# Research management matters I realize that many people will object to the term “management” in the context of research. “Management” has strong connotations of “control” and most people agree that agree that autonomy is incredibly important for great creative work, especially research. The term is “research coordination” is apt, but flaccid. At some point, unless the work for a project can be done by a single person, someone needs to play a coordinating function. As uncomfortable as it is to say, coordinating involves getting people to do things they wouldn’t do otherwise. Everything from [[LIGO]] to [[Xerox PARC]] to any [[DARPA]] program to any academic lab with postdocs and grad students had leaders nudging people to do more of some things and less of others. These nudges can be at various levels of abstraction and involve various levels of coercion, but at the end of the day, coordination involves causing two or more people to work together when they would not otherwise do so. In other words, research management matters. A common narrative is that, like other creative endeavors, researchers need to be completely unfettered — attempting to manage research is foolhardy and can only hurt. However, 1. [[Management and autonomy are not diametrically opposed]] 2. [[Management exists either implicitly or explicitly whenever there is coordination or power dynamics around research]] (which is almost everywhere). 3. There are different sorts of research! Some needs more management than others. ([[Research has many orthogonal and non orthogonal classification axes]], [[List of research axes]], [[List of research classification paradigms]]) Of course, not all management is created equal! Bad management is often worse than no management. Good research management has many dimensions and can manifest in many different ways depending on the context: from Elon Musk’s involvement in minute engineering details to J.C.R. Licklider’s funding labs and keeping communication channels open between them based on a precise vision. (See [[Heilmeier — Licklider — Braben — Elon quadrants of Research Management]]) ### Related * [[All funding organizations are research organizations]] * [[Activity design indicates how power and coordination are distributed]] * [[Motivation is not context-free]] * [[The goal of a research manager is to be able to tell whether a proposal has been thought through]] * [[Research management is about providing constraints]] <!-- #evergreen #publishing/published --> [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Research+management+matters) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Research+management+matters)