How project management applies to research

Think of yourself as the customer, the project leader as your chair, and the others as your committee and you'll be pretty close...

Your research is a project, or rather a series of projects within a larger program called your research agenda.  The first big project is your dissertation, but nearly every paper, conference presentation and book/chapter after that qualifies.  It therefore pays to learn early some of the basic principles of managing such a project.

Note: I do NOT advise taking formal project management training.  That training is intended for a much more complex environment than most researchers face.  If you end up running a lab somewhere you’ll need to learn those skills (or more likely hire a project manager to do the work for you), but early in your career you will be mostly concerned with yourself and maybe a couple of others.  Full-scale project management is too administration-heavy for that environment.  However there are some principles you can and should borrow.  That’s what I’m going to talk about.

The Triple Constraint

If there is any single project management concept that you should learn, it’s the triple constraint.  It goes like this.

You have three general types of resources at your disposal:

• Time
• Scope
• Money / Costs

You can control the SCOPE of your project.  You do this when you define the research question you are planning to answer.  For this reason, a person introduced me to the concept early on of the LPU: The Least Publishable Unit.  You should choose projects that contain sufficient new ideas to get published, but NOT put all your great ideas into one paper.  When people ask me how I got through my dissertation so quickly I point to this idea.  There were a LOT more questions I could have asked, but I tightly controlled the scope of the project in order to get it done.

Scope ties to TIME.  The bigger the scope, the more time it is likely to take.  And TIME ties to COST, both in terms of additional time at a lower salary to the cost of lost opportunities while you work on the old stuff.

Here’s the thing about the triple constraint.  You can flex one leg of the triangle, but when you do, you need to change the other two accordingly.  The three are still joined at the corners, and something has to give.

A couple of examples:

• My chair announced he was taking a year-long sabbatical in Spain (lucky dog) and that, therefore, I needed to finish before he left.  TIME was constrained.  Therefore I strictly monitored the SCOPE of my project and invested more MONEY by paying people to do certain things for me (like editing and delivering meals) in order for me to get the project done in that time frame.  I kept a tight rein on SCOPE and allowed it to COST more in order to meet the TIME constraint.
• A colleague got to their proposal review and had their committee heap a bunch of additional stuff on to the scope of the project.  (In their defense, she will be writing on this data for a decade and got some great stuff.)  She didn’t have a lot of money to spend, so in her case she cut out everything else in her life to finish the project.  She put in more TIME to make up for the increased SCOPE.

One of the dangers of the triple constraint in academic circles is the COST issue. We tend not to see it clearly.  All too many PhD students take a very long time to finish their dissertations due to massive scopes without any awareness of what that time is costing them.  The tuition cost is easily quantified, but few look at the cost of continuing on as a graduate assistant rather than getting a full-time job. Early career faculty see six years to tenure review as a very long time when, in fact, with academic publishing on a stone-age schedule, it is actually quite short. And this is before we get to what economists call the Opportunity Cost.  What COULD you have been doing/making (now and for the rest of your career) if you were done now?

Scope Creep

One of the biggest pitfalls for academics is Scope Creep.  We ALWAYS have more questions, more ideas, more literature to read, etc.  I got stalled for about a month on my literature review; there were so many interesting things to read, most of which were only peripherally related to  my hypothesis.  Then I almost did it again with methodology books/articles.  It’s in our nature to be curious, but that makes us especially at risk.

You have two protections against scope creep.  First, tightly define your research question for the project at hand and stick to it.  If what you are reading/asking doesn’t apply to that question, set it aside for now.  Second, keep a notebook of ideas to explore and things you want to read.  This is where you place those things not related to your current project but that could lead you in potentially interesting directions in the future.  Plan time between major project to review that material.  Your Nobel Prize may start out in that notebook, so it’s worth going back to regularly.  For more on this topic go back and read my post on Cal Newport’s research framework.

Planning

The first stage of planning is determining which of those constraints represent hard limits.  Think broadly here.  Whether you are heading toward graduation or tenure review, there is always a deadline.  What defines that deadline in terms of graduation might be money (your assistant-ship runs out at the end of year four) or an externally imposed deadline (tenure at year six or your contract doesn’t get renewed).  Regardless, figure out what it is and then back into what your scope needs to be in order to meet your objective.

Once you have that objective defined, you can now lay out how much time and cost will be involved in achieving it, as well as the minimum scope of the projects.  PhDs very rarely do only the minimum, but if you know what that minimum you can be sure to meet it while going above and beyond in your core areas of interest.

