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If you’d rather read, here’s the full interview:
Julian: First of all, congratulations on your book "Research at Scale." I think many people who have been working in the research space were thinking, "Finally, we have a book about this!" How did the book come about?
Kate: I signed the contract with Rosenfeld to write the book in 2020. Louis approached me and asked if I would consider writing down what I knew about research operations, given my work building the community around it. I write to understand what I know, but also to evolve what I know.
By 2022, I had a decent draft, but the industry had changed dramatically. We went from a thriving industry where people were flying all over the world, teams growing wildly, to a completely different scenario. I realized I had written a book built on the sentiment that we were growing and scaling, but we had just learned serious lessons about where we weren't actually hitting the mark of scaling value.
So in 2022, I rewrote half of the book—literally six of the 12 chapters—to dig into what I had observed over 13 years in the space and how corporations run. I had to answer two vital questions: What does scaling research even mean? Because "scale" is thrown around everywhere, but we're not producing cars or cookies, we're producing knowledge. And secondly, how do we deliver value as research into an organization?
These two big questions occupied my mind obsessively for a couple of years before the book was finally published in September last year.
Julian: That's a great story—rewriting half the book is a lot of work!
Kate: It was a lot of work, but I think it was worth it. The earlier version was sort of a recipe for how to deliver research operations, but research cannot just be finders or creators of knowledge anymore. We must be builders.
My belief is that to deliver value into organizations, we've got to become specific about how we operate. What has happened is that because of the rise of research operations, research leaders now think that operations is a headcount—you get your headcount, and then that headcount sorts everything out for you. But operations is really a verb. It's a way of being, a way of living, and therefore a way of interacting with the world around you.
How you operate will determine how much value you deliver into the organization and therefore how robust you'll be when the next economic crash comes. Operations should be rooted in the building of your finders and builders—deciding what tools and resources you need at this point in time to meet the needs of the organization.
Julian: Operations is not just a headcount, but an action. This show is about first researchers or small research teams, and at some point, we need to think about the infrastructure we build and wear that operations hat. Something you probably hear a lot is that operations is for large teams, not small companies or teams. When should researchers or research teams start thinking about building infrastructure or practices that are scalable?
Kate: You are operating, whether you're a big team or a small team, and whether you've decided how you operate or not. If you don't decide how you're operating, then you're likely operating inefficiently or not delivering value to the right places in the organization.
I love to use a restaurant analogy: You'll get a dinky little café on the corner with maybe three tables outside. They will have systems in place that enable them to operate as a small café. They still need to be organized—ensuring regular coffee supplies, working refrigerators, finances sorted—to operate within laws and keep customers happy.
At the other end, you'll have a massive 150-seat restaurant with a head chef, large kitchen, alcohol licenses, supply chains, and huge walk-in refrigerators. They're working at a completely different scale, but both still need to think about how they operate. They still need supply chains, just at different levels.
Julian: I love the analogy! You use a lot of analogies throughout your book, which is a great way to get points across.
Going back to what you mentioned earlier about the changing landscape, why is it important for businesses to think about systems that scale in the current research landscape, especially when teams are downscaling?
Kate: That's one of the best questions any podcast interview has asked me! It's assumed that all systems should be scalable, but it takes a lot of work and usually money to build and maintain a scalable system. Sometimes it's not necessary.
You might be a five-person research team that will only ever look after a certain amount of people or recruit a certain number of participants, with no foreseeable headcount increase. Your reality might be making the most of what you've got, not building a massive system that's going to grow exponentially. Not everything has to be scalable.
But even if you're small and likely to stay small, you might look at how to scale the value you deliver to the organization, not necessarily the size of your team or the number of reports. That's a nuance on scaling that's often forgotten.
For example, with a team of five serving five stakeholders, you might look at how to take what they're producing and consolidate that knowledge—perhaps by getting a headcount for a librarian or finding a way to structure content so it appeals to higher management or even founders and CEOs. The team stays mostly the same, but the value you're delivering is scaled, and the longevity of your assets is extended—a fantastic opportunity for a small team.
