Volume LIV, Number 1
Is it Time to Rethink How We Support Research: Teams, Squads and Mission? – An Opinion
Karin Scarpinato, CEO
Research Ingenuity*
Jeanne Viviani, COO
Research Ingenuity*
Abstract
Research Administration continues to adjust and expand to ever-changing external demands, often in the form of creating new institutional processes for new federal rules and regulations. At the same time, institutions are under tremendous pressure to increase research numbers, metrics, and rankings. In this environment, it is difficult to take a step back and look at HOW we operate rather than just WHAT we do, and few have taken the time to make changes that address our behaviors rather than our rules and regulations. In addition, we can to lose sight of our mission and goals, which arguably are not to be found in metrics and rankings but are rooted in our researchers and the support we provide to them.
We here argue that such review of our core behaviors, the way we do things, and a refocus of the office towards its true mission, is important for sustained long-term success of academic research and its support infrastructure. Here we provide an opinion that focuses on the global trend toward team-based approaches and proposes a shift in how we operate to embrace a non-sequential workflow that focuses on mission and objective.
Keywords: Research operations, team-based approach, core behavior, core values
Introduction
As leaders in research administration, we are in charge of providing quality support to the researchers of our institution, ensuring that our units have the personnel needed to provide these services, often under rather dire budget constraints, and making certain that our staff has the skills and knowledge to do the best job they can. While operations in the individual units, such as sponsored programs and post-award activities might have seen slight changes based on changing external mandates and regulations, HOW we provide services to our “customers”, the researchers, seems to have changed little in the last decades. With the fast-paced world of research administration, we often do not stop to evaluate if how we are approaching tasks is still the best way to operate. In addition, without pause and reflection, it is hard to know what is worth discarding or changing in our behavior and what is holding us back.
Preventing such “pause and reflection” is often our mandate to both respond to changing regulations and, maybe more so, the mandate to most research institutions to chase growing metrics and rankings, and constantly deal with deadlines. While these are important milestones on our way, they are not a goal, though often mistaken as such; arguably, quality and “customer service” should be the goal and mission of the research administration office. How, then, can we integrate all these different pressures and reflect on ways to improve our way of providing services in an environment that, on the research site, focuses increasingly on cross-disciplinary interactions and collaborations?
A Thought Model
Indulge us by considering a different model, at this stage only a “thought model” that is founded in a new way for research administration work to be accomplished effectively and productively in support of our researchers. While the following structure or theoretical framework is not found in the literature, the authors, through decades of experience, have consolidated and refined a model of research administration best practices. Please know that at this stage, this is an invitation to brainstorm with us and reflects an opinion from our decades-long experience. We have organized this process based on our four core principles, symbolized as “STAR”: Strive (identifying existing challenges) – Think (what are we doing or could be done to address these challenges) – Act (suggested solutions) – Read (references and further readings).
STRIVE: Is it time to rethink how we best provide our services to researchers? Has the way we provide our service kept up with the needs of our ever-evolving environment? From the researcher perspective, the “administrative burden” on them is an increasing concern that keeps them (even if only in their perception) from spending more time on the job they were hired to do—conduct research. A survey conducted by the Federal Demonstration Partnership in 2018 demonstrates that, while some of the administrative burden on faculty, measured as “time away from research” indeed did very slightly increase at some institutions (from 42.3% in 2012 to 44.3% in 2018), at others, it did not (Schneider, 2019). Based on these results, the increase in administrative burden for faculty may therefore be a perception that could be addressed via reorganizations and restructuring of services, rather than providing new ones.
In addition, from our perspective, researchers often do not seem to understand or spend the time to understand the workings of the research administration office. However, as already mentioned, faculty researchers are hired to do research. Is it, therefore, fair to expect of the researchers to know the administrative side? They are trained to do their research, not be knowledgeable in what is arguably our job. With these conflicting approaches, the gap between research administration and researchers appears to be ever increasing.
