Fast Track Impact: Recent Episodes
Mark Reed
The podcast for researchers who want to be more productive and achieve real-world impacts from their research. Every week, Mark Reed gives you practical tips and discusses how you can enhance the impact of your research, based on the latest research.
This week, Mark talks through a series of good practice principles for engagement and impact, published in his recent blog post
- Add your own feedback and ideas here
The blog builds on a number of sources, including:
Mark’s Impact Culture book (see the bottom of this page for his impact culture toolkit)
NCCPE engagement guidance
Mark’s “Re-thinking impact…” paper
You can download a written transcript of this episode here
This week, Mark explores what the recent REF2029 guidance means for impact, including a discussion of what we might be expected to write about in the new engagement and impact narrative, and an evidence-based approach to writing a 4* impact case study.
NCCPE engagement guidance
My “Re-thinking impact…” paper
What made a 4* impact case study in REF214 paper
My 4* REF2021 impact case study
Impact templates (in the Google Sheets menu, go to File > Make a copy to save an editable version)
3i analysis template
Fast Track Impact Planning Template
You can download a written transcript of this episode here
This week, Mark talks to Michael Parker, Director of Operations at The Conversation, a news outlet that specialises in working with researchers, giving them editorial control on a global platform. Drawing from their work together creating the Media Impact Guide and Toolkit, Mark and Michael discuss how researchers can harness the media to get more impact from their research and provide evidence of both the reach and significance of the impacts that arise.
Read the Media Impact Guide and Toolkit
Find out more about The Conversation
Sign up for next year’s Exchange conference
You can download a written transcript of this episode here
Eric Jensen is an expert in impact evaluation who has written a textbook on many of the most useful methods you'll need and leading two companies that specialise in impact evaluation consultancy and training alongside his academic research on environmental issues. In this interview, he provides tips to help you design a more effective survey to evaluate your impact, and explains how you can repurpose widely used impact planning tools as evaluation tools, that will help you improve your practice as much as they will give you evidence of impact.
Find out more about the Institute for Methods Innovation via his Methods for Change website
Learn about Qualia Analytics software to help you both collect and analyse impact evaluation data
Watch Eric training with Mark and others on the use of Theory of Change to evaluate impact
Read Eric's book, Doing Real Research: A Practical Guide to Social Research
You can download a written transcript of this episode here
This week, Mark interviews Laura Tucker (Vertigo Ventures), Tobias Schoep (GrowImpact), and Sarah Morton (Matter of Focus) about the platforms they have developed to help researchers keep track of their impacts. Find out more about each platform:
GrowImpact
OutNav from Matter of Focus
Impact Tracker, part of the impact ecosystem from Vertigo Ventures
You can download a written transcript of this episode here
This week, Mark interviews Rachel Blanche from Queen Margaret University Edinburgh to find out how arts-based methods can provide depth and rigour to an impact evaluation. They discuss a range of approaches including visual, performative and narrative methods, the types of evidence these methods can generate, how these approaches can empower participants in determining what’s meaningful, and how evaluating in this way can itself generate further impacts. Rachel shares two examples of arts-based methods used to evaluate impact in healthcare research – a theatre project capturing data on dementia care (citing this paper: http://www.meetinggroundtheatrecompany.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/28-31JDCJF15Schneider.pdf) and a participative creative inquiry on osteoporosis (details here: https://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/10487).
The paper we mention writing together about evaluating impact with arts-based (among other) methods can be accessed here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733320302225?via%3Dihub
Watch the training Rachel and I ran on evaluating impact
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMzT_99JDDI
And you can find out more about Rachel's work here: https://www.qmu.ac.uk/schools-and-divisions/mcpa/mcpa-staff/rachel-blanche/
Mark discusses a range mixed methods evaluation designs that can help you collect data to evidence impacts arising from industry, policy, media, and public engagement. The methods are easy to use without any specialist training or experience, and can generate useful data in some of the trickiest areas of impact evaluation.
Find out more about the "postcard to your future self" method: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/post/2018/11/07/get-longitudinal-impact-data-with-a-postcard-to-your-future-self
Find out more about the Media Impact Guide and Toolkit: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/media-impact-guide-and-toolkit
Read Mark's REF2021 case study in which he evidenced a range of policy impacts: https://results2021.ref.ac.uk/impact/9318b32e-3b4c-4629-9fea-6b7ede36e4e9?page=1
How do you design an impact evaluation? There is no blueprint, but in this episode, Mark gives you the tools you will need to choose an evaluation design with methods that can deliver convincing evidence while giving you win-wins for your research.
Evidencing impact paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733320302225?via%3Dihub
Decision tree: https://www.dropbox.com/s/pbupwthhgpj9yzv/Decision%20tree%20EDITED.pdf?dl=0
In this first of a series of episodes on monitoring, evaluating and evidencing impact, Mark discusses one of the biggest mistakes that people make when the evaluate their engagement instead of their impact, and provides simple tools anyone can use to keep track of their impact with minimal time and effort. He concludes by explaining the difference between monitoring and evaluation and introducing impact evaluation concepts and approaches. The episode draws on this paper about evaluating impact: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733320302225?via%3Dihub
This week, Mark interviews George Hope, Communications Manager at Oxford Net Zero and Greenhouse Gas Removal Hub, based at University of Oxford, about how you can reduce the risks of engaging with social media and achieve more impact online. They discuss challenges of engaging with skeptics and conspiracy theorists, and strategic tools for achieve more impact with less risks to your time, reputation and mental health.
Connect with George on LinkedIn or follow his work on Twitter via his personal account, Oxford Net Zero and the CO2RE Hub.
What do you see when you hold the mirror up to your attempts to achieve impact? Are you doing enough? If not, what are your excuses and assumptions, and what could you do to do more? This week, Mark shares what he learned from a book that transformed how he saw the world, and with it his research and impact - Less is More by Jason Hickle. He goes on to discuss how, in response to this, he has started to engage actively in politics - something he had previously avoided to retain his independence and influence. Achieving impact isn't risk-free, and sometimes we realise that it isn't enough to play safe.
