Managing scientists does not require being one
The trigger for this post was the publication of the vacancy for an Executive Director of the Global Coordination Hub of Future Earth. Future Earth is a global umbrella organisation for sustainability and global change research. I was closely involved in the emergence of the organisation about ten years ago.
The vacancy is for a senior management role. The Executive Director is expected to provide strategic leadership, coordinate a globally distributed secretariat, work with governing bodies, mobilise resources, oversee finances, develop partnerships and represent the organisation. Yet Future Earth also expects candidates to hold a PhD in sustainability science, Earth system science, science policy or a related field, and to possess strong international scientific credibility.
There it is again: the persistent assumption that, in order to manage scientists, you need to be a scientist.
The scientist-manager assumption
I have been out of international research management for several years. But during my more than a decade as Executive Director of the Earth System Governance Project, I encountered this assumption repeatedly and campaigned against it repeatedly. Not least during the establishment of Future Earth, when the so-called Transition Committee was tasked with facilitating and guiding the closure of the previous sectoral organizations, including the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme.
The committee was populated exclusively by scientists, even though the main challenge was not so much defining the future scientific agenda as managing the organizational merger and designing the structure of future operations.
Producing knowledge is not managing it
To be clear, I am not talking about classic university management, or what Germans call akademische Selbstverwaltung: academics taking turns as department chair, dean or committee member. There are good arguments for scholars governing academic institutions and safeguarding academic standards and independence.
I am talking about professional management roles in complex international networks that seek to organize and advance a research field, influence policymaking, manage staff and budgets, maintain relations with funders, and survive on a patchwork of often temporary grants. These are organisations in which the product happens to be knowledge.
That does not make producing knowledge and managing its production and dissemination the same profession.
With very few exceptions, most of the brilliant scientists I worked with were poor managers.
Excellence does not automatically transfer
This is not because scientists are by default unsuited to management. Excellence in one profession simply does not automatically transfer to another. Scientific careers reward intellectual depth, originality, independence, persistence and individual reputation. Management requires a partly different set of competences: setting priorities, creating clarity, allocating scarce resources, managing conflicts, developing people, designing and maintaining processes, and taking responsibility for decisions.
A strong publication record is no evidence that someone can manage a team. A PhD does not demonstrate that someone can build an organisation, raise funds, handle a difficult board or create cooperation across institutions, cultures and time zones. Scientific prestige can provide legitimacy, but it can also conceal managerial weakness. People are often reluctant to challenge a renowned scientist, even when meetings are badly chaired and prepared, responsibilities remain unclear and the organisation is slowly drifting.
Confusing familiarity with competence
Selection panels nevertheless keep confusing familiarity with competence. A scientist understands the language, culture and sensitivities of science. That is useful and sometimes essential. But understanding the environment in which one manages is not the same as being demonstrably effective as a manager.
Turn the argument around. For a vacancy for a scientist or a legislative lawyer (to take an example in my current assignment), nobody would make management experience mandatory merely because the person will have to work with managers. We would first ask whether the candidate can conduct excellent research or draft robust legislation. Organizational skills would matter, but they would not be more important in selecting candidates than the core competence of the profession.
The opposite mistake in government
Curiously, my current professional ecosystem often makes the opposite mistake. In and around government, “years in government, regardless of department” can become the overriding selection criterion. Substantive expertise becomes optional, while familiarity with administrative processes is taken as proof of suitability.
Someone who has spent fifteen years moving between unrelated policy departments may be considered more qualified for a senior role in energy infrastructure than someone who has managed complex energy-transition programmes, worked across levels of government and understands the substantive and political trade-offs, but has spent fewer years inside a ministry. Here, the comfortable proxy is not the PhD but the number of years spent in the bureaucratic machine.
The underlying category error is the same. One characteristic that offers contextual familiarity is inflated into the defining qualification for the role. As so often, the optimum lies somewhere in the middle: strong managerial competence combined with more than a superficial understanding of the subject matter.
Management first, subject knowledge second
The order matters. A managerial role requires managerial competence first and substantive knowledge second. The necessary depth of that knowledge depends on the role. The Executive Director of Future Earth should clearly understand sustainability research, international scientific collaboration and the science–policy interface at a serious level. But that is not the same as requiring the person to be an established scientist, let alone prescribing a specific doctorate.
A management-team member in a policy department may need less specialist depth. But “less” does not mean none. A manager must understand enough to ask intelligent questions, recognise trade-offs, judge the quality of advice and avoid becoming dependent on the loudest specialist in the room. The manager does not need to be the best expert. The manager needs to organise expertise, connect it to decisions and create the conditions in which experts can do their best work.
Recruit for the work, not the credential
Good recruitment would therefore begin by asking what the job actually produces. Is the main task research, legal analysis, policy development, organisational leadership, fundraising, political advice or operational delivery? Selection criteria should test evidence of success in those tasks. Domain knowledge should be specified as a threshold: what must a candidate understand on day one, and what can reasonably be learned? And yes, in many roles that day-one knowledge may need to be substantial.
Instead, vacancies often describe an imaginary all-purpose candidate: eminent scientist, experienced executive, inspiring people manager, accomplished fundraiser, financial overseer, diplomat and brilliant communicator. Faced with this impossible combination, selection committees retreat to the most legible credential. In one ecosystem, that is the PhD. In another, it is the number of years employed by government.
Knowledge-intensive organizations need managers who respect expertise without pretending that expertise and management are interchangeable. Their authority should not depend on being intellectually superior to the people they manage. It should come from judgement, reliability, fairness, clarity and the ability to make a collective endeavour more than the sum of its individual parts.
Yes, this is personal
And yes, this is personal to me. Hell, I would love to apply for that Future Earth vacancy. But even with a publication record longer than that of many PhD holders, I am not a scientist at all.
And yes, I have applied several times for challenging positions in government, only to be rejected for lacking sufficient years inside government, and then to see the job go to someone who appeared less qualified in almost every other respect.
Perhaps that explains the rant. But it does not invalidate the argument.