Researchers are getting disgruntled with the administrative demands that appear to be increasing, and research administrators are frustrated with the lack of interest and consideration for the administrative site. In addition to that, the offices and divisions of research have created and are more and more creating their own silos, where each unit defines and protects their “turf,” the tasks they are exclusively responsible for. To make things worse, these different units within an office or division of research may not even work as well with each other as expected, even though, to be truly effective, they would need to collaborate on mostly overlapping responsibilities that support a research project. Putting this together with the fact that researchers often do not even know that different units exist within the Office of Research, nor do they care to know or explore their different roles, we clearly have a chasm between the service unit (research administration) and our customers (the researchers), and sometimes even between administrative support units themselves. This chasm is further exacerbated by the increasing number of cross- or inter-disciplinary projects that require research administrators supporting researchers in different fields to work with each other.
THINK: Research administrators have provided their services to academic researchers more or less the same way for decades, with a workflow of grant applications processing through different, separated units and tasks. Changes that have occurred are in response to increasing and changing regulations and policies that mostly affect WHAT we do, but not truly HOW we provide research support. New units, like research development, may have been created, with every research administrator trying to find their own niche, independent from other units. Rather than following the collaborative, team-based trend that we see in research itself, we are hardening the already existing silos within the divisions and offices of academic research.
Interactions between researchers and their research administrators are also mostly confined to times when researchers have the immediate need for support. Communication from the administrative offices to faculty and back is breaking down, evidenced by several articles and opinion pieces in higher education journals, and the number of tools that are provided online to improve communication. A Delphi study published in 2007 identified improved communication between faculty and research administrators as needed to support growth and collaboration (Cole, 2007).
The way many of our administrative offices are organized, researchers are expected to come to us when they need support. Yes, we send out newsletters and organize networking events, but we only get involved with the administrative side of whatever research project a faculty is working on when the grant proposal is due in a few days, or, hopefully, weeks.
Maybe we need to look further than just improvements to communication tools. Is it time to rethink how we provide our services to our “customers”, the researchers? Should we and could we consider a significantly different approach that does not lean on a step-by-step, sequential workflow through units that get involved on an as-needed basis, but a team-based approach in which, ultimately, the research administrators become part of the researcher's immediate team, just like any other collaborator? Granted, this requires a “team” and sometimes a “squad”, which could be viewed as a waste of time on the administrative site. Researchers would also be able to view and accept the integration of the administrators into their team. Using a bit of US Military structure as a basis, two teams (of no more than four people) make up a squad (four to ten people). We argue, though, when there is value for the researcher in this integration, they will embrace it.
ACT: Let us think through a model in which we indeed create a collaborative team with the researcher, rather than staying in our far-removed administrative world that gets tapped into as needed and where we focus changes to our best practices mostly on the response to changing federal or state regulations. Let’s, for a moment, focus not on best practices of WHAT we do, but on the best practices of HOW we provide our services. Here is a suggestion that would follow the idea that a team approach, where everyone sits around the table whoever will be involved in the research project, either on the research OR the administrative side, is involved from the beginning.
STEP 1: Start with a new faculty member entering your university and explore their interests and needs, possibly in a mini questionnaire.
STEP 2: Form a team (example name: Team Orange) that, at a minimum includes one representative from research or proposal development, sponsored programs, research accounting and research compliance (as needed). Other ad hoc members might represent tech transfer, core facilities, college/department research administrators, research communication, export control, etc.
STEP 3: Go and meet the new faculty as a team—ideally in person. Let THEM tell you about their research interests, rather than you telling them how you can help. Make it clear that Team Orange will now always be the point of contact for this faculty. The researcher receives a unique email address (TeamOrange@university.edu) that the individual can use to reach the entire team in one email. Teams can be based on the type of sponsor or the college the faculty/researcher is in.
As mentioned above, it is important not to forget the mission of the research office as a customer support unit. Having the researcher talk about their research gets this sentiment back on track.
STEP 4: Expand on this first meeting with the faculty and continue staying in touch. Appoint facilitators in your division who will be in charge of creating regular reports to the faculty and organize meetings of the team. Each team will be appointed several faculty, which could be based on the type of research, type of sponsor or location.
STEP 5: Team Orange will meet weekly to discuss which step this faculty is at and how the team can best provide support. All team members are required to attend. Ideally, the faculty should participate in the meeting. These can be brief, “stand-up” meetings to simply touch base. If a research team exists, work with the “contact PI”, though communicate to the entire team on a regular basis. We recommend these meetings to run like a “tumor board”, a hospital term in which any caretakers ever treating a cancer patient discuss treatment options. Much like these “tumor boards”, create written documents (which can be online) to document progress of the faculty and their research.