I would not advise making up a gantt chart, detailed work breakdown structure or any comparable formal project management tool.  Since much of the work of an academic is solitary or in small groups, using the agile project management ideal of focusing on communication is usually your best bet.  However that is a big huge topic for another day.

If you have questions about managing your research projects and agenda, feel free to leave a comment or ask/follow me on twitter: @protoscholar.

There are things that make a lecturer more or less effective.  The following picture (click on it to get to the original paper) provides a way of telling if you are being effective as a lecturer and, by extension, how to increase the effective traits while decreasing the ineffective traits in your lectures.

Here’s 7 tips to making sure your lecture’s are productive for your students and painless for all involved.

1. Be a good storyteller.  Your students rarely have the same level of intrinsic interest in the topic that you have.  Some will only be there because it’s required, some won’t have realized what your course was about when they signed up, and a few thought it sounded interesting but are more interested in the hottie they saw while on their way to class.  Your lecture, therefore, needs to tell a good story.  It has a beginning, a middle and an end.  It has something that anyone can relate to, whether that is the topic itself or the examples you provide.  You use vocal modulation, pace and tone to make the story compelling.  If I can do it with statistics, you can do it with anything.
2. Don’t just repeat the book/reading. Enhance it.  Bring it to life.  Enrich it.  Focus on bringing concrete (current) examples, the latest research and a bit of humor to the topic.  For example, in my statistics class I have to explain Correlation.  I can say “correlation does not equal causation” over and over, but I get a LOT further with a simple scatterplot.  (If all you do is repeat the book, some of them won’t bother to read it.)
   

   These two things have WHAT to do with one another?

3. Use the slides as a structure, not a script.  We laugh at the guy at a conference who just reads his slides, but I’ve seen my share of intelligent instructors do the same thing.  It’s boring to sit through for you, and just as boring for your students.  Use the slides to provide a structure for both you and your students, and as a mechanism for bringing in value-add multimedia (charts, images, TED talks, whatever).  Use the Notes section of the slides to provide yourself with the discussion questions you want to use, practice problems, answers to said problems and notes on information you want to make sure you include.  COROLLARY:  You don’t HAVE to use slides. I never saw a single Powerpoint in my graduate program.  Instructors assigned us readings, then walked in and talked (sometimes off an outline, sometimes not) about the readings and asked extensive discussion questions to get us thinking about how the readings fit into the broader context of the field.
4. If your topic is technical, use slides and let the students print them before class. This one occasionally is debated, but teaching statistics I’ve found it invaluable.  The last thing I want is students writing down formula’s incorrectly or spending all their time taking dictation.  I want them listening, processing, asking questions and engaging with me.  By giving them the notes, they can write down the things that will make those notes more meaningful to them.  COROLLARY:  They should still be NOTES.  Your slides should be an outline* of the topic, not a paper on it.
5. Have a common thread through your lecture.  This could mean a common example or a common problem to be solved.  It helps a lot if this thread is accessible to your students, since they will anchor all the concepts you are discussing to that thread, and will remember an accessible thread better.  Keep coming back to that thread.  To you, it will seem repetitive.  To them, it will provide a structure and a tool for them to later remember the material.  (I keep toying with the idea of restructuring my entire stats class around a zombie apocalypse.  Maybe someday.)
6. Don’t do all the talking.  Listening alone is never the best learning tool.  Students need to experiment, discuss, and apply what they are learning.  Rather than doing an entire problem on the board, have them do it themselves first.  Rather than talking, ask them questions about how they understood the material.  This breaks up the lecture and allows them to process the information.  Make sure you have one meaty discussion question every 10-20 minutes.  The following image is from a larger paper that talks about how group size impacts questioning techniques and how you, therefore, need to adjust the type of questions you ask.    
7. Review your material the day before class.  Once you have designed your lectures, developed your slides if you plan to use them, integrated it all with your reading list and assignments, and otherwise put it all together, you still aren’t done.  At least 1 day before you teach a particular class, review your notes and the timing of any exercises.  This will make it fresh in your mind and help the class run seamlessly.  Whether true or not, many students mix up a disorganized lecture style with a lack of subject matter expertise in the instructor.  You should strive to have a plan and then remind yourself of the details of that plan in advance.  (By doing it a day in advance you have the chance to make any changes for a particular section.  You will find over time that sections learn at different paces and learn best with different types of exercises.  I can use that information to quickly customize or to choose specific exercises that I will use.)

