, i. T. , travel, charge cards, supplies for the government across the whole government. Executive, judiciary, legislative branches as well as state and local relief work, tribal. So it is the epicenter of what government performances about. It was the best job in the world. [applause] in a sense its kind of the back office . Guest it is. We serve the government and our goal was to help government perform better. We are enabling that in a number of ways innovation as well as products and services. As to when to delete the gsa . Guest i left the gsa two years ago when i resign. I resigned in the face of an Inspector General report which is about the conference in las vegas which is what everyone remembers. It was a conference that has some various indiscretions and some poorly executed contracts and excessive travel and became a flashpoint and i think it was a political flashpoint and in the wake of that report i resign. Host it was in an electionyear . Guest it was very much at the beginning of an Election Year and one of the management candidates was a manager person as well. The storyline at that time was to be sure the president understood the government and i was managing one of the largest organizations around government performance. Host Martha Johnson when you say you resigned do you mean you are signed . Guest i lost the support of the white house and i chose to resign. There was a number of meetings that i had with the white house in which they were trying to understand what happened and what the scale and scope of that was. As we continue to have those discussions i got to the point where it was obvious that the white house had withdrawn its support. You know you dont have to be a Rocket Scientist to know when your boss has withdrawn his support. You pretty much figured out and i offer to resign. Host your new book i want to show on the air, on my watch leadership, innovation and personal resilience. It kind of detail the lost day in office at the gsa. What was the last day like for you . Guest the last day was personally very sad day. I was in mourning but for most of the day i could show that because my resignation was very sudden in the afternoon and i was concluding things in signing some letters and orders but when i resigned in front of the senior staff became very suddenly and i simply said to them that i had chosen to resign and i sent a letter to the president and i left the room. I turned the meeting over to my chief of staff and went downstairs and got in my car and drove him. When i got home my email was welling up with all sorts of people extending themselves to mean a wonderful way. It was quite a day of both lost in the sudden network of support. It was a story i wanted to tell about how in the buzz saw of washington politics theres a human story behind that and its a terrific story, a career story comment personal story of Lessons Learned and the brazilians. Host what would you have done differently with regard to that gsa compress . First of all did you know anything about it . Did you know what was happening . Guest what was planned for at least a year before i came into office so that was one piece of the data. We knew what that because my deputy had requested an investigation of that because she had heard a story in the bathroom you know of someone saying something about the conference this year and she said we need to find out more. That investigation went for 15 months. We were aware of that because we had requested the investigation and we were waiting for it to come forward so that we could decide how to respond. And i think thats a little bit of the dilemma, the due process of an investigation. You need to wait until its done. You dont act precipitously so there were those kinds of due processes and issues so finally when it came out, and youd know i knew pieces of it and i knew something about it but the formal report was delivered a month before i resign. Host did you in a month do anything with that report . Guest owco yes, owco yes. We were running through firstround review the materials. An Inspector General can come in and say a bunch of things and its important for us to validate and understand those things. So i had a war room set up instigating disciplinary action but the government is about due process and those things dont happen my death. Part of a think what happened was the stormclouds of politics were insisting on more action and calling for a head to roll even as the process was unfolding. That was the political buzz saw once the media got ahold of it and congress. Host was the head of gsa do you agree with the fact that you should have resigned . Guest that is one of those questions that will haunt me forever. I did say in front of congress that i will mourn for the rest of my life the loss of his job. It was a fabulous opportunity and we were doing wonderful things and importantly i did not resign because of all the innovative work we were doing. It was not because we were taking risks and trying new ways of helping the government perform better. It was another issue that brought this to the front. In part i want to say you should not sitcom to risk, the risk of innovation is important to do. Its not something leader should be afraid of far worried about. They need to take calculated risks and move. We were doing that and that is not why i resigned. I believe the white house and its various calculus which i wasnt particularly privy to felt who knows what all that was about after all the heydays but they simply did not want to continue their support. That was something that i heard loud and clear. Host how did you hear that . Guest was in a meeting with jack lew the chief of staff in the last of the series of meetings that he basically was expressing the president s concern and the real concern that if the government is going to be operating well for people that set the rules need to set a platinum standard. It was since i doubt that i could hear what was being basically requested. Host did you ever made from the president are here from the present throughout this process . Guest now no, it did not and it was largely handled by staff. Host do you think thats appropriate . Guest i dont know whats appropriate. You know in many ways part of my story is that im not a political animal. Im an executive management person and i have to say my hats off to the Obama Administration for inviting me to play a serious role in the performance and management of government. Not policy, not program but in how it works and thats where my expertise is and that is where perhaps, that is what i do and the politics and the campaigns and the various issues around who is on first in washington, i was able to avoid that because of the Management Organization but i ran into the buzz saw. Plus good do you think thats kind of the negative not to understand the optics necessarily of the politics . Guest i think i had a very competent staff competent staff that understood the optics and we were all taken for surprise surprise. At about this one that could have been completely foreseen because relative to other scandals in the size of your station and this is something that the process should have taken care of, so that part of it i think was maybe a little overblown. I believed i had i stayed in office we could have done some great things that would have been a huge benefit and we lost that chance. Host Martha Johnson as you have been watching the Eric Shinseki affair play out. He has resign now from his position. What has been your thoughts . Guest a couple of thoughts. The first is that big Eric Shinseki is one of the great public servants. I worked with him a little bit and observed him and he has a very deliberate and quiet style and he is to be respected. I hold him as one of the people that i wanted to emulate in caring for the urbanization of the lead. I will say the management analysis i have on this as i think we have fallen in love with measures so much so that we have forgotten that there were whole systems around those measures that need to come into