STEP 6: Facilitators put together regular reports to the faculty to provide transparency.
Figure 1. Outline of Team-Based Approach for Academic Research Administration. Teams consist of standing members from research and proposal development, pre- and post-award and a college administrator (if appropriate). Ad hoc members join the team, as needed. These can be representatives from compliance, tech transfer and other support units. Facilitators manage the team interactions and are the direct point of contact to faculty.
Many companies have long since embraced the idea that bringing together teams of people from all different units who at any time will work on a product, idea or service makes them much more successful in the long run. The US Military combat designations have the smallest unit being a Team (four soldiers) and Squads (two teams of four to ten soldiers) and even Platoons (several squads). Each PI would get a Team, each Department would get a Squad, and each College would have a Platoon. All members of the subunits would make up the subsequent larger unit, but each have a critical mission to accomplish for their objective (PI, Department or College). Even our hospitals have recognized that together we are stronger: Tumor boards meet regularly, typically in the early morning, to discuss a list of cancer patients and their best treatment options. Anybody who might ever provide treatment to this patient is in the room, from the surgeon to the geneticist to a radiologist and pathologist, to name just a few.
Most importantly, this approach does not only work for the patient, or, in our case, for the faculty, but also for the team members themselves, as they get to know each other and learn what other units are doing or are able to provide. The Disneys, Apples and Bloombergs of the world even went as far as organizing their work environment accordingly, in that it not only supports planned meetings, but encourages unplanned meetings between individuals who do not normally meet, noticing that the best ideas may come out of such interactions. A beginning of such a model in Research Administration is a new way of onboarding new faculty, also referenced as “Step 3” above: Instead of bombarding new faculty with names and contact information, meeting with them as a group representing all core research administrative areas, have the researcher talk about their research interests instead. Automatically, your administrative contributions can be mentioned more organically, to which the researcher will be more receptive. In our experience, this approach has been extremely successful.
READ: We can recommend many books and articles for this focus, but we found these useful:
- Courage to Execute: What Elite U.S. Military Units Can Teach Business About Leadership and Team Performance by James D. Murphy (2014)
- Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull (2014)
Further Considerations
This new approach does not require additional time or investment of resources, but it is a redirection. Incremental changes and familiarizing teams with the same information repeatedly is no longer required. We can’t always have all the information, and we get stuck in a paralysis of analysis deciding what to do about a particular issue. This new approach requires making proactive support and reducing reactive activities (e.g., long email threads).
Interestingly, even research has embraced this idea of “unplanned meetings” and created interdisciplinary workspaces that cumulate in such buildings and institutes as the Broad Institute and Bio-X. Academic research administration, however, is entirely being left behind. As the world around us shifts toward these team-based approaches, we continue our historically derived mode of operations, divided into different units with sequential workflow. Is it time to rethink the status quo?
Author’s Note
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Karin Scarpinato, COO, Research Ingenuity, LLC, karinresearchingenuity@gmail.com.
Karin Scarpinato, Ph.D.*
CEO
Research Ingenuity, LLC
(305) 322-1833
karinresearchingenuity@gmail.com
Jeanne Viviani, M.P.A.*
COO
Research Ingenuity, LLC
(813) 765-0439
jeanneresearchingenuity@gmail.com
*KS and JV are also employees of Florida Atlantic University, as Senior Associate Vice President for Research and Director of Research Development, respectively.
References
Catmull, E., & Wallace, A. (2014). Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration. Random House Publishing.
Cole, S. (2007). Research administration as a living system. The Journal of Research Administration, 38(2), 14-27.
Murphy, J. D. (2014). Courage to execute: What elite U.S. military units can teach business about leadership and team performance. John Wiley & Sons.
Schneider, S. L. (2019, January 24). Results of the 2018 FDP FACULTY WORKLOAD SURVEY: Input for optimizing time on active research [Presentation slides]. Federal Demonstration Partnership. https://thefdp.org/default/assets/File/Presentations/Schneider%20FDP%20FWS3%20Results%20Plenary%20Jan19.pdf