Research Leaders

Over a 20 year career in global health research, I have worked with some great researchers and some inspiring leaders. They were not necessarily the same people. As the second piece in my reflections on leadership, I discuss the idea of the leader itself.

Two of the most thoughtful leaders I know are Rob Macredie and Richard Parish, both of whom I met while working in the UK. They are not the only impressive leaders I have ever met. Setting them apart, however, was the extent to which they thought about leadership itself: how to lead and how to lead better. Some people do seem to be “natural leaders”, but as far as I can tell, this is the exception rather than the rule, and there is a danger believing that leadership cannot be learned. Thoughtful leaders have a self-reflective, inquisitive edge in improving their skill.

Of course, if you can learn to become a leader, does this mean that you have to wait until you are promoted to a leadership position before you can learn? And if you can learn to be a leader before you are in a leadership position, how do you practice? To my mind, the real value of these questions is that they reveal a problem with the ways we think about leaders and leadership.

Pick up almost any book or article on leadership, and it envisages a leader as a person who carries a “boss” position within an organisation: the CEO of a research organisation; the head of a department; a team leader. This view is too narrow to capture what it is to be a leader and limits an organisation’s opportunities to recognise and develop leaders.

My 3 am take on a leader is… “A person who acts strategically to move a collective towards its goals“. Short, pithy, perhaps a little uninspired (3 am has delusional qualities), and with some nonetheless potentially provocative implications.

First, leaders can lie anywhere in an organisational structure. Second, in acting strategically, leaders may develop and evolve the strategy itself. Third, leaders may set and refine the goals of the collective. It is worth noting that, in the context of this definition, a collective may be (as I tend to think about it) a research group or research organisation, or it may be a commercial organisation or a team within a company, a school, a civil society organisation, or indeed society itself.

The key to being a leader lies in goal-directed, strategic action. That is, they think and act beyond the operational. Not all leaders will set strategy; not all leaders will set goals. Some leaders will hold positions in organisations that do not empower them to set strategy or goals. And some leaders will have both those authorities and would be well-advised not to wield them. Indeed one example of bad leadership is characterised by the need to be an agent-of-change in a collective that is already set on the right course and working effectively.

In the world of agile software development ( “Agile”), there is a refreshing approach to leadership. The software development team will have a head, but leadership roles evolve and shift according to the needs of the team at any time to ensure delivery of the product. One person may step into a leadership role now because of the skills and expertise she possesses, and another person will step up later; this is all done according to the flexible needs of the team to achieve its goals. Teams work this way because of Agile’s short cycles of incremental development and reflection as the software gets better and better.

Agile approaches may not work for the entirety of an organisation. They may, nonetheless, be ideal for smaller, fast-moving, evolving areas of research, a development unit in HR, or a commercialisation team working with a new scientific invention. The key idea, here, is that leaders should be encouraged to emerge according to need and circumstance, not according to rank and hierarchy. These agile leaders won’t be reworking the organisational strategic plan or resetting the organisational goals (unless that is the task). They can, nonetheless, evolve local strategy and local goals. Still, they can act strategically to advance the collective towards its goals — perhaps in something as simple as a small team writing a grant proposal. Interestingly, McKinsey & Co. has begun to embrace ideas of Agile in business transformation.

The management literature talks about “managing up“. If we are to develop research leaders, it is undoubtedly, at least as necessary to prepare staff for leading up. Some of the most successful leaders I have known, lead up. They work behind the scenes, they influence, they nudge, they target. Highly strategic, they are usually well-recognised within the organisation, but often unknown beyond it.

Reflecting on junior colleagues in my Division, some do their job, but some do their job and lead up. And they do this without stepping out of role or stepping on toes. A recent example was a colleague who suggested and then implemented process changes to the management of a large project. The changes will bring more reliable accountability mechanisms to bear for delivering research outputs on time.

Valuable organisational lessons emerge from all this. Invest in developing leadership skills at all levels. Take mentoring seriously. Embed the vision of the organisation, the department and the team to encourage strategic actors.

Conflicts of interest in research leadership (Part I)

Family & Friends

This is the first in a series of pieces I am writing on research leadership. The first in the series is a couple of articles devoted to conflicts of interest. I also want to explore ideas of organisational strategy, gender, who can lead, and with my interest in the global south, on funding, collaboration, and global leadership.

