How to be an efficient manager in a remote collaborative project?

Because of the nature of my research, remote collaborations have become essential. Here are some notes on what I found useful on how to better manage these remote projects. There are many more, but I list only three points here, which seem to work in my team in my area of the research. Hope this may be useful to some people!

Table of contents

1. Toyota Matrix & Trello Board
2. Attach the estimated date to finish on every item on the ToDo list
3. Try to make each goal concrete, following the MAC principle

1) Toyota Matrix & Trello Board

In our lab, we have been implementing a method, called the “Toyota matrix”. It consists 4 regions, each of which lists various items related to the project. “Todo”, “Next”, “Problems” and “Awesome”. There are lots of similar techniques, called in different names, like WOOP etc.

As a Toyota matrix, we have used a whiteboard and Google Doc, which works well. Recently, we migrated into Trello, which is better in some aspects. One advantage of Trello is that the owner of the board can move items in “ToDo” into “Done”, which the team can review later.

The most important among 4 regions for me is “Awesome“. Share the “Awesome” goal among the team is quite important. The video from Spotify is inspiring. https://vimeo.com/94950270

If the team doesn’t align with the Awesome goals, collaboration can collapses.

Next important is “Problems“. This can be a difficult component of the matrix to fill if the team consists of all optimists. When we have realists / pessimists, they can come up with all sorts of potential failures. This is very useful. According to the science of the planning, we improve the success rate of the project if we are aware of problems. As I myself is optimistic, these negative comments are useful to keep. If they turn out not big problems, that’s also fine. Explicit listing of these potential problems are also good for pessimists. If they keep on thinking and ruminating these concerns, that can be harmful for the progress. I have seen many cases where these concerns are irrelevant in the end.

In our team, we use “Todo” to list goals and projects that the owner of the board plans to complete soon. We usually meet once a week or two weeks. So, anything that we plan to do before the next meeting comes under Todo.

Anything that won’t finish before the next meeting will go into “Next” area.

So, that’s the first step.

2) Attach the estimated date to finish on every item on the ToDo list

Next thing, which I recently found super important, is to estimate a date of completion for each ToDo item.

It’s known that >40% of items on ToDo list is never finished, if it doesn’t have a date.

There are several problems with the ToDo items without dates.

a) We can’t agree on the priority of the items.

b) We can’t understand each other what is causing the delay of each step. (Or, sources of the under- and over- estimation of these delay).

Having estimated dates of completion makes these issues manageable.

I find it’s better to use a term “estimated dates”. If we call them “deadlines”, it puts unnecessary pressure to the team members.

With these estimates, it becomes clear that almost everyone has significant biases. The biases may be due to perfectionism, planning fallacy, etc.

It seems many struggles come from poor planning of goals. We can improve the quality of goals by making it more measurable and actionable.

3) Try to make each goal concrete, following the MAC principle

M – Measurable

A – Actionable

C – Competent

I’ll skip the C part, for now.

I found that abstract goals, such as “Understand LME”, are not suited to put in ToDo. (Although, these abstract goals can be very effective and important in Awesome).

The problem of the abstract goals is that the team cannot assess whether we achieved them or not. It is better to make each item “measurable”. Compared to “understand LME”, “Read Chapter on LME” is better. “Apply LME to analyse the data” is even better.

Actionability follows a similar principle. If the goals are not something that we can do with concrete actions, it’s hard to see if we are doing something.

Once you get here, breaking down the items further, so that the owner of the board can achieve 4-5 seems to work well. Having many achievable goals makes achieving these feels like a game!

When is the best time to apply for a PhD program?

Photo by Max Fischer on Pexels.com

I often receive emails from students, asking “Can I join your lab as a PhD student?”

In most cases, I cannot say “yes” immediately. This post explains why.

In email exchanges and zoom interviews, I tend to discuss things that I write below.

I encourage students to think of the question of “when to start” from 2 viewpoints and 2 timescales.

Table of contents

1. From a student’s short-term perspective
2. From a PI’s short-term perspective
3. From a student’s long-term perspective
4. From a PI’s long-term perspective
5. Summary

From a student’s (=your) and a PI’s (=my) viewpoints.

From a short-term and a long-term timescales.

1) A student’s short-term viewpoint

Including myself ~20 years ago, we tend to be very short-sighted when young. Students who are finishing the final year of university are, in particular.

In Australia, 4th year undergraduates do a Master-equivalent Honours thesis project. It tends to be very intense. Usually, it is the first time for students to spend >6 months on one thing and write >10,000 words. While doing this, they don’t have the luxury to think about the future.

At completion of Honours, they tend to think “when to start PhD” by looking at other students, who haven’t thought about it properly too….

If you are at that stage, I recommend you to “take off” at least for several months.

Travel. Read books. Do anything (e.g., volunteer) that you wanted to do. Join a company as an intern and see how the world (outside academia) works. Try to become a Youtuber. Test yourself and gain experience to make you unique.

All these activities will help you identify if it’s worth doing a PhD or not.

Currently, life expectancy is quite long. And you will retire 5 to 10 years later than your parents do / did!  

There is no rush to decide when to start your PhD. Delaying it for a year or more doesn’t matter for you in your life. A hasty decision will cost you  3-5 years (depending on programs). 

In fact, in my experience, the more mature students tend to do well for PhD. (There may be some stats on this, but I’m not aware of it).

