jonathan@researchcomputingteams.org
Parent categories: Strategy
Other tags: | Managing Your Career: Other | Becoming A Manager: Other | Strategy: Working with Decision Makers |
Own Your Feedback (Part 1): Receive Better Feedback by Asking - Padmini Pyapali We’ve talked about giving feedback to our team members, but we need feedback, too - from our managers, or researcher’s we’re supporting, or other stakeholders. Pyapali makes some specific recommendations for getting good feedback from others. They all involve asking, and how to ask: Be Timely and Specific - you’ll get better feedback if you’re asking soon after the thing you’re asking about, and if you ask specific questions Provide a Reason...
Continue...Other tags: | Strategy: Prioritization |
How to say “No” right now - Lara Hogan, Wherewithall The year end is approaching, and with it deadlines and final pushes. But other stuff comes up. The solution to dealing with too much work isn’t “time management” - managing time isn’t a power granted to us. There’s only task management, and the number one task management skill is declining them. This is a good time of year to practice saying no or deferring a yes - everyone’s in the same boat and so understands....
Continue...Other tags: | Strategy: Prioritization |
5 Tips for Saying No To Stakeholders - Roman Pichler You can’t keep focus on your goals and priorities without saying no to requests. We’ve covered articles on this in the roundup before, and alluded to this in the stopping things advice at the beggining of the newsletter, but it’s an important topic! Pichler emphasizes: Don’t feel bad about saying No Empathize with the stakeholder Reframe the conversation - around the problem to solve and the project goals Don’t rush the decision (but don’t procrastinate...
Continue...Other tags: | Strategy: Working with Decision Makers |
Templates for Writing a Better Board Report! - Dolph Ward Goldenburg Research computing leadership can and should learn a lot from nonprofit leadership. Research computing grant-writing is are more like writing for nonprofit grants than it is for research grants (remind me to write this blog post some day). Managing open-source contributions is exactly managing volunteers. Stakeholder management, community outreach… there’s a lot of overlap. This particular blog post won’t be relevant to all research computing managers. Some of us have mangers who are themselves...
Continue...Other tags: | Strategy: Working with Decision Makers | Strategy: Managing Up | Working With A Research Community: Communications Tools |
Minto Pyramid - Adam Amran, Untools Amran gives a very clear formula here for emails that you also see in advice for briefing boards (or in our case, e.g., scientific advisory committee.). Start with a one-sentence paragraph of the conclusion (or the ask); then a listing of the key arguments; then the supporting details. I’d add that the subject line should reflect the conclusion/ask. I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently. I’m generally ok about writing to-the-point, skimmable emails. But that skill may have...
Continue...Other tags: | Strategy: Working across an organization | Strategy: Working with Decision Makers | Working With A Research Community: Digital Humanities |
Organic and Locally Sourced: Growing a Digital Humanities Lab with an Eye Towards Sustainability - Rebekah Cummings, David S. Roh, Elizabeth Callaway, Digital Humanities Quarterly A useful article on setting up a Digital Humanities “pop up” lab in the University of Utah’s Marriott Library, after an earlier attempt had failed. The story told here of learning from (and building on) previous attempts and using the lab not simply at a thing in and of itself but as a concrete thing for a nascent cross-campus effort...
Continue...Other tags: | Managing A Team: Data Teams | Strategy: Working across an organization | Strategy: Working with Decision Makers |
Ten simple rules for starting (and sustaining) an academic data science initiative - Micaela S. Parker, Arlyn E. Burgess, Philip E. Bourne, PLOS Computational Biology Many research computing centres are trying to figure out how to launch or scale up a data science core facility or research institute. Creating anything new within an organization is a challenge, even when the winds are in your favour. Parker, Burgess, and Bourne offer some very sage advice on not just starting up a data science effort in particular,...
Continue...Other tags: | Strategy: Making Decisions | Managing A Team: Other |
The Decision-Making Pendulum - Candost Dagdeviren Our Role in Effective Decision Making - Kathy Keating Everyday Decisions, Done Dirt Cheap - Matt Schellhas Dagdeviren talks about the decision-making pendulum, the spectrum of decision-making processes ranging from authority (“Because I said so”), through advice and consent, to consensus decision making (“So say we all”). The processes at the extremes aren’t great for either the teams or the decisions that likely result (I don’t agree with everything Manager-Tools says, but I think they’re 100% right about consensus...
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