When I started to think about writing this series, I remembered one of the best books I had ever read on leadership, Be in Charge: A Leadership Manual. It was written by Alexander Margulis. During his career, Margulis was Professor of Radiology at Cornell, Chair of Radiology at UCSF, and an accomplished scientist. His book is, unusually in the leadership literature, relevant to the research environment. I read it early in my career, the year it was first published, at a time when I was trying to overcome management issues with a large multi-country study I was conducting. It helped to crystallise in my mind basic ideas of successful leadership.

When the book was first published, its language and tone were already a little dated (and while he struggled against it, sexist). Re-reading it, it reminds me of the comfy slippers worn by the sage, bachelor uncle in a 1960s, US family, TV drama. I recommend that you push past all that; read it for its common-sense advice, and ignore it for its anachronisms. One of the things he reflects on, not in great detail, is the issue of conflicts of interest associated with family and friends in the workplace. To start off, I have extracted three short ideas:

Close friendships are a handicap except with clearly non-competing equals.

Do not have favorites.

Do not ever employ members of your family in your unit … If for some reason one of your family members has to be employed in your unit, you should not have any supervisory or controlling responsibilities for his or her performance.

For my entire career in Global Health, I have collaborated with my wife, and the question of conflicts of interest would occasionally raise its head. Global health has, in fact, had some great husband and wife teams. One of the most successful, and frankly, one of the most important for health globally was that of Ruth Bonita and Robert Beaglehole. There was never a hint of a conflict of interest, and the benefits of that collaboration were enormous.

The salvation for my wife and I was that we were never each other’s boss. We were either working in different institutions or, when we were at the same institution, we occupied parallel positions. We could work together, but we could not offer favours to each other. Monash University was so concerned about the potential for conflicts of interest that they stopped us co-supervising PhD students — something I thought was a particularly stupid interpretation of a conflict of interest that ignored where the real benefit of our collaboration lay for students. Nonetheless, we complied, and that perceived conflict went away without even a hushed whisper.

When my wife moved to take over the Director position of a United Nations policy institute, we briefly discussed whether we could continue the collaboration and whether I could seek a position in the same institute. In our heads, we could see how to navigate it, but the reality of the conflict of interest was too strong and the rules unequivocal — No! It is easy to see why the answer is, no: “Do not have favourites”. Couples can be more or less emotionally mature but, unless there is indifference between them, it is probably quite tricky not to favour the person you love over others. Even if that can be managed, it is probably difficult for the no-longer-favoured to understand why. At the very least, you each know your partner’s needs, desires, and handicaps more deeply than you do others. In that greater understanding, opportunities are created for perfectly rational moments in which help can be offered. The help that is not offered to others because you do not understand them as well. That loss of opportunity for others is simply unfair, and the kind of thing that gnaws away at organisational harmony.

For the Head of a Research Organisation, to have a family member working within the organisation will always be a challenge. If the family member is very junior, it may appear, at first, to make little difference. A helping hand from above would be so overt and so distasteful that it likely would not occur. However, the supervisor of the family member may believe that doing small (or large) favours for Junior will play well with the boss: a favourable appraisal, an opportunity to attend a conference, a room with a view. Even if the Head and the Supervisor are both completely honest, the perception of a conflict of interest, however unjustified, may arise. And perceived conflicts of interest can undermine the trust and confidence in the organisation.

If the family member is not junior, but quite senior, the risks of a conflict of interest are even more pronounced. Senior Scientists need to negotiate with their supervisor or their supervisor’s supervisor (who may well be the Head of the Research Organisation) for resources to support their team. A new piece of equipment is needed, extra space, or a new hire. None of these is an issue except, as is always the case, when others are competing for the same resources. Only the other team wants the resources for a new vehicle, $50,000 of cloud computing, or a staff retreat.

Margulis has a blanket rule. Don’t do it. The reality may be more difficult. If my wife and I progressed in the same organisation and she applied for a senior position, should I resign? Should she be precluded from consideration for higher office? Should there be a process based on the Russian aphorism, Trust but Verify (Доверя́й, но проверя́й). Set up some oversight role that can monitor conflicts of interest arising between the Head of the Research Organisation and their lover. It doesn’t merely sound distasteful, it can’t work because any process operating from within the organisation can be subverted by the boss. The inherent power of the Head of the Research Organisation provides ample opportunities to offer favours and promotion to the Guards — and there is no one to Guard the Guards. Again, even if the Head is completely honest, perception creates the potential for conflict of interest.

