Insights
POV: Are You From the Past, or the Future?
The Ghost of Christmas Past makes Scrooge remorseful.
The Ghost of Christmas Present makes him curious.
And the Ghost of Christmas Future scares the bejeezus out of him.
That’s the power of speaking from the future, if you’re believable.
(BTW: This new version of “A Christmas Carol” on F/X with Guy Pearce as Scrooge looks great.…
Read MorePOV: The Four Axes
I see four POV axes for researchers who generate insight content for non-specialists:
- Are You From the Past or the Future?
- Are You an Advocate, or are You Dispassionate?
- Are You a Fox (always knitting together lots of disparate ideas) or a Hedgehog (jamming on one big idea)?
POV: Who Are You to Us?
Why have so many residents in Detroit’s communities of color turned down the city’s offer to plant free trees in front of their homes?
Because no one asked them if they wanted the trees.
They should want them — at least, that’s how a researcher might think.…
Read MoreWhat’s Your POV?
We all have opinions — expressions of how we perceive the world. These we can be rather free with, especially at conferences around 5p.
Very few of us, by contrast, clearly articulate our points of view. The point of view — it says it right in the name — isn’t your opinion.…
Read MoreHow Much Time Do They Have?
How do you decide what specific tactics — tweeting? op-eds? a roundtable? smoke signals? — to use in communicating your research idea to non-specialists?
Most research communication efforts throw up their collective hands and say: let’s do everything. Or let’s do what we always do.…
Read MoreAvoiding Science’s Schlock Pile
What if researchers had to rate — publicly — the evidentiary robustness of the major points they made in books, opinion pieces…all their communications for non-specialists?
What if research communicators had to do same?
Oh, what a wonderful world. I think.…
Read MoreThe Forbidden List
You already have this list, if only in your head. Everyone who runs or works for a research-driven organization does.
It’s the list of all the evidence-based things you and your researchers don’t feel you can say or talk about publicly.…
Read MoreYour Bio: How Does Your Insight Lead the World?
Yesterday I outlined the first of two subtle ways the bio of Jessica Hellmann, director of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment, inverts the normal research bio to position her as a strong leader.
The first inversion: for leaders, research achievement is about impact, not journals.…
Read MoreYour Bio: How Does Your Research Lead the World?
Quick note: I misspelled Jessica Hellmann’s last name in last week’s email on researcher bios. Two n’s in Hellmann, not one. My apologies!
As a leader of a research-driven organization, you have a bio. And you almost certainly don’t like it.…
Read MoreWhat Leadership Bios Look Like
They read your thought leadership content; now they’ve looked up your website bio to learn about your leadership.
The last thing they want to read is an extension of your CV — academic in style. Or a list of your achievements without cohesion or relevance.…
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