play. A onedimensional management scheme were in office is going to measure you in a lagging indicator without sufficient resources is not the kind of incentive that works and what the overwhelming pressure to create measures and to memorize everything i think we are signaling to the bureaucracy that is the dimension we want and thats the dimension and its a gotcha dimension. I think there is a lot of serious management systemic structural change that needs to go on to balance out measures in the whole performance of government, the improvement of performance of government effort. I really feel that thats the heart of what this is about, using measures and manipulating measures and holding up one or two measures as somehow the beall and endall of what was going on at the va. I think its very were credible and disproportionate. Host give us a sense Martha Johnson of being in that washington got to media feeding frenzy. It when i was in front of congress. The way i felt it in fact i had a friend, a media person advice before had my congressional hearings and the striking thing to me she said, when you are exchanging, you know, comments with the congressman, do not look that congressman in the eye. Do not. Look at the nameplate. You do not want to engage them personally because this is not personal. This is about them talking to the cameras and theyre doing something for a different stage and you are sitting there and it has to be orchestrated so that you dont get caught in an unnecessary hoopla about this. And there were cameras across the front, you know, clicking every time i blink. So i felt the intensity of it and i appreciated that advice that was, remember, this is more about the system of government. Its not about you personally. And when yo youre in that kindf crowded situation its good to remember that. At the same time when if somebody up on a dais pointing at you and saying mean things about you, looking you in the eye . I tell you, one of the things that i continue to think about and tried to evolve as i was lectured hard by one of the congressmen about the bullying culture in gsa. I was feeling a little bullet at the moment and i think we talk about bullying in of the context and i think we need to put that on the table a little bit more. But, frankly, as they redoing that they were looking at me. They were looking at the camera. Its very disconcerting to be lectured in another direction. You know, being in any kind setting like that is its own unique experience. Something else you talk about in on my watch, that first month after you left gsa. What was it like . Well, it was full of surprises and thats one thing i think people need to know when they crashed into a wall is that the other side of the wall has a lot of surprises, which you can capture very positive energy. My surprises were, you know, i was sitting at home looking at the dust on the furniture and not really sure what my life would be like. But it suddenly, i got to have lunch with my husband. I didnt have to get dressed in a suit everyday. I cant say to myself again, theres a hold live out the. What i want to do . And for me part of what i stepped into was my creative work, and i finished my novel. So that first month was sort of life had changed and i couldnt say no, i want to create something and ive been working on a novel. Ive been writing it on the bus going back and forth to washington. I was able to finish that and publish it. That is the kind of surprised that i think you can introduce into life after crisis like this, just take advantage of. Its not all pain. Its also the energy and the opportunity of something new. Was their depression and . You know, i think theres always bashed that i dont know if those depression as much as morning. They be thats depression. I dont know how to go about it but i still mourn that loss of the job. I always will. It was such an opportunity and i was raised i had an opportunity to change government and we launched a number of things and i just felt as if i hadnt finished my work. So that i will continue to mourn. Its a little bit of sadness but its not what dominates who i am. I have of the ways i can contribute and i believe in work, so im finding other work to do. Were you first on on the nonprofit with some of your former circles in washington when youve resigned . Well, my experience was that i had a rather Large Network i discovered and it broke into three categories but the first was what i call banana bread brigade. They all showed up with banana bread and the wine and the flowers and all the invitations to dinner and some. It was a huge support of loving hug and it was big. And then the second was a group of people who were really angry for me. They were angry at the system, angry about what happened and, of course, how to go until you all about that. I heard that but it allowed me to let go of my own thank you. When you take that on for me, ill send it to you and that gave me a little bit of space, emotional space. The third thing that i recognize was that the was a small group of people who are washingtonian, longstanding, who communicated to me a email or call and they said get a grip, thats washington. This is politics. Everybody knows what this was about. You will be fine. I found that wasnt quite something i could totally understand at the moment, but i completely embraced that now. Im fine. Im fine. The system still has although bit of work to do, you know, personally i felt as if ive emerged this huge lesson and a lot of energy to keep on worki working. Did you have any flashbacks when Jill Abramson was fired as executive editor . Top duo executive leaving, was there any comparison . I certainly watch the high profile stories and its interesting to me that that was such an amazing, that was a store that great a lot of buzz. Everybody wanted to sort of explore that. And the gender conversation about that has been i think significant about style, work style. I have found that those conversations are incredibly important and they do think that theres some real issue about the standards senior women are said to in terms of how they can compare with the guys and all that. Were Getting Better at that but we have a lot of conversation to have. I do say that it does open up a workplace, the New York Times and other media, and then the sort of brought in some of it. They use the word growth. The word gruff. A leader needs to be very careful about style, man or woman because youre the one in power. If youre the one in power and youre using a particular style that is negative, it will roll down the organization and they will stuff it and youll never begin to get back to the. You might learn things but the culture will be one of defensiveness and fear. And i am of the mind that a elitist style is as important culture as anything. So i think about that with her story, with all these others of what style and messages they were sending to the organization. Thats where i again, without the culture of performance of an organization rather than the politics of it. What is your novel about . Thank you for asking. Its not about murder on the potomac, nor is it about its a story about a gay boy in a small midwestern town, Southern Indiana and and its about his coming of age. Theres a parallel story in the korean war, another son of the same community who is also gay and who was murdered in a hate crime. And the one story, both stories have been kept completely under wraps, its a very special book and i really was able to go to a different place to finish writing that. Where did the concept come from . Well, it came from a group of activists that i knew in the 90s who were very concerned about gay ordination in the Presbyterian Church, and they just exposing to a lot of writing and a lot of issues about this, and i ran into a slightly similar story and said thats a novel. I picked it up and ran with it. You are active, orgy, in the Presbyterian Church of . I am. My and. My father is a minister but my grandparents were all clergy so thats part of my story, and to do think that th