Impact Culture is available as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books. Find out more about the book and join free training and discussion groups at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
Disillusioned with how academia works, Sarah Wijesinghe left academia to set up Brijjd, a new social platform for researcher to communicate their research simply to the widest possible audience. Mark learns about her personal journal and the platform she has created, and discusses recent controversy over Twitter's new owner. You can join Brijjd for free using your LinkedIn or other existing credentials, so head over and start sharing content and engaging with each other: https://www.brijjd.com/
Impact Culture is available as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books. Find out more about the book and join free training and discussion groups at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
In this final episode on mental health, Mark questions the assumption that we need to be fixed and find a happy ending, when so many people feel stuck in the middle of a story that has no end in sight. He shares stories from from researchers who are in a messy "middle" and argues that it is better to accept life in the middle of suffering, and find peace and joy there, than to live for a future happy ending that might never happen, and miss the life we have now.
Read Peter Rhode's blog: https://voicesofacademia.com/2022/05/27/leading-by-example-living-with-mental-illness-in-academia-by-dr-peter-rohde/.
Building on the success of the “health resilient researcher” course and the launch of health coaching for academics by Fast Track Impact, Dr Joyce Reed discusses some of the most common challenges driving researchers to the brink of burnout, and how she has motivated people to turn things around to get better work-home balance and make changes to their diet and lifestyle that have transformed both their wellbeing and their productivity.
This event is part of a series of free training and discussion groups. Find out about other events in this series here: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture-free-training-and-discussion
When Paris Tuohy and Ruby Annand-Jones failed to collect the data they needed for their research, they felt frustrated and guilty - not just about the project, but for the community they were seeking to serve. But as they shared their feelings with more senior researchers in their team, they discovered that they were not alone in this experience, and started to learn lessons that would reframe how they viewed failure, at the same time as getting their project back on track. In this interview, you will get valuable tips on how to be sufficiently brave and flexible to pivot your work, and the importance of having people you can debrief and be vulnerable with, to cope with the inevitable failures that accompany every research project.
Read the paper, "Normalising failure: when things go wrong in participatory marine social science fieldwork" https://academic.oup.com/icesjms/article/79/8/2184/6705562?login=false
Mark reports back on the workshop to discuss alternatives to the word stakeholder, where the group discussed whether or not we should in fact be trying to replace the word, or encouraging people to find the right word for their purpose and context. Alternatives were discussed as well though, including the idea of a simple typology where we can refer to people, organisations or nature.
Impact Culture is available as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books. Find out more about the book and join free training and discussion groups at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
This week, Mark discusses problems with the word "stakeholder" and discusses alternatives that could enable us to decolonise our vocabulary as researchers, ahead of a discussion workshop to discuss the issue further.
Join the discussion workshop on Monday 21st November from 09.00-10.30 UK time: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/myevent?eid=233739309567
Join the email group to discuss the issue further with workshop participants: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=IMPACTCULTURE
This week Mark talks to Petra Boynton, social psychologist academic, consultant and trainer, about her work on "being well in academia". They discuss how systems in academia perpetuate burnout and health problems, and discuss ideas that could help fix the system, providing colleagues with the necessary support, resources, skills and help to cope better and thrive, despite the growing pressures of academic life.
Get your copy of Petra's books, Being well in academia: ways to feel stronger, safer and more connected and The Research Companion
A practical guide for those in the social sciences, health and development.
Other useful links:
https://voicesofacademia.com
https://www.studentminds.org.uk
https://www.educationsupport.org.uk
https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/student-wellbeing-and-protection
Do you have a toxic relationship with your line manager or supervisor? This week, Mark discusses three ways you can tackle your relationship so you can stop dreading your meetings and start thriving again at work.
Impact Culture is available as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books. Find out more about the book and join free training and discussion groups at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
This week, Mark considers how to move beyond simply learning from mistakes, to understand how our mistakes have shaped who we are, transforming regret into an experience of being more authentic. He tells a story of a mistake that was used by his boss to blackmail him, and how this one mistake haunted him until he was able to talk about it and learn to forgive himself. Only then could he see how this mistake had shaped parts of his character for good. Who we are has been shaped and made by our mistakes, including parts of ourselves that we find problematic, as well as parts of ourselves that we really value, that we would not have become were it not for our mistakes. This is not just about being able to live with our mistakes; it is about living our mistakes as part of who we are, and transforming regret into an experience of being more fully alive than ever before as we embrace our whole selves more fully and authentically than ever before.
Impact Culture is available now, as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books. Find out more about the book and join free training and discussion groups at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
This week, Mark discusses how to transcend the labels we often hide behind as academics, so we can embrace failure and mistakes as a necessary part of who we are, sitting with discomfort and being able to feel the full range of human emotions. By accepting and living with the less comfortable emotions that failures bring up, we unlock the capacity to feel more of every feeling, including joy, peace and inspiration. What is your failure trying to teach you?
The episode finishes with an audio chapter of Mark's new book, Impact Culture, which is available, as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books. Find out more about the book and join free training and discussion groups at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
Anxiety is baked into many academic cultures, but for some that fear can be debilitating. In this episode Mark talks about his own struggle with anxiety after a failed attempt to return to face-to-face work post-COVID, and brings a message of hope and healing for anyone struggling to give themselves the self-compassion they need to move through difficult times. Trigger warning: this episode includes references to sexual and spiritual abuse.
Impact Culture is available now, as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books. Find out more about the book and join free training and discussion groups at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
Most researchers suffer from imposter syndrome at some point in their careers, but few talk about it, so it can feel like you are alone in feeling the way you do. In this episode Mark shares his own experience of imposter syndrome and introduces another audio chapter of his book, Impact Culture, which provides practical advice to prevent and overcome imposter syndrome. The book is available as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books. Find out more about the book and join free training and discussion groups at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
Why do we say "yes" to things we later regret, or struggle to share early drafts of our work with collaborators? Why we get upset when colleagues ask for help and then don't follow our advice? Are you really driven by a desire to help others, or are you seeking external validation? Why do we need to make sure we've got everything right - can you have a healthy level of perfectionism or are you expressing a deeper need to "be right"? This week, Mark explores some of the common ways in which researchers experience people-pleasing and perfectionism, and how you can harness these challenges to learn more about yourself and the decisions you make. In so doing, Mark argues, it is possible to regain control of your work-life balance and start making decisions that make time for the most important things in your career and life. The episode ends with an excerpt from his new book, Impact Culture, available now, as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books. Find out more about the book and join free training and discussion groups at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
Next episodes
- Chapters on imposter syndrome etc
- Anxiety with Petra Boynton
- Interview with Andrew Scott
- Evaluation episodes:
- Intro from me
- Rachel Blanche
- Eric Jensen
- Tobias, Laura and Sarah
- Michael Parker from The Conversation re: the Media Impact Toolkit
- Ioan
In this episode, Mark considers the difference between influential versus manipulative impact, and shares insights and practical tips that can help you identify early warning signs that you might be about to cross a line and say or do something you might later regret. He builds on previous episodes about leadership for impact and his chapter on empathic leadership in his new book, Impact Culture.
