What do you want to accomplish?

In conversations with faculty members, I hear over and over again that they have dozens of other priorities. The conversations inevitably move to what to throw overboard to make room for innovation.

Those seeking external funding for research really don't have choice: Not a day goes by without seeing a request for proposals from a funding agency looking for the transformative, the translational, the sustainable. But the fact that everybody says they are too busy to innovate demonstrates the yawning chasm between rhetoric and reality.

Conversations about what to stop doing are inherently difficult and divisive. Conversations about the best ways to pursue a specific goal are much more productive. They begin only if you have something worth doing, otherwise we won't find a way to make it happen.

The right question is: What do you want to accomplish? Decisions about how to assign resources are much easier when you have a great idea.

These questions seem to get the wheels turning in a positive direction, and unearth their real priorities:

1. What motivates you to go to work everyday?

2. When was the last time you proposed a new idea to your dean? How was that idea received?

3. If you could run the university by yourself for a day, what changes would you make and why?

4. If you could take a sabbatical, what would you do and why?

5. If you could work for any university of your choice, which one would it be and why?

6. If you could create your own business, what would it be and how would you run it?

I also ask these questions of myself to figure out how to make it easier for that faculty member to pursue their idea:

1. How have they been equipped to be an innovator? What training have they received? What tools have they been supplied with?

2. Do they have access to an innovation coach or mentor? Is there an innovation expert in their unit who will help them develop their breakout idea?

3. How easy is it for them to get access to experimental funding? How long would it take to get a few thousand dollars in seed money? How many levels of bureaucracy would they have to go through?

4. Is innovation a formal part of their job description? Does their compensation depend in part on their innovation performance?

5. Does the university’s management processes—budgeting, planning, staffing, etc.—support their work as an innovator or hinder it?

The truth about the university is there’s no shortage of ideas bouncing around. Like just about everything else, execution is the result of collaboration, decisiveness, discipline and hard work. All of which faculty members are quite good at when they are driven by a vision.