Research Leaders & Strategic Focus

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Catalyzing Research

9 min readAug 6, 2020

Presented below is the first of two excerpts from chapter 3 of my book, Catalyzing Research: Research Leaders and the Complex Faculty/Administration Interface. (A previous article in Medium’s Catalyzing Research publication presented an adapted excerpt from the introductory chapter of the book.)

Research Leaders

Research leaders play valuable roles at many levels within research organizations. At a research organization’s highest level — for example, the level of a university president’s cabinet or hospital’s C-suite — the title of chief research officer is sometimes used as a placeholder for an array of possible titles, including, although rarely, the title chief research officer itself.

Within universities, observed titles for the most senior-level research leaders include:

Vice president for research
Vice chancellor for research
Vice provost for research
Dean for research
Vice president (or chancellor) for research and X, where X = economic development, innovation, technology transfer, creative activities, or a combination of these or similar terms

According to a recent paper, based on a survey of university-level research leaders, 70% reported to the president and 27% reported to the provost or vice president for academic affairs.¹

At the college or school level within universities, observed research leader titles include:

Associate dean for research
Vice dean for research
Associate (or vice) dean for Y, where Y = basic sciences, clinical sciences, research strategy, or a similar term or phrase

Across hospitals, health systems, and independent research institutes, there are additional variations in research leader titles.

Roles and Responsibilities

Operating a research enterprise — whether small or large — requires a multitude of functions, roles, and responsibilities. Some of these roles and responsibilities are more naturally attuned to faculty, and some are more naturally attuned to administrators. For example, faculty often assume important roles related to research and its conduct, management, and strategic direction with the research organization. These may include:

Building and directing individual research programs
Entering into and nurturing research collaborations with partners at their own institution and from other research organizations
Managing faculty affairs, including faculty promotion and tenure activities
Working to improve faculty research incentives and combat real and perceived faculty research barriers
Interacting, to some degree, with external research funders such as federal program officers
Mentoring graduate and undergraduate students and trainees such as postdocs and research fellows

At the same time, administrators — some located centrally and others distributed throughout units of the research organization — often assume important but complementary roles related to operation of the research enterprise. These may include:

Providing research administration services across pre-award and post-award domains
Working to ensure institutional compliance related to the organization’s research activities, including fiscal and non-fiscal compliance
Supporting fundamental infrastructure components necessary for conducting research, including laboratory and office space and information technology capabilities
Monitoring and ensuring research safety across the research organization, including biosafety, hazardous waste removal, and radiation safety
Staffing technology transfer or commercialization offices and providing a means by which discoveries and other forms of intellectual property developed by the research organization’s faculty and other stakeholders can be protected and ultimately transferred to the market

But the lines between faculty roles and administration roles are not always crystal clear. For example, both faculty and administrators have vital roles to play in research organizations’ efforts related to technology commercialization and new ventures. Still, faculty and administrators often settle into accepted, largely non-intersecting roles related to the organization’s research enterprise.

The importance of research leadership has grown over the past several decades, driven by factors including the increased complexity of managing research organizations and the intense competition for external research funding and for recruitment and retention of the most talented faculty and other researchers. At the same time, additional roles and responsibilities have been assigned to, and assumed by, research leaders at the institutional and other levels in research organizations.

There are some roles and responsibilities that research leaders are uniquely skilled and positioned to successfully accomplish that differ from the things for which faculty and other members of the administration are particularly well-suited. Examples of research leader roles and responsibilities that fit these criteria often include:

Developing and leading the implementation of a research strategy, or research strategic plan, for the institution
Leading strategic externally facing interactions, including promoting the overall research enterprise to federal agencies, foundations, industry, and other current and potential supporters
Engaging in strategic internally facing interactions, including working with faculty and other leaders at the research organization on important faculty affairs such as recruitment, start-up, and retention
Overseeing the management and operation of the institution’s overall research enterprise — a role that necessitates effective delegation to key administrators who can handle many of the day-to-day activities

Among these roles and responsibilities of research leaders, perhaps the most important in helping faculty and other researchers to be successful relates to research strategy. Research strategies can range from formal, written strategic plans to less formal, but still well-considered and well-communicated, strategic guideposts for the research organization. Research leaders almost invariably are involved in the development of research strategies, working with faculty and other stakeholders, and research leaders are instrumental in the implementation of an institution’s research strategy.

Much of the value of an organization’s research strategy is derived from the selection of areas on which the organization is going to focus efforts and resources — and conversely, and very importantly, areas on which the organization is not going to focus. While a research strategy is not intended to stifle faculty or other researcher creativity and exploration of their particular areas of expertise and interest, a strategy must be selective — in general and in the case of research strategies at universities, independent research institutes, hospitals, and other organizations.

With a small number of core roles identified as particularly attuned to research leaders, a key question for research organizations and research leaders is:

What additional roles and responsibilities can, and should, be given to research leaders?

To answer this question most effectively, the following companion question should also be asked:

What roles are best attuned to the unique capabilities of research leaders and their roles within research organizations?

