Decide whether you have the capacity
I knew establishing a leading a centre was going to be a lot of work. But I still underestimated how much. How bad can it be? Since setting up the Sussex Cancer Research Centre, about half of my emails are connected to running the centre. My e-mail traffic has doubled. I am passionate about what the centre is achieving, and therefore this doesn’t feel too overwhelming, but starting a research centre could easily be overwhelming and distract from your “real” job. Leading a centre could distract you from the goals of your Future Leaders Fellowship. It also isn’t all just replying to emails. There will be important decisions to make that require time to consider, consult on, and execute.
I would not consider setting up a research centre that doesn’t directly benefit the goals of your FLF project. Your time should be committed to the FLF research project, and this is required by the terms and conditions of your funding. Unless starting a research centre integrates into your project then you might want to reconsider. My FLF was both computational, and laboratory science based. The larger vision was to have impact on cancer patients through this approach. I knew to make my FLF project succeed I would need to bring together cancer researchers, clinicians, patients, charities and more. Therefore, founding and running a multi-institution cancer research centre was additive for my FLF project. You need to determine whether the same is true for your project and your centre idea. If you do not believe that starting a centre adds value to your FLF then wait. Upon completion of your FLF you will still be well positioned to make change, and won’t be limiting your capacity to deliver a prestigious project. You can start a centre then.
Am I not too junior?
As an FLF you’ve likely been at your institution for 1-7 years. When most people imagine a centre founder/director they imagine someone with a tenure of 10+ years who has climbed the ranks over time. The speed of your progression to leadership is likely greater than average, and as such there will be people in your institution thinking: “Are they ready yet?”. These people might include yourself! People in your institution will have a sense of who should lead a new research centre. This may well not be you in some people’s eyes. There will be people who do not know you, and many who will only know roughly when you joined, and roughly what you do. As such, you will have to convince some people that you’re the right person to launch and lead a centre. Having secured an FLF is half the battle. Senior researchers will know this is a big endorsement of your leadership potential.
Self-confidence
You are a Future Leaders Fellow. This means a rigorous peer review process has agreed that you have the potential to be an international research/innovation leader. Leading a research centre in your local research environment is an amazing way to work towards that goal and realise your potential. I believe all FLFs are senior enough to establish and lead research centres.
Have lots of informal chats to gauge support
By this point, you’ve identified an unmet need, and convinced yourself that a centre may have impact on this unmet need. I will describe how to go about getting the institutional and administrative support necessary in later chapters. But you are going to need more than formal support, as you also need to:
- Gauge support for the general idea of a centre
- Identify people who could be leading the centre instead of you
- Identify people who could be leading the centre alongside you
- Identify people who will be critical friends, allies, advocates, and leadership, for your research centre.
Doing the above requires meeting with a number of people. Remember, at this point you’re not trying to convince them to join or support your centre in any concrete way. Start with your line manager. Your line manager must approve what you’re doing. Describe your motivations for starting a centre, let them know how founding/leading a research centre is additive to your research/innovation goals, career goals, and the goals of the institution. Their advice will be key. Do not start a centre without your line manager approving (at least), and advocating (ideally) for the endeavour. Ask for their advice on who to talk to next.
Think about the more senior people in your institution, the ones who might want to head up a centre like the one you are thinking of setting up. You should meet those people and be open with the ideas you’re formulating and why. Talk to people about the unmet need. Be prepared for people to not see the same unmet need you see. Perhaps they’re aware of approaches that are working, where you have only seen approaches fail and missed opportunities. Talk to these senior people about why you think a centre might help. Again, be prepared for them to disagree and listen to why. Make a mental note of their reasons why you should not start a centre, you will need responses to them if you decide to proceed. If the person you’re talking to agrees that there is an unmet need that a centre could address, ask them bluntly whether it’s something you should try and make happen. When I had such meetings I was frequently told:
“We need a new centre in this area but I don’t have time to do it.”
And occasionally:
“I tried to do something like this in the past but wasn’t successful.”
These are great responses to get. In upcoming meetings people will ask you:
“Have you spoken to X?” A powerful response is: “Yes, they think this needs to happen and support me doing it”.
You also might be told:
“If a centre is started I think [this senior person] should lead it.”
When you get that response, go talk to that person. Ask them whether they were thinking of setting up a centre, or whether they would support you in doing it. These conversations will provide really valuable information for all of the next steps. You will need to have more in depth conversations later, but at the moment, all you’re trying to do is make sure you’re not treading on the toes of someone who is well positioned to start a centre, and likely is more experienced and established than you. Be prepared to offer to support someone else in establishing a centre. There will be chances to step up to leadership later.
In my scenario there was an existing “blood cancer” research group, and obviously I wanted to know whether the leader of this group wanted to start a cancer research centre (the answer was no), and whether they would support me if I did it (the answer was yes).
These informal conversations also address the above concerns you may still have about your relative lack of seniority. In having conversations with senior potential research centre leaders, and discovering whether others are ready to lead a research centre, you can build your confidence that you are ready. If more senior folk aren’t going to do it, but you still believe in the substantial unmet need, then you have your answer. You are the most senior person ready to take on the task. There is a lot to say around imposter syndrome here, but I’ll leave that to the excellent FLF Marc Reid. In the end I settled on the conclusion that if someone more senior wanted to step up and make this happen, at any time, I would step aside and support them, so long as I believed their leadership and vision could realise the benefits that I was working towards.
It is important to go into all of these chats with a very open mind on what the centre might look like, and even whether it will exist at all. Any one of these conversations might highlight a key reason why now isn’t the time, or why you’re not the one to do it. Having a mouldable vision, without too many fixed ideas around centre structure and identity is also important at this stage. You want everyone you’re talking to feel ownership and investment in the centre that might emerge. You want key stakeholders to be able to see their fingerprints on the centre’s structure, management, ideas and vision. There will be other opportunities for this later, but if you go into your first exploratory chats with concrete ideas, personally invested in leading a centre, then you will not make the most of these discussions.
You can’t do it alone
During all of the above chats, you want to keep one eye out for people matching this description:
- “Critical friends”. People invested in a centre succeeding, and who won’t be afraid to tell you when you’re about to make a decision that could jeopardise that success.
- “Stakeholder leaders”. Well-connected and/or senior people, within groups of key stakeholders that you want to get involved.
- “Experienced research leaders”. People with experience running research groupings and centres.
- “As stubborn as you”. People who are as motivated and committed as you to achieving the goals of the centre.
If you find someone that ticks all of these boxes, bring them on board. Consider inviting them to be co-directors with you. You should at least invite them to any management structure you might establish, and we will cover inviting people to management groups later.
In my experience I knew the key stakeholders I needed to unite were two universities, one medical school, and the NHS hospitals in the area. In these first informal discussions I was very fortunate to meet 3 talented people that ticked all of the above boxes, one from each of the institutions I was uniting (Melanie Flint, Timothy Humphrey, and Duncan Gilbert). Between the four of us we shared a frustration with the missed opportunities – everyone except me had experience leading successful research centres – and we all had a shared determination to bring about change.
The main challenges faced by FLFs in establishing research centres are all addressed by identifying strong co-directors:
- You may be perceived as too junior, and therefore partner with some senior colleagues.
- You may not have capacity, and sharing the workload will go a long way.
- You are crossing disciplinary and institutional boundaries, and establishing an interdisciplinary and multi-institution leadership team ensures everyone is on the same page.
- You risk being seen as motivated by career progression, but demonstrating the centre is co-led by multiple people will indicate to everyone that the true motivation is to achieve research and innovation impact.