Fast Track Impact

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-burnoutRead Dr Reed's new blog on self-compassion: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/post/self-compassion-and-kindnessFind 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-researcherFollow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn.Impact Culture is released as a paperback, e-book and audio book

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. Be the first to find out how to join the launch team and get an exclusive signed copy over a month before the rest of the world by joining the Fast Track Im

Episode 2: 5 lessons to co-produce impact when you have limited timeThis week, Mark shares his top 5 lessons for co-producing impact with limited time, based on his forthcoming book, Impact CultureFind 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; andBe 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. Be the first to find out how to join the launch team and get an exclusive signed copy over a month before the rest of the world by joining the Fast Track Impact mailing list.

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.Be the first to find out how to join the launch team and get an exclusive signed copy over a month before the rest of the world by joining the Fast Track Impact mailing list. 

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 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 https://twitter.com/profmarkreed/status/1202929151923179521

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: https://www.slideshare.net/MarkReed11/evidencing-research-impact-204551527

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 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 at https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/single-post/2019/11/19/3-i%E2%80%99s-stakeholder-analysis-%E2%80%93-advanced-analysis-reveals-more-than-ever-before-about-who-you-need-to-work-with-on-your-pathway-to-impact

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 at https://www.vitae.ac.uk/policy/concordat

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: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/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. http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/92655/1/Unsworth%20Yeo%20Beck%202014%20Multiple%20goals%20review%20and%20derivation%20of%20

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.​