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Dear friends,
I’m writing this from a tiny apartment in Madrid with the morning sunlight streaming in, while my family sleeps. I can thank the jet lag for waking me and the surroundings for inspiring me. I hope the summer months bring you a similar escape, and if you want some tips on how to really unplug from work during vacation, check our my prior post here.
Time away has led me to reflect on some of the basics of work. I recently listened to an episode of the podcast HBR Ideacast called “Basic Competence Can Be a Strategy.” It is based on professor Raffaella Sadun’s study of private companies that demonstrates that the vast majority do not meet minimum standards for competent management. Many of her observations hold true for academia as well, and I love the idea of doubling down on competence.
We can apply the lens of basic competence to academic activities, by looking at our actions in concert with our own standards for quality, timeliness, and collaboration, whether we are talking about data collection/ analysis, writing grants and papers, or giving talks. I definitely see gaps in basic competence in my own work-life. When I think back to recent meetings, I am forced to acknowledge that I haven’t always followed my own fundamental rules of having a written agenda/ needed decision points in advance, staying on task during the meeting, and ending with concrete next steps assigned to specific people. Similarly, are we giving our co-authors adequate time to read/ revise our work? Have we double-checked spelling and grammar before sending out a draft? In addressing co-author comments, have we either incorporated feedback or explained why we elected not to? Did we build in time to practice our talks? There is no excuse not to do all these things, 100% of the time!
Nevertheless, I admit that sometimes it feels impossible to get through my to-do list with that level of basic competence. No doubt this is why basic competence is so rare! However, consider that if you don’t have time or energy to meet the standard of basic competence, something needs to change. Perhaps your standards are too high, and you’re working to a level of excellence when competence would suffice (people who agonize over word choice in an email, I’m looking at you!) You could be over committed, and while it’s not always possible to match level of commitment to capacity, especially in a soft-money situation, using the lens of competence can be a useful way to explain/adjust your bandwidth or lack thereof. I personally also find it very tempting to engage in work-adjacent activities like social media, which can detract from competence in the fundamental aspects of our work. As an experiment, do a retrospective look at last week. Where did you miss the mark on competence? Why? Try to identify concrete and actionable issues that interfere with competent performance, and expect an iterative process. As always, bring self-compassion to any self-scrutiny!
So, this summer, whether you’re frantically busy or enjoying some downtime, I challenge you to be . . . competent! I suspect it will be more transformative than it sounds.
Warmly,
Urmimala