What assumptions or beliefs would the ResearchOps profession benefit from letting go of?
This is It's a Great ResearchOps Question, a 6-part podcast series produced by the Cha Cha Club, a member's club for ResearchOps professionals. In each episode, a panel of Club members will tackle a great question about ResearchOps, like what does AI mean for research, or how do you build a compelling business case for ResearchOps? This series is sponsored by Great Question, the all-in-one UX research platform. And I'm your host, Kate Towsey. I'm the founder of the Cha Cha Club and the author of Research That Scales: The Research Operations Handbook.
Kate Towsey:Right. This is episode 6. In the studio, we have Steph.
Steph Kingston:Hi, everybody. I'm Steph Kingston, and I'm a research operations specialist at Cisco Security.
Kate Towsey:And Jenna?
Jenna Lombardo:Hi. Jenna Lombardo, senior manager of research analytics and design at Workday.
Kate Towsey:And last but not least, Kasey.
Kasey Canlas:I'm Kasey Canlas I am a UX research manager at Genesys.
Kate Towsey:All guest views are their own and not that of their employer. Perfect. I think that one was very cool. Casey, are you happy?
Kasey Canlas:Yeah. I'm fine. It sounded great. Yeah. This is why, like, when I do speeches for, like, conferences and stuff, I I just have, like, 3 words.
Kasey Canlas:It's like, this is what you're talking about, and this is where you're going next. And that's all I have.
Steph Kingston:Okay. So there there there's one thing out there that we probably do need to get rid of or move past on, and it's we need some better job title skills. They're so long. Every time somebody asked me what I do, and I'm like, alright, strap in. I'm a user experience research operations specialist, and I just said 5 words, and you don't know what any of them mean.
Steph Kingston:And I did that happened one time with my neighbor, and he's like, oh, cool. I'm an electrician.
Kate Towsey:Because you know what
Kasey Canlas:I say is I say, like, we research the researchers and try to make it a better, like, experience for them. So it's just like that's the easiest way I can think of doing it because otherwise, it's like, what do you do? Everything under the sun. I'm like, yeah.
Kate Towsey:And these days, I'm tending to say I'm a research systems designer, which even then you can hear is still, like, pretty tricky on
Kasey Canlas:the tongue. Yeah. I know. And then I thought after the fact too is, like, Nielsen Norman, if you've seen, like, they have research ops as a part of design ops, and the whole reason for that I'm not going to say that I know the reason, but I'm guessing it's because design ops has been around longer than research ops. So they see research ops as being a piece of that, but not as being, like, an equivalent partner.
Kasey Canlas:You know? Like, research and design partner, and we work together, and we can be under the same operations umbrella. But, like, we're not actually a piece of design ops. We have different things that overlap and we have different things that are very specific.
Kate Towsey:And the product operations book that I've just been reading, which I'll put in show notes, that has research operations as a part of product operations. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Interesting.
Kate Towsey:So at some point, all these operations are either gonna amalgamate or be big enough to be sitting next to each other as equal partners with completely different skills. But being able to work together, then we have power.
Jenna Lombardo:Yes. Mhmm. That'd be beautiful.
Kate Towsey:It will be beautiful.
Kasey Canlas:Beautiful. We will do it.
Kate Towsey:The question that we have today in this episode 6, which is the final episode of a 6 part series is juicy and big. It is what assumptions or beliefs would the research ops profession benefit from letting go of? We have just started this discussion. Steph, you had a really interesting point around the the start and end of a research operations person's job. And it feels like we were getting into something around defining what it is that research ops people do between administration and the other stuff.
Kate Towsey:Is that a good place to dive in?
Steph Kingston:Yeah. And I I mean, I don't wanna get too into that because I think that was actually, like, the topic of another episode. But in the sense that because re research ops is so new, a lot of that a lot of the people we work with teams, companies, whatever, like, they don't necessarily know what research ops does. And so to figure out, like, how to define, okay, like, here's what I need to do or here's what I can do, and sometimes those are 2 different things. And then, you know, Casey was saying, like, we also you have to, like, make a point of, like, you can't we can't do everything.
Steph Kingston:You know? In a dream world, I think we would all have, you know, teams of 10 and have somebody delegated to everything and it would be great. But, you know, in in reality, lots of research ops people are working as teams of 1, maybe 2. I I come from a I have a very large team of 5, which is like one of the biggest teams there. And even then, we still turn things down all the time because we just can't.
Kasey Canlas:The first thing I thought of is we can't do it all because I feel like with research ops, whether someone is not familiar with research operations or you're coming into somewhere where research operations was only recruiting or only x y z. It's kind of redefining what research operations is and what you can handle in a time frame. You can't do it all by yourself.