Impact Culture is available now, as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books. Find out more about the book and join free training and discussion groups at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
This week, Mark interviews Dr Katerina Cidlinska from the Institute of Psychology at the Czech Academy of Sciences about research she conducted with Early Career Researchers (ECRs) who left academia. Her work identifies four trajectories and impact could be part of the problem as well as part of the solution. There were unique challenges for women and researchers in STEM subjects, and Katerina now runs workshops to help ECRs think about how they can balance the competing demands of their roles, or whether they need to start thinking of an exit strategy.
Download her full paper here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fs7jdbzawoyzet4/Cidlinska_et_al-2022-Higher_Education.pdf?dl=0
Impact Culture is available now, as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books. Find out more about the book and join free training and discussion groups at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
In this episode, Mark is joined by Dr Joyce Reed, health coach and CEO of Fast Track Impact, to talk about the transformative power of coaching for academics, and how it can increase both productivity and resilience. They talk about individual and group coaching, and the benefits of upgrading from a mentoring to a coaching programme in schools and departments, and how coaching can tackle burn-out before it happens, rather than picking up the pieces after everything has gone wrong.
Get group coaching from Fast Track Impact:
Read Mark's blog for Times Higher Education on "Why every researcher needs a coach"
Get your copy of "What works in executive coaching" by Erik de Haan
Find out more about health coaching via the NHS (UK only)
Mark interviews Saskia Gent (Insights for Impact) and Jennifer Locket and Dawn Ashby (Plymouth Marine Laboratory) to learn from research that reviewed over 70 impact strategies from around the world. The research suggested there are just two types of impact strategy to choose from - enabling impact and achieving impact strategies. Mark discusses the paper with Saskia before interviewing Jen and Dawn about how they developed their strategy, which features as an example of good practice in the paper. Read the pre-print of the paper: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactstrategies
Mark, Saskia, Jen and Dawn are running a free training workshop based on the paper and the PML case study on 27th June - book your place here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/how-to-write-an-impact-strategy-tickets-233733472107
Impact Culture is available now, as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books. Find out more about the book and join free training and discussion groups at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
Mark interviews Professor Gemma Derrick from University of Bristol about her work to understand the characteristics and drivers of negative unintended consequences from research, what she calls "grimpact". Read the paper Gemma led on her work here: https://ressh2019.webs.upv.es/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/ressh_2019_paper_9.pdf
You can get in touch with Gemma to share your grimpact case studies at gemma.derrick@bristol.ac.uk.
Impact Culture is available now, as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books. Find out more about the book and join free training and discussion groups at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
This week, Mark concludes his series on empathic leadership for impact by considering evidence from studies of expert negotiators that suggests empathic leaders can be significantly more influential. As he revises the empathic leadership model to move beyond service, he suggests that the third and final pillar of empathic leadership is about our ability to both influence and serve others by understanding their positions and needs more deeply.
Impact Culture is available now, as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books. Find out more about the book and join free training and discussion groups at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
In this episode, Mark discusses how leaders that want to facilitate impact need to cultivate bridging expertise to bridge ideas and networks, bringing people and solutions together to make a difference. Read the blog version of today's episode at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/post/empathic-leadership-part-4-bridging-expertise-being-an-expert-at-finding-expertise
In the episode Mark refers to an earlier episode on working with conspiracy theorists, which you can listen to here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-deal-more-effectively-conspiracy-theorists-on/id1095867924?i=1000457169707
Impact Culture is available now, as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books. Find out more about the book and join free training and discussion groups at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
In this episode, Mark discusses how leaders need to have a deep understanding of their impact, to be authentic and therefore be able to connect empathically with their teams, drawing people to impact. Read the blog version of today's episode at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/post/empathic-leadership-part-3-the-purpose-of-an-empathic-leader
Impact Culture is available now, as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books. Find out more about the book and join free training and discussion groups at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
In this episode, Mark looks at a range of leadership models and discusses the sort of leadership needed to drive impact, drawing on his new book, Impact Culture. He presents a new leadership model, empathic leadership, based on purpose, bridging expertise and service, and discusses the tools and approaches of an empathic leader, and how this can inspire impact.
Read the first part of Mark's empathic leadership blog here: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/post/empathic-leadership-part-1
Impact Culture is available now, as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books. Find out more about the book and join free training and discussion groups at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
This week, Mark interviews Dr Ged Hall about an innovative rolling 3 month programme for researchers to build skills and community around impact, giving them permission, accountability and support to achieve impacts that align with their values, whether or not they are valued by funders or governments. The programme arose as a direct response to the perception that the impact culture at University of Leeds had been shaped too much by the Research Excellence Framework. It uses peer to peer support and tutor input to embed an approach to impact that is heavily influenced by Theory of Change tools. This approach is built on, institutionally, as academic Schools are supported to develop ‘bottom-up’ impact outcomes and strategies that aim to deliver those outcomes.