BONUS: If you will be using a white board, remember that students can’t hear you if you speak to the board.  Practice turning back around before you speak, using good diction and projecting your voice strongly.  I can’t get away from using the board to do problems, but I learned quickly to stop writing numbers and turn around if a student asks a substantive question.

Your lecture is not a static thing.  You’ll never deliver it the same twice, and your first semester you will often leave class thinking “well, that didn’t work.”  Keep a piece of paper handy AS YOU LECTURE and make notes about things that don’t flow well, are missing, are ill-explained, or that you need to not forget.  Then spend a bit of time once a week during the semester integrating those things into the lectures just completed so that NEXT semester you won’t be writing down the same things.

The first and best book I read on teaching is called Tools for Teaching.  The author has made the chapter on delivering a lecture available online (as well as a few others), and I suggest you take a few minutes to read through it.  It has some great suggestions for those who aren’t comfortable with the public-speaking aspects of teaching.  Keep in mind, however, that this is from the 1993 edition of the book, meaning it far predates many of the technological tools we now have at our disposal.

*I had this awful grad seminar that required me to learn mind mapping in order to take notes.  The instructor spent the entire session lecturing, working off a set of lecture notes (no slides) that were, I kid you not, typed on an actual typewriter and yellowed beyond belief.  He would ramble, wandering around the topic in a way that linear-little-me couldn’t follow.  I finally took to mind mapping his lectures in order to get some type of notes down.  Turns out it didn’t matter, since the paper we had to do (1 for the entire semester) could have been on nearly anything on the topic and passed.  Don’t be that guy.

1. Create a folder structure first: You should have one for the document itself, one for pdf”s of literature you may reference, one for your data, syntax and output.  At it’s simplest, you can have something like this:

• Dissertation
  • Chapters
  • Data
  • Reference

1. Break the document down by chapter:  I broke my dissertation down by chapter so that it would be easier to edit.  At least twice I have seen a document in word implode due to size combined with track changes and code fields for citations.  Working on each chapter in a separate document let me avoid that problem.  Because I use Zotero, when I copy and paste the text into a single document I can just refresh the bibliography and Zotero merges it all into one.  (Most other reference management software should do the same.)
2. Set your word processor autosave to ridiculously frequent:Seriously.  I set word to save autorecover information ever 2 minutes.
3. When you first open a document on a particular day, save it with a different name: Saving with a new name should be the very FIRST thing you do.  That way you can be sure that the old version is preserved.
4. Create a file naming convention and stick to it: There are lots of different ways to do this.  Here’s mine: 20110228-Ch5-Results.docx
   1. The first string of numbers is the date.  That is the part that changes every day I work on it.  Notice that the year comes first, then the month, then the day.  This ensures that it sorts in order of when the document was created.
   2. The second part tells me where in the overall document this chapter belongs. I added this after I realized that the chapter names didn’t sort into the correct order.
   3. The last section is the chapter name, more so that my husband and my editor can easily find things.  It isn’t technically necessary.
   4. When someone reviews it, they tack their initials on to the end of the document name so as to separate it from the original document.
5. Every time you pause, hit the save button:  More is better.  Or set yourself an alarm to hit the save button approximately every 15 minutes.
6. Set up background automatic copies to a different disk drive: I use Syncback free to copy the entire documents directory to my Dropbox folder, which makes an offsite backup copy.  If you are worried about security, Syncback free can save to a zip file and add a password, or Syncback SE ($34.95) can encrypt the file.  Set it to backup FREQUENTLY (I used 5 minutes), but only worry about the chapter and data folders.  That should keep you under the free 2G dropbox limit.
7. Your data analysis output needs to be kept as well: As important as your writing is the syntax you are running in whatever analysis tool you use and the output of that tool.  Use a similar naming standard, and name the syntax that created the output and the output itself the same.  Try to give the files a name that tells you what you were trying to do that day.  (“Analysis” isn’t good enough…)
8. Clean up the old files each time a milestone passes:When my proposal was approved, I got rid of all the earlier versions of those chapters and saved a set with the names 20110104-Ch1-Intro-APPROVED.docx.  Then when I started working again, I used those versions as the base.  I will do the same thing when I send it all off to the editor, again when I submit, and then with the final version.

The key is to automate what you can (backup copies, off-site backups using dropbox), save early and save often.  I have heard too many horror stories of crashed laptops with no backup copies or bad word documents that were the only version.  All of these can be avoided with a bit of planning and a pinch of paranoia.