Steph Kingston:You know, research ops is so new in a lot of ways. And, you know, a lot of people doing research ops, they might be the first person at their company or in their team doing that role. And so it is hard to, like, find that line of, like, you know, what yeah. Where does, like, a researcher doing recruitment and and a dedicated research operations person begin? And so, yeah, defining that that and then figuring out like, okay, like, what what do I need to do?
Steph Kingston:And what can I do? Because those are sometimes 2 different things as well.
Jenna Lombardo:And the expectations of what we can or cannot do come from, I think, two sources, external, outside of research ops, and within research ops. So, for example, the job descriptions that we often see, right, that have all these expectations of what one research ops person can do. And then we also try I think as just ops in general, we try to do as much as we can and take on more than we should. So I think also part of this is learning how to say no and defining boundaries.
Kate Towsey:Jenna, I have a habit of trolling those job descriptions as job person. In the past, I've I've actually emailed the person advertising the role and said, do you realize that you're asking for someone who does this person cannot possibly do all these things from a time perspective. Like, they can't be the procurement person, the librarian, the recruitment person, and and and and and. But also that the skills you're looking for would would require a polymath. Someone who's, like, studied taxonomy and librarianship skills and understands financial systems and organisations and, and, and, and, and, and it's really interesting when people come back and they go, Oh, wow.
Kate Towsey:Thanks for letting us know. And I don't kind of keep like track of the, the job roles to find out whether they've edited them. But I definitely think there's something that we can do as a group is just get on and point out when people have unrealistic expectations of what one research ops specialist can do.
Steph Kingston:And I think we often have unrealistic expectations of ourselves. You know, I I think people who get into this line of work, we like to solve problems. And so to look at a sea of problems and be like, well, I can't do all of these. That's really hard. You know, we wanna be the person who fixes things and sets things up and makes things run smoothly.
Steph Kingston:But sometimes we can't. And that's, you know, yeah, something that we have to figure out with ourselves too is like, you know, how do you how do you say no? How do you Yeah, how do you like, understand with yourself? Like, what what can I actually do in a way that you know, I'm not gonna burn out? And it's hard to say no, it sucks to say no to things like both to the person you're saying no to and also, yeah, to myself.
Steph Kingston:Like, I feel bad when I, like, don't get to dive into a particular puzzle that I want to dive into because I just don't have the time.
Kate Towsey:I like that idea of, not saying no, but saying yes. And and so it would be, say, P someone wants let's let's stick to the idea of a library. Someone wants a library. Kind of a big juicy example. And so it wouldn't be no.
Kate Towsey:It'd be, yes. And I would need this headcount, this amount of time, this much money. Of course, I could do it for you. And then so you never have to say no.
Kasey Canlas:You often have a very flexible road map of, like, here's what I think they will accomplish throughout the year. And then you, like, firm up your quarter that's next, and you know that there's going to be 1 to 5000000 things that show up and then become priority. And so you have to talk to whoever it is that is your manager or your director and explain, I have to take these things on now. This is the most important, which means all of these things will get pushed back. And, like, making sure that they're aware of that and they're okay and they're not holding you to those same initial dates that you set.
Kasey Canlas:Because if you are just one person, you're also trying to figure out what of my tasks can I, like, have someone else do? What can I have, like, the democratization, which I know is another topic that you have? But just trying to figure out how you can offload through training or some of that work because you just are never going to be able to do all of it.
Kate Towsey:I'm realizing as we get into the conversation that this is the final episode and it's actually quite nice because it wraps up so many of the topics that have been spoken about democratization, definitions of what research ops is. Going back to the question of what assumptions or beliefs, is it true then that we're talking about there's an assumption on both sides on or a belief on both sides that research operations can do the full stretch of everything that is required, like one person. Is that what we're talking about here in terms of a belief that we need to change?
Jenna Lombardo:I'd say yes. I think it's best for us to have specializations, and then we can there's generalists and specialists. Right? And, I think it's important to distinguish the 2. It's okay to have somebody that's just focused on one thing, and that's that's with any type of team.
Jenna Lombardo:You need both in order to support the organization's needs.
Kasey Canlas:And in that same vein, not having it be limited to one thing either. Like, not having them just be like, this is just the recruiter. This is just for example, on my team, I only have a team of 1, but I was set up to start a participant recruitment program, and then I've handed it off to her. And I said, your role will be not just recruiting. It is how can you get out of the weeds to handle all the different pieces and parts where you touch participants.