Join Mark and Ged for a training session on the 25th of April to learn more about what University of Leeds is doing in this space, and find out more from the Impact Culture book about how to motivate researchers to engage with impact on their own terms: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/how-to-motivate-researchers-to-engage-with-impact-on-their-own-terms-tickets-233494066037
Impact Culture is available now, as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books. Find out more about the book and join free training and discussion groups at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
Following his Reading Group appearance earlier this month, I'm interviewing Professor Jonathan Grant about his new book, The New Power University. He argues argues that universities must embrace “new power” values that focus on participation, networked governance and transparency, to put social responsibility at the core of the academic mission. I ask him how he tried to put what he wrote into practice when he was a Vice Principle at Kings College London, and discuss some of his more controversial ideas, including the idea that blue-skies research should be deprioritised, universities should take strong stances on controversial issues and celebrity researchers should give up tenure so early career researchers can get long-term positions.
Get your copy of The New Power University now.
Follow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn.
Impact Culture is available now, as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books. Find out more about the book and join free training and discussion groups at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
Next episodes
- Leadership blogs
- Chapters on imposter syndrome etc
In the fourth and final episode that includes an audio chapter from his new book, Impact Culture, Mark discusses how to build capacity for impact, including the leadership and skills needed, as well as a discussion of the role that impact strategies can play, based on his recent pre-print with accompanying blog and database which you can read here: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactstrategies.
Follow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn.
Impact Culture is released as a paperback, e-book and audio book on 25th March 2022. Find out more at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
In the third of four episodes that include audio chapters from his new book, Impact Culture, Mark discusses the importance of working strategically to foster relationships with institutional and disciplinary networks as well as stakeholders. In the introduction, he describes a new stakeholder analysis tool. The chapter that follows considers the role of trust, different types of connection, social norms and power in the generation of impact, before considering a number of actions, including building boundary organisations and fostering a more compassionate culture in your workplace.
Follow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn.
Impact Culture is released as a paperback, e-book and audio book on 25th March 2022. Find out more at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
In the second of four episodes that include audio chapters from his new book, Impact Culture, Mark discusses some of the literature on purpose, and how researchers derive meaning from their work. In the introduction, he discusses the role of mentors versus coaches in academia, and the chapter that follows focuses on practical ideas that can help researchers prioritise and spend more time on impact.
Follow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn.
Impact Culture is released as a paperback, e-book and audio book on 25th March 2022. Find out more at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
My new book, Impact Culture, is released on 25th March, and this is your opportunity to join the launch team and get involved in the impact culture community of practice, which launches today!
Get involved in the impact culture community
Today I'm launching a new website for anyone who wants to improve their research culture and put impact at the heart of what they do. It includes:
- A programme of free training events and discussion groups run by members of the impact community. The first event is on impact monitoring and evaluation on 28th February and already has over 300 people booked, so book now to avoid disappointment. Our second event is a more intimate reading group with Jonathan Grant on his new book, The New Power University, on 14th March
- Sign up for a new JISCMail impact culture email discussion group to keep the discussion going between events
- Free content from the book - over 90% is available open access via the website, including an impact culture toolkit where I've collected together all the most practical and transformative ideas from the book
Go and have a look around: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture
Join the launch team and get a pre-publication copy of the book
I would also like to invite you to join the launch team for the new book, which includes a signed pre-launch copy of the book with free postage and packing anywhere in the world and a place at the launch event, which will run as an online Reading Group.
Your responsibilities as a member of the launch team will be to:
- Attend the launch event having read as much of the book as possible, so you are ready to discuss it with others;
- Write a short review of the book on Amazon (whether you love it or hate it), to help others decide if they want to read it too. To do this, you will be asked to buy a free Kindle version of the book the week before launch, so your review is for a verified purchase; and
- Help promote the book to your colleagues or networks (if you like it!).
In return for this, you get:
- An exclusive signed copy of the book (this is the only way you will ever be able to get a signed copy)
- Get your copy up to a month before the book goes on sale to the rest of the world
- Free postage and packing anywhere in the world (all other customers will have to pay this)
- An exclusive place at the launch event (everyone else will have to tune in via YouTube and won't be able to interact with the author or other participants)
- Free audio, PDF and Kindle version of the book
Please only buy a ticket if you are able to join the launch event and can commit to writing a review. Places are limited to 100.
Download a sample of Part 1 of the book before you commit to joining the launch team.
Or listen to my podcast where I previewed the audiobook version of one chapter last week, and will be previewing three more chapters of the following weeks.
If you like what you read/hear, then you can join the launch team here.
In the first of four episodes that include audio chapters from his new book, Impact Culture, Mark introduces the first of four components of a healthy impact culture: rigorous, ethical and action-oriented research. In the introduction, he discusses some of the common ethical traps researchers inadvertently fall into when attempting to generate impact from their research. In the chapter that follows, he uses the poet John Keats' creative process to explain how researchers can generate original ideas that can solve real-world problems, and the episode concludes with practical ideas to transform your research so it can underpin impact.
Follow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn.
Impact Culture is released as a paperback, e-book and audio book on 25th March 2022. Find out more at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
In this episode, Mark is joined by his wife, Dr Joyce Reed, former hospital doctor turned health coach and Managing Director of Fast Track Impact. They talk about some of the hopes and fears of returning to in-person work, and how you can stay resilient in body and mind, whether you are staying at home, going back to work or exploring hybrid ways of working.
Find out more about burnout and how to tackle it in this blog by Dr Reed: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/post/how-to-manage-stress-and-recover-from-burnout
Read Dr Reed's new blog on self-compassion: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/post/self-compassion-and-kindness
Find out more about Dr Reed's health coaching practice: https://www.drjoycereedhealthcoach.com/
Bring The Health Resilient Researcher course to your institution: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/the-health-resilient-researcher
Follow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn.
Impact Culture is released as a paperback, e-book and audio book on 25th March 2022. Find out more at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
In this episode, Mark delves into some of the assumptions and world views that can prevent us doing research that is genuinely coproductive. He draws on a realisation that some of his own early work was far from coproductive, and instead could be characterised as "helicopter research" that included elements of white centering and epistemic racism. He also draws inspiration from work with local communities in the UK by University of Staffordshire's Creative Communities Unit, as an example of what is possible when the boundaries between researchers and stakeholders are dissolved.
Trigger warning: this episode contains discussion of racism that some listeners may find upsetting.
Follow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn.
