22nd September, 2021

Research team meetings provide opportunities beyond sharing project updates and literature reviews. There’s more to these gatherings than a means of checking in. Your team meetings are also an ideal medium on which to test, revise, refine, and remind the team about what their combined efforts are all for.

Over the last several months, I’ve tried to progressively increase the level of transparency in how I communicate with our team. I’ve shared how my fellowship was prepared, proposed, and pitched. And therein, I’ve tried to share the ‘big picture’ panel interview presentation that shares how all of our project come together to deliver genuine societal impact. The first time I did this, an encouraging number of pennies dropped, especially for the less experienced members of our team. It became clearer for them how their project, as niche and isolated as it may appear, connects more deeply to a web being weaved together by our combined team efforts.

That presentation helped share with my team how seemingly disconnected multidisciplinary projects come together to help improve the uptake of digital tools, improved productivity, and enhanced workplace safety across the Chemical Sector.

In later iterations of my attempts to refine and revise our team’s purpose, that short five-minute presentation has been distilled further. Five slides are now one. My monologue has become a mantra. Now, ‘mantra’ has a range of connotations but, to be clear, by ‘mantra’, I mean an easily spoken meditative reminder that brings motivation for concentration.

The long message becomes a mantra that brings motivation for concentration.

This process of refining the message behind what our team is for is partly inspired by playing in entrepreneurial circles. Any entrepreneur worth their salt will be able to fill in the balnks of the following sentence:

The is a __________________ that does _________________ for _________________.

This is a mug that keeps coffee warm and displays an Iron Maiden album cover for coffee drinkers who like heavy metal.

This is a microphone that provides studio-quality sound control through the ease of USB plug in for amateur content creators who want a professional feel for their recordings without the complexity of a professional set-up.

This is a book that provides hands on lessons for budding programmers looking to build their programming skills away from the distractions of myriad online courses.

You get the idea.

So, turn that lens on you and your team.

We are a research team that investigates ________ for __________.

What do you do? And who are you trying to serve?

If you have a question for Marc, upload an audio recording for it to be featured on a later Q&A episode!