I’ve never met an academic without a room full of books.  Or two.  Or three.  Rooms, I mean.  There are always new books that we find out about or that come out which are relevant to our work.  However that is a LOT of storage space, not to mention cost if you move, weight if you don’t and dusting regardless.

You don’t HAVE to dedicate huge portions of your house to being a library.  And you don’t have to go completely broke keeping up with this material.  There are some techniques for managing both the cost and the storage of books that can help keep it all down to a dull roar.

ACQUISITION:

• Buy used – wherever possible, buy used.  This is good for the planet (fewer trees killed) and good for your wallet.  Amazon shows used books with their listings and make it painless.
• Check all the different formats - I have found that sometimes you can get a hard cover version of a book for less than the soft cover (both new and used).  So look for other formats and see if it matters to the price.
• Pay attention to edition numbers, however – Books that are updated often put out new additions.  Sometimes that matters to you and sometimes it doesn’t.  Depending on the topic it can be more or less of a big deal.  You have to decide if you care, but regardless pay attention.
• For new academic books, use your conference discount – Conferences invariably have book displays and discounts for those attending.  If you can’t go, get someone to bring you the new listings and conference order sheets.
• Shop around – Amazon is a great starting point, but hit book search engines like AddAll and  BookFinder to make sure you are getting the best price.
• Google Books – If the book is OLD, it may be freely downloadable via Google Books.  If it isn’t, you may still be able to read parts of it online via Google Books.  You need to search using Google Scholar to get at many of these books, but it is worth the effort ESPECIALLY if you only need a chapter or subsection.
• Library book sales – Particularly for academics, library book sales are a goldmine.  Get on the list for your local libraries and go to one.  The books are inexpensive and it’s a great way to get out of print or older volumes. 
• Used bookstores – Fun to browse and get ideas.  However this is often my last stop.  Any one used bookstore is likely to be spotty at best, whereas the online sources like Amazon Marketplace let you search several used bookstores at a time.
• Audio Books – Less shelf space, easier storage.  However they can be expensive.  Check used bookstores and more importantly your local library for downloadable audio books.  These aren’t likely to be technical/academic books, but I’m a big fan of listening to background material as opposed to reading it.
• eBooks – Same thing here – downloaded books take up less space than printed ones.  Having said that, you need to be comfortable reading books electronically for this to be helpful.  Again, check your library for downloadable ebooks.

STORAGE:

• Get decent bookshelves – The cheaper the shelves, the faster they lean, sag, bend and ultimately break.  Ikea makes decent quality shelves at a very reasonable price, and they aren’t made of cardboard.  The Billy series is the most famous (and has the most options) but they make something for every decor.  We like Expedit.
• Have a system – It does no good to have an extensive collection if you can’t find the book you need when you need it.  Have an organizational system.  It could be alphabetically by author, by topic then author, or whatever works for you.  The key is just to be able to find the books when you need them.
• Catalog your collection – My husband, the librarian, recently turned me on to LibraryThing, a site that lets you catalog your collection and search it on the web, including on your phone.  You can also tag books and see what other things people have tagged similarly.  Social networking for your book collection.  (The search via phone is the most important feature, since it lets you search from the book store and make sure you don’t have it BEFORE you buy a second copy.)
• Take care of the books – dust regularly, stand them up neatly, try not to rip the dust jackets, etc.  All of this will make them last longer and increase their resale value if/when you sell them.

DISPOSAL:  If you don’t periodically trim your collection it will take over your home.  Sometimes it is important to consider whether you will truly read the book again, whether the information is easy to find, if it is outdated, where else you might be able to find it, etc.  Then it’s time to get rid of some.

• Amazon Marketplace – Amazon makes it PAINFULLY easy to sell your stuff.  You list the book, price it to sell, and ship it when it does.  A few tips though:
• Be honest about the condition.  Use the comments to put in details.
• If the book is a specific edition, list that in the comments.  Particularly if it is an older edition.
• Price it low for a fast sale.  I often just price mine at the bottom regardless of condition to get it out of the house.
• Don’t bother to list items for less than $3.00.  Amazon’s fees eat your profit.  I know some of the big sellers do this, but it just isn’t worth it for the average low volume seller.
• Always offer expedited (priority mail) shipping.  Some buyers need the book fast and this can be the difference between a sale and no sale.
• Search by ISBN number, not title.  There are LOTS of different versions of any book and the ISBN will more accurately match up your book to the correct description.
• Don’t overpack.  These are books; piles of paper bound together.  They don’t need big boxes and bubble wrap.
• Used bookstores – Used bookstores will often buy books for either small amounts of cash or larger amounts of credit.  My husband hasn’t bought a casual fiction book in YEARS because of the credits we have with our biggest local bookstore.  This is where all the books not worth listing on Amazon go.
• Donate to Charity – If it might be interesting to folks who shop at the local Goodwill, donate the books.  Even if the store sells them for just a buck or two, you have still done some goo
  d.
• Sell to fellow students – If you have collected a bunch of academic books on a topic that you are now no longer interested in or working on, put out a message to graduate students offering the books individually or as a set.