Impact Culture is released as a paperback, e-book and audio book on 25th March 2022. Find out more at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
This week, Mark shares his top 5 lessons for co-producing impact with limited time, based on his forthcoming book, Impact Culture
- Find out who’s interested in your research;
- Next, start with their needs, not your ideas;
- Give as much as you get;
- Base action on bodies of work rather than your latest findings; and
- Be curious about what works.
Follow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn.
Impact Culture is released as a paperback, e-book and audio book on 25th March 2022. Find out more at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
In this episode Mark introduces Season 4, discusses why we need to think harder about the culture in which we do our work, and unpacks what a healthy impact culture looks like. To do this, he draws on his new book, Impact Culture, and provides some practical examples of how he is putting the ideas into practice as he builds a new research centre at Scotland's Rural College.
Read the peer-reviewed journal publication that summarises the lessons from the book.
Follow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn. Impact Culture is released as a paperback, e-book and audio book on 25th March 2022. Find out more at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.
Bella Reichard and Mark Reed discuss how their new paper analysing high- versus low-scoring impact case studies from REF2014 can be used to write more effective case studies, drawing from their experience advising Universities across the UK on their REF submissions.
Bella Reichard and Mark Reed read from their new paper analysing high- versus low-scoring impact case studies from REF2014.
Bella Reichard and Mark Reed read from their new paper analysing high versus low-scoring impact case studies from REF2014
This week, Mark asks how you can make room for the most important work of your life. What priorities most authentically express your identity and values, that you need to make time for? The systems that hold you back and demotivate you might not be about to change. But you have the capacity to make small changes that can have a big impact on your motivation, and make your working life easier. Learning from evolutionary organisations and socio-technical systems, Mark shows how you can design experiments that make small changes you can learn from. They are low-risk so you can start now without asking for permission. If it doesn't work, you discontinue or adapt, and if it does, then you build on it and bring others into your experiment. At minimum, you create a work culture that protects you from a toxic organisational culture. Ideally, your new ways of working take off and start changing your organisation from the bottom up.
In a bonus episode this week from the climate conference in Madrid, Mark provides a worked example of how to use a policy seminar to generate and build relationships that have the potential to deliver long-term impacts from research. There are lots of methods available to find out who attends a policy seminar and engage with them after the event. To see Mark's approach this week, view this tweet with a link to his video, press release and opportunity to take part in the research.
In this second part of his episode on evidencing impact, Mark reads the final sections of his forthcoming co-authored paper, describing five types of impact evaluation and a methodological framework to guide the selection of methods for evidencing impact. See the figures from the paper in this summary presentation.
This week, Mark reads from his forthcoming co-authored paper on evaluating impact, providing new definitions of research impact, reach and impact evaluation, an overview of national impact evaluations around the world, and a discussion of different ways of demonstrating causality between research and impact. He concludes by introducing the impact evaluation typology and methodological framework, which he will cover in part 2 next week.
Take your understanding of publics and stakeholders to a new level with the 3i's approach. This week, Mark introduces a new Fast Track Impact guide based on ongoing research, and explains how the interest, influence and impact of different groups may vary in relation to your research at a surprising number of (increasingly deep) levels.
Read the guide and download the template
Many of us encounter individuals with deeply held convictions that run directly counter to all the evidence we know as researchers. It is easy to dismiss conspiracy theorists as crazy or irrelevant, but when we do so, we often inadvertently fuel the root causes of their beliefs. In this episode Mark explains some of the psychology that explains what attracts people to conspiracy theories, and suggests three things you can do to engage more constructively with the beliefs of this group, to deliver benefits for even the most hardened believer.
When did you last think about what you could do to enhance your career, make things easier for yourself or enable yourself to do new and exciting things you can’t currently do? What can you do to enable those around you to develop their careers? A new Researcher Development Concordat means UK research funders are increasingly going to ask us to make substantive investments in researcher development, and it should already make us start thinking about the expectations we should have of ourselves and our employers, so we start prioritising our own growth and the growth of those we’re responsible for. Find out more including examples of what Universities are already making available to their researchers across the sector on the Vitae website.
Announcing the winner of the Unsung Impacts prize! Listen to inspiring impacts that will never be celebrated by any University, based on the entries to the Fast Track Impact Unsung Impact Prize 2019. Read the article with images of the unsung impacts.
We’re all familiar with the publish or perish mantra, but for many of us it is less about the number of publications we produce, and more about their quality. The need for rigour goes with saying, but we are all striving for that one significant, original contribution that changes our discipline forever. In this episode, Mark uses the creative process of the poet, John Keats, to explore an unusual approach to pushing research beyond the current cutting edge.
How do you introduce yourself to others, and what do the labels you choose say about you? How do these labels influence how others perceive you? In this episode, Mark explores the many labels we can all choose from when someone asks us “what do you do?”, to show that we all have multiple authentic identities we can project to the world. He then describes three ways of thinking more deeply about these labels, so we can re-invent ourselves in ways that feel more authentic: integrating labels, re-labelling and transcending labels. Labels are important as we discover who we are and learn our trade, but if we allow ourselves to be defined by our labels, we will never grow beyond the expectations created by the labels we identify with. Hold your PhD or job description lightly if you want to be freed from the tyranny of everyone's expectations and the weight of your ego's demands, so you can transcend all the labels to become more authentically you than you ever thought possible.
Few of us have enough time to do all the things that are expected of us, and when we have more goals than we can achieve we will trade them off against each other in different ways. When we get it wrong, this can lead to important things never being done. But when we get it right, we can increase our focus and motivation and do incredible things with our limited time. This week Mark works through a paper on multiple goal theory to unpack some of the core lessons from his book, The Productive Researcher. You will understand how your many goals interact and why you prioritise certain things over others. By understanding this, you will be empowered to make clearer decisions as you prioritise your workload, and be happier with the work you do - and don’t do. Unsworth et al. (2014) Multiple goals: A review and derivation of general principles. Journal of Organizational Behavior 35: 1064-1078.
Interview with Bec Colvin and Chris Cvitanovic from Australia National University about their work with policy on climate change and first nations communities, in which they describe surprising research about the danger of generating too much trust with policy-makers.