The possibilities are numerous, and the risk of overloading research leaders — especially the most capable and demonstrated research leaders — are real. As presented in this book’s Introduction, the time and energy pressures on research leaders can be intense and sometimes debilitating, highlighting even more the importance of research leaders carefully taking on roles.

As this book contends — and as the section “A Path to Differentiation” below addresses in more detail — by looking to research enterprise areas positioned at the complex faculty/administration interface, research leaders can locate vitally important roles for themselves that can differentiate their ability to catalyze research throughout their institutions.

The following passage from K.K. Droegemeier et al. serves to summarize some of this exploration into research leader roles and transition to the next section:¹

There is a substantial need to better document the necessary responsibilities, skills, and knowledge of the CRO [chief research officer] position, and the variety of ways in which the role is enacted, in order to maximize the effectiveness of the position itself, assist those interested in obtaining the position in the future, and help university leaders and administrators responsible for hiring CROs choose candidates most likely to be effective in the role.

Aspiring Research Leaders

Institutions’ most senior research leaders are typically supported — to greater or lesser degrees — by a number of other individuals and advisory structures within research organizations. These individuals and advisory structures serve to extend the research leader’s capability, reach, and capacity to successfully catalyze faculty-led research. They include:

Senior research office staff and deputies to the research leader — for example, in the case of a vice president for research, there may be many associate or assistant vice presidents for research that head up important sets of activities
Research advisory committees, composed of selected key faculty and other research enterprise stakeholders
Other advisory structures at the institution; for example, a committee formed from the associate deans for research from each of a university’s colleges and schools

Very often, the next round of institutional research leaders — and aspiring research leaders, generally — participate in these types of positions or structures. Aspiring research leaders are well-positioned to professionally benefit from learning as much as they can about the structures, functions, and dynamics of research organizations and the strategic management of research enterprises within these organizations.

K.K. Droegemeier et al. write in the Journal of Research Administration that:¹

[T]he means by which individuals acquire necessary skills and experiences to excel in the [chief research officer] role are not clearly identified, nor is the process by which an institution might best ensure a strong and diverse pool of candidates to fill the role in the future.

Aspiring research leaders can begin to differentiate themselves by:

Becoming more knowledgeable about the focus areas highlighted in this book, because these areas are important to today’s and tomorrow’s research enterprises
Developing an eagerness to engage in, and dedicate time and energy to, these areas, recognizing the related risks and rewards that these areas can have for research organizations

In doing so, they will be better positioned to ascend to future research leadership positions and strongly contribute to research leadership and catalysis.

A Path to Differentiation

As stated above, research leaders face significant constraints on their attention, time, and energy stemming from the multiple responsibilities they face. As an example, according to a survey of university chief research officers, each of the more than a dozen responsibilities listed below were responsibilities of the majority of respondents:¹

Economic/technology development
Export controls
External funding
Federal relations
IACUC (Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee)
IRB (Institutional Review Board)
Patenting/licensing
Private industry relations
Research center/campus
Research communications
Research development
Sponsored programs, post-award services
Sponsored programs, pre-award services

In addition to time and energy constraints, research leaders face constraints related to the institutional resources available to them for investment in continuing to support and strengthen their organizations’ research enterprises.

The amounts and shares that research organizations themselves are being required to invest in their research enterprises is increasing. Contributing factors include the inability of federal and other external funding sources to keep up with the rate of inflation and the inability of recovered indirect costs on external research grants and contracts to cover the base operating costs of research enterprises. Furthermore, many institutional sources that might be tapped for internal research enterprise investment are being squeezed, including state funding to public institutions, annual distributions from organizations’ endowments, and a share of the clinical revenues from research-active healthcare organizations that have historically been used for investment in research.

For research leaders, learning to focus on the most important roles among their many disparate responsibilities and being able to differentiate themselves within this complex environment is a central challenge and opportunity.

As a result of both their many, disparate responsibilities and the limited institutional resources at their disposal for research enterprise investment, research leaders may struggle to strategically prioritize the most important responsibilities for their focus, as this book’s Introduction suggested.

In my experiences working alongside research leaders at over 50 wide-ranging research organizations, I have observed that many struggle to keep up with daily demands and strategically ascertain the direction in which their organizations’ research enterprises should be heading.

Research leaders have a key charge: leading activities that serve to accelerate the research efforts of faculty and other researchers at their institutions — or catalyzing research. For research leaders, learning to focus on the most important roles among their many disparate responsibilities and being able to differentiate themselves within this complex environment is a central challenge and opportunity.

What is missing is a guide and rubric to help research leaders accomplish this focus and differentiation. My impetus for writing this book was just that: to share some of my experiences and thinking around how research leaders who are looking to chart a path, differentiate themselves, and lead major advances in their organizations’ research enterprises should focus an increasing share of their time and energy.

References

Droegemeier KK, Snyder LA, Knoedler A, et al. The roles of chief research officers at American research universities: a current profile and challenges for the future. Journal of Research Administration. 2017; XLVIII(1):26–64.

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.