I frequently hear the phrase “the science has to come first” that generally means all we have to do is select whichever course of action produces the most science (as if that were easy to determine, but that’s another topic) when faced with any decision. While I agree the business of observatories is to produce science, I often wonder if saying the science comes first is a bit like saying profit comes first. Is doing whatever produces the most science equivalent to doing whatever produces the most profit? These days, the latter sounds antiquated and uninspiring. Many modern companies put their mission, their customers, and even their employees over profits (see Vineet Nayar’s book, Employees First, Customers Second, Ricardo Semler’s Maverick, and many others, for example). The thought is that if you put your employees or your mission first, the profits will follow (see also Simon Sinek’s Start with Why, for example). Looking into these sources, you can convince yourself (as I have) that this is not all just a bunch of feel good new age talk, but a real recipe for both doing general good and being rewarded for it with enhanced profit (or in our case, science).
When I was working on my MBA, I often had to build a translation table to map for-profit strategies to their equivalents in the nonprofit world. More often than not, the mapping was as simple as changing dollars profit to science output (measured in published papers, if you must). There isn’t a whole lot in what I often refer to as “the real world” that doesn’t apply to the academic world if you make that mapping.
It therefore seems no stretch at all to believe that if we build good scientific organizations that put employees’ needs first, the good science will follow. Imagine a corporation that makes every decision based on maximizing profit. Is that a place you would want to work? Is that organization going to attract and retain the best people that will bring the best ideas that generate more profit? I think not. Putting profit first may appear the more. ahem, profitable approach, but it is a short-sighted one that leaves a lot of additional unseen opportunity on the table. An employee-centered organization, on the other hand, taps into one of humans’ best profit(/science)-generating fountains: self motivation and a general desire to contribute to a larger goal.
Simon Sinek talks about “people don’t buy what you do they buy why you do it.” Is science output our profit, or our mission – our why, in this context? Clearly, we have a why people can buy into – we are exploring the Universe around us and sharing our knowledge. Yet science output is also our currency. In making science the bottom line, are we being a greedy company focused only on profit, or a noble organization focused on a larger mission of exploration and the transfer of knowledge? (Hint: science output is both our why and our profit and for both, we need the best from our people.) Too often we fool ourselves into believing that putting science first enhances our mission, when in reality, it can end up demotivating our staff and making us an undesirable place to work.
Science is our mission, and it is a grand and noble one, yet we need our best people fully engaged to produce the most of it. People first – in order to produce more science – is the key that will help us fulfill that mission.
Our focus on our scientific and educational mission is what allows us to have such a dedicated staff of people that want the organization to succeed. It is why we often get professional managers, engineers and technicians that could be making more money in the “real world”, but come to us to be part of the mission of discovery and sharing. Science provides a compelling answer to Simon Sinek’s why? Focusing on science outcomes is good.
And yet, it is not enough. Focusing on our output only, whether it be science productivity or dollars, sets the focus away from the people we are serving and more importantly the people who are doing the work. It says the ends are more important than the means and I don’t believe they are.
To produce the most science, we need to focus on the means as well as the ends. We need to allow our people to innovate and deliver more and better science because we have made it easy for them to do so. We need to create an environment where our people can create and enable the most science by setting things up, then getting out of their way. By focusing on our staff, we allow them to focus on enabling and producing science, just as many companies have found focusing on their staff allows them to produce more profits. For any given decision, one choice might appear to produce the most immediate amount of science, but if it hinders a staff member, limits their ability or motivation to produce and innovate, lower output will result. Businesses cannot afford to focus on profit over their people; and neither can we. If we want the most and best science, we have to focus on enabling our employees to go out and produce it for us.
As an astromanger himself, Scot wants his work to deliver the most possible science, and before he became a manager, he contributed to that mission by producing science, individually and in collaboration with others. At that time in his career, he could indeed focus on what action would produce the most science. As an astronomanger, however, his primary mission is no longer to produce compelling science himself, but to enable those in his care to do so for the good of the overall organization. Making that happen meant changing his focus from what he was trained in, the objective, relentless, scientific process, to what he had to learn, how to enable the people in his care to live and work to their greatest potential. That is the true role of the astromanager, and one he strives to be worthy of, despite its subjective, squishy, nature.