This week Mark interviews Yamni Nigam, Professor of Biomedical Sciences, and Clare Lehane, Impact Support Officer, at Swansea University, about how Yamni got her research on maggot therapy for wounds featured in four episodes of the popular UK soap Casualty, watched by 4.5 million people every week. They have commissioned a polling company to do a before and after evaluation of the impact the episodes have on people’s perceptions of maggot therapy. Yamni’s story shows how curiosity-driven research can lead to impact, and how applying that same curiosity to impact can lead to powerful evidence of benefits to the people she has sought to help.
This week Mark discusses three ways you can evidence impacts arising from media coverage of your research, with a particular focus on understanding the significance of the benefits, rather than just focusing on measurements of reach.
Have you ever thought about starting a podcast? This week, Mark talks to an academic whose podcast gets 1.5 million downloads a year and has spun off into a book series and live show. Together, they follow James’ story from a history academic who doubted anyone would be in his research, and consider the unique benefits of podcasting for impact. The episode finishes with their tips on how you can pick up the microphone and start one yourself. Read the blog version of this episode here: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/single-post/2019/06/26/Podcasting-for-impact
Rosmarie Katrin Neumann talks about her PhD research on science-policy exchange, explaining how you can increase the likelihood that evidence from your research is taken up by policymakers. Key messages include increasing meeting frequency to once a quarter, if possible face to face, working with professional facilitators and knowledge brokers, and providing opportunities for co-production from the start. Find out more by following Rosi on Twitter
This week, Mark continues to reframe failure as something that deeply affirms our values and leads to greater meaning and contentment. In part 2, he thinks about how we step back, withdraw from the fight and change tack, drawing on a philosophy of pessimism. This views challenge as a psychological necessity that makes us feel more fully alive, rather than constantly looking forward to a time when there will be no suffering or being nostalgic for a lost time before our challenges began. Academic life is full of rejections, but this episode will help you transform your view of failure to become more resilient.
This week, Mark explores how you can reframe the failures and rejections that are part of everyday academic life as something that deeply affirms our values and leads to greater meaning and contentment. In part 1, he focuses on how we pick our battles and choose to do things that are high risk but high reward in terms of expressing our values, and how to know when to stop fighting a losing battle in line with our values. Read some of the tweets quoted at the start of the episode.
This week the podcast showcases a personalized approach to impact training being pioneered by Universities of Salford and Warwick. Find out how researcher development and impact teams can co-produce training to meet key skills gaps on impact as part of a long-term personalized approach to training that enables researchers to build capacity systematically through a three-year plan including targeted workshops and one-to-one coaching. Find out more about Davina Whitnall's books.
This week Mark interviews Jane Mills and Jasmine Black from CCRI at University of Gloucestershire about how they are using social media to generate research impact. They discuss how to build stories and engagement throughout the research process (including before findings are available), how to break into stakeholder networks on Twitter and how to use case studies to evaluate, communicate and build impact online. Read their paper: Mills, J, Reed, M, Skaalsveen, K and Ingram, J The use of Twitter for sustainable soil management knowledge exchange.
This week Mark considers how we can harness creativity in the research process to derive original insights, and shows how some of the best new ideas arise from the greatest personal and professional challenges. He outlines five practical methods for finding new depths of creativity by embracing and exploring the places we tend to avoid.
In this second part, Mark discusses a range of practical methods for managing power in meetings and workshops, including methods for opening up the discussion and exploring, methods for analyzing and methods for closing down discussion and making decisions.
How to make meetings and workshops with stakeholders and colleagues safe, fun and productive. This week, Mark explains how you can identify and manage power discrepancies in a group to successfully manage difficult individuals and situations using subtle cues and three simple techniques.
This week, Mark interviews Saskia Walcott, an independent impact expert who has helped researchers generate and evaluate their impact for over 15 years. In this interview, she talks about her research on perceptions of impact and the power of attitudes to shape how we respond to the impact agenda.
Read Saskia’s blogs ‘3 nuggets of advice’ and ‘Research impact: individual interpretation and translation’
This week, Mark gives us an insight into two days of his working week, to illustrate how he puts the lessons from his book, The Productive Researcher, into practice. He illustrates practically how he prioritizes based on his values and builds mental health resilience into his working week.
This week Mark shares three ways to overcome imposter syndrome, based on his own experience battling feelings of inadequacy as a researcher. The first solution is to re-calibrate how you judge yourself to reframe your worth based on your values. The second solution is to re-balance your internal, invisible power with the external, visible power that is given to you by the world. The third solution draws on the previous two to create equally credible, evidence-based alternative narratives to your imposter syndrome narrative.
This is the third and final part of Mark's series of episodes on getting research into policy, and the last episode of 2018. Building on the ethics and principles from part 1 and interviews in part 2, in this final episode Mark considers practical ways to both inform and influence policy based on reliable evidence from research. He considers how to take a more relational approach to developing a policy brief and how you can make a "pincer movement" to work from both bottom-up and top-down to achieve impacts from research in the policy arena. The podcast will be back for more in February 2019.
In the second of this three-part series on getting your research into policy, Mark interviews a researcher who ended up leading a country's negotiations at a UN summit when the chief negotiator he was advising died, the head of climate science for WFF who has the discomfort of being based in the USA and the head of a global initiative to protect peatlands for UN Environment. All three explain ways you can get your research heard at the highest levels, and it is easier than you might think.
This week, Mark considers the moral premise of responsible policy engagement and discusses four ways that researchers often inadvertently lose the trust of members of the policy community. Using his four-step check-list, you can make sure your policy engagement is on the right side of your morals and engage more confidently in challenging policy contexts.
This week, Mark considers how you can learn from your experience in the lecture theatre to become more effective in your generation of impact, and how impact can inspire better learning and teaching. He also considers how you can evidence pedagogical impacts from your research, and design interventions in the classroom that can effect change well beyond the academy.
This week, Mark draws on his experience writing bids, as a reviewer and on funding panels, to explain how to write the impact sections of a grant proposal. Funders are increasingly expecting researchers to consider the likely impact of their work, and increasing weight is being given to impact in funding decisions. So it is worth getting it right...
This week, Mark considers how researchers can become more authentic, and how this can reduce the likelihood of imposter syndrome and help you grow in confidence. To do this, he discusses the daily practice of letting go of who we think we should be and embracing who we are, having the courage to be imperfect, and the need to cultivate compassion with clear boundaries.