I personally consider disposal the most important part of this process.  I know people whose decorating scheme is walls lined with books throughout their entire house.  That is neither attractive nor usable (the books or the house).  Periodically you need to trim it back to what you want/need/intend to read or use again.  Keep the stuff that is hard to replace, get rid of the stuff you haven’t looked at in a while.  It will help your decorating and your budget.

The job news this week really threw me for a loop.  There I was on Monday talking about creating a reading habit and then Tuesday it all fell apart.  Now I have to get that back.  Moreover I also got out of the writing habit and the exercise habit.  So, here are some of the ways I will be using to get myself back on track.

1) Revise your schedule – My scheduled reflected my pre-job-issue life.  I needed to revise it to reflect the time I need to be spending on ensuring that I find a job for after the first of the year.  So I reviewed my schedule and changed some of my time to focus on job issues.  This work needs to get done but it needs to not take over my life.  Scheduling time in to send out resumes, respond to calls and search for opportunities allows me to know that it will get done while still getting OTHER things done.

2) Prioritize – I need to add this job-search to my days until I have something solid.  That means determining what won’t fit or where I can cut some time.  But that doesn’t mean I should cut other things entirely.  I still need to exercise and I still need to read, but I also need finish out the semester strong and submit some conference proposals.  What that means to me is scaling some things back to make time.  I am scaling back foundational reading to an hour per night and changing one conference proposal from a completely new topic to a tangent on an existing topic.  That way I can harvest some of the writing I’ve done elsewhere to put the proposal together.

3) Realize what you can’t do – It is more important to get a job that will support me through the remainder of school than to present at an obscure conference.  There will be more conferences.  I dropped one proposal.

4) Don’t just drop the things you don’t want to do – yes, I could skip working out for the next couple of weeks.  Not like I’ve been that good about it lately.  But in the end that hurts only me.  The exercise, the stress release, and the mental break are all still necessary and important.

5) Forgive yourself – Falling off track when something major and negative happens is normal.  It’s important to not berate yourself, let it go and focus on moving forward. 

One step at a time.

Since this blog is moving in the direction of more musings and less how-to, I have agreed to write a weekly post at Gearfire Student Productivity.  The first article went  up this morning talking about how to make use of Wikipedia in an academic setting without needing to cite it.

There is likely to still be some cross-over; I’ll talk here about my experiences with my GTD system whereas over there it will be more advice on how to implement one for a student.  That site focuses more on tools and tips, so check it out when you get a chance.

One of the first things you are taught in a speed reading class is that it is as important to know WHAT to read as it is to develop the skill to just move your eyes faster.  That doesn’t mean knowing which books to read but knowing what parts of the book or article to read and how far you have to go to get what you need from the book.  This is important because often we don’t have the choice of which books we need to read.

Whether for a class, an interview, or a meeting with “the boss”, there have been many times in my life when I’ve had to read a book (hundreds of pages) very quickly.  I was once schedule for a next-business-day interview with a company that uses Good to Great as a defining mantra; I discovered this while doing familiarizing myself with their website the night before.  I’ve had class assignments to read an entire book in a week at a time when other classes or work had to take priority.

For my husband, this would be trivial.  He reads quickly.  I don’t.  And while I have taken speed reading classes and learned some skills, reading a book for me is still a long effort.  So here are some tips and tricks regarding what to read that I use to deal with these types of situations.

