As research group leaders, we face enormous pressure not only to perform ourselves but also to train the next generation of scientists. Unfortunately, this pressure can easily lead us to direct rather than facilitate the scientific process. Facilitating science requires that we create environments and cultures where people can really think. It requires that we create space rather than pressure, that we trust individual and group creativity rather than assuming we are the only ones with the answer. If instead we create a group culture that values doing over thinking, we rob group members of agency and ownership of the research process in a way that limits their professional and intellectual development. Importantly, though, this also increases the very pressure that we as group leaders can seek to alleviate by directing. If we take care in establishing the conditions that support thinking and scientific creativity, giving guidance when it is sought, seeking to inspire and be inspired, the very productivity we fear will be lost if we don’t push is very likely to increase. In fact, by making this simple switch in emphasis and focusing on creating an environment that truly facilitates both individual and group thinking, our dual goal of making research advances and supporting the development of scientists is no longer in conflict. In this way, we discover that scientific progress can be a natural product of supporting real thinking.

This program explores the ways in which we can shift the emphasis from doing before thinking to thinking before doing in research. We will explore our own research vision and how it can be used as a framework for measuring group progress and helping individuals to see where their contribution fits into wider group goals. We will further examine how group discussions can be built around a working map of the research territory we are exploring and how we can use individual and group interactions to continually update and refine the map in light of experience coming from our own data or those shared by others. Throughout the program, we will look at the key issue of converting research progress into publication output.