Kasey Canlas:And so it's participant management and that's across the board and making sure that whatever you give to them can become something larger than what they initially start out with, or they can grow and change their role because we don't know what the landscape of research ops is going to look like either, and we don't know how needs will shift. And so it really it just it depends. Everything is situational.
Kate Towsey:I think especially at the moment with so much change in organizations, it feels everybody I speak to is saying, we set up a strategy or structure and then within 3 to 6 months, things have changed around. And so it's constantly, it depends and shifting and learning. And then that's within the context of being a young profession that's also doing some amazing pioneering work and trying to understand what are the specialisms? How do we structure teams? How do we manage teams?
Kate Towsey:How do we grow people? How do we create the opportunities? What are those opportunities? Is that something that you're finding?
Steph Kingston:Yeah. You just you just made me think of maybe, like, this could be controversial, you know, something that we might wanna let go of. And an idea that we might wanna let go of is that we know what research ops is. Because, yeah, I mean, it's this this is we're very early in the game. Things change.
Steph Kingston:I know things change for for me all the time, for my team all the time. The industries are always changing. So, you know, maybe we should just accept that we don't necessarily know what we're doing because we don't not to say that we don't know what we're doing, but we we we don't know what's around the corner. And so, you know, as much as we like to build systems and and, not control, but organize, I guess. Who knows?
Steph Kingston:So maybe this maybe that's what we have to let go of that we that we know what we're doing.
Kate Towsey:I love that. Jen, I feel that you've some got something right on the tip of your nose. What what you're forming your words.
Jenna Lombardo:Yes. I think another idea that we can let go of is that we only support research or design the people that are the teams that are closest to us because we have these specializations that can help lots of other teams across the company, across companies. And our impact is much larger than design research.
Kate Towsey:With my book, I'm looking at at the moment, there's obviously a research audience, for the audience. I've this is a little self promotion, which, I always feel a bit embarrassed about, but I've just launched a book called Research That Scales. And, I'm looking at who the audience is for this book beyond researchers. And at the same time, I'm reading a book called Product Operations by I'm terrible at remembering names. Melissa, have any of you read it?
Kate Towsey:Melissa On
Jenna Lombardo:my to read list.
Kate Towsey:To read list. Very it's very, very good. I highly recommend reading it. So much synchronicity with research operations, and realising that for us is a huge audience, in product, of course, product operations, never mind design operations. But also, in teams in companies that don't have researchers necessarily, but have people who are doing research.
Kate Towsey:Also in academia, universities are more and more starting to restructure and they're looking at how they make use of people researchers, academic researchers. And there's so many spaces that we can be working in both within our companies, but also in a wider context.
Kasey Canlas:When I was talking to my information architecture team, they're kind of the ones that do procurement and the like. We were talking about, do we have certain needs across tools, across teams? And when we looked at that, it was off topic, but they would say, oh, how how are you getting consent? And the teams would say, like, oh, we don't we haven't really thought about that. And so we could say, oh, well, we can offer you like, here's our template consent form.
Kasey Canlas:And they would be like, that's great. We didn't have that. And sharing some of the processes that have worked for you and finding out, like, who else is kind of starting to do research and the like, because we we partner with PM ops. Like, we partner with DevOps because maybe you love Jira and there's certain things you find while you're just searching the web and you talk to your DevOps and they're like, that actually applies across the entire company, like, changing this 1 or 2 things. And so I think not thinking of us as kind of in a silo.
Kasey Canlas:It's really across all of the operations, across all of your companies no matter how big or small. Not everything's going to work. Like, you're not going to be able to have one standard template across everything, but it can apply to many people in one way or another or get them thinking about how they could do better research
Kate Towsey:or
Kasey Canlas:even better workflows and processes.
Kate Towsey:Steph and and Casey, that makes me think well, Casey, that makes me think of Steph of your amaze I love the proposition. I'm I'm always a bit of a radical. So when someone says something radical, I hop right in there of like, do we even really, you know, maybe we redefining our research operations as we go. And really where that brings me to is like how we're defining research. And we don't need to go down that rabbit hole right now and be here for the next 50 years.
Kate Towsey:But, because then you're defining I've been down this rabbit hole, which is why I know it quite well. Almost didn't write a book because of this rabbit hole. Because then you're defining, well, what is knowledge? Because ultimately research is about capturing knowledge. And I think it was Plato who first described knowledge as justified true belief.
Kate Towsey:And then that was turned over by a guy called Gettier, sometime more recently, not as old as Plato. But it got me to think that really what we're doing is setting up operations for learning, for learning what our customers and users, helping people to learn what customers and users need, how they feel, etcetera, and then helping other people to relearn from that same knowledge. And if we look at it that way, then the job becomes so much more broad than working within a research team and just helping them recruit participants, which is not a just we all know that that's a huge, huge job. I wonder, like, how does what thoughts does that bring up in terms of, like, being the operations people around learning?
