I was sitting in my office the other day with my supervisor came running in. We got to talking about Griffith’s new performance metrics when he said something that caught my attention. In not so many words he told me … to shoot for average.
I got an email the other day from a colleague in South Australia who had read a paper of mine… he told me to “shoot for average”.
I am not sure if it’s God or what but maybe, just maybe I need to “shoot for average”. After all, when you are just getting started (at least in cricket terms) you need to get the runs on the board. If you don’t perform consistently at a “respectable” level often enough you may just wind up being left out in the cold. This did get me thinking about how people become extraordinary… how do they do it? What makes this blogger stand out and have more visitors than this blogger (me)? The answer… they are not average. They stand out. As for me I am Mr. Average. In our performace metrics there are four tiers:
1. Tier A*
The super Tier… if you combined Jimi Hendrix, Einstien, Hagel and some other famous person and made them into UBER academics they would publish in these journals.
2. Tier A
Many academics kindly refer to these as Good but not great.
3. Tier B
These are above average but not quite average as average goes… (does that make sense?).
4. Tier C
Average – my goal
Anything else in our metrics is relegated to supreme obscurity. *coughs* So why do I want to shoot for average? Because the bigger tiered journals are out of my league at the moment. Through development and willpower if I could give a crap… I might try. Now this “quitter” attitude may surprise you. But to me if you want to play the game, it’s better to be consistent in the beginning and THEN become remarkable than be instantly remarkable. Now, the only thing to work out is if I want to play the game or not. I am against the corporate sausage maker!
I am on a path of potential development… let’s see if I can discover what I am remarkable at. Sorry, I watched a Seth Godin video recently.
Be free! Be free!
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Hmmm… I just hope you’re clear about your priorities!
I’m no academic. In fact, I’ve spent seventeen happy years in the corporate sausage-machine (they may buy your brain but they never own your mind). But if I were an academic, I hope I would pursue research topics that interested me (of course) and played to my particular strengths. The test would be: Am I the best person to do this research? And to be very clear, the question is not: could anyone do it better than me, but will anyone…? Others may (just possibly) be better equipped, but they are probably too busy on (we hope) more important research.
What you do with the fruits of your research is, to this idealist, of secondary importance. You may be able to publish a series of lesser papers in lesser journals, building up your academic reputation until you can publish your most important results in a more important journal. Or you may prefer to share with a growing group of like-minded individuals who publish in a journal whose importance, as a result, is growing. Or you may focus on packaging your insights for the mass market, make megabucks and then publish more detailed academic research in all the best journals!