Six Team Science Best Practices

First up… Develop a shared mission, vision, and goals

Science teams are busy, often trying to do ground-breaking, high-impact, life-saving research with minimal resources and even less training in teamwork. In this series, I’ll be describing six best practices that your team can start to implement immediately. (Please see the figure at the bottom of this post, and you can read the full paper here.) These practices are drawn from the research in the field of the Science of Team Science, which itself is an interdisciplinary field that brings together organizational psychology, sociology, and other fields focused on studying and facilitating teamwork. Each post in the series will share some of the relevant literature (helpful if you’re writing any of this work into a funding proposal), as well as steps you and your team can take to improve your approach to collaborative science. I’ll start with the smallest, easiest-to-implement steps, building up to larger steps that may take a little longer to accomplish. Like any practice, it takes time to develop habits and the systems to support those habits, but taking these small steps should improve your teamwork quickly and perceptibly.

Six Team Science Best Practices:

1. Develop a shared mission, vision, and goals

2. Facilitate interdisciplinary conversations on approaches, methods, and results

3. Create a culture of trust, accountability, openness, inclusivity, and constant learning

4. Build strong research support systems

5. Build accessible, transparent data management systems

6. Foster strong functional leadership

First up is “Develop a shared mission, vision, and goals.” Research has repeatedly shown that being on the same page around what you’re trying to achieve has tremendous benefits [1, 2], but I have seen in my coaching and facilitation work that alignment is often illusory. Teams may think they agree on the direction the project is going, what is expected of them, what they can expect of others, and how the team will work together, but that is frequently not true! (In fact, this was one of the key findings of my dissertation work.) Fortunately, this is one of the most accessible best practices to develop, as it can mostly be accomplished with conversations and regular, brief reflection. Unfortunately, teams rarely budget time to do this work. 

As the team leader, it’s critical that you are clear on your own vision for your research program and how you want your lab to work. Being clear at the research team level has several benefits. First, having a clear vision will make it easier for you to recruit the right staff and trainees to work with you. They either can see themselves and their goals in your vision or not, which can weed out those with interests not aligned with your team’s. Second, having a clear vision will make managing and retaining satisfied, productive employees easier, because they will be able to see how their work fits into the larger whole. Let’s face it, we all have parts of our work that feel tedious, monotonous, or dull, but when they can clearly see how those tasks move the team toward a larger vision, it’s easier for team members to stay focused and engaged. Finally, a clear vision makes it easier to both attract collaborators with complementary visions and to say no thank you to requests for collaboration that don’t move you toward your vision.

The following definitions of a mission statement and a vision statement are taken from the SHRM website:

What is a mission statement?

A mission statement is a concise explanation of an organization’s reason for existence and describes its purpose, intention and overall objectives. The mission statement supports the vision and serves to communicate purpose and direction to employees, customers, vendors and other stakeholders. See SHRM's Company Mission Statement Examples for a variety of samples. Questions to consider when drafting mission statements could include: 

• What is our organization's purpose?

• Why does our organization exist?   

What is a vision statement?

A vision statement looks forward and creates a mental image of the ideal state that the organization wishes to achieve. It is inspirational and aspirational and should challenge employees. Questions to consider when drafting vision statements might include:

• What problem are we seeking to solve?

• Where are we headed?

• If we achieved all strategic goals, what would we look like 10 years from now?

Quoted from SHRM

As I do more and more of this work with science teams, I’ve come to the conclusion that trying to distinguish between the formal definitions of “mission” and “vision” is really challenging and, IMHO, not that useful to invest time in. Instead, you, as the team leader, can answer a few questions that get at the various elements of mission and vision. From these elements, you can craft concise statements for various audiences who may be interested in your work, including, for example, the scientific community, where you’d want to stay pretty broad and high level, or for your team, where you may want to be a little more granular about the techniques and approaches, as well as the more short-term outcomes and impact you hope to have.

I recommend setting aside about 30 minutes on three consecutive (or as close as you can get!) days: the first session for creating a rough draft, the second session for revisions, and the third session for final polishing. Don’t get caught up in wordsmithing on the first round, just get all your thoughts down and allow your brain to mull it over between sessions. It can also be useful to run your answers by a trusted colleague who may identify parts of your vision that are unclear and you may want to clarify.

The first two questions help you get at your “why” - don’t be afraid to dream big and set audacious impact targets for yourself! Especially if you’re just getting started, you have an entire career to move toward achieving your vision. Questions 3 and 4 start to get into a few more details, without getting to the level of tasks, and question 5 helps you think clearly about how you’ll know if you’ve succeeded.

1. What is the overarching goal of my work? This answer should be high level, things like “to increase survival rates for pancreatic cancer by identifying new biomarkers for early detection” or “to reduce heart disease in post-menopausal women through community-based interventions.” For my work, my overarching goal is “to increase the ability of science teams to conduct more high-impact science that improves human health.” 

2. If I achieve this goal, how will the world be different? This could be something like “fewer people dying from pancreatic cancer” or “post-menopausal women are not suffering from heart disease.” For me, that looks like collaborative research becomes less challenging and all researchers are able to collaborate effectively and efficiently without feeling overwhelmed and burdened by the extra work of collaboration.

3. How will I achieve this goal? What methods and approaches will I focus on for the next 3-5 years? This will vary widely but might focus on the kinds of research and training you’ll do in your team. I focus on the development of infrastructure such as interventions, trainings, and facilitators, to make team science more effective.

4. What kind of culture do I want my lab to have such that I will achieve my goals in a way that feels sustainable and is aligned with my personal values? This answer could focus on creating an environment of psychological safety where trainees can explore their interests, or might call out limiting the number of trainees to ensure lab members receive sufficient attention. It may encompass recruiting trainees or working with collaborators who are members of your study population to ensure diverse viewpoints in your work. To answer this question, think back to the environments in which you have previously worked and identify what worked well for you and what didn’t. What would you like to replicate or adapt, and what would you like to make sure you don’t do?

5. How will I know if I’ve succeeded in achieving my goals? This could include both quantitative and qualitative measures, things like “my students successfully complete their degrees and recommend my lab as a supportive place to work” or “I have secured and launched two federally funded research grants.” 

I highly recommend returning to this exercise at least once per year and have seen great success when team leaders set aside time each quarter to review this vision document and make adjustments based on new information. You never know what is coming around the corner and the most successful team leaders understand that being flexible is the key to resilience in a sometimes challenging environment. 

In the next post, I’ll share how this exercise can be done with your broader team.

References

[1] Kuipers, BS, de Witte, MC. Teamwork: a case study on development and performance. The International Journal of Human Resource Management 2005; 16(2): 185–201.

[2] van der Hoek, M, Groeneveld, S, Kuipers, B. Goal setting in teams: goal clarity and team performance in the public sector. Review of Public Personnel Administration2016; 38(4): 472–493.

Also see:

The National Research Council report on Enhancing the Effectiveness of Team Science (2015).

Rolland B, Burnside ES, Voils CI, Shah MN, Brasier AR. Enhancing reproducibility using interprofessional team best practices. Journal of Clinical and Translational Science. 2021;5(1):e20. doi:10.1017/cts.2020.512

Figure