Having said that, it’s important to secure the money. If you don’t have economic security, you might want to work for a while to save the money. Actually, you can gain experience from work, too. If you want to join my lab, working in some company that allows you to learn programming will be a huge plus.

If you have already decided to do a PhD 100%, then try to find well-funded research labs, which interests you the most. They might have TA or RA positions for you. Gaining experience in that domain will be useful for you in a long-term (See #3).

2) PI’s short-term viewpoint

By PI, I’m going to talk about myself. (I recommend that you talk with your future PI.)

My main short-term concern is whether you fit the lab. I wrote our policy of recruiting new members (prospective PhD candidates) here. https://sites.google.com/monash.edu/tlab/joincontact-us?authuser=0

I want to make sure you have great TIPS. Techniques, Intelligence, Personality and Speed.

In short, Techniques include various knowledge and skills (e.g., programming).  Intelligence includes communications skills and mindsets (e.g., growth-mind). I want to work with someone who fits with the existing members, including myself!  Speed includes adaptability upon feedback.

The best way for us to find these out is to work on some projects. It can be several months. It can be a Honours project. etc.

I need to make sure TIPS because I want to have a happy supervision experience.  3.5 years is short-term for me, but a long investment from my viewpoint!

What projects you want to pursue matters. But that’s something we can also figure out better if you do some projects with us.

3) A student’s long-term viewpoint

Students tend to have vague long-term plans, especially after PhD. Roughly, those who want to do PhD with me have 3 plans.

a) academic jobs, including research and teaching

b) jobs outside academia (e.g., clinical or industry) 

As I don’t know the reality for option b), I can only give some realistic advice on the pathway a). 

The most important thing that students don’t know is that the day you get a PhD will matter in the future. The date of PhD conferral matters.  Not your age. This is true for almost all scholarships, fellowships, awards, grants, and promotion.

(In Japan, I know some fellowships/scholarships that use “age” as one of the criteria. But that won’t continue given the current worldview. It’s age based discrimination…)

Your CV at the time of PhD conferral will constrain where you can go next (e.g., postdoc, scholarship, etc). The better your CV is at that time, the better options you have.

This means, the later you start PhD, the better.  In fact, the best strategy I usually recommend is to publish a paper before you start PhD.  If you can do that, that will increase the chance of your success in the long-term.

4) PI’s long-term viewpoint

From my viewpoint, choosing which PhD candidates to work with for the next 3.5 years is quite important in the long run.  Having great PhD students shapes the lab in a sustainable manner.

I, as a PI in Australia, generally want to take PhD students. If you, the student, can get a scholarship, I don’t have to pay you. This is important for my long-term viewpoint.

If I were in the US, I would generally have to cover your stipend in some way. If I were in Japan, I would like to take students who can get a JSPS fellowship so that they can focus on research. I may write on these issues later.  Specific details differ for each country.

Roughly, mid-sized labs like mine tend to consist of PI, postdocs, PhD candidates, RAs. Some other short-term students (like Honours, interns, etc) also join in and out.

Hiring postdocs is pretty expensive in Australia. Generally, one grant can hire one postdoc for 3 years in my field. So, relying on a postdoc is quite stressful (as the grant success rate is not that high ~10-25%) and not stable.

So, I would be very happy to work with PhD students, who can contribute to the lab in various ways.  That’s why I pay attention to TIPS.  In particular P: personality.

5) Conclusion & Summary

I hope that what I wrote here has some capacity to generalise to other fields and PIs, but I’m not sure.

At least, if you want to join my lab as a PhD, this is pretty much what I will ask you to think…

1) Take off and think about long-term plans.

2) Delay the start of PhD to maximize your chance in the future.

3) Think a bit from the PI’s perspective as well.

I have also posted some videos answering related questions from a student who is thinking of applying for US/Australian PhD (English), a high school student thinking of going to US University (Japanese) and a student thinking of US grad school (Japanese).

最終的には意識の研究をしたいが…

たまに、学生（とくに大学生）から、「最終的には意識の研究をしたいが、今はとりあえず分子生物学、とか、機械学習を博士課程ではやりたいと考えているがどう思うか？」的な質問を受ける（日本でもオーストラリアでも）。（こういうのはなぜかシンクロして数人から同時に聞かれる）

分子とか機械学習の研究やるのは良いが、自分のゴールを見失わないようにした方がいい。私の知り合いに、学生の頃から意識をやりたくて研究者になったが、それ以外の研究で成果を出して、その後はそのフォローアップに研究人生を費やした人がいる。

で、引退直前にある学会で、「ああ、俺はこういうのがやりたかったんだ！」と思い出した。このままじゃ死にきれない、とそこから舵を取り直し、ラボの方向性を完全に変更して意識研究。今は幸せそう。

死ぬ前の５大後悔にも通じる話。https://theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-five-regrets-of-the-dying…　本当に自分がやりたいこと、そしてそれが自分の強み・得意なことなのか、真剣に考えぬいてから始めた方がいい。当たり前の話しで外でもよく言われていることだけど。

というTweetをしたらある程度反響があったのでブログに載せてみた。

後に、「とりあえず」でやっているわけではない、色々と考えがあってやってます、というリプライをもらった。考えがあってやってんだったら、なんで私の意見を聞きたいのかよくわからない。。。

ただ、このリプライした後で、「科学的な適職」By 鈴木祐 に出会い、まだちゃんと読んでないが、上のアドバイスは今後良くない部分も含んでイそうだなぁと思う部分もあるので、また後日Tweetなり、ブログなどで考えを書きます。