Steph Kingston:I yeah. I think that that really resonates to me because one thing that my ops team has really become is we are, like, yeah, we're the knowledge keepers. You know, not just when it comes to recruitment, we, you know, we have the repository and and all the data management stuff, but also, you know, we're the people, like, if somebody needs to know where to find a thing, they usually come to us. They're like, oh, where's that form? Or, like, oh, do you guys know where the, you know, employee whatever survey is?
Steph Kingston:And they they often come to us first because we're just known to be knowledgeable.
Kasey Canlas:Accidental encyclopedias. They're always like, you're the go to person for everything. Yeah. You can try to share that knowledge out, but still it ends up finding its way to back to you because you just you somehow stick everything in your brain unintentionally. Mhmm.
Jenna Lombardo:I think that we are good at organizing our knowledge. And that's what, distinguishes research ops maybe from other teams because there are so many other teams within a company that also create knowledge too, but they don't necessarily know how to share it. I wouldn't I maybe I shouldn't say don't know Howard. Haven't established a great system for sharing out finding information. And that's going back to my comment about how we can help other teams outside of research.
Jenna Lombardo:That's that's a huge opportunity right there. Something we're currently working on.
Kate Towsey:How are you doing that?
Jenna Lombardo:1st, starting by building relationships. I've learned from experience that you can't just say we know how to do things. Hell you know? Of course, they're gonna jump on jump in and and do what we recommend. It that's not how things work.
Jenna Lombardo:So it's really about relationship building once you have trust, and then they can see how you have built systems to pull that information, etcetera, then it's easy for them to jump in, but it takes time.
Steph Kingston:I love the idea of going from being the accidental encyclopedia to, like, the knowledge ambassador. Right? Like, hey. Here's all the structures. Here's how you can use them.
Steph Kingston:Here's how we can all benefit from this even if, like, I don't necessarily work with your team very often, like but here's a structure that could be useful for you. Go enjoy.
Kasey Canlas:I say encyclopedia, but, like, I can tell you right now that my information architecture part of my encyclopedia is kind of not a 100% filled out there. And that's okay because that's why when I go to add on to my team, I will find somebody that has that strength and can complement the others that are on the team. And, like, everyone has their own unique strengths and weaknesses that they bring to the team, and you don't have to be the pro at everything. You just have to know how to find the pro at whatever you're looking at. So it it really is a joint effort across everywhere, and it may even be that you're not looking at a research ops person.
Kasey Canlas:But if you're collaborating, you're looking across the company going, who knows more about x y z? And they say, oh, talk to this person, and then you can have that conversation and you can see if you can pull on their knowledge because you're not going to know everything. You're not going to be the best at everything, and that's okay. Like, it's part of life. You just have to be able to find the right people.
Kate Towsey:That reminds me of an assumption that I see often made about hiring into research ops and and advertisements for jobs looking for someone who has x number of years of experience in research ops. And I look and I think they're narrowing their amazing talent that they can bring into their team because they're requiring someone to already have a research ops job title or to have already had experience. Some of the most powerful people that I've hired in into teams in the past have had no experience in research, nevermind research operations, but they've come with a wealth of experience in the particular field that I'm looking for. Whether it's librarianship, 20 years worth of amazing librarianship experience and no experience in the research space. But you can pick up enough about research and about, the the tech industry or whatever it's kind of space you're in within 6 months, pretty easily with the right manager.
Kate Towsey:And suddenly you're super, super powerful because you bring these deep, deep non research. I mean, librarians should be part of every single research team in my opinion, but you're bringing in these very unique teams skills into your team. And I, I, I wish that the, that, more people would start to look at their job roles more creatively. Is that something that any of you have found or have you noticed in the space around you?
Steph Kingston:Not so much within research ops, but, like, outside. Right? And I I think it's just, again, like, the result of people, like, thinking they know what research ops does or is, and then kind of, yeah, putting those but, you know, those are very traditional, like, especially when it comes to hiring. Right? Like, oh, we want, you know, this amount of experience and this degree and this job titles and blah blah blah
Kate Towsey:blah blah blah blah blah.
Steph Kingston:And I and I think that's this is something that happens in many, many industries, job roles, like, you know, there's and I not to, like, get on too much of a personal tangent, but, like, I worked in hospitality for 15 years before moving into to research jobs. Like, I had the opposite of a traditional resume. And, you know, I if I hadn't gotten lucky and found the right person who knew what that experience meant, then I probably wouldn't be here today. And so, but but so often those decisions aren't being made by the actual research ops people. Like, I think research ops folks, we all come from such disparate backgrounds.