1. Figure out what you need from the book: This is also the first lesson of speed reading.  Get clear on the question you need to answer, the level you need to understand the material and and the context in which you will need to use that information.  If you just need the basic theme you can get that from the Amazon summary.  If you need to understand the key ideas, keep reading.
2. Review the table of contents:  Make sure you understand the overall structure of the book.  It’s also good to read the back matter at this point if you haven’t already.
3. Review the Amazon web page:  This page generally has a summary of the book from a couple of sources, one of which may be something like Publisher’s Weekly.  This may have some critique of the book as well.  Skim some of the user reviews (both good and bad), but don’t get  bogged down here.  The quality of user reviews varies wildly.
4. See if the author has a web page: The author of Good to Great, Jim Collins, has an extensive website that includes supplemental materials which can help you get the gist of the book quickly.  Academics often have websites as well, so don’t dismiss any of these steps just because it is an academic book.  You never know what you will find.
5. If this is a mainstream book, such as a business book, check out sites like Executive Book Summary or Business Book Review for abbreviated versions.  The first site does excellent chapter by chapter summaries (and allowed me to fly through the aforementioned interview without having read the book).  There are other fields with review and summary services like this, as well as hundreds of sites that contain book summaries.  Whether you will find one for your book depends on its popularity.
6. If this is an obscure academic book use your library’s search tools to look for book reviews published in academic journals.  These will often be just a few pages as opposed to a few hundred but will give you both a feel for the book and some critiques to give you an idea of the weaknesses.  (This can work for business books as well but is generally less necessary.)  Google Scholar can help find these if you aren’t sure where to look, although you will probably still have to go through an academic library to see the articles.
7. Read the introduction/first chapter: This is straight out of speed-reading.  The introduction of a book will usually lay out the argument for you, provide basic definitions and show you where in the book to look for more on each major element.  The exception is some postmodernist or inspired works where the structure is not that clean cut.  In those cases you generally need to read it all or not bother, since once you get past perhaps the prefix the text is decidedly non-linear.
8. Read the last chapter, and look at all graphs or charts: The last chapter should pull it all together and tell you why you care.  The graphs and charts can help you see for yourself the numbers and patterns.

I can walk through steps 1 through 7 on an academic book in about 2 hours, which is far faster than I can skim 200 pages, and frankly my understanding will be better. 

I am by no means advocating that you do this instead of reading every book.  I tend to do most of these steps even if I intend to read the entire book, since reading other critiques tends to give me a deeper understanding of the books perspective, particularly if its in an area with which I am not as familiar.  When you have the time, do the reading.  When the book is on a key area of interest, do the reading (even if it has to be after the fact).  When your CEO is remaking the company according to the book’s principles, do the reading.

However when you don’t have the time to read and consider every page before a specific deadline, these techniques can help you make a credible showing and ensure that you are not lost in the subsequent conversations. 

You’re at a conference.  You’ve met some interesting people, including the big names in your field.   You fawned over one of them earlier.  Now you are in the elevator and just as the doors are about to close the aforementioned big name jumps into the elevator with you and says “So, what are you working on?”  What do you say?

This is the moment for the academic version of the Elevator Pitch – a standard technique used by entrepreneurs, project leaders and other business people.  The idea is simple; have a quick, clear, and concise answer to the question ready to go.  It should take just the duration of an elevator ride; 30 seconds, 150 words or so.  (Yes, I know how difficult that is for an academic…)  The pitch should encapsulate:

1. What your topic is, whether it is your dissertation topic or the latest paper you are working on.  (If you are a grad student, it had better be your dissertation topic)
2. What your methodology is (in brief – “Case Study”, HLM, Survey….that’s enough)
3. Why your question matters
4. Where you are in the process
5. What you need to get it done

This last point is important – While many people see being an academic as a solitary pursuit the process really works best when we communicate with one another.  Thus, I would argue that this skill is even MORE important for academics then it is for business people.  Our elevator pitch is the opening to the type of conversations that move the field (all fields) forward.

An example may help:  At my conference last weekend I asked a question during a session, which more or less got the attention of one of the names.  (Luckily it wasn’t a stupid question )  That afternoon he sat in the row in front of me as we were waiting for another session to start.  After getting settled, he turned around, introduced himself and asked me what my area was.  I gave him my spiel, including the fact that I was trying to narrow down a few options.  We talked for the next 5 minutes (until the session started) as well as for 15 minutes after the session, and I walked away with several good ideas and a couple of things clarified.

Your pitch will change (regularly) as you refine your ideas.  It doesn’t have to be a complete plan; in fact mentioning that you are trying to narrow something down or wrestling with an aspect is a great way to get into a conversation.  Unlike the entrepreneur version (where you are asking for money) the academic version gets the most value by starting a conversation and sharing ideas; ideas ARE the currency of academia. 

The point here is that you have to be able to get your idea out there quickly and concisely. 
It is the nature of academics to be verbose; to want to provide all the
details and to think a lot of big thoughts.  But there is a great deal
of value to be gained by having a distilled version ready to go when
you need it.  Think about what you will say the next time someone asks you what you are working on.

