Season 1: Ep.11 - Gracefully Breaking the Rules: In Research

(00:21)

Hello, and welcome back to Graceful Rulebreakers. I'm your host, Kirsten Lee Hill. Happy October everyone! I am so excited and just ready to be starting a new month; just a nice fresh start. And this is the month when I will officially kick off interviews on my podcast, which I am over the moon about. I really love learning from different people in different fields, all about their experiences, and I think that Graceful Rulebreaking is something that happens, or needs to happen, in all fields to help us be better and make the world a better place. So, I am really jazzed to have some awesome guests to share with you coming up in the next few weeks. With this transition to a new month and a new chapter in my business, I've been thinking a lot about my calling and what I'm here on this earth to do. A big part of that for me is research. So, to kick off these more intimate, Graceful Rulebreaking conversations, I wanted to do an episode on my personal experience with Graceful Rulebreaking; share some lessons I've learned and a bit more about my story, because I believe that when we are authentic and honest, and share our stories, we inspire others to do the same, and that makes the world a better place. I also really value being practical. So, through my journey, I hope to shed light on and share three key aspects of Graceful Rulebreaking that you can apply to your work; know the rules, know your values and identify the disconnect.

(01:57)

I'm trained as a researcher. I spent six years in graduate school learning everything I could about education policy and evaluation, and research methodology. And I still do a lot of work in the research space. And to be honest with you, I love it, but it doesn't always love me back, so to speak. I'm what people might call a non-conventional PhD; I didn't go into academia, I didn't go work for one of the big research institutes and, you know, I think more so in the hard sciences, but sometimes in education, people go to industry and there's spaces for that, but that's also not the route I went. Instead, I decided to go out on my own and start my own company. That decision was driven in a large part by the fact that I didn't feel like I fit in anywhere. In college and again in graduate school, I felt as though I was always, always, always getting in trouble for my perspective. Like, unintentionally ruffling feathers by doing radical things, like, volunteering too much. Seriously. I'm a values driven person; I believe really strongly in what I believe in, and I don't want to compromise on my values. If you're listening to this and thinking… hmm, I'm like that too. Well, if you're not already working for yourself, there's a good chance you'll end up that way.

(03:22)

From a value standpoint, I want research to be accessible, practical and meaningful. I wanted to help people and I wanted to help people, now. I think that a lot of people in traditional research and academia feel this way too, but they're also willing and able to operate on much longer timelines, and dedicate more of their time and energy to more traditional aspects of research like publication; the publisher parish adage didn't come out of thin air. In my experience, I felt like when working at institutions, that there was so much red tape, and I know that's stereotypical and we hear this about big bureaucracies, but for me it just felt so suffocating, and I didn't want to suffer working on the inside. There were some rules that I just couldn't play by. And again, this has been a trend that has been ongoing in my life, and I think it makes a lot of people dislike me, which is fine, but I just, I don't want to have to wait to make a difference, especially if it makes sense to help people now.

From my perspective, if I have those skills; why do I have to publish a ton of things in a peer review journal that nobody has access to, or that is going to cost people a ton of money to read? Why do I need to garner this traditional version of prestige or tenure, and just all these other things in order to make an impact? I feel like I can help people right now by leveraging the knowledge and skills I have, and I don't need to jump through all those hoops and have a big institution or someone say, 'I'm good enough,' to go on and help people. I have the credential. I have the experience. I can do it on my own. Well, not really on my own because I definitely value partnerships and working with others. But you get my point. And truthfully, I partner with universities and institutions all the time, because they do have an incredible value add, which we'll talk about in a bit. The point here is that I didn't want to wait for all this traditional signalling in green lights, in order to be able to do what I felt I was put on this earth to do. I didn't want to have to compromise on my values of service to chase after things I didn't value, so that one day I would have earned the right and ability to go back to focusing on service. It just seemed too convoluted to me, and I just, I don't like doing things just to check boxes; I want to jump in with my full heart and do something because I really, really believe in it.

(06:11)

But here's the thing; society is built around these rules, these levels of power, prestige and accolades. People listen to people who have money and who have power. Those people get to set agendas and make changes. It's enviable really, four years ago when I graduated, if there had been a university or institution that would have allowed me the freedom to pursue my passion and values, I would have jumped at the chance to work in that environment and borrow their credibility and resources to make positive changes. I want to be clear that it isn't that I don't see the value in academia or traditional research, it is that I don't see my role in those spaces. My values aren't aligned and I don't have enough of the traditional forms of power or credibility to be a successful advocate within those spaces. To change them, I have to gracefully break rules from the outside. That's step one and Graceful Rulebreaking; know the rules.

I relentlessly studied and learned, and mastered the rules of the game. I know how to do great high quality research. I know the jargon. I know the methods. I can do them and I can play at the scale and the stage traditional people want to play at. And, I continue to practice and hone those quote unquote 'traditional skills.' You have to know them from the inside out. But, I'm also not afraid of trying new things and pushing boundaries, and learning, and iterating and partnering with lots of different people with varied perspectives. And I think that's really important If you want to be a Graceful Rulebreaker in your field; don't just be an expert. Be better than an expert, because you were willing to admit when you don't know something. You are willing to ask questions. You are willing to be wrong and you are willing to continue learning.