Margulis focused on potential conflicts of interest where a more organisationally senior family member offered (or was perceived to offer) favours or advantage to a more junior family member. In organisational leadership, however, there is also a potential for lateral conflicts of interest to arise, from family members occupying ostensibly parallel but influential positions.

In a commercial organisation, family members holding parallel posts may not be an issue and may, in fact, be a significant “value add” for the organisation. If you are a member of the Murdoch family then having family members on the Board, others holding senior positions elsewhere in the company, others working in an entwined parallel organisation, need not be a conflict of interest. The whole family is focused on maximising the value of their holdings, and therefore (probably) supporting the maximisation of the value for all the shareholders. That at least would be the argument I would make, and if the majority of shareholders buy the argument, it is a non-issue. In a private, family-owned company, it is even less of an issue.

This is not so in your typical not-for-profit research organisation or university. A family member who is a Chair of Geology and another who is a Chair of English Literature are unlikely to create conflicts of interest within the organisation. They are not simply in parallel units, they are in parallel universes of academic and research engagement, and they are highly unlikely to have an opportunity to interact with each other in a compromising professional manner. This would not be the case, however, if one family member was, say, the Director of Purchasing and the other was the Director of Finance. Here, there would be ample opportunity for fraud. It would be equally challenging to avoid a conflict of interest if one family member were on the University Council, another was a senior executive in the university, and a third was the steward of the university’s union, representing academic staff. They might argue that, as with the Murdochs, this level of intertwining is an advantage for the organisation because it creates efficiencies and synergies. Nonetheless, it would create an unequivocal perception of a conflict of interest that the university’s Vice-Chancellor or President would inevitably have to confront.

There is an interesting twist to this notion of parallel units. A married couple were simultaneously Vice-Chancellors (Presidents) of two of Australia’s top universities. Each appointment was a testament to the extraordinary qualities of the individuals. In combination, it could also have created a perception of a potential conflict of interest. The Australian newspaper described them as wielding “vast influence as the vice-chancellors of two of Australia’s largest, most highly ranked and esteemed universities”.

Two notorious, rival institutions, constantly competing with each other over a larger slice of a diminishing pot of funding — and also sometimes successfully collaborating — were led by a married couple. The universities could have their internal strategies, strengths or weaknesses exposed by their leaders (the two people who were supposed to have their respective institutions’ best interests at heart) over a shared cup of coffee, a walk in the park, or a more active and intentional trade. For four years the couple simultaneously held these two university CEO positions (with a combined salary in 2018 of AUD$2.7 Million), and to my knowledge, there was never a hint of a realised conflict of interest. It must, nonetheless, stand out as a bizarre exception to the rule. It is impossible to imagine that close a familial relationship would be countenanced between the CEOs of Alphabet and Amazon or Microsoft and Apple.

It may be that a Research Organisation would permit (potentially) conflicted relationships to arise in its leaders — and not simply allow them but countenance and endorse them. This action would require clear acknowledgement, clear justification, and clear guidelines for ensuring that it neither damaged the internal nor external working relationships of the organisation. The costs and benefits of permitting such a conflict would need to be carefully weighed and balanced. If it arose inadvertently it could have even greater reputational damage because it would bring the quality of governance into question.

Playing Fair: “Horizontality” and the Future of Aid

The arrival of US Aid, “from the American people”.

In his book, Playing Fair, the self-confessed Whig, Ken Binore argued for the redistribution of the “social cake”.

For progress to be made, it is necessary for the affluent to understand that their freedom to enjoy what their “property rights” supposedly secure is actually contingent on the willingness of the less affluent to recognize such “rights”. It is not ordained that things must be the way they are. The common understandings that govern current behavior are constructs and what has been constructed can be reconstructed. If the affluent are willing to surrender some of their relative advantages in return for a more secure environment in which to enjoy those which remain, or in order to generate a larger social cake for division, then everybody can gain. (p.7)

In other words, if we do not share the cake, “they” might burn down the bakery.

I am more idealistic. I have a sense that we should share the social-cake because it is the right thing to do, or maybe it is less the case that redistribution is right than it is wrong to leave people in states of significant disadvantage, particularly when one can do something about it. I am also sufficiently pragmatic not to care what motivates people to extend a hand to others.

