Relationships are at the heart of impact.

You can't really do a whole lot just working away on your

own in the lab or at your desk.

We need connections.

You don't have unlimited resources.

You don't have unlimited time.

So it's really important to think about for the life cycle of the

project, who are the different types of people or organizations where

your time is gonna be best spent.

A personal mission is trying to create a better work environment

for those professional staff who are working so, so hard.

And I think they deserve a lot better a lot of the time.

Hello there.

I'm Sarah McLusky and this is Research Adjacent.

Each episode I talk to amazing research adjacent professionals about what

they do and why it makes a difference.

Keep listening to find out why we think the research adjacent space

is where the real magic happens.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Research Adjacent.

Chris Pahlow, my guest today, is joining us all the way from Australia.

I first heard of and heard Chris through his excellent podcast

Amplifying Research, and if you haven't listened to it yet, make sure you go

and check it -out after you finish listening to this episode of course.

Chris runs a consultancy business, also called Amplifying Research, where

he helps researchers think through research impact, and importantly the

relationships that underpin that impact.

Chris didn't have the most conventional path into this work.

He started out as an indie filmmaker and took on some teaching

work to help pay the bills.

This turned out to be a baptism of fire, but also the path that led him into

research communications, and impact.

Chris and I talk about why relationships are at the heart of the work he does,

how being independent can help him be honest, even when it's not what people

want to hear and the often invisible work of research professional staff.

Listen on to hear Chris's story.

Welcome along to the Research Adjacent podcast.

Chris, it is fantastic to have you here all the way from Australia.

Tell us a bit about who you are and what you do.

Sarah, thank you very much for having me on the show.

Big fan of what you're doing and the mission, of championing research

adjacent folks is something I'm a big believer in and I'm looking

forward to chatting about it.

What do I do?

I run a consulting company here in Melbourne, Australia

called Amplifying Research.

I work with academic teams, primarily focused on research

centers and folks like that.

And I think if I had to think of two words to sum up what my focus

is, it's impact and relationships.

I don't think the language the sector uses is always that helpful.

Terms like comms and engagement, and dissemination and science

communication get thrown around a lot.

And so sometimes I get put into those buckets.

But the way I think about it if someone says, Hey Chris, we wanna do a podcast

series to disseminate our research, or we wanna hold an event, or we

need to update our branding or update our website, inevitably when we are

thinking about external audiences that researchers need to work with, whether

that's practitioners, whether that's industry, whether that's the dreaded

general public in quotation marks.

Ultimately, when we start talking about things we end up talking about the team

within the research center or within the department or whatever it is.

And it's all about relationships.

I'm thinking about something Sarah Morton said, Sarah Morton, from

Matter Of Focus, basically saying that relationships are at the heart of impact.

You can't really do a whole lot just working away on your

own in the lab or at your desk.

We need connections.

And so what I do, when I'm working with researchers and academic

teams, I help them think about.

What do they want to do?

What impact do they want to contribute to, and what are the different relationships

they need to build and strengthen over time to make that impact possible?

I think that sounds very much aligned with

my take on things as well.

And I agree that the language that we use around it is not always helpful.

Where I find myself talking about, oh, I do things like communications, but

it's but that isn't really what I do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It is.

As you say, much more about people.

So tell us a bit about, so you're based in Australia and I think

impact, as we said, thinking a little bit about the language, impact is

a really big deal here in the UK.

I'd love to hear about whether that understanding of impact in

Australia is the same or whether it's slightly different and what are

the priorities there around impact.

I think we're probably still a little bit behind where

things are at in the UK, but impact is becoming increasingly important.

If we think about things like grant applications, the government funding

bodies, the big funding bodies, they do want to see some sort of

evidence of impact if they're gonna be awarding taxpayers, money to to

research projects, they want to see it.

I think.

I'd like to think it's becoming more and more something that's

on the radar of academics.

Certainly the people that I work with regularly and the people that

inspire me and even inspired me to completely change my career are

the ones who are focused on impact.

And yeah, I feel super grateful to be working with people like that every day.