Steph Kingston:Like, we know we know that, like, these skills and these things aren't something that necessarily, like, you pick up in university or from even, like, reading books and stuff. I think that's something that's something that you just pick up from having a diverse life experience. We know that, but I don't think folks outside of research ops necessarily know that.
Jenna Lombardo:I was gonna say it's so funny stuff that you mentioned hospitality, because I was gonna mention that as well. That that's a strong industry where I've seen a lot of people can be successful in research ops. My myself, my undergrad, I went to Cornell Hotel School. So my undergrad's in hotel administration. Yes.
Jenna Lombardo:So I see a lot of similarities there. I think it's because we deal with people. Mhmm.
Steph Kingston:And and you have to be organized. Like, I my my sister also was in hospitality. She's an engineer a chemical engineer now. And she told me once, she was like, most servers I worked with could run circles around those project managers I work with. Like, you have to be organized.
Jenna Lombardo:I also think the sense of confidentiality too is That's true. Something, like, if you're working in a hotel as a front desk agent, there's certain things you can and cannot say to protect, your, guests. So I think that's another interesting similarity.
Kate Towsey:And such good systems. It is amazing systems. Even when you go I love when you're at restaurants that have open kitchens, and so you get this view into how their systems work. And I sit there, annoyingly, to my husband, analyzing, how do they know when to pass this dish there? And they've got the system for that.
Kate Towsey:And I'm, like, unpacking the systems to try and understand how does the restaurant work. And the really, really good restaurants have very rigorous systems. And ultimately, I think that that's what we as operations folk are. We're systems fundies. I haven't used that word in a very long time.
Kasey Canlas:I think it's important to have somebody that has operational experience. It doesn't have to be research ops if you don't have a research ops person, but somebody that has that operational mindset. They can be in the interviews, and so they can ask questions to kind of see how people would react, how they can handle problem solving because that's a lot of what we do. And then once that person is hired, if they haven't had experience previously in research jobs, building their confidence. So they're not just saying, oh, well, I just started this.
Kasey Canlas:No. You didn't just start this. You had x amount of years of experience that apply to what you're doing now. You have the mindset that you you've set up these processes. You've thought about systems and how everything works, and, like, that is what you bring to the table.
Kasey Canlas:So you are research operations or whatever operations you may be. It it's not defined by how long your role was research operation.
Steph Kingston:Yeah. Absolutely.
Kate Towsey:Let's take a super short break to hear from Ned Dwyer, the cofounder and CEO of Great Question. He'll share his thoughts about the topic and will rejoin the panel straight after.
Ned Dwyer:I definitely echo a lot of what everyone is saying so far that you can't do it all. But when I think about what belief or assumption is kind of holding research ops professionals back, I think it's that the the idea that you exist to serve the research team. Yes. You're here to support them, help make them successful, resolve a lot of the ops related challenges that are in front of them, but ultimately you're here to sub serve and support the strategic goals of the broader business as a whole. And so I think it would serve research ops professionals to be reaching outside of the research organization to see how you can be supporting product design, marketing, other areas of the business that equally care about putting customer insights at the heart of their decision making processes, that care about research as well, but maybe don't have access.
Ned Dwyer:Maybe they're not less of a priority to the research team, but equally have their own needs that need to be met. I think aligning with these other business units is going to help you better serve the business as a whole, and potentially create new opportunities for collaboration, with research ops, but also with research in general.
Jenna Lombardo:If we're ready, I have another topic we can switch to.
Kate Towsey:You dive in there.
Jenna Lombardo:Something that gets me going is the assumption that a way to get to become a researcher is to start in research ops,
Steph Kingston:to
Jenna Lombardo:get your foot in the door. That, that that may work for some people. I don't wanna discredit it completely. But that's something that I think we need to drop, that idea, because it's they're very different skill sets, and it also depends on what we're doing within research ops. Yeah.
Jenna Lombardo:That's something that I think that whole idea, we need to drop. So there's different career paths, and you can't assume that because you're taking a contractor scheduling, role that that means you can work your way to become a researcher. It doesn't necessarily set you up for success in that role that you're, applying for.
Kate Towsey:I've had that in interviews where, I've specifically tested for that just to see are they really committed to an operations role, to designing systems, to running systems, or or, you know, all that sort of stuff as opposed to seeing it as an entryway into a research role. And so often, it was kind of seen as like, well, I'll just do this for like 6 months and then hopefully someone will pick me up and move me into research. And then it's it's also quite satisfying where when I meet people who have been in a research as a researcher and they've made the move into research operations and they're still there 2 years later and loving it.