(08:07)

The next piece is this; know your values. For me, I believe that good research can look so many different ways, and the different levels of rigor are appropriate for different stages of ideas. And this is where I get into one of my flavors of Graceful Rulebreaking; I think you can have small sample sizes and descriptive or exploratory studies and cheap, quick data collections and still generate powerful information. It's what I like to call the aluminum standard. In contrast to the gold standard of research, which is the randomized controlled trial, something that requires fairly significant investments of time, money, and expertise. Instead, I advocate for radical transparency in more bite sized research. By radical transparency, I mean this; don't overstate your findings. If anything, over contextualize them.

(08:58)

A few years back when I was trying to find my 'fit' in more traditional spaces, I was given an interesting scenario to respond to as part of vetting for a position… that I was definitely not chosen for. It went something like this; what would you say to a funder who insists that a randomized controlled trial is the only way to determine effectiveness and make causal inference? My answer then is the same answer I'd give now; the funder is partially right. RCT randomized control trial is the only way to make causal inference. That's the rule, but we can collect some bad-ass rigorous data to bolster evidence of effectiveness without doing one. That's my value. The key to successful Graceful Rulebreaking is that when you are thinking about the rules and your values, you also need to think about what values your industry espouses through those rules that you like, and don't like. And when you're able to articulate this confidently and powerfully, you can be strategic about breaking the rules.

For example, I like the rigor and the structure the traditional research paradigm set up in value. I dislike the inaccessibility and perceived inflexibility of rigor and structure. The disconnect is my 'why.' It's your 'why.' It's why we do this work. And my case with research, the money, the time, the scale, the university stamp of approval; I don't think you need all of that to do good research. There are things that you do need to do good research; you need to have a clear question. You need to collect the information in a way that makes sense to answer your question. You need to be ethical and make sure that people are protected. There are things that you definitely need to do, and I think there is so much value in the rigor and structure and bringing in experts, and really honoring everyone's expertise.

But, I also believe that you can work on a small scale in a quick timeframe, with measures of success to reflect your community's values and still have quality research. That's my 'why.' The choice shouldn't be between research that is locked away in an ivory tower and going rogue in our data collection. Research should be open-sourced. It should be quick, small, digestible, responsive, so the people can actually use it. And they're excited to use it and they know what it means, and why it matters to their work. And let me rephrase that a little bit; research shouldn't be. Research should have the option to be, right? It's a both and situation; you can have the traditional research, and at a certain stage and level of investment, that traditional research makes sense. But it's not one size fits all, and so I want us to stop treating it that way.

(11:47)

Something that's super frustrating to me is the number of studies and reports from big fancy firms that come across my desk that I read, and they've obscured their sample or they're overstating findings, and just like, overgeneralizing and they're getting picked up and published in like the New York times, and people think that this is this like great research that's come out because there's some sexy finding. And it's so disheartening to me that that's held up as good work, because it comes from these credible institutions, when there are people who are doing really good research on a small scale and not getting any credibility for it, because it's small or because they aren't one of these really well known institutions. Evidence and information can be so powerful, and we live in this world that is so full of misinformation. Don't we all have it upon ourselves to do a better job producing information? That's what research is; research is producing information. And wouldn't it be great if communities were able to define success on their own terms and design studies to figure out what things work according to metrics that are meaningful to them, and not have to jump through hoops at a university or pay oodles of money to a university to do the work, but rather to be able to partner on a smaller scale, that's mutually beneficial to everyone where they can really sit at the table and negotiate what their values are, and ensure that the work that is done is meaningful to them and to their communities.

(13:20)

I can only speak to my experience, but the message I got was; that in order to be able to do things like that, to support people on these smaller scales and these more, like, unique, one-off innovative projects. First, I had to do all of these other things and really just become much more established in my career. And once I was more established, then I could start taking on the fun stuff. I think that's wild and needs to change. If you can support people on their work now; do it. Don't wait until it's safe and you have more credibility and power to throw around. If that's what you're waiting for, then we need to rethink credibility and start coming up with new ways to generate credibility, like, on the basis of quality of work or alignment of values and experience… and P.S - I think we absolutely need to do this. This is a key task for Graceful Rulebreakers: generating credibility because you're leaving the traditional spaces and going out on your own. So, nine times out of ten; you're the odd person out. You seem like a risk, right? And you might be limited on the traditional forms of credibility that society trades it. But you also think creatively and are an incredible partner, and build really magical game-changing stuff. Your values, your dedication, the quality of your work and the partnerships and connections you are able to form with others; that is your credibility. And yes, it's a more difficult currency of credibility to trade in, so to speak. But to me, it's so much more valuable than having a snazzy certificate or affiliation, if those things are out of alignment with who you are.

(15:20)

I’ll end this with a recap and my best piece of advice that I have today; know the rules. Be an expert. Assess what you like and what you don't like about the traditional space, that you either still operate in or that you have left and now operate adjacent to. Know your values; how are you different from that traditional space? What matters to you and why. Identify the disconnect. Where do the values espoused by traditional rules and your values diverge? And why is that important? Lastly, I will leave you with this; keep doing your good work with integrity and stay humble. The world will catch up. I won't lie and tell you that it will be easy, but I will tell you that living a life in alignment with your values is priceless. And it matters because you are doing good work and it makes the world a better place.