Events often conspire to force us to wake up and think about things in a new way. I’d had many discussions about whether the Apple iPad is a “necessity” or just superfluous fluff. Having my iPad grabbed from my hands on a train in Paris forced me to really think about this.

The US NIH recently changed the grant format, among other things adding a new section titled “Innovation.” Many of us have wondered: how can we convey innovation if we’re using standard techniques and methods? Morgan has some ideas on this, illustrated with an iPad and a razor.

When we get our grant rejected, it is easy to point the blame at the reviewers. “Those
stupid reviewers, they didn’t get it.” While that approach may be emotionally satisfying and ego-stroking, it doesn’t
solve the problem. Your reviewer didn’t understand your proposal, and there is only one person to blame for that.

A colleague recently said to me, “Graduate education is fundamentally a fact-based activity.” I respond to that somewhat misguided view in the latest video. In my view, a graduate education (particularly PhD) is a skills based endeavor, not a fact based one.

The biggest impediment I see to most people’s success (not only in science careers) is perfectionism.

You can’t be a perfectionist and be successful. Period. End of story.

I’m not talking about doing shoddy work here – one should always strive for excellence.

But excellence is an ongoing process, whereas perfection is an unachievable end state. There is no perfection in the universe.

If you don’t believe me, try to draw a mathematically perfect circle.

Bet you can’t do it.

Nobody can. It is impossible. Quantum physics won’t let you locate atoms or electrons precisely enough to achieve it.

So if you set out to draw a perfect circle, you’ll never get there.

Just the same – if you set out for perfection in your scientific work, you’ll never get there.

I have seen perfectionism destroy more than one career.

It is particularly pernicious when it involves your own judgement.

See, in a job, or in an undergraduate class, you don’t have to worry about “perfection” because you’ve usually got documented standards for “perfect” to go by.

To get an A in a class, the teacher sets forth exactly what you must do. And so you do it (or not) and get the A (or not).

But the world of science, from Graduate School onward, isn’t like that. There is no pre-set criteria for “perfection” (or even for an A grade). There is simply a set of human interpretations about what works and what doesn’t, or about what is the “right” and what is “wrong” way to interpret data. That doesn’t mean there’s an actual eye in the sky judging what is “right” and “wrong” – just human guesses at it (guesses which are often proven wrong in the lens of history).

Many people let this trip them up. I have let this trip myself up – countless times in my career.

But trying to achieve perfection gets in the way of doing. But you have to be constantly doing to really get anywhere.

In her video, “The Risk of Starting a Career in Science,” Zella Zanolli talks about the frustrations of sacrificing everything for her science career, then struggling to find a good science position. This is sadly a common story. Does it mean you should give up on having a science career? As usual, Morgan provides a unique perspective on the question… watch the video to find out, and post your comments on the blog.

I was recently speaking to an entrepeneurial fellow, and he made a comment that stuck in my mind: “people like you and I are unemployable.”

It didn’t take me long to realize that he was right.

He was referring, overall, to the entrepeneur personality.

The “problem” with entrepreneurs is that they can’t just accept the way things are – they have to go around always trying to make things “better”.

That’s great if you’re starting a new business, or running a certain kind of science lab.

It’s not so great if you find yourself embedded in a stiff bureaucracy that is reticent to any kind of change.

The reference to being unemployable is that people like he – and myself – would drive most traditional managers/bosses crazy. Because we can’t leave well enough alone. We can’t let tradition stand. We can’t do something just because someone told us to do it – we have to understand “why” we are doing it – and then try to improve upon it.

It’s a sad statement about the stultification of most jobs.

Maybe that’s why I know of so many people who are giving up regular jobs to venture out on their own in business or consulting. It seems that more than just a few people realize that they can no longer stifle themselves enough to be “employable”.

One of my long-term goals is to figure out how to do science without having to do the bureaucracy. You may think it is wishful thinking, but I have a plan (kind of like the Cylons).

Maybe I’ll start an interdisciplinary research institute that is strucutred to be size and bureaucracy limited. Wouldn’t that be nice?

consulting, and

Today I had a conversation with someone who is now working for free at a major academic center.

Yes, that’s right. This person is no longer being paid a salary – but is still working.

The center that this person is working at brings in a few hundred million per year in grant money – on top of hundreds of millions in patient care revenues, etc.

But, because the person hasn’t received a grant for a while, the university has shut off the salary.

“Sorry, no grants, no paycheck.”

“Oh, you need to eat? Food? Maybe you can eat agar left over from the latest experiment while you wait for three months to see if you’re graced by the roll of the NIH grant dice.”

“By the way, we still expect you to teach that course next fall for all the med students, but we don’t have any money for your salary to do that – you’ll have to milk the NIH for that.”

This is taking things too far.

I’m calling a spade a spade – and this is the worst kind.

Universities seem to have gotten this notion that this is a “business” and that all their scientists are “businesspeople”. This is especially true in academic medicine.

But I’ve got news for the administrators who think they are being so smart by running things “like a business:”

Yes, in a business, salary can go to zero if you’re not “productive” enough. No difference here.

But, in a business, salary can go to millions or billions if you’re extremely productive.
BIG difference here. In a business, there’s huge upside potential. In an academic job?
Not so much, these days.

Basically, what the university is doing to this person (and many are doing to many people) is saying: you’re taking all the risk on the downside, but you get none of the upside potential.

You get no grants, you get no salary.
You get millions of dollars in grants, and you get no extra salary*.