Oh, that's brilliant.

And I think what I particularly love about, I know the concept of impact.

It isn't, sometimes it's a little bit of a tricky thing for

people to get their head around.

Sometimes it's a bit of a love hate thing.

I know here in the UK it's all become very incentivized, which

has become a little bit difficult.

But the general concept of it that it's, it is about not just let's randomly put

stuff out into the world, but thinking through really carefully who you want

to reach and why you want to reach them.

So tell us a bit about your process your kind of thinking of when

you're working with somebody.

That's a great question and you've caught me

at a very interesting time.

If I can share a little bit about, I guess me and my motivation, something

I've been saying a lot recently is.

I just get really cranky sometimes and I've I've ended up doing the work that

I do and indeed focusing on trying to develop new ways of working and thinking

about impact and thinking about the relationships academics need to have.

It's just because I get too cranky and too frustrated with

the way things have been done.

And I can give you some specific examples at varying levels of

infuriatingness, that's not even a word, but various levels that can make

my blood boil or, make your eyes roll.

And for a long time.

I was consulting specifically on academic videos and podcasts, 'cause we can,

maybe we can talk about this later, but I have a long background in the

film industry and so I ended up working with academics almost by accident.

And so yeah, people would come and say, Hey, we finished our research

project, or we're almost finished.

And let's disseminate it and then you'd be like, okay, well it would've been nice

if you came and talked to us at the start of the project that you're here now.

That's good.

That's a start.

Let's talk about

That's such a recurring theme.

I know.

I know.

And the thing is, everyone's trying their best.

So there's a, I hope, a happy ending to this story.

Certainly.

I'm very optimistic, but people would come and they know they need to do

something with their research, whether it is because on a personal level

they have a, an impact driven mission or whether it's just because the

incentives are changing, as you say.

But then you'd start to ask them questions about, do you have any behavioral goals?

Do you want people to change what they do?

Do you want people to change their beliefs and who?

What type of people do you need to be engaging?

And sometimes they would say, I don't, I dunno, I didn't think about that.

And sometimes they would give you a very long list of my grandma, every person

in the village I grew up in, scientists, you people in space, alien, the general

public like I was saying before, right?

And again I don't put any blame on any of them, and this is something I've been

thinking about a lot the last few years.

I just don't think there's been nearly enough support.

Certainly not what I've experienced here in Australia.

I'm yeah, keen to hear what it's like in your experience over in the UK,

but I just saw so many researchers doing incredible stuff in all sorts

of fields and some of it very moving.

I felt really humbled to be just sitting in on some of the meetings where people,

they're dedicating their life to really trying to make a positive difference

and it just didn't seem like they were getting the support they needed to,

to drive that impact and the longer I got to work with people like that and

was kicking around the universities here in Melbourne, it just seemed like

there are some big structural issues.

And on the one hand, universities are trying to take lessons from industry,

whether, that's something like the film industry or podcasting is increasingly

big in the academic world now.

So whether they're trying to take lessons from those kind of folks, or whether

it's from consulting firms or whether it's from, advertising and marketing.

There's a lot of great stuff there, but the way it's applied,

in my opinion, in the academic world really has a lot of gaps.

And so that's what I'm trying to tackle now.

And so to go back to your question of what's my approach when it comes

to helping people think about who they work with, this is hot off the

presses I haven't even published it on my website yet, but I feel

like people need to prioritize.

That's a really big thing, I understand.

Your work is super important and you're dedicating your life for

a huge part of your life to it.

But you don't have unlimited resources.

You don't have unlimited time.

So it's really important to think about for the life cycle of the

project, who are the different types of people or organizations where

your time is gonna be best spent.

And there's been some great thinking done like Professor Mark Reed and his

team developing the three I framework, encouraging people to think about

not just influence and interest, which those are two criteria that

have been used for a very long time.

But we also need to think about who are we potentially impacting with our work.

So people have been doing great thinking about that, but I also think on top of

prioritizing, we also need to do a bit of categorization and differentiation.

