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Dear friends,
How are you? We’re deep into Fog-ust here- I haven’t see the sun in days! I do have some vacation ahead, and I hope you too have a chance to savor the last days of summer. Lately I have been thinking about who holds the ultimate responsibility for our work, and why that matters.
Usually I encourage all of you to delegate as many of your work tasks as possible to your team, and I do stand by that advice. However, this month I have been learning the lesson that there is a limit to delegation. Even with the best team ever (which I have!), sometimes the scientific lead just has to get their hands dirty.
For one of my projects, we have been working on a protocol paper for months. I felt like we were going in circles at our weekly meetings. I would verbally explain a concept that needed to make its way into the paper, but it just was not moving forward. When I finally decided to open the document and write, I unearthed several important scientific decisions that still needed to be made. I also realized that my verbal explanations were not clear to those who were trying to write the paper. Until I started actually doing the writing, we were stuck. Not because I needed to make all the decisions, but because I knew which decisions had already been made, which required the input of our statistical expert, and which needed to be discussed as a team. This experience made me realize that if I feel that some work is ‘stuck’, it’s time to zoom in myself. As your team grows and your projects and roles multiply, it’s tempting to try to address roadblocks by pulling in a mentee or another staffer. Don’t do it! When things slow down, you should delve into the project yourself. Get into the details enough to be able to collaboratively solve the problem.
I also reached the limits of delegation recently in preparing a recorded lecture (not my favorite activity anyway!) I gave some instructions to an experienced staffer who has prepared at least a dozen presentations for me, and they prepared draft slides. After I reviewed, they edited according to my instructions. I re-reviewed the slides and thought I was ready to go. As I was practicing the talk, I realized that some essential concepts were missing. I ended up postponing the recording so I could add in more content. Why did my plan to delegate fail? I see two reasons. First, I gave my staffer very little information about the organization that had invited me to give the lecture. They did not know the audience, and I did. Second, reviewing slides is a far cry from practicing a talk. When you delegate, make sure you build in time to pressure-test the product, whether it is a talk or a visual abstract or a poster.
Delegation is an important work strategy for a scientist with a growing portfolio- up to a point! As I learned this month, the buck stops with me (or you, as the case may be!). As always, please share widely and, if you are so inclined, sign up for the blog here. Keep in touch and do share good news so I can amplify your successes!
Warmly,
Urmimala