What organizational rewiring can help us shift? (Part 4)
Welcome to 2026. I hope you had a lovely break and enjoyed reading some of the articles from the back catalogue on the blog (check them out here and here). Today we’re revisiting the McKinsey and Co article on change management. You can check the previous posts out here, here, and here.
As you will recall our last discussion prompted you to look at the central players, relationships, and dynamics of your area of research. This is the start of your plan to reinvent your research program. This week we are going to put some meat to the bones of your plan by thinking more specifically about the resources needed to make these plans happen.
According to the article organizational rewiring in the business context is about disassembling and reassembling how work is done so that old structures don’t get in the way of reinvention. The question, “What organizational rewiring can help us shift?” is really asking about the resources you have that can be leveraged to drive reinvention. These resources can be financial (ex. overhead money, one-time money from your chair or dean, or grant funding opportunities), people power (ex. collaborators, graduate and undergraduate students, and other trainees), or time based.
To figure out which resources you will need to make your reinvention successful look at the ecosystem you created from our last post (Part 3). Where do you need to start? Maybe it’s with creating your research team? Maybe it’s understanding the work of other people in your proposed field? Maybe you need to link your central players and relationships?
Once you have all the steps worked out as best you can, and keeping in mind these plans are adaptable, it’s time to think about which resources you need. Do you need money, people, or time? What’s most important today? And what can wait until you have some of the other details worked out?
If you need time, this could mean stepping off committees (even ones you like or get something from), giving up advising all of the students in your program (despite the fact that students “need” you), or saying “no” to a collaborator about a new project they want to start (so you can focus on your own work).
If you need money, start by thinking carefully about the real amount of money you need. Would hundreds of thousands of research dollars solve a lot of problems? Sure. Is that a realistic amount to lay your hands on within the next 3 months? Probably not for most of us. But could you start collecting some pilot data with a select group of patient advisors for a few hundred dollars? Likely.
If you need people power think about your students and junior colleagues. I always have students who are looking for projects. Junior colleagues have lots of energy and often a more flexible schedule. I’ve found the greatest long-term success when I can include new collaborators early and giving them ownership of appropriate pieces of the project (thus freeing my time for other things only I can do).
For your reinvention to be successful you need to allocate money, people, and time to the effort. Since these resources are finite, this will require changing how you do your work right now. Failing to make these adjustments will at best significantly delay your progress, and at worst it will mean your reinvention doesn’t succeed.
Rewiring is hard. I think that’s why so few people see their reinventions happen. Human beings are not good at being uncomfortable. Our brains are wired for energy conservation and seeking comfort and ease. This is where having a partner in the process can be helpful. Somone who will hold you to your plan and provide encouragement when things get hard. This could be someone on your team, a mentor, or someone external to your everyday environment. But we all need someone to acknowledge our struggles, while also reminding us of why we started the reinvention process to begin with.
Next week we will tackle the question of how we learn faster than others in the academic context.
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