It’s not the way to motivate people, folks. At least not the really smart and really capable people. They will see right through the ruse (why do you think I own two businesses? I don’t want to miss out on the upside potential of my own particular skills and talents).

I’m happy to take on the risk of my salary going to zero – as long as the university is happy to pay me at least 30% of the total grant revenue I bring in each year. (ummmm errrr maybe I shouldn’t be giving them any ideas about “businessifying” academia even more)

It is saddening to me that the academy has gotten to this point. I understand that everyone has big budget pressures to deal with. I try to be sympathetic about that. But the question that admins should be asking themselves are, “what are the long-term ramifications of my budget cutting decisions?”

The long term ramifications of putting people in a situation where there is only downside but no upside is low morale, and a flight of talent.

When the talent flees, the revenue will drop.
When the revenue drops, more budgets get cut.

And things go into a death spiral.

That’s not the way to run a business, folks. Most businesses who go into that kind of death spiral die (or get bailed out by the government).

Universities: treat your scientists (and all your people) well! You should be treating them like kings and queens, not like peons. These are the people that make your university great – and bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in grants.

Universities administrators that “get this” will be leading successful institutions into the future.

Having good mentoring is vital to move forward in a science career. Today’s careers are fraught with complexities that didn’t previously exist, and navigating through those can be daunting without good advice. However, if you seek out mentors who are too close to the “outcome of the experiment” (that would be you and your career), you are risking problems.

Some departments in some universities assign a mentor to their young faculty. But it is important to be careful what you reveal and don’t reveal to that mentor.

Because, often, that same mentor is going to be sitting on the committee that reviews your tenure/promotions.
Say you’re really struggling with your writing. Say you go to your departmental mentor about that, and they ask for some examples of your writing. Say your examples are not exactly stellar – in fact, your writing could use some real work.
And let’s say you improve your writing substantially in the subsequent years.

The question is, will your mentor be able to “forget” their first impressions of your rather poor writing capabilities?
Perhaps – if that’s the only struggle they see, and you clearly overcame it.

But what if you found a different solution – say, hiring a great science writer in your lab. This solves the problem of being able to produce great written papers and proposals – but it won’t overcome your mentor’s impression of you as a writer. They won’t see the improvement. How will that color their review of your tenure package (or other promotion) if they know that you are getting help on all your writing?

That’s just one example. Say you’re struggling with drinking a bit too much alcohol. Or struggling with family/work balance. Or etc.

You want to be able to ask questions about how to deal with those things. Because in an academic science career, there are many challenging issues to address. But if your mentor learns too much about you, it could harm your chances when it comes to decision time.

It depends on the mentor, of course. Some will see all that stuff and be un phased by it, only looking at who you’ve become, not who you were.

But others won’t forget. They’ll form an impression of you that could carry into the future decisions that affect your career.

When I was starting out, I read in a book on faculty careers that one should seek out a mentor outside of one’s department. I didn’t follow that advice, until about five years into my career. Finally, when I did, it was a breath of fresh air. I had someone that I could talk to openly about some of the challenges I was facing – without worrying about “will this impact my promotion?”

The bottom line is: 1) seek out mentoring, always – at whatever stage of your career you’re at. The more and better mentoring you get, the better and more effective person you’ll be, and 2) find mentoring that is outside of your immediate department or unit (better yet if outside of your university).

For many years I wandered through my career, jumping on various opportunities as they came along, but without a real “direction” for where I was going.

I was fortunate in that I made some good choices – getting into bioinformatics early on, and then getting into proteomics early on – before the fields became popular. But, despite the outward success this has brought to me, I’ve often struggled with, “who am I?”

For years the “who am I?” question was subsumed by goals, the latest being “getting tenure.”

But here’s the thing I realized once I had achieved that goal: I was doing it, because it was the thing to do. Not because it fit into some kind of “grand plan” for my life.

I’m glad to have done that, but after doing it, I felt a noticeable void: what next?

Tenure is a huge goal for many people, and a lot of those I’ve spoken to after they got tenure felt that it was anti-climactic.

I would go one step beyond that – it is a “life crisis” inducing event if you’ve been focused on it too much.

That’s why it is so important to have a picture of your ultimate life and goals in mind – hopefully before going for tenure (or going for the faculty job, or the postdoc job, or graduate school – or, anything!)

Because then, when you achieve one goal, you can move onto the next goal that fits into your grand plan – rather than just finding yourself having completed this big thing, and wondering, “what next?”

In my own case of assessing “what next?” and “who do I really want to be?” I’ve figured out a few things:
1. I enjoy writing – I have a whole slew of books to write, and I’ve been reenergized in getting my first book done so that I can move onto the next one. The first book is titled “The Golden Ticket in Science: Funding and Recognition Through The Power of Marketing”. Keep your eye out, or sign up for my mailing list if you want early access (that’s the big subscribe box on the upper left).

2. I enjoy helping people become better at what they do. While I used to think that I enjoyed programming computers, I’ve realized the challenge of “programming” people for success is both bigger and more rewarding for me.

That’s why I’m doing this whole blog thing (and my grant writing course http://tinyurl.com/3a8uhzq
, and future courses to yet be named). To help you be more proactive in your own life, and achieve your goals. Yeah – it sounds rah rah (like a cheerleader), but sometimes cheerleading is necessary.

Besides, I want more happy, proactive scientists out there solving the important problems in our world – and less unhappy, reactive scientists who struggle with things.

So go out and be proactive. Define who you want to be when you grow up. And then start moving towards it!