Do it because it is right. Do it because it serves your own interests. Do it as a romantic, random act of kindness. I don’t care. The capacity of a dollar to make a difference is not altered. DO IT!

Let me extend this discussion to support offered by more affluent countries to less affluent countries. A couple of days ago I attended a virtual dialogue at Wilton Park as part of their “Future of Aid” series. “Aid” in this context is the (usually financial) assistance provided by one country to another.

Definition; Aid: Late Middle English from Old French aide (noun), aidier (verb), based on Latin adjuvare, from ad- ‘towards’ + juvare ‘to help’.

At least in conceptual origin, country-level aid is about one country doing something towards helping another country. And I would argue that what is really meant (or should be meant) by one country helping another country is that they are helping to improve the lives of the people who live in that country and, in particular, the less affluent and less powerful people.

An important idea emerged in the discussions about aid and that was “horizontality”. Horizontality is the idea that the donor and the recipient countries are equal partners. It is an attempt to move aid beyond neocolonial domination. I applaud this idea, at least I applaud the idea that we should not use aid as a vehicle for exchanging one kind of colonialism for another.

What I hope we are saying when we talk about horizontality is that aid is not about the exercise of power, it is about the redistribution of power. To achieve horizontality, aid can be neither handout, loan nor gift. Aid must be part of a just, redistributive process to improve lives and reduce suffering that recognises we all share one planet, and appreciates that donor and recipient governments are imperfect, though necessary, vehicles for realising these goals.

Horizontality does not mean that aid should be without conditions or accountability. In fact, it means the very opposite. Aid should have strong accountability mechanisms because the purpose of aid is to help people, and governments (and other involved commercial or civil society organisations) are simply vehicles for achieving that goal. The aid is from my people to yours.

If I give money to a homeless person, I am not asking for them to account for how they spend it. I am giving it to them because they need it. Maybe it goes on food or shelter, or maybe some momentary pleasure or relief from misery. If I give money, however, to a charity, I absolutely want them to account for how they spend it, because they are the means to the end and not the end in itself.

COVID-19 has brought the “future of aid” question into stark relief. We need better, more respectful mechanisms for delivering even more aid from more affluent countries to less affluent countries. The aid needs to come with strong accountability mechanisms to ensure that benefits are distributed according to an inverse power-law: the least powerful and the least affluent first. Aid, of all things, should not trickle down. When it does, governments on both sides of the aid-exchange should be held to account, by your people and mine.

How do you make a grown man cry?

Answer: Give him £20.

You look baffled — like you missed the punchline to a joke. There was no joke and you didn’t miss anything. Although I have a perniciously dark sense of humour, this is not an example of it.

Outside a supermarket, in South London, there was a man begging. I had a £5 note amongst a couple of twenties and I fished it out and gave it to him. He looked grateful for this small windfall and tucked it away in one of the many folds in his layers of clothes.

COVID-19 has pushed people out of their jobs and out of their homes. The lockdown has reduced pedestrian traffic on the streets, closed public toilets, and made life even harder for the homeless than it was before.

He and I did not catch up on the state of business, but I imagine there were not many people giving him £5 notes. By the time I’d finished my shopping, he had already bundled his belongings together and headed off — I surmised, for food — and in his place was a new face.

I saw the new guy and my immediate thought was, “Yeah, Nah”. I did what anyone would do in these circumstances. I ignored him. I made no eye contact. I pretended I had not heard his polite request for help, and I headed down the street.

Before you judge me, let me remind you, I had already given away my £5 note and all I had left were the twenties. There were also other prospective givers, who felt no compulsion. If they weren’t giving, maybe they knew something about him that I didn’t — some mark or taint that made him less deserving of charity. I felt OK about the decision. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “because there are many in necessity, and they cannot all be helped from the same source, it is left to the initiative of individuals to make provision from their own wealth, for the assistance of those who are in need.” And I had already done my provisioning for the day.

Two hundred meters down the road, I thought to myself, “you arsehole”. And I walked back. I retrieved a £20 note from my wallet and I folded it so it could be passed to him more discreetly. As I got closer I was struck by how lifeless he looked. Huddled, still, and head bowed. He was not looking about anymore. He was not begging. He was spent.

I put my hand out with the money and he reached for it mechanically. Head up to say, thank you. Looked at his hand. Looked again. Started to say, thank you, and burst into tears. There is something profoundly wrong with a grown man being that grateful for £20 — a breach of protocol — so I joined him.