Because in my experience on the ground, working with research teams, when

I'd asked them, okay, who are the stakeholders or who are the relevant

parties you think are most important?

We end up with a huge list or a huge Eisenhower matrix just

with so many different names and so many different cards.

And we'd look at them all, and people would ask, I think, very legitimate

questions of how are we supposed to choose between community members who might be

affected by our work and a funding body, or the faculty executive or, a peak

body, like they're just categorically different types of relationships.

And what I'm trying to do at the moment is to get teams thinking about

not just the dissemination or the translation or knowledge mobilization.

It's really good to think about the beneficiaries or

end users of the research.

But you also gotta think about what I'm calling ecosystem enablers.

So who are the people or organizations that are gonna set up your team

for success and if you're in a university that probably is gonna be

decision makers in the faculty or in chancellery or something like that.

It's really important that you understand the strategic

priorities of the funding bodies.

Increasingly I'm talking with people who are looking for philanthropic

funding or, or, industry partnerships.

So they're not just thinking about funding on a project level, but

they're thinking about the future of their center or their organization.

How can it last more than those first five years?

So I guess that's just an example yeah.

Prioritization, but categorization and thinking about the fact that

not all relationships are the same.

They do have different purposes in the lifecycle of your project or your

organization or indeed your career.

And I guess I'll say one other thing.

I really like the word relationships 'cause I think it has some

really helpful connotations.

And if we go back to my criticism of the existing language it's very common

for me to hear people say things like, oh yeah, comms is one way.

I'm just gonna be broadcasting out my ideas, which I think

is based on a fundamental and very unhelpful misconception.

And they talk about engagement is two ways.

So comms is one way.

I'm just gonna be shouting into the void and hoping someone listens.

Engagement, I, maybe I'll do some listening and I'll do some

talking and we'll split it 50 50.

But when people think about engagement, I think that can still

have some pretty heavy limitations.

They might think about consultation.

Like I, I'll go and do a focus group with some representatives

from a community group.

And it could just be a one-off or a short term kind of situation.

Whereas I think relationships suggest something that's ongoing, something

that's reciprocal something that requires, investment and even like

love and care from all parties.

And I think those things are all really important.

I guess just for life and just for being a person, but especially if you really

do want your work to have lasting impact.

Yeah, I think it's so true.

I think when you say they're shouting into the void there's many

a research communication thing I've seen that it just felt like that.

It's just yeah, we've got some money.

We're just gonna create this thing and then we don't quite

know what we're gonna do with it.

I think it's so interesting is always when it's a tagged on part of the

research, there's always that people always say, I haven't got the time.

Whereas if you think about it as just an integral part of how the research

is done, as you say, not just thinking about it as like a one-off thing,

but like an ongoing relationship that runs, all the way through, that's just

threaded through everything that you do.

And then in those cases, you are gonna have considerably more impact

than chucking thousands of pounds in animation that you're gonna

post once on social media and then it's gonna disappear without trace.

And actually so much of that impact really is about the difference

that we make to people, isn't it?

A hundred percent.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I would be so happy.

I'd be overjoyed if I, if anyone listening who's a researcher.

I know we're pro Sarah, we're probably preaching to, to the choir

here because it is, I know you

I think probably the people who listen to this.

Yeah.

I guess what I would, what I'd love to see in the future is if

folks working in research organizations could just take one day a quarter.

Just take stock of where are your current relationships at, the

important ones, and just do a bit of thinking about what relationships

might be most important next quarter.

If we could just do that four times a year, I think that would

already make a big difference.

Yeah.

Well maybe you're giving yourself something to organize there, to a

kind of online little retreat thing.

Yeah.

Get people to come and talk about it.

I think, as you say, I think our, most of our audience for this podcast

are, will be on board with you.

But yeah, maybe if that message.

Even if people, I think sometimes I find with this podcast, even if it just helps

people feel that they're not alone, I think that can be really helpful.

And even if the conversations they're having are challenging it know that

other people are facing the same challenges, I think can be really helpful.

