I caught up with my old friend, Mike Crawford while preparing a talk on research strategy. After a 30+ year career in academia, including 26+ years as a professor at U Texas at Austin, Mike joined a technology start-up as CTO in Idaho in 2004 and subsequently spent nine years at Siemens as a Fellow Engineer, before […]
5 Tips on How to Enhance Your Research Career Read More »
Meetings are the bedrock of getting things done in organizations, or at least they could be. Despite all the practice we get, most people complain about meeting quality. Don’t expect them to improve on their own. Eric Barker’s Barking up the Wrong Tree blog has pulled together useful meeting resources in an article 5 ways to
7 Ways to Improve Your Meetings Read More »
Imagine that a professor were to beam in from a late 19th century laboratory. Once he had recovered from the shock of the trip itself and the variety of new machines and instruments surrounding him, he would begin to smile and nod in recognition about the familiarity of his current surroundings. Once he strayed outside the
The More the World Changes, the More Research Stays the Same Read More »
I recently asked a group of research leaders how they would respond, when one of their people was trying to insist that a picture from a result was showing something that wasn’t in the data. The answers were varied. A few focused on the person’s need to please, a few talked about the person forgetting
Observe First, Judge Later Read More »
Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund organized their first lab management course in 2002. After the 2005 edition, they issued the book Making the Right Moves (which you can download by following the link). Thomas R. Cech, then president of HHMI gave the keynote to the 2002 course. He shared the lessons he had learned
Why You Should Eat Your Cake Later Read More »
Time management is a topic that will always be with us. In a recent leadership workshop, one of the participants, a professor of physics, asked me about it. I thought that the wise words of Lewis Carroll, the pseudonym of Oxford mathematician Charles Dodgson, on time management might appeal to him. They did. They illustrate the
Time Management: Why it is Futile Read More »
Well selected, a team’s values improve cohesion and productivity. They guide our behaviour, so we know what to expect from each other. Poorly selected, a team’s value cultivate cynicism because they are divorced from daily work, and make the leader look inauthentic. And in too many teams they are poorly selected. To avoid this, select
The Importance of Clear Values Read More »
Are values recognisable? Fortunately, yes. One helpful resource for making values visible is Ed Schein’s book “The Corporate Culture Survival Guide”. Using it as a starting point, here are a few simple ways you can unearth an organisation’s or a team’s (or your own) values. The first is to analyse common sayings and phrases within
Values That Forge A Bond Read More »
Avoid the discrepancies in lived values in your team that lead to decreased cohesion and productivity. A recurring theme in our workshops is the increasing importance participants give to values in their teams and organisations. In Freedom to Learn, Carl Rogers defines them thus: “(Values are) the tendency of any living beings to show preference,
The Advantage of Values for Your Team Read More »
As the year draws to a close, I hope you’re looking forward to a break and also some time around children, who seem to imbue this season with its own magic.In Germany, the 12 days of Christmas coincide with the Rauhnächte, a time traditionally for driving out spirits and engaging in prophecy. While I’m not suggesting you
My Rauhnächte Reflections Read More »
