Dear Colleagues
This will be my final note as Director. Let me start by saying that it has been an honor to lead IGIB. It was a challenge to fill the big shoes of my predecessors and I was lucky to be supported throughout, by individual and team excellence at IGIB.
For me, this journey was one of learning, since I have never held a leadership position before, not even that of a class monitor. The one time, during my college years, I stood for an election, even though my future wife did not vote for me. She did not think I would be able to handle the responsibility. Why she thought I would make a good life partner eludes me still, but that is my good fortune, then and now. I am told that one of the Professors, who liked us both, more than me I guess, was worried (for her) and even advised her to reconsider. Thus, the one thing that I had in my favor, while coming into my new role as a leader, was my knowledge of my limitations, amply communicated by family and friends over the years. I have never let these limitations limit me though. It is sometimes better to accept and use your strengths to work around your limitations, rather than try to overcome them. Other times, one just learns to get better.
My time as a bench researcher was such. I was (and am) a terrible bench researcher whose gels did not polymerize, samples managed to run off the finally polymerized gels before being checked, etc. Rather than give up on research, I realized I needed to approach it differently – to add value elsewhere, such that eventually I got my own technical staff. Everyone is different and cannot be molded to the same shape. My boss, an excellent leader, was very accepting of this. It is a lesson I have tried to carry forward, when faced with leadership. Another perspective came from my feeling as a physician-scientist that physicians overestimate their skills and much of the good (and bad) that happens is attributable to chance. Even scientific careers are not that different but let that be a story for another day. Borrowing heavily from wisdom by Adam Cifu, an academic physician, I came up with my version for leadership. For those who have seen this already, thank you for following me on twitter. Incidentally, even my journey to social media came from following advice from colleagues – here, Beena – who felt that I could add something useful. Here they are:
1) We systematically assume that decisions we took, but whose outcomes we don’t yet know, were good.
2) Our feedback overwhelmingly comes from those who have chosen to stay in our circle.
3) The power differential between us and others prevents people from telling us what they really think.
4) We spend more and more time with those who know less and less about what is happening on the ground.
5) The institution is self-organising and self-healing. It often gets better despite us as opposed to because of us.
I do not claim to be an exception to these, and only hope that I remember them and that you also remember them, so that future leaders may benefit from appropriate feedback. My path from here diverges slightly from yours, but we are all in the same ocean of Indian science; collaborators for a better future and susceptible to the same tide that lifts or sinks boats. My best wishes to everyone for ever greater successes and also happiness while achieving them.
Cover picture Credit: Aastha Vatsyayan
Anurag Agrawal is the Director of CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (CSIR-IGIB). He is a physician-scientist with interests in the interface of biology, medicine and data.