So you've hinted there that you're, this isn't a world

that you've always worked in.

You came from a very different background.

Tell us a bit about how you've ended up doing what you do

now, what you did before.

It's a pretty long and unusual story.

I imagine I'm probably quite far from the average listener of this podcast.

I imagine a lot of them like yourself, probably went and did PhDs

and had this period where they were considering are they gonna continue

on the academic path or are they gonna do something research adjacent?

That's not my story.

I didn't go to, I didn't even go to film school.

I went to art school, so I'm really coming at it from a different angle.

And um, there's a lot of like little steps in my journey, which

at the time just seemed like really strange, almost random and at times

really frustrating kind of things.

And I. Only now I look back and be like, oh, they all make sense now.

They all contributed.

And so one of the things that happened when I was doing my Bachelor of Creative

Arts here in Melbourne was the university very kindly decided to delete the

degree when I was halfway finished it.

Oh, goodness.

Yeah, I know.

It's great.

I know.

But it meant I did a bunch of philosophy subjects just from the arts faculty

and really enjoyed that and got along with one of my lecturers really well.

And I was, at the time I was pursuing being a screenwriter and director

and I was already working on a bunch of short films and documentaries

and having some pretty good success in festivals and stuff like that.

And so I just needed some money to live while I made

independent uh, films because if.

If anyone listening knows anything about the film industry, it's a terrible,

terrible way to make any kinda living.

And I real, I thought teaching would be fun and I thought it'd

be something I would enjoy.

So I just asked one of my philosophy lecturers like, Hey,

can I come work for you as a tutor?

And he's no I don't need anyone, but I just got offered this

job at another university.

I don't think you're qualified, but why don't you just give them a call

and see, and I wasn't qualified.

It was teaching a master's course in a graduate school of business,

and the subject was critical thinking and communication.

Oh.

Oh, wow.

I'd only really done continental philosophy.

I hadn't studied any formal logic or anything, but you know what it's

like in university sometimes they just need someone to start next

week, and if you show up at the right time they'll give you a job.

You're just the one that's there.

Yeah.

And so I went in and had my interview and they're like, okay, great.

Have you read these books on the reading list?

And I'm like, no.

But I certainly could read them like, terrific, go to this tute now

you can watch what this tutor does and then you can do it tomorrow.

And, already I, that's already strange enough as my kind of

induction into the, a academic world.

But then I went to the tute and teaching is now my friend Ashley Barnett, and

he starts the class pretty normally talking about what critical thinking is.

And then he starts doing magic tricks.

He's like literally like pulling things out of his sleeves and making

things appear behind people's ears.

And I'm like.

I'm like looking around what the, am I supposed to learn how

to do magic to teach this class?

And no, that wasn't the expectation.

He just happened to be an academic who was like a magician in his part-time and he

was like an exceptionally good teacher.

Yeah.

But if I look back at that was, a real baptism of fire, but it's really paid off

because so much of what I've done over the last few years has been, challenging

folks to think about different ways of communicating stuff and not just

going to the obvious kind of situation.

And I did that for about six and a half years, and then I taught another

couple of unis in their film schools, which made a lot more sense at the

time when I was making my first movie.

And yeah, like I said, the film industry's a terrible way to make money, so I

just kept hanging around universities and eventually got asked to consult

at the University of Melbourne on a bunch of different media projects and I

worked off and on with them for a very long time, and it was some of those

situations I described before seeing just how hard researchers were trying

and how big their impact goals were.

And again, I just didn't feel like the structures were set up to help them.

And I felt like I was getting involved too late.

Like I said, it might be the end of a project but even the fact that I was

consulting with a video and media team and kind of like you said, it's good to

think about who your audience is and what you want them to do differently before

you spend all the, all that money on an animation or a podcast or whatever it is.

And I found myself in the very awkward position of, the video and media team

at this university would say, Hey Chris, can you come and take a look at these

podcast projects, these video projects, and we wanna know what you think about

it and what you think they should do.

And I'd have to say, I don't think they should make a video, or I don't

think they should make a podcast.