Jenna Lombardo:Yes. It takes a lot of investment too from the to to train somebody in in the role. Like, for example, recruitment, that's usually the role that people think they can get into and then become a researcher. And so it's very it can be frustrating with, like you said, 6 months later, it's like, oh, I got another role. So so I'm I'm out or not enjoying it.
Jenna Lombardo:I always when hiring, I love to see the the passion, excitement that they have for operations.
Kasey Canlas:Just solving problems. Like, somebody that's like, oh, I I'm so close to, like, figuring this out. It's like, I see you. I see that you would probably just succeed so much in this.
Kate Towsey:I often think that particularly it's this maybe it changes, like Steph, to your point where we're we're such we are pioneers. We're we're learning, we're figuring it out where you've gotta be pretty brave and just get in there and try something and see if it works. And so we're entrepreneurs really. I feel in our own even in little spaces, we're still entrepreneurs. There's lots of nodding going on.
Jenna Lombardo:Yeah. There's always new problems. We're always solving challenges. And, like Casey mentioned earlier about having our road map, having things planned out, and more than likely we can't we're always handling other things and don't often get to the things that we plan to because of that. We have to be very creative with all of these challenges, situations that we solve.
Kasey Canlas:It's like you build a road map on the beach, and then the wave comes. And then you're like, well, half of it's still there, but this other half, I'm going to have to figure out what to do.
Steph Kingston:I I really like it. I I love that. Jenna, it's something you said that I think I really keyed it. I keyed it on there. You talked about when we talked a little bit about being creative.
Steph Kingston:And I think that's another assumption that that, you know, that research ops is boring. And it's just about spreadsheets and organizing. And we do have to be really creative, both in just like the way we approach our actual work. And the way we deal with those challenges, like I like creative thinkers abound in research ops, and I think that is not something that people would not necessarily think that, oh, yeah. You doing you you do 2 really complicated sounding things in what research sounds complicated, operation sounds complicated.
Steph Kingston:It sounds like it must be, like, really stodgy and involve a lot of numbers. I'm, like, yeah, sometimes it does, but, like, sometimes you get to, you know, brainstorm with cool people about how to solve problems in new ways, and it's so exciting.
Kate Towsey:I I actually come from a a fine art background. I have never studied business. Same. Yeah. And and when I when I did my degree in fine art, we did conceptual art, which was very much about how do you think through problems or how do you communicate something through some kind of experience.
Kate Towsey:And I think a lot of that has helped me in this space because Steph, I completely agree. It's such a creative role. And I'm more and more thinking of us as designers with service and systems designers. And then as part of that design, then we need to have people that continue to administrate those systems. So where a designer might design something and then walk away from it or a consultant often does that too.
Kate Towsey:When you're sitting with your design and now it needs to run and actually deliver stuff all the time consistently to more and more people often. And then you're also getting someone or you're yourself administrating the system that you've designed. So I think it's really important that that the assumption of research operations being purely about administration and oftentimes being first about administration gets turned on its head. And it should be first with designers. The first person you hire into your research ops team is a designer and they're designing all the systems.
Kate Towsey:They're designing all the systems that interconnect with all the other systems. And then they're designing in a system that requires as little administration as possible, but it will always be there. And then the administrators come in and keep the system moving while it's constantly redesigned, Casey, to look after when the wave comes in and changes the landscape and you need to adjust again.
Kasey Canlas:I think you've nailed it right there. It's like, it's not that there isn't a place for administrative work in research operations, but it shouldn't just be given to the research operations as, like, that's all you do. It's more of a final step once you have something where it's running on its own and it's able to kind of support itself, but still needs a little bit of help. And when you think of automations and when you think of things that are traditionally technical and boring, you have to look at all of the pieces and figure out different ways to put it together and see if it works. And then if it doesn't work, tear it all apart again and come up with a new different sculpture, if you will.
Kasey Canlas:And so I look at it as we are very creative. We are very like, if you sat someone in front of a whole bunch of administrative work day in, day out and just ask them to do that as a research operations person, they're going to burn out because they're not getting the chance to spread their wings and to try to figure out all the things that they're good at and what they really, like, have passion for. Because we touch so many different things. You might be passionate about one thing and not care as much about the other. So still do the other things, but not as happily and as joyfully as the one thing that really lights your heart on fire.