This week, Mark interviews Karen Laing, Senior Research Associate and Co-Director of the Centre for Learning and Teaching at Newcastle University. Karen has been studying co-production manuals and is developing her own guide for researchers who want to work more closely with their publics and stakeholders to co-produce research and impact. Find out more about Karen's work.
On Monday this week, Mark was at a Royal Society conference on changing research culture, where he was awarded a prize for changing research culture with colleagues Rich Young and Tanya Collavo. Find out about their idea to create a Tinder for researchers and hear ideas that emerged from the conference via interviews with participants.
This week, Mark revisits his most recent book, The Productive Researcher, published a year ago this month. As he has taken the book on the road over the last year, he has been challenged by numerous questions and objections, which he addresses in this episode, giving you a short-cut to the core lessons of the book whilst helping to apply these lessons to some of the more challenging contexts that colleagues have presented him with during trainings. Get your copy of the book here. https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/the-productive-researcher
In this episode, Mark explores how you can become more resilient as a researcher, using grant and publication rejection and workplace bullying as examples. Strategies based on robustness and rapid recovery may work in some circumstances, but adaptive and transformative strategies have the potential to give us longer term resilience to a wider range of unpredictable challenges, in some cases transforming pain into the richest experiences of our careers.
This week, Mark asks questions that can enable you to achieve impacts from your research that disrupt old ways of doing things and lead to fundamental transformations in organizations and society. Based on different ways of conceptualizing resilience, this episode will make you rethink your ambitions for impact to dream bigger and achieve transformational change.
The questions:
- How can my research strengthen people and organizations so that they are able to withstand or resist change, and continue to provide or get the outcomes or benefits they need?
- Can my research enable a person or organization to change what it does and how it does things so that they can protect their core mission and still achieve the things that are most important to them.
- How can my research enable people to look completely differently at old problems, or disrupt old ways of doing things, so that people and organizations can do completely new things in new ways that are actually valued more than the old ways of doing things and the things they produced?
- Can my research help a person or organization become more robust so they can resist change and maintain what’s most important to them in a changing world?
This week Mark looks at emerging evidence that the impact agenda is creating institutional cultures that can lead to unintended negative outcomes. What are the motivational levers we can use to inspire colleagues to engage with impact for diverse and healthy reasons, and what mix of extrinsic incentives should accompany such a bottom-up and empathic approach to creating an impact culture? Mark defines three elements of an impact culture and asks practical questions that can enable you to characterize the impact culture of your own group, and decide what strengths you can build on and the things you might want to do differently.
This week Mark shows how you can use seven elements of powerful stories to plan for and create impacts that engage and inspire. He uses examples from The Lord of The Rings, and two impacts from his own research on peatlands and research impact.
The seven points are:
- know who you want to benefit and treat them as the “hero” and you as the “guide” in your pathway to impact;
- identify the external and internal problems your publics and stakeholders face and care about deeply;
- 3) be a guide who enables your publics and stakeholders to become the hero in their own story;
- give them a plan to engage more deeply and learn about your work and/or act on what they learn;
- make a call to action and give people concrete opportunities to put their new-found knowledge into practice;
- identify what your audience has at stake if they don’t solve the problem - what is the cost of inaction or failure;
- help people visualise what success might look like for them.
To download the stakeholder and public analysis template mentioned in this episode, visit www.fasttrackimpact.com/resources
In the first episode of Season 3, Mark shares two new definitions he has developed that will enable you to become crystal clear about what impact is (and is not). He then introduces his impact typology from the second edition of The Research Impact Handbook, and explains how you can use it as a checklist to identify impact goals for research proposals and to design an evaluation of your impact that captures the full depth and breadth of benefits that arose from your research. Get your copy of The Research Impact Handbook here or view online at www.fasttrackimpact.com/what-is-impact
In this final episode of the second series, Mark interviews Dr Jenn Chubb about how students can generate impact during their Ph.D. This is a critical look at both the benefits and the challenges of working with publics and stakeholders alongside your PhD, and Mark and Jenn suggest creative ways you can pursue impact without compromising your PhD. Read Jenn and Mark's blog, 5 ways to fast track the impact of your PhD.
This week, Mark updates on progress towards publishing The Productive Researcher, which is out on 11th October.
Read more about the process of self-publishing the book.
This week, Mark interviews Sarah Cook from University of Dundee and Liz Oughton from Newcastle University to explore the potential for researchers to collaborate with creative arts practitioners to generate new insights and impact as part of the research process. Rather than seeing arts as an "add-on" to help communicate research findings, is it possible to engage more meaningfully to enhance both your research and impact?
CRE artist in residence programme
Sarah Cook
Liz Oughton
This week Mark interviews researchers who have gone from having no experience working with business to working closely with industry to realize impacts from the research. Andy Pickard and Nigel Paul give Mark a tour of Lancaster Environment Centre which hosts the Centre for Global Eco-Innovation.
Mark interviews Ged Hall from The University of Leeds to find out how researchers can get support from professional services staff and other researchers to empower them to achieve impact. Whether you are a researcher or a member of professional services staff, this episode is packed full of ideas for working more efficiently with your colleagues, so you can achieve more impact, more effectively, in less time.
This is the second week that Mark is reading from his forthcoming book, The Productive Researcher. In this episode, Mark explains how researchers can reconceptualize themselves to sharpen their focus and get better work-life balance, using an exercise that interrogates your identity as a researcher, the values connected to this and the amount of time you spend being different parts of yourself.
Read Andrew Scott's book
Follow Phil Ward's award-winning blog
Find out how Ana Atlee is changing the world
In this bonus episode, Mark talks about his latest paper, "A theory of participation". Although rooted in research on the environment, the paper provides principles that can help people working in any context understand how to design processes that deliver impact.
This week, Mark explores the factors that increase motivation so you can become more productive in your work and find time and energy to generate more impact. This is based on an excerpt from his forthcoming book, The Productive Researcher. In the research tip this week, Mark shares some of his favorite tools from QMUL's forthcoming Public Engagement Evaluation Toolkit.