And eventually that led me to basically just consulting on comms strategy,

and then the more I work with these organizations, like I said at the

start of the episode, very often it would be like, yeah, great, let's

communicate with your external audiences.

But right now you've got a team of amazing people who don't even know what each

other do, and they don't know how to, talk about their work in the same way they

have potentially fundamental disagreements about what they're doing, and how

they should talk and think about it.

This is I think, probably particularly challenging when we talk about

interdisciplinary research, but I guess a long story sorry, hopefully

there was some LOLs along the way.

But yeah a long, strange journey of going from teaching in universities

when I probably shouldn't to working on podcasts and movies to, yeah, eventually

like consulting on research strategy, particularly about stakeholders.

Yeah.

That is a very unusual and very interesting journey, but

you are reminding me of Yeah.

I've certainly been the person in the room where I've just

gone, no, you really shouldn't be spending your money on this thing.

And that is quite a brave thing to do sometimes, especially when it's

potentially like putting you out of a job.

I've certainly been there, but when you think Yeah.

But this is the right thing to do.

How do you approach situations like that?

You're right.

It is hard and there's definitely been a lot of emotions over the years,

particularly in the early years when I was finding my feet with this stuff.

I used to joke it's lucky that I'm a consultant 'cause I can just throw a

hand grenade into the room and if, if people don't like what I say, I can, I

just don't have to show up to the office for a few days 'cause I don't work here.

And I'm joking, but I do think that's actually been a bit of a superpower.

Like I, I'm thinking of one particular meeting where a project

was, had really gone off the rails.

It was like six months overdue.

All the stuff that can happen in any big organization like staff have changed.

And, the briefs been changed five times and everyone's trying their best, but the

circumstance is just not really working.

And I could go into the call and say Hey, this project's not

working, we need to finish it.

These are the things we need to do.

And if we can't do that, I think we just need to stop and start again from scratch.

And.

That was quite a shocking thing for someone to say when there's been what I'm

struggling to remember from my critical thinking days, the sunk cost bias.

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to think of.

Sunk cost fallacy.

Yeah.

Everyone's been working it for so long.

They've invested so much time and money and energy, but it's just not working.

And if we keep going, they're just throwing good money after bad.

And I realized when I said that I was the only one on the call who could say that

and the senior manager, she paused for a moment and she looked at me and she said.

You don't work for the university, do you?

And I was like no, I don't.

Yeah.

And I found, even though those moments were scary and there were

times I was like, oh, that's it i'm getting kicked off that project now.

I think people, I. Trusted that I was being honest because yeah, I

think it is scary and I don't know, I just couldn't sleep at night if

I just went along with this stuff.

And like I said, I just got too cranky and if I think if I wanted an easier

life I wouldn't be doing anything I'm doing, but I just can't, I can't bear

the frustration sometimes, Sarah.

I just, we gotta do something about this.

Oh, I can completely relate to that.

And I think, again, I do think it is powerful.

I don't think I could have made this podcast and said some of

the things I've said if I had been employed in an organization.

So yeah it can be a very powerful place to, to be.

Power that needs to be used with responsibility, as you say, when doing

it, when you feel it's the right thing.

Yeah.

Yeah and like I don't want us to just be congratulating

ourselves too much, but like I said at the start, I really do believe in your

mission and I think what you're doing is really important because while I

could make a joke and say, yeah, I'll just not turn up to the office for

a few days 'cause I don't work here.

Everybody else still did work there.

And it really made me upset to see how often professional staff and

universities were treated like second class citizens and bossed around.

And as my, a big part of my mission is trying to help amazing researchers

drive impact, but I, a secondary mission, a personal mission is

trying to create a better work environment for those professional

staff who are working so, so hard.

And I think they deserve a lot better a lot of the time.

Yeah.

Couldn't agree more.

And I think well perhaps that nicely leads us onto a question I like to ask

all of my guests, which is, if you had a magic wand, what would you change

about this world that you work in?

The whole world or just the academic world?

Just, just your little impact, research impact little corner.