Kate Towsey:Next year, I have a fantasy about running retreats. For some reason, I want to do them in, like, the English countryside in one of those old, like, grand houses. And they're about research operation strategy strategy, and about designing operating models and having like 3 days away from the noise to walk around in the countryside and hang up in these big grand rooms. And it will be scissors and paper and glue and cutting stuff out and sketching stuff. And because I found that when you get sort of stuck in the square straight screen that we are all staring at right now, but then also within the confines of Slack or Teams or whatever your and the email, it's all very square and it's very I found it difficult to then kind of move out of that, and get back into being a bit more, like, creative and circular.
Kate Towsey:And it was really helpful to actually just get out scissors and paper, different, like, dig into your kids, like, I don't have kids, but dig into your kids, like, art supplies and start sketching and drawing and just kind of loosen up a little bit again to kind of bring out those creative juices.
Kasey Canlas:You have an inner child that has art supplies. That's how that works, Kate.
Kate Towsey:I love that. I do actually have quite a lot of art supplies.
Kasey Canlas:As do I. Like, not even that my kid's allowed to touch. He has his own supplies, and I have mine. So
Kate Towsey:You know what?
Jenna Lombardo:I have the same thing. My kids are not allowed to touch my art supplies.
Kasey Canlas:These Crayola are your watercolors. These here are my paints. That's
Kate Towsey:great. So the things that we've spoken about, so far have been being accidental in encyclopedias and knowledge ambassadors and behind being encyclopedias and knowledge ambassadors for things like how do I do this and where do I put that? And also, what do we know about x y zed? Oftentimes, operations will step in and say, oh, we've got this stored in this repository. I've seen it there.
Kate Towsey:They'll know where a bit of research got to. We're also designing all the systems that sit behind all of these knowledge retention, knowledge sharing, knowledge creation, knowledge of how to do things, not knowledge of where things are. And then there's administration going on. So that's a huge remit, a massive remit that is often on the shoulders of a one person team. Is there assumption?
Kate Towsey:This is a leading question For all the researchers who are listening, I'm very aware that I'm leading I'm leading the crowd here. Is there an assumption that one person can do all of that?
Jenna Lombardo:I say still working against that because I've I've seen it. I've seen both. 1st, I was gonna answer that with, well, if you are working with people who understand the needs, right, then they understand that it can't just be one person. But that's not true because I worked with somebody who was writing a job description that was a research manager and had all these expectations that the research ops person was gonna come in and solve all their problems. And so it's still something we're working through.
Kasey Canlas:But I think the the conversation is changing. You're starting to see more, like, large teams of operations. Like, they're like, Kate, I believe you had, what, 5, 6 people that are left here? 12? Okay.
Kate Towsey:Yeah.
Kasey Canlas:Nearly, you got much lower. 10.
Kate Towsey:I might have, we we were certainly 11 at one point, and I think I had then 3 head count that were frozen. So it would have become 14. Would have, could have, should have, but would have become 14, 15.
Kasey Canlas:I think part of when you go into interviews as well and when you're talking to people about a potential position, it's important to ask them, like, do they plan to bring other research operation people in? Because if they're wanting you to start up a practice as a generalist and, yes, I can start up something, but once I get these started, someone else is going to have to come and run this if you want me to tackle x y z. If you don't have that other person, then you're going to put all of this on me, and then you're going to expect me to keep everything else running in the background, spinning plates on, like, sticks while I'm supposed to create new sticks and plates. Like, it just it needs to be there needs to be a conversation had about how they see this developing and maybe even at least putting it into their minds as they're going that we would probably need someone else. There there would need to be more than one person for this because it's not realistic for one person to create and maintain and tackle new things.
Kasey Canlas:I think that in that, though, it's proving more of our value. Like, the researchers that work with us know that we have value, same with the research managers, same with any of the operations that we partner with. But those that are above them, we really have to kind of figure out a way that we can justify why we are worth having on the team and really, like, carve out that place for us. Because I think a lot of other a lot of other operational places like DevOps or PM Ops have been around a lot longer. So they've had that chance to really generate that business impact, and and we're still we're still working on it.
Kasey Canlas:So I do think it's improving, but I think there's a long ways to go before they see us as really being so valuable and really justifying a larger team to handle everything that they would like to be solved.
Kate Towsey:Kasey, earlier you had mentioned, you know, we'd spoken about different teams across an organization and even across industry, but let's stick within the organization. And you'd spoken about working with DevOps or your information architecture crew and and finding ways of, sharing the things that you're creating for research, but it also helps them. And I think my personal experience is that that can really help to spread the impact without necessarily adding on more and more work. And so that you become more valuable to more people and more teams across the organization rather than just sitting behind research, which is not to say that that's bad, but it can be fairly dangerous to silo yourself behind just one team when you can create so much more impact across the organization.
