Luck Finds the Prepared Mind

It occurred to me the other day that I didn’t really know much about how good research organizations are run, so I took the time to go in to ask my Bioengineering academic advisor some questions about running a lab.

My advisor is an older Professor that really takes the time to talk wtih his advisees, so he happily agreed to meet with me. Although, he was a little confused by the request, and asked me “What is it exactly that you want to know this stuff for?”. I told him that studying organizations is what I do and that I wanted to know more about how successful labs are run, so I asked him some questions about the structure of lab organizations and found what I basically expected, they’re all different and they function in a manner that reflects the values the leadership and members uphold. The Principal Investigator acts as the figurehead, manager, and coach.

Since this is largely what I expected, I had a hidden agenda as well. It occurred to me that many of the researchers I knew (that is, people that actually do the labor of research) typically weren’t the types you’d expect to see running high performance organizations. Moreover, I’ve begun to feel that leadership can’t be learned. Like many characteristics and abilities, it can be improved, but the visceral elements have to be there first. So I asked, “What set you apart?” and got him going on the story of his success.

People are generally a bit hesitant to talk about themselves for a prolonged amount of time, but once you get them going, they really enjoy it. And I could tell he was starting to enjoy himself.

His response boiled down to two things: No Fear and the Ability to Motivate. At some point Robert Langer‘s infamous lab came up to put the icing on the cake, as Professor rather emphatically stated,”Langer is so successful because he Inspires people.” This is a theme that comes up over and over again when one studies successful people.

But, I learned something else that was much less expected. Once the conversation had come to a close, Professor looked at me and said, “In all my years running this lab, I don’t think I’ve ever really had anyone ask me these things.”

It’s true, people just don’t naturally ask questions of genuine interest to those around them. This isn’t new to me. But, I was nonetheless a bit stunned. Here’s a man with an international reputation and a leader in cancer research and no one has asked him about his success and his story in over thirty years as a world-class scientist. I did find that surprising and a bit of a shame.

Kevin
3.25.2009