In Chapter 1 we established that you want to set up and lead a new research centre. You identified why, and you’ve identified some key support to help you get there. Now it is time to document some of these ideas and describe what your centre will look like. You need a vision document. The goal of this vision document it to have a single document to send to all key stakeholders. This single PDF will tell stakeholders everything they need to know about why a centre is necessary, what the centre you’re establishing will look like, and what it will achieve.
Starting with a blank document and describing a new research centre from scratch may seem daunting. However, the pages will quickly fill up once you start capturing all of the ideas from chapter 1. The real challenge is editing down the document into a concise and digestible format. Anything more than 5-6 pages risks not being read by anyone. To make the task easier I’ve attached an outline version of the vision document, which my co-directors and I constructed for the Sussex Cancer Research Centre (below). This document contains a potential layout, headings, and writing prompts for a vision document for your centre.
The vision document will be the first impression of your endeavour for everyone that is important to your centre’s success. We found the best process for writing this vision document was very reminiscent of the process of grant writing. We first put all our ideas down into the headings provided in the draft guide, without respect for space limits. Then, we embarked on the challenging process of refining each paragraph, sentence and word to fit in space constraints we set ourselves. You will need to iterate on this entire process a couple of times with the 2-3 critical friends/co-directors you identified in Chapter 1. Your first draft will not fully capture your vision and it is important to get this document right. You should allow at least a few weeks for this writing and iterating process.
The vision document will also benefit from investing some time and thought into centre branding. While image is less important than content at this stage, an appropriate name, slogan, logo, and colour scheme can contribute to achieving buy-in for your vision. You likely don’t have a budget for anyone to help with this but think about what makes your centre unique and try and incorporate that into a logo and slogan. For the Sussex Cancer Research Centre we knew that patients had been left behind in previous attempts to unite cancer researchers and so we placed a patient icon at the centre of the logo, with a slogan of “putting patients at the centre of cancer research”.
Once you have a first draft, that has been revised a couple of time by your critical friends you’re ready to use this document as the basis for soliciting buy-in for your vision.