Kasey Canlas:Yeah. Networking is very important and even finding, like, I don't know other terms for it, but, like, guilds. Like, in my company, we have different guilds that is around Chiro or it's around, I mean, product management tool. Different ones, like, they have different tools. And so, like, you meet and you have different people from different areas, almost like a steering committee.
Kasey Canlas:And that way you're able to see the full the full perspectives of everyone and then also, like, try to solve problems that work for everyone. And it's just like a half hour every 2 weeks, but that half hour solves the entire company's problems. Wow.
Kate Towsey:Yeah.
Steph Kingston:Yeah. It's not just that we can connect with other teams outside of research. It's that we should be connecting with teams outside of research.
Kate Towsey:All of this reminds me of, when you start doing that kind of work and then you're successfully getting more head come behind you, and then suddenly you find that you're a manager, which brings with it all kinds of new requirements and skills and new pioneering tasks. Like, how do I structure my team? Earlier, we spoke about specialized specialist specialized roles versus generalist roles. And then you're questioning, like, what kind what shape does my team take? And it's this is a little off topic.
Kate Towsey:But, Jenna, you manage a a nice sized team. Right? How big is your team now?
Jenna Lombardo:Now probably 20 plus people.
Kate Towsey:Yeah. Yeah. So you've like really been trying to figure out how do how do we do tell us a little bit about your experience if you want to.
Jenna Lombardo:Sure. I've well, when I first started at Workday, there there weren't any, I was building the research operations team. The one person that was there was heading out, so there was no one there. And I base I I looked at the needs. So what are the challenges that we're trying to solve and try to do the near term and long term plan of where I see the needs.
Jenna Lombardo:And I that's how I hired my first team of 4 people. And they were all 3 were specialists, 1 generalist. And that's and that helped solve those needs, and there were big enough problems. And then it's kind of like a check-in, right, after a year, 2 years to see where we pivot, maybe move people around. But I've since grown to now taking on other ops teams and needs within research and design.
Kate Towsey:One of the things that I found with having specialists was that when you hire, like, a finance person, which I did, and they just looked after finances and reporting and, like, ops, reports and managing all the money for research. But that's a pretty set of role. That person's not gonna suddenly, like, in 3 months time, you go like, oh, actually, I kinda need you in recruiting now. And then you just move them over. So it's definitely much more of a strategic commitment to hire the specialists than it is to to stick with generalists.
Jenna Lombardo:Yes. Generalist, I see, is running the day to day. Right? Those are the things that we need to get done to run the day to day. The specialist is like the recruitment repository needs.
Jenna Lombardo:Let's see. We needed somebody that would focus on culture and community building because it was a new organization. So that was a specialist that we had come in. Those are all some examples.
Kate Towsey:That's super cool. Taking that back to the question of assumptions and beliefs, that the research ops profession would benefit from letting go of. But also that, you know, what's interesting about that question is perhaps it's not the best phrasing for that question. Speaking Steph of rephrasing what research operations even is. But also what we've been speaking a lot about is what can we let go of, or what can the research world or the world around us broader let go of in terms of what research operations is and isn't.
Kate Towsey:And so I think for people to know that there is, there are teams that are 2, 1, 20, 12 with a mix of specialists doing highly specialist things that don't come from a research operations or even a research background. That could be, Jenna, to your example, super amazing in community building, but in like completely different, like, I don't know, selling fridges. Let's just pick something. But they bring those amazing community building tools into research. In 6 months time, they are up and running and they're delivering gold.
Kate Towsey:So that's an amazing assumption. I hope that out of this conversation that listeners who might be hiring a research ops person and get that headcount they've been seeking for, will think a lot more creatively about how am I going to who am I gonna hire? How am I gonna make the most of their very specialist skills? Or if they're a generalist, how am I gonna empower them to find something that really lights them up? Casey, you spoke about, like find the joy.
Kate Towsey:And how am I gonna manage the workload with them or allow them to manage their own work loads that it's really realistic. They're not gonna be delivering recruiting, fixing all the problems, looking after program management for the entire team, and then delivering a library plus managing all the tools on top of it and running all the procurement. I feel like that was a bit of a conclusive babble. I liked it. Yeah.
Kate Towsey:You're like great. Okay. Thanks, Casey.
Kasey Canlas:I think you you just wrapped it all up nicely.
Steph Kingston:Mhmm.
Kate Towsey:A big thanks to our guests for sharing their time and expertise and to our sponsor, Great Question. Learn more about Great Question at greatquestion.co/chacha. That's c h a c h a. This podcast is a limited edition series produced by the Cha Cha Club. We're a member's club for ResearchOps professionals.
Kate Towsey:You can find out more at chaCha dot club.