Writing is a massive part of academic life at all levels.  The more drafts you go through, the more familiar you will be with the material and the less likely you are to catch mistakes as you work.  So here is the best tip I have on the topic:

Why? Reading aloud requires a different set of neurons to fire than working on your screen.  As such you will see the text differently.  You will catch things like errors in tense, missing words and inconsistencies in pluralizations.

Personally, my dogs are getting a PhD right along with me.  I read my work to them.  I stop every time I find something awkward and reword it or figure out what is wrong.  I read it slowly, word by word.  I put inflection into it as though I were delivering it at a conference.

Case in point;  I thought I was done with my 2 page research proposal until I started reading it aloud.  All of a sudden I found myself wondering if a particular sentence should be have/has, clarifying my language, shortening sentences and fixing all sorts of little stuff.  I made more than a dozen changes in 2 pages during my read through.  I’ve made 3 so far on my read through of this post.

Of course getting someone ELSE to read your stuff is always good as well.  They can catch style issues.  (For example, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m wordy )  But reading it aloud will let you catch a lot of things first and allow your editor to focus on more substantive comments about your logic or your writing style. 

Graduate school is a big change from undergraduate coursework.  Your interaction with faculty is much closer and more intimate, your courses smaller and the volume of work often larger.  When you reach the point of a dissertation or thesis this interaction explodes even further.  You cannot avoid working closely with your adviser and committee, but you CAN make it work better for both of you.

One difference I have noticed between myself and many other graduate students appears to be one of approach;  I treat my committee as other, more senior professionals in my field rather than some strange form of deity with the ability to control my life.  Implicit in there is the image of MYSELF as a junior professional in the field who is responsible for her own progress rather than a powerless leaf adrift on the breeze.  This appears to be quite a different attitude from many of my colleagues.

I’m sure this is related to being a bit older and having had a career before.  But here are a few things that I have noticed myself doing different from my fellow graduate students and why they would be good habits for you to adopt as well.

1. Schedule regular time with your adviser.  That doesn’t mean a weekly meeting (although there will be points during your program where that will be necessary) but it DOES mean that you need to sit down with them often enough for them to keep you abreast of what is going on and for you to keep them up to date on your thinking and progress.  There is a student that I know who was starting to fumble her way into her dissertation (really poorly, I might add) who, it turned out, didn’t even KNOW she needed to do her comprehensive exam (a prerequisite) and had not talked to her adviser about it.  She had not filed a program of study (also a prerequisite) and had no idea how she should be proceeding.  Regular time with her adviser, even quarterly, would have gone a long way toward keeping her on track. 
   
2. Always go into a meeting with an agenda.  Know what you want to talk about and why, as well as what you need to get out of the meeting.  At the very least you need to provide your adviser an update on where you are and SPECIFICALLY what you need from them. 
3. Learn the rules.  That means read the graduate catalog, every scrap of information from your department on its process and touch base with your adviser periodically on what changes you  might need to worry about.  I have a spreadsheet in which I store my classes taken, what “concentration” they count toward, as well as tentative graduate dates and all of the deadlines leading UP to that.  I don’t expect my adviser to know all that stuff when it is available to me.
   
4. You are the one who cares the most about graduating.  No one else.  There are people in my department who have been floating around for years because they expect someone else to make it happen for them.  No one will.  By learning the rules and following them you can keep the goals and deadlines in the minds of both you and your adviser.
5. Your adviser’s career is almost as important as yours.  My adviser doesn’t have tenure.  Getting him tenure is the number 2 thing on my priority list, right under graduating.  I keep the pressures that HE is under in my mind at all time and both help where I can and stay out of the way when that is what he needs.  If your adviser has tenure already they are still going to have career pressures.  Make sure you aren’t a totally negative drag on their energy.
6. Find your own funding.  Look for grant opportunities and apply.  Bringing in money is necessary as an academic and getting some practice now not only makes your relationship with your department far better but also makes your CV stronger when you start to look for jobs.  It’s definitely a win-win.
7. If you say you will do something, do it.  This is your job.  You have responsibilities and if you don’t live up to them you are wasting everyone’s time.  If you can’t meet a deadline let people know as soon as you realize it.  For example if I am supposed to have my revisions of an article to my adviser by Friday at 5 and realize on Wednesday that I’m not going to be done, the professional thing is to tell my adviser as soon as I realize and also tell him when I will be done.  Not turning is going to annoy him and possibly throw off his schedule depending on what plans he had made around that deliverable.
8. Ask for feedback and accept it graciously.  You’re not going to get everything right.  I went into my PhD thinking I was a pretty good author only to find out that the academic style of writing is different enough that I border on sucking.  (Note to self:  Avoid adjectives and personal pronouns.)  I almost cried the first time I got a document back from my adviser to discover almost none of my words were left.  My husband was the one who pointed out that, while he had reworded almost everything, he had kept my overall organization scheme.   He wasn’t criticizing my thinking, but rather the details of how I expressed it.  I STILL struggle with this aspect, but by learning to accept even negative feedback as intended to help me improve I am making better use of it and reacting less emotionally.
9. Ask for clarification.  If the feedback you get is muddy or doesn’t make sense, ask for the faculty member to explain what they mean.  Do so politely, but don’t be afraid to say “I’m not sure what you are looking for here”.
10. Be clear on deliverables, in both directions.  One productivity tip is to always finish a meeting by asking “What are the next actions.”  Use that.  Make sure both you and the faculty member are clear on what is expected, from whom and by when.  If you think there is ambiguity, follow up with an email message.  If you expect them to get back to you with something, make sure they understand your expectation and agree to it.
    