Although, it can be something connected, but it's your choice.

If money and time were no object.

I mean there's a million things, but something

that's, I think a personal bug bear.

I think the academic world needs to put a lot more money into, yeah,

what would come under professional staff or professional services?

I'm biased because most of what I have done over the years has been communication

sort related, but I've just been in too many meetings where the leaders

of a department or a center are saying like, we don't understand what's wrong

with our operations, or why does it take so long to get any anything done?

And I have to point out again and again, this is a multimillion dollar

operation you're running here.

And if we looked at a commercial business who had the same yearly revenue.

They would have it's not even a comparison I don't know, 10 x, a hundred x in terms

of the spend and amount of staff they'd have working on things like marketing

and sales and all that kind of stuff.

And so I feel like I, it's, there's just, it's just a lose lose situation.

It's bad for academics 'cause they get frustrated.

And it's also not fair to the professional staff who are working so hard and

they're trying to do five people's jobs and they're not getting paid enough.

Yeah.

And I think that is very much what we're about is just making it

apparent this work that is being done, because I think so often it is

invisible unless there's a problem.

And if there's a problem, suddenly yeah, it explodes.

And I think also that really genuinely valuing the professional staff

who work in these organizations is the secret to almost everything.

So when academics are saying, oh, we're too busy and we can't, and now you

expect us to do all this other stuff on top of our jobs, it's like well, no, we

don't necessarily expect you to do it.

You could put other people in place who can do these other things that feel

like it's, another demand on your time.

And yeah.

So I think the secret to making things better is bridging that

divide between this kind of sense of academic and professional staff

research adjacent, whatever you want to call them, and thinking about

how we can get them working together because that's what they're doing.

They're all working together for a shared aim, but at the moment,

doing it in very different ways.

And look, I empathize, like I know things are hard.

I know.

The structures aren't set up to make what I'm suggesting easy.

And a lot of people would say it's not even possible, but I guess it's

the magic wand question and I hope

Absolutely.

If we have this conversation again in 10 or 20 years, I really

hope things have started to shift.

Yeah.

Me too.

Me too.

Saying then that, we haven't really talked about this, but we're seeing

what you can see on this podcast.

Part of the reason we're thinking about that is 'cause you have

a podcast as well, don't you?

So would you like to tell the listeners a little bit about your

podcast and where they can find it?

The sorts of things you cover?

I'd love to.

So the pod is called Amplifying Research, just like my company and I have the

great pleasure of talking to amazing people from all around the world people

who are passionate about impact, and we talk about how research organizations

can communicate more effectively, how they can engage more effectively, and how

they can collaborate more effectively.

Um, Incredible guests, like people talking about how can you co-design

research projects with different communities, people talking about stuff,

more like what we've been talking about.

How can you work in comms or engagement and embed the right

kind of approach in your center?

Yeah, I feel really grateful just to get to talk to super, super cool people

who yeah, they're trying to share everything they've worked on and all the

knowledge they've got with the world.

Yeah, so check it out.

You can find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts.

Just type in Amplifying Research.

Yeah, I would definitely recommend it for anybody who is in

this kind of comms engagement impact kind of space you've had some fantastic

guests on and really talking about this, more the strategic piece, isn't it?

It's the whys and where fors of doing things better.

So yeah, definitely recommended.

And if people want to get in touch with you personally or find out

more about your company, where would you have them go and look?

You can find me on amplifyingresearch.com or just come look

me up on LinkedIn and shoot me a message.

Yeah, very happy to have a chat if you care about impact and any

of the things we've talked about.

Very happy to have a chat.

Fantastic.

So it just remains to say thank you so much for coming along and sharing

what you do and sharing your story.

Sarah, thank you very much for having me.

Again, huge fan and it's yeah, it's like an honor and a pleasure to be on the show.

Oh, thank you.

That's really kind.

Thanks for listening to Research Adjacent.

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Research Adjacent is presented and produced by Sarah McLusky,

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And you, yes you, get a big gold star for listening right to the end.

See you next time.