Fast Track Impact

In this episode, Mark is joined by his wife, Dr Joyce Reed, former hospital doctor turned health coach and Managing Director of Fast Track Impact. They talk about some of the hopes and fears of returning to in-person work, and how you can stay resilient in body and mind, whether you are staying at home, going back to work or exploring hybrid ways of working.Find out more about burnout and how to tackle it in this blog by Dr Reed: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/post/how-to-manage-stress-and-recover-from-burnoutRead Dr Reed's new blog on self-compassion: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/post/self-compassion-and-kindnessFind out more about Dr Reed's health coaching practice: https://www.drjoycereedhealthcoach.com/Bring The Health Resilient Researcher course to your institution: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/the-health-resilient-researcherFollow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn.Impact Culture is released as a paperback, e-book and audio book on 25th March 2022. Find out more at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.

In this episode, Mark delves into some of the assumptions and world views that can prevent us doing research that is genuinely coproductive. He draws on a realisation that some of his own early work was far from coproductive, and instead could be characterised as "helicopter research" that included elements of white centering and epistemic racism. He also draws inspiration from work with local communities in the UK by University of Staffordshire's Creative Communities Unit, as an example of what is possible when the boundaries between researchers and stakeholders are dissolved.Trigger warning: this episode contains discussion of racism that some listeners may find upsetting.Follow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn.Impact Culture is released as a paperback, e-book and audio book on 25th March 2022. Find out more at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.

This week, Mark shares his top 5 lessons for co-producing impact with limited time, based on his forthcoming book, Impact CultureFind out who’s interested in your research;Next, start with their needs, not your ideas;Give as much as you get;Base action on bodies of work rather than your latest findings; andBe curious about what works.Follow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn.Impact Culture is released as a paperback, e-book and audio book on 25th March 2022. Find out more at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.

In this episode Mark introduces Season 4, discusses why we need to think harder about the culture in which we do our work, and unpacks what a healthy impact culture looks like. To do this, he draws on his new book, Impact Culture, and provides some practical examples of how he is putting the ideas into practice as he builds a new research centre at Scotland's Rural College.Read the peer-reviewed journal publication that summarises the lessons from the book.Follow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn. Impact Culture is released as a paperback, e-book and audio book on 25th March 2022. Find out more at: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactculture.

Bella Reichard and Mark Reed discuss how their new paper analysing high- versus low-scoring impact case studies from REF2014 can be used to write more effective case studies, drawing from their experience advising Universities across the UK on their REF submissions.

Bella Reichard and Mark Reed read from their new paper analysing high- versus low-scoring impact case studies from REF2014.

Bella Reichard and Mark Reed read from their new paper analysing high versus low-scoring impact case studies from REF2014

This week, Mark asks how you can make room for the most important work of your life. What priorities most authentically express your identity and values, that you need to make time for? The systems that hold you back and demotivate you might not be about to change. But you have the capacity to make small changes that can have a big impact on your motivation, and make your working life easier. Learning from evolutionary organisations and socio-technical systems, Mark shows how you can design experiments that make small changes you can learn from. They are low-risk so you can start now without asking for permission. If it doesn't work, you discontinue or adapt, and if it does, then you build on it and bring others into your experiment. At minimum, you create a work culture that protects you from a toxic organisational culture. Ideally, your new ways of working take off and start changing your organisation from the bottom up.

In a bonus episode this week from the climate conference in Madrid, Mark provides a worked example of how to use a policy seminar to generate and build relationships that have the potential to deliver long-term impacts from research. There are lots of methods available to find out who attends a policy seminar and engage with them after the event. To see Mark's approach this week, view this tweet with a link to his video, press release and opportunity to take part in the research.

In this second part of his episode on evidencing impact, Mark reads the final sections of his forthcoming co-authored paper, describing five types of impact evaluation and a methodological framework to guide the selection of methods for evidencing impact. See the figures from the paper in this summary presentation.