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Research Findings
Program Information Management System (PIMS)
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Research-Practice Collaboration (RPC) - Best Practices
Research collaborations are particularly valuable when the outcomes produced would otherwise have been unthinkable. - Jon M. Veigel
I. Homilies that Shape and Measure the Collaboration
Common objectives and hopes are essential.
Real needs demand real commitments.
Risks are real; risk sharing is vital.
Good relationships fuel success.
Mutual trust demonstrates strength.
Individual accountability produces results.
High-level champions protect and promote the enterprise.
II. Elements of an Agreement to Collaborate
Cite strategic goals and objectives and the process to revise them.
Resolve all potential deal breakers.
Balance risk exposures.
Balance commitments of value.
Allocate both resources and benefits.
Describe effective and equitable internal governance.
Identify first among equals for each member.
Designate specific individual responsibilities, authorities, and accountabilities.
Establish functional inter-organizational and interpersonal communication channels.
Empower the internal Executive Committee.
Establish effective external oversight through one or more advisory groups.
Specify the pace and the limits of disclosure.
Establish the process and timing for terminating the collaboration.
III. Threats to Collaboration
Costs that are higher than budgeted.
Time lags or latencies that are longer than expected.
Complexities greater than initially expected.
Opportunity costs that were unexpected.
Goals and objectives that are confused, ignored, or changed unilaterally.
Critical commitments that are over promised and/or under delivered.
Problems and failures that are ignored.
Individual authority and/or accountability that is sabotaged.
Processes that suffocate the product.
Key researchers that leave.
Research effectiveness that declines.
Communication between individuals and teams that degrades.
Collaboration staff that are the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Management that doesn't manage.
Intercultural disconnects that are ignored.
Institutional members that withdraw their membership, their commitments, or their support.
IV. Commandments of Success
Fail faster.
Hold management accountable.
Review failures and successes.
Handle the problem, then the system.
Don't shoot either the messenger or the wounded.
Everyone needs to be involved to fix the system.
Be brazen about lessons learned.
V. Assumptions that no longer work
There is only one way to organize a business.
That the principles of management apply only to business organizations.
There is a single best way to manage people.
That each industry's technologies, markets, and end users are fixed and do not overlap.
That management's scope is legally defined as only applying to an organizations assets and employees.
That management is internally focused, not externally.
That national boundaries define enterprise and management.
Successful collaborations are those comprised of institutional members and staff who recognize that the value of their mutual needs to work together are still significant and outweigh the costs associated with the consortium. They have a shared history of surviving conflicts. They share the desire to press forward with common objectives that are recognized by all. It will be recognized internally and externally that individual responsibility, authority, and accountability are the threads that have been woven together to become the very fabric of the consortium.
(Adapted from Jon M. Veigel, 2000.) The situation to avoid is that described by Argyris (as cited in Veigel):..."it is possible to achieve quite respectable productivity with middling commitment and morale...In such a system, superficial answers to critical questions produce adequate results,and no one demands more."
Adapted from Veigel, J.M. (2000). Good Science Plus Bad Management Equals Bad Science. Read it online.
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