This week Mark looks at a variety of ways you can collect evidence to demonstrate whether or not your research has had (or is having) impact. This is important to help correct our course, so we know when things aren't going according to plan, and to provide information to funders and other stakeholders who want to know that you made a difference. He focuses on methods that can be used by any researcher, including a number of creative techniques that take the pain out of evidencing impact.
In this week's tip, as a researcher who has been cited >10,000 times, Mark tells you the secrets of writing a highly cited paper or book.
Find out more about the Fast Track Impact Evernote impact tracking system.
In this week's episode, Mark discusses four questions that can help you develop a social media strategy that can efficiently drive impact from your research. You don't have to write anything down - if you can answer these four questions in your head, you've got yourself a social media strategy. Mark provides a worked example of answers to the four questions, and shows how he used them to develop a LinkedIn strategy for a research impact that drove real-world impacts.
In this episode, Mark discusses how researchers can get more out of their digital footprint, enhancing both their research and impact, without spending too much time or risking their reputation. In this episode, he steers clear of social media, looking at what you can do to manage a sprawling or fractured digital footprint, and make sure you don't waste time updating multiple sites that rapidly become out of date. It is about getting more out of your time online, so you use your time more efficiently.
In this first episode of the second series, Prof Mark Reed discusses how to do public engagement or impact, not just for the hell of it. A lot of public engagement is done because it is a good thing to do full stop, which is fine. But how do you know you are actually making a difference, and how can you ensure that all the work you put in really does have a beneficial impact on people?
In this episode, Mark is at the ARMA 2016 conference (Association of Research Managers and Administrators) to hear what leading thinkers think about the future of research impact. He interviews Phillip Ward from the University of Kent who won an ARMA award for his blog, Fundermentals, James Wilson, Professor of Research Policy from the University of Sheffield, and Fiona Collegian, the founder of Piirus, with her colleague Jenny Delasalle, freelance copywriter and librarian, and editor of the Piirus Blog.
Read the Fundermentals blog or follow Phil on Twitter.
In this episode, Mark explains the three most common motives for researchers to engage with the impact agenda. He then provides tips on how to translate these motives into priorities that can drive action.
In this episode, Mark walks you through seven questions that will give you a social media strategy to power your research to impact:
- What do you want to achieve through social media?
- Who are you trying to reach through social media and what are they interested in?
- How can you move from a “lurker” to a content maker?
- Who can you work with to make your use of social media more efficient and effective?
- How can you make your content actionable, shareable and rewarding for those who interact with you?
- How can you monitor and evaluate your social media plan?
- How does your social media strategy contribute towards your wider impact strategy?
Download your own social media impact template at. www.fasttrackimpact.com/resources
In this episode, Mark interviews the brains behind @CECHR_OuD to reveal how she reached 87,000 followers in four years, currently growing at 150 followers per day, to become one of the most influential research institutional Twitter accounts in the world.
Mark also describes six things you can do to grow your influence on social media:
- Have a social media strategy: know your audience, add value to them and actively promote your research
- Focus on Twitter (and LinkedIn if you’ve got time)
- Be credible: be professional and link to content
- Be visual: stand out from the crowd
- Tweet at the right time: audience time zone and engagement peak times
- Curate your top 3 tweets and have a follow/unfollow strategy
The Centre of Environmental Change and Human Resilience (CECHR) is a partnership between the University of Dundee and the James Hutton Institute. Find out more about their work.
In this episode, Mark discusses how you can build a network of people who can empower you to have the impacts you want.
In this episode, Mark interviews Rosmarie Katrin Neumann about her work as a knowledge broker and asks if we might all as researchers, be able to do more to act as knowledge brokers.
Find out more about Rosi's work or find her on Twitter.
In this episode, Mark explores the range of reasons why people engage with research.
He describes research in which he asked the people who had engaged with researchers what had motivated their engagement, and these were the most common reasons people cited:
- Accessing future funding and new business opportunities
- Developing new solutions to old problems
- Increasing personal impact/influence through collaboration with researchers
- Intrinsic motivation to “make the world a better place” or a desire to learn about the issues being researched.
Bear these motives in mind, and see if you can work out which of these motives apply to the people you want to work with. By tapping into their motives, and explaining clearly how working with you can achieve what they want, you are much more likely to get the level of engagement you want.
In this episode, Mark gives you a sneak peek behind the scenes of his new book, The Research Impact Handbook and tells you how you can write a book in a week.
Key points:
- Reasons why you might choose to self-publish your next book, rather than going with a traditional academic publisher (or not).
- The personal story behind The Research Impact Handbook, including the sentence that breaks a lifetime of silence and shame.
- How you can write a book in a week by breaking the task down into manageable tasks that can be compiled into a book easily, in just a week.
- The key is to confront your fear of putting something imperfect into the world and receiving criticism, and start putting out things that are "good enough" and improving and extending your work progressively - what Jeff Ollson calls "the slight edge".
In this episode, Mark presents eight powerful questions that will enable you to envision the impacts your research might have. Whether you already have a defined impact goal and plan, or you don't know where to start, these questions will help you get a clear idea of the impacts you could achieve from your research:
- What aspects of your research might be interesting or useful to someone, or could you (or someone else) build upon to create something interesting or useful at some point in the future?
- Going beyond your research for a moment, think of issues, policy areas, sectors of the economy, practices, behaviors, trends, etc. that link in some way to your research. What problems or needs are there in these places, and what are the barriers that are preventing these issues from being resolved? Could your research help address these needs and barriers in some way?
- What is the most significant area of current policy, practice or business that your research might change or disrupt?
- Which are the individuals, groups or organizations that might be interested in this aspect of your research (whether now or in future)?
- What aspects of your research are they likely to be most interested in, and what would need to happen for this to become more relevant to them? What could you do differently to make your work more relevant to these people? Who would you need help from?
- If these people took an interest in or used your research, what would change?
- Might you see changes in individuals, groups, organizations, or at a societal or some other level? 8. Would these changes be beneficial or might some groups be disadvantaged in some way as a result of your research?
In this episode, Mark shares five ways you can enhance the impact of your research. He illustrates each of the five principles with practical suggestions about ways you can generate impacts from your research.