Differentiation as a Research Leader

How can research leaders differentiate their abilities to catalyze research?

Faced with constraints on their time, energy, and resources, research leaders in organizations including research universities, independent research institutes, academic medical centers, and research-active hospitals can improve their abilities to effectively support and accelerate research at their institutions.

Presented below is an adapted excerpt from the introductory chapter of my 2017 book, Catalyzing Research: Research Leaders and the Complex Faculty/Administration Interface.

In upcoming articles (part of Medium’s Catalyzing Research publication), I will be sharing additional, adapted excerpts from this book. Future articles will address research leaders and the four focus areas posited in the book to be particularly relevant to research enterprises and the daily activities of research leaders — areas that operate at the complex, challenging faculty/administration interface: core research facilities, research centers and institutes, research development, and strategic research investments.

Focusing Attention

This morning’s calendar is marked:

8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., Time to Think

As vice president for research, you have set aside three hours in your schedule today to get your head in the game, rise above some of the day-to-day noise and clutter, do some strategic thinking, and clarify your plan (at least in your mind) for leading your organization’s research enterprise.

Now what?

By 11 o’clock, you are back to a busy schedule of meetings, and the rest of the week looks no better. There are a couple of faculty candidates visiting this week, one for a department chair position and one for an endowed professorship that has been vacant for some time. There are a slew of research compliance meetings, research safety meetings, and more.

You feel confident that you have what it takes to be productive and successful in this role, but there is no instruction manual to help you focus your attention, time, and energy and the resources available to you for investment in strengthening the organization’s research enterprise. You know that your role is to help enable the institution’s faculty — and other researchers, students, and research administrators and staff in your office and throughout the organization — to be as productive and successful as they can be. But your time and resources are being stretched in many different directions, and so many areas are demanding your attention.

This book is designed to help you examine the areas on which you focus your attention, time, and energy as a research leader. It strives to make the case that while there are many important areas deserving of — and in some cases, requiring — your attention as a research leader, there are some areas for which invested effort is more likely to lead to research leader success and differentiation.

The Value of Differentiation

I have devoted my career to helping organizations strengthen their research enterprises. Along this journey, I have had the opportunity to partner and work with many — and to observe many more — successful and not-as-successful research leaders. These have included leaders with the titles of vice president for research, chief research officer, associate dean for research, and numerous others, working across research universities, academic medical centers, independent research institutes, and research-active hospitals and health systems.

I have observed research leaders who are overwhelmed by the myriad facets of their jobs — from seemingly endless, mundane operational issues to “pie-in-the-sky” strategic visioning exercises and lots of things in-between. These observations are coupled with my 20 years of experience as a consultant focused on research enterprise strategy and management, during which I have been fortunate to work with some of the nation’s leading research institutions, as well as a number of more emerging research organizations.

[T]here are certain areas within research organizations in which focus and engagement can allow research leaders to significantly differentiate their leadership capabilities and outputs.

Just as the amazing, diverse researchers working throughout the world’s research organizations are driven by deep passions for their research disciplines and subdisciplines, my passion is just as deep — just in a complementary field. Specifically, my drive and passion is to understand the organizational dynamics in action within research organizations and to use this understanding to help institutions, via their leadership and faculty, to be as successful as they can be. Doing this requires recognition that research organizations and the individuals who work in them are operating, in some ways, in a very nurturing and supportive environment but, in other ways, in an extremely and increasingly competitive one — for external and internal resources and other factors.

Recognizing that there is no single solution to helping research leaders focus their time, energy, and resources, my observations and experiences suggest that there are certain areas within research organizations in which focus and engagement can allow research leaders to significantly differentiate their leadership capabilities and outputs.

By differentiating themselves, research leaders will be better positioned to:

• Strongly contribute to research enterprise excellence and growth at their institutions
• Better manage and balance their time and energy
• Focus their investment of institutional resources to better strengthen the research enterprise
• Demonstrate — to both faculty and administrators — their ability to work across their sometimes-divergent environments, styles, and approaches
• Excel along their career trajectories
• Be more competitive for research leader positions at the next level (for example, moving from an associate vice president for research position to a vice president for research position — at their current or another research organization)
• Demonstrate to faculty that they “earn their keep”
• Feel more comfortable and confident with the pathways they have chosen as research leaders

The Clear, Pressing Problem

In short, this book sets out to help research leaders address a clear, pressing problem:

How can research leaders differentiate themselves — in terms of their capabilities and effectiveness in their roles — given the following constraints?

1. Limited leadership attention, time, and energy
2. Limited institutional resources

While trying to boil down the primary goal of research leaders is difficult and risks oversimplification, one pattern is clear:

Research leaders are ultimately charged with catalyzing research within their organizations.