So, after all this, what do you do if you pulled a bad one.  There are lots of graduate students with horror stories about faculty who ignore them, treat them dismissively, are verbally abusive, constantly change what they want so that the student can never get it right and even actively work against the student.  What can you do?

• Be professional.  Whine and cry on your own time.  When you are in that situation behave as an adult and try to avoid getting overly emotional.
• Address the situation EARLY.  This is a big one.  You don’t want negative behaviors on either side to become a habit AND you don’t want to be well along in your program to the point that you can’t change things before you start to deal with this.  Nip it in the bud.
• Speak directly to the offending faculty member about the problem.  There is a faculty member in my department with a reputation for treating students badly.  He is dismissive, abrupt, and basically assumes they are all idiots and incompetents.  He was also my original adviser.  I had an early discussion with him where I basically told him that treating me like that wasn’t acceptable.  I explained that that sort of demeaning behavior wasn’t productive and made some suggestions on how we could be sure of getting what we both needed (such as agendas and deliverables).  He never did it to me again.
• Document, Document, Document.  Send the faculty member meeting notes in email phrased as confirmations.  “I want to make sure I understand what you are looking for and by when…”  Be consistent as soon as you detect even the slightest problem.  This will make it easier, as the process moves along, to explain to others both what has been happening and that you have made every reasonable effort to deal with it yourself.
• If the faculty member doesn’t respond well, speak to another professor whom you do trust.  You will take lots of classes and some profs will click more with you than others.  If you are having a problem with one particular faculty member, go to another and ask them to mentor you on how to deal with the troublesome faculty member. 
• Speak to the department chair.  Make an appointment and again, be professional in your presentation of the problem.  The department chair may be able to make suggestions as well, and they will almost certainly present your concerns back to the faculty member in (hopefully) a productive way.  If you are calm and obviously seeking a win-win solution to the conflict, the department chair will almost always work with you.  [Conversely if you go in whining and crying they are likely to be more sympathetic of the faculty member, so it is critical that you keep your cool.]  Bring your document and present it as your attempt to resolve the problem on your own, not as an accusation against the professor.
• Speak to the graduate college.  Often the graduate college can help resolve issues where a faculty member either doesn’t know or doesn’t realize their responsibilities in terms of moving you forward.  They can also help advise you on working the system so as to accomplish your goals.
• Consider removing the faculty member from your committee.  The aforementioned faculty member who was my original adviser has a very different idea of what comprehensive exams should include than almost anyone else in the department.  I am therefore forming my official committee without that person, even though they were originally assigned to me.  Your committee is your choice and it should be a strategic one.  If this faculty members goals and attitudes are not in sync with yours than BOTH of you will be happier if you don’t include them.
• As a last resort, consider transferring.  I have heard horror stories of abusive faculty who end up as chair’s of someone’s committee.  That person lets them get away with it for years until it turns out that the faculty member has decided this person will NEVER be good enough and either refuses to let them graduate or stops responding.  The best idea is to remove the person from the committee and find someone else, but in a small department or sub-specialty that may not be an option.  In that case consider transferring either to a new school or a different department/sub-specialty.  It might set you back a bit but in the long run it might be your only option.

The bottom line here is to behave like a professional, not a supplicant.  Yes, they have a certain amount of power and control over your future, but you have some control and power as well.  Exercise it in an adult, professional manner and both you and the faculty members with whom you interact will be happier in the long run.