Great point on providing financial support with no strings attached! For those who never received grant money to do something, this may be difficult to imagine. Like “of course, if someone gives you money, they want to make sure that you spend it on a specific purpose”.
Which makes sense, in theory. In practice, the rules often specify that you need to spend the money in certain way. (And you need to spend some time and money to provide the documentation that you followed the rules.) Which means that you cannot change your mind, sometimes even about trivial details. If the situation changes, you don’t have the freedom to adapt. A human manager could admit that the new situation requires some small changes, but the words on paper won’t budge.
For example, you are in the middle of an important scientific research, and your printer runs out of ink. Too bad, because the rules specify a list of things you are allowed to buy for this project, and “printer ink” is not on the list. (More seriously, it’s a biological research, and your freezer breaks. The samples will thaw long before you could do the prescribed procurement ritual.) Or your scientists need to type million numbers in a spreadsheet, and you realize it would be more efficient if you paid some student to do this part instead; but no, the rules specify that only people with PhD can be involved in the project. A key person in your project gets sick, but luckily you know a few people qualified and willing to replace them; too bad, in the grant proposal you had to specify some information about the person doing the project, and now each possible substitute has a wrong age, wrong gender, is not a citizen of your country (but lives 10 miles behind its border), is/isn’t a contractor, etc.
Even if everything goes fine, I guess that at least 20% of the person’s attention is consumed by the worry whether they are doing the paperwork right. When things go wrong, it easily becomes 80%. That is not what you wanted to pay them for!
(What happens in reality is that researchers participate in some kind of shadow economy, like “oh, you need ink for your printer, but your rules don’t allow to buy it? luckily, my rules do, so let’s pretend that it was my printer than ran out of ink; next time you owe me a similar favor”. But this is also a tax on everyone’s attention, and some people don’t have the necessary skills, so they need to hope that someone else does.)
A more convenient solution would be something like this: “Look at the existing evidence that I am doing great things. If you are impressed, send me some money. Later, look at the new evidence. If you are still impressed, keep sending more money. But don’t micromanage me.”
Great point on providing financial support with no strings attached! For those who never received grant money to do something, this may be difficult to imagine. Like “of course, if someone gives you money, they want to make sure that you spend it on a specific purpose”.
Which makes sense, in theory. In practice, the rules often specify that you need to spend the money in certain way. (And you need to spend some time and money to provide the documentation that you followed the rules.) Which means that you cannot change your mind, sometimes even about trivial details. If the situation changes, you don’t have the freedom to adapt. A human manager could admit that the new situation requires some small changes, but the words on paper won’t budge.
For example, you are in the middle of an important scientific research, and your printer runs out of ink. Too bad, because the rules specify a list of things you are allowed to buy for this project, and “printer ink” is not on the list. (More seriously, it’s a biological research, and your freezer breaks. The samples will thaw long before you could do the prescribed procurement ritual.) Or your scientists need to type million numbers in a spreadsheet, and you realize it would be more efficient if you paid some student to do this part instead; but no, the rules specify that only people with PhD can be involved in the project. A key person in your project gets sick, but luckily you know a few people qualified and willing to replace them; too bad, in the grant proposal you had to specify some information about the person doing the project, and now each possible substitute has a wrong age, wrong gender, is not a citizen of your country (but lives 10 miles behind its border), is/isn’t a contractor, etc.
Even if everything goes fine, I guess that at least 20% of the person’s attention is consumed by the worry whether they are doing the paperwork right. When things go wrong, it easily becomes 80%. That is not what you wanted to pay them for!
(What happens in reality is that researchers participate in some kind of shadow economy, like “oh, you need ink for your printer, but your rules don’t allow to buy it? luckily, my rules do, so let’s pretend that it was my printer than ran out of ink; next time you owe me a similar favor”. But this is also a tax on everyone’s attention, and some people don’t have the necessary skills, so they need to hope that someone else does.)
A more convenient solution would be something like this: “Look at the existing evidence that I am doing great things. If you are impressed, send me some money. Later, look at the new evidence. If you are still impressed, keep sending more money. But don’t micromanage me.”