Like catalysts in a chemical reaction, research leaders act as catalysts — leading activities that serve to accelerate the research efforts of faculty and other researchers at their institutions.

Research leaders in today’s research organizations are facing many challenges and being bombarded from multiple sides in a manner that risks diverting attention from key research enterprise focus areas in which they are uniquely positioned to make strong contributions.

There is no shortage of things on which research leaders can focus, but many of these things may be effectively left to faculty or administrators. Doing so would allow research leaders to spend more attention, time, and energy on a subset of important areas that a surprising number of research leaders have been observed to shy away from.

The Solution, in Brief

The solution this book presents to the problem above is based on my experiences as a partner to research leaders and consultant to research organizations. It can be summed up as follows:

Research leaders should seek to better understand — and then focus disproportionate attention and energy on — research enterprise areas that lie at the complex interface between faculty and the administration (even though they may be tempted to shy or stay away from these areas because of their challenges and messiness).

[A] characteristic of the most successful research leaders … is their willingness to fully dive into areas that operate at the complex, challenging faculty/administration interface.

As a corollary to this solution:

By gaining a better understanding of these focus areas and by focusing to differentiate themselves, research leaders must devote less attention and energy to some other areas — that is, areas that are likely effectively handled by talented faculty and administrators at their institutions.

Based on my experiences, a characteristic of the most successful research leaders — compared to others who are still effective but perhaps less successful — is their willingness to fully dive into areas that operate at the complex, challenging faculty/administration interface. I have observed this to hold true among research leaders at the institutional level (for example, vice presidents for research) and at unit levels (for example, associate deans for research), although its effects appear more pronounced at the institutional level.

While I hesitate to oversimplify the situation or to propose any sort of magic bullet solution, based on my compiled observations and some testing, I think that this can serve as a helpful guiding tool or framework for research leaders seeking to manage their stretched and limited energy and to differentiate their capabilities and performance.

To summarize, successful research leaders can differentiate themselves by striving to:

• Better understand the key focus areas that are at the complex faculty/administration interface
• Invest disproportionate resources in these areas, including:

- Their own attention, time, and energy

- Support for highly qualified and motivated lieutenants to head and lead these areas — but with the institution’s research leader remaining intimately engaged and vested in the strategic success of these areas

- Institutional resources available for strategic investment, aimed at strengthening and improving the organization’s research enterprise

How to Use This Guide

This book is organized into two parts. Part One addresses foundational components of the research environment. Chapters address research organizations, research leaders, and the complex faculty/administration interface at which the focus areas targeted in this book operate.

Part Two presents four focus areas posited to be very relevant to research enterprises and the daily activities of research leaders — areas that operate at the complex, challenging faculty/administration interface. Some of these areas have long histories within research organizations and have been within the purview of research leaders for extended periods, while others are newer to the scene.

Presented alphabetically, the focus areas are:

• Core research facilities
• Research centers and institutes
• Research development
• Strategic research investments

For each of these areas, its importance to the research enterprise is described and its position at the complex faculty/administration interface is demonstrated. In addition, I share examples from my experiences that illustrate potential risks of research leader inaction in the area and potential rewards from research leader attention to the area.

The intended audience for this book is primarily individuals serving as research leaders in chief research officer or equivalent positions at research organizations — including, but not limited to, universities, academic medical centers, independent research institutes, and research-active hospitals and health systems. As most of my experiences have been at these types of research organizations in the United States, the content may have more direct relevance in that context, but some areas and concepts can translate internationally.

Additionally, aspiring research leaders can gain a lot from this book. This set of individuals includes research leaders at the institutional level (for example, those who hold titles such as assistant or associate vice chancellor for research), research leaders at unit levels (for example, a vice dean for research at a college or school), and research center or institute directors along with other faculty members interested in moving into future research leadership roles.

By contributing to their higher-order, strategic thinking about research enterprises and the proactive management of research within research organizations — as well as some of the challenges faced by institutional-level research leaders — aspiring research leaders may be able to differentiate their applications and secure future positions as chief research officers.

While I think the research leader and aspiring research leader can benefit from reading this book from beginning to end, in a linear manner, it can also be read out of order. Each chapter can, more or less, stand on its own.

This material is excerpted and adapted from the book, Catalyzing Research: Research Leaders and the Complex Faculty/Administration Interface.

RAND HALEY has devoted his career to helping organizations strengthen their scientific research enterprises. He has partnered with leadership and faculty at a wide range of leading and emerging research institutions and led research strategy and management projects at over 50 organizations.