Julian: This brings me to an interesting concept from your book: cost center versus value center. How would you connect this to the strategies you'd recommend to keep moving in the value center direction?
Kate: A smart research leader has a strategic mindset and looks into the organization to determine priorities. If you don't have more funding but might be able to squeeze out a headcount with the right pitch, you could build a strong library—not just a house for knowledge, but an interconnected communication platform to get knowledge moving around the organization in the right ways for the right people.
The skilled research strategist is looking for primary opportunities where, with a little leverage, they can make a mountain move. Another example is democratization. You might not be able to democratize for everyone, but you could work specifically with designers to build systems enabling them to do the research they need.
My belief is that the research team of the future needs to be an octopus. You can't just have one arm because you'll go around in circles. You need multiple arms where you're delivering democratization, knowledge across the organization, advocating for customer insights, and so on.
Julian: From finders to octopus—we could do a season on building octopuses!
A common question I get is about researchers wearing different hats—researcher by day and builder by night. How can they pitch to the rest of the organization that working on operational topics is important and worth the investment?
Kate: I always believe in show, don't tell. Operations and strategy both have massive baggage and mysticism around them. Operations is not a noun—the headcount you hire in operations roles are there to bring life to the way you've chosen to be. Strategy is often confused with visionary ideas of the future, but it's really your practical plan for bringing your vision to life.
If operations is just seen as "someone's going to sort out all the plumbing behind the scenes," that's valuable—I call that "keep the lights on." But no one appreciates well-run operations because you shouldn't notice it until it goes off.
To remedy that and show what excellent operations looks like, get a baseline of "keep the lights on" operations, then find a spike or vertical orientation where you can show value to senior leadership. Look for what your organization is paying extra attention to right now.
For example, if the CEO says increasing daytime television viewership is a priority, you could set up a recruiting panel specifically for that audience, create a rich area in your library for daytime television insights, and formulate specific ways to distribute that content. This creates a vertical "spike" that people notice, rather than just the horizontal operations no one sees.
When they see this new value, they can start to understand what operations can deliver, and that's when you can get funding you wouldn't have otherwise.
Julian: That's fantastic! Speaking of spikes, in your book you talk about the eight elements of Research Ops and then connect this with the Research Ops Venn diagram. Can you elaborate on that?
Kate: Research operations efforts are wildly misunderstood and underestimated. People might say, "I'm going to build a panel by procuring this tool," without planning for all the other necessary elements. Then later they realize they need to address privacy and ethics, create onboarding processes, set up thank-you gifts, and so on.
The Venn diagram takes the eight elements and overlays them because wherever you start on the journey, you're going to encounter all of the other elements. It helps you think holistically and upfront about all the work, thinking, and design needed to deliver this as an operable part of your organization, rather than just a siloed tool that's ticked off the to-do list but doesn't actually function or add value.
Julian: For those who are starting to build a practice or working on the infrastructure of their practice, what three tips would you give them?
Kate: First, before diving in, stop and think. Take a Buddhist moment and consider what you really want to achieve, what resources you have, and what needs consideration. Come up with a plan and strategy: Why am I doing this now? For whom? How much is necessary? When does it need to launch? What's the goal? This might take a day or two weeks, but it's worth it because you'll save wasted time later.
Second, once you have that plan, step back again and work out how this machine will operate. Everything you do will have various moving parts to make it operable and sustainable. Design the system—what kind of researchers? What kind of research? Who's involved? What mix of ingredients does this recipe need?
Third, build sequentially and patiently. Find low-hanging fruit to show quick value, but don't get stuck there because that "high carbohydrate diet" isn't sustainable. Look for the "bone marrow"—the deep nourishing stuff that might take a year or two to deliver but provides long-term value.
Julian: I love it! I usually say "plant the seeds and water the sprouts"—another analogy we can use.
Want to know more about Kate Towsey, her book and masterclasses? Make sure to visit her website, where you can find all the details!
Till next time!
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