What if my idea for making an impact isn’t very good?
Starting something new is scary. Especially in the academic world, where we are trained from baby graduate students to choose one area and dig and dig and dig into that area until we are the world’s foremost expert on that topic. The idea of switching gears, giving up on all that work and effort seems stupid. And even if you do start over what if you choose wrong and your idea for making an impact isn’t good?
No one wants to put in effort to fail. It doesn’t feel good. I get that. I get those same feelings every time I make a change in my career.
At the same time, I keep seeing opportunities that won’t leave me alone. In some cases, the thought of these opportunities chased me for months. They popped back into my mind while I was working on other projects. They would come up in conversations with colleagues or in an email about a new training program that would help me seize the opportunity. In other cases, all the stars aligned in a way that made the choice so clear that I knew I would regret not taking the chance right away.
Now of course not all these opportunities panned out. The original plans changed, the accolades I thought would come didn’t, and the people I wanted to serve didn’t think my solution was as important as I thought it was. But I have always learned some important lesson from these experiences that has helped me change better next time.
Here are the four things I think about when exploring a new idea for impact:
1. Look for problems real people are facing – This means getting out of your office and into the world where the people you want to help exist. Ask them questions about their lives and the troubles they face day-to-day. Be curious and listen. Do not come with your own ideas and look for confirmation that they are good. Just see what there is to see.
2. Ground observations in the literature – Take your observations back to the literature. Have other people identified the same problem, or one that’s related? How did they think about it (or not)? How do your observations differ from the literature? Does someone have a solution you can test with the people you want to serve?
3. Test small then scale – Use the research literature as a guide to begin exploring your problem. If the literature didn’t have anything to say on the topic specifically then explore it. Expand your conversations with people in the field using qualitative interviews that can be built into surveys to confirm that the problem is in fact important. If similar work has been done in other fields, but not yours, then present it to your community for feedback. If there are interventions test their acceptability and feasibility. Each of these projects can be done on a small scale as you continue to refine the idea and build support for it.
4. Give it time – Rebuilding your research program takes time. More time than I would like, and more time than you will feel like you can give. There is no way around this. I wish there was. While timelines may differ by disciplines, I’ve seen that it takes 7-10 years for new ideas to really take hold in my field.
5. (Bonus consideration) Have multiple streams of work – Starting a new research program doesn’t mean you should abandon your old work. Having multiple streams of work will get you through the transition.
I firmly believe that we all have a set of problems we were meant to help solve in the world. These problems don’t all come at once and often evolve as we gain more knowledge and experiences in our lives. Sometimes we are the ones that get to see the solution cross the finish line, other times we contribute just a few pieces to the larger puzzle. The problems will tell you what they need from you.
So, if you are feeling the itch to switch maybe try these steps. If you could use a cheerleader to kick your behind into action, let me know.
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