Success Factors in R&D Leadership - Gritzo, Fusfeld, & Carpenter, Research-Technology Management

This resource first appeared in issue #22 on 01 May 2020 and has tags Becoming A Manager: Other, Managing A Team: Other, Strategy: Working with Decision Makers

This is a paper from a few years ago which took a look at leadership development data from 47,000 respondents; both managers and those evaluating them, in R&D and outside of R&D, and compared the two.

They found - well, it’s hard to read it any other way than R&D managers were generally worse managers than non-R&D managers:

When the results were consolidated, R&D managers were rated more favorably than their non-R&D counterparts for only 3 of the 115 positive attributes: Quickly masters new technical knowledge necessary to do the job, is creative or innovative, and is calm and patient when other people have to miss work due to sick days.

That refers to just one set of questionnaires, but the whole thing is pretty grim. I think the way to understand these results is that there are some must-haves in R&D managers; they are things like:

Understands higher management values, how higher management operates, and how they see things
Creative/innovative, and fosters a climate of experimentation around them
Offers novel ideas and perspectives
Is prepared to seize opportunities when they arise
Adjusts management style to changing situations
Quickly masters new technology

and that the R&D managers that have those qualities can have some success despite the following common deficits:

Can’t make mental transition from technical manager to general manager
Hires people w/good technical skills but poor ability to work w/others
Does not resolve conflict among direct reports
Won’t take the lead on unpopular yet necessary actions
Doesn’t communicates confidence and steadiness during difficult time
Doesn’t regularly seeks data about customer satisfaction.

The lesson I take from this is that we all pretty much by definition have the positive “must-haves” to become research computing managers - and certainly taking a look at that list, I think that’s a fair assumption. The way we can become better managers, for our teams and for our bosses, is to work on the management fundamentals - better working relationships with our team (one-on-ones), better communication, better feedback, better decision making, better execution. Doing even modestly better than the current accepted practice will help us, our teams, and the research products we support stand out from the pack.