The success we all need but pretend we don’t

In our latest addition to our blog space, Dr Imogen Jones & Dr James Greenwood Reeves dive into how universities metricise success, why that often disadvantages colleagues with different life circumstances and what a more human, compassionate version of success could look like.

We have been thinking about success. This is particularly close to our hearts as two neurodiverse folk who also fall within other minority groupings. We ultimately argue that the university's need to quantify and metricise success necessarily creates disadvantages for colleagues whose definitions or scope for success don’t align with that metrication process. But, more hopefully, we also argue that it is possible to conceive of “success” differently.

“Success” and “Failure”

As with many important concepts in life, finding a satisfactory definition of a concept is tricky. At a base level, success might ordinarily mean achieving a positive outcome, usually as a planned action creating a desired result. But even this definition has blurry edges: for example, some successes may come from unexpected means, or amount to unpredicted ends. It is not uncommon to hear someone say, upon being congratulated, that they “had no idea it would turn out this way!”

Importantly, “success” is often defined by, and co-creates, its antithesis: failure. In some respects, failure is the “shadow” of success - it is the darkness cast wherever success does not shine. Anything short of meeting the desired outcome could be termed a failure e.g. a silver medal in the Olympics. Conversely, we might take the view that failure and success intersect, such that we might say “While I am proud of my research here, I recognise that there is considerable room for improvement...” So, which is it? How we identify what is a mitigated success, versus an outright failure, may depend upon the consequence. For example, a very good grant bid that gets pipped to the post might be a triumph in its own terms, for which the research team is proud notwithstanding the outcome - but it will certainly feel like a failure if this prevents the research team from being promoted, or worse, from keeping their jobs.

Finally, and relatedly, we need to ask: success for whom? We all have our own ideas of what success means based on our values, our experiences, our needs and desires. For some of us, success means survival. It might mean making a positive change to the world around us. It could mean staying true to our principles. And indeed, it can mean a variety of these – even at times where they may appear to conflict. They may change over the course of our lifetimes, based on what matters to us and those around us. It may well be that many of us do not consciously sit and ask ourselves what success means for us.

Even if we do reflect on the meaning of success personally, academia itself demands a much less philosophical, and much more quantitative, approach. However we define success as individuals, our own personal reflections may become overshadowed by the more mechanical attitude of the wider HE sector. Universities are businesses whose survival currently depends on success in terms of money and reputation. They want measurable performance in each and employees are necessarily mechanisms to achieve that. As such, to survive in this sector, whatever our own definition of success may be, we are forced to subordinate our conception to our employer’s. Amongst other things, we must therefore ensure we meet REF expectations, acquire external income, as well as contributing to the general academy and other aspects of HE life: we must “succeed” within this particular rubric. Failure to do so is, necessarily, failure.

As success can be quantified in these ways, this conceptualisation therefore also risks fostering an unhealthy competitiveness. We may find ourselves (and our colleagues around us) comparing publications, grant income, and other “success” markers. They are also explicitly included as promotions criteria, which exacerbates this – particularly where, for many of us, promotion is necessary just to stay on top of the rising standard of living costs. When one also factors in how these metrics disadvantage colleagues who, for example, have caring responsibilities, disabilities, and other such considerations, this systematisation of success generates systemic injustices.

Immeasurable success?

Theodore Roosevelt is widely quoted as having claimed that ’comparison is the thief of joy’ – we are inclined to agree. And yet once that is accepted, it hard to reconcile with having to surrender determination of success to the machine. We don’t begin to pretend that it would be easy for any institution (whether HE or otherwise) to step away from the status quo, but that is no reason not to have hope or to at least try to move toward that.

We are led to ponder: could we have employers that treat success differently, who accept and nurture diverse conceptions of success?  This would not demand abandonment of REF, or income, or excellence in student education, but it would upfront the fact that for each person who succeeds on those terms, there are others who enable that by enacting different conceptions of success. It would be a system which recognises and values the co-dependence of traditional success.

One way to start might be to ask: what is within our control? Being compassionate, collegiate, responsive – these are essential and yet rarely officially recognised measures of success. To a certain degree we have control over whether we submit articles, grant applications, and so forth – though of course, there are countless factors that could make this harder to consistently achieve for some people compared to others. But inversely, we cannot control the outcomes of these submissions, which involve an element of lottery. Nor do we control how well we fit in an ableist framework. These are but examples, but they serve as a starting point for reconsidering both what it is to be a ‘success’ in HE and how we might want to create a fair system which reflects that.

Can compassion, collegiality, and care be recognised as successes by the University? We see no reason why not. We certainly recognise such qualities through the Partnership Awards, to the extent that they allow students and colleagues to share stories of being treated with kindness and respect by one another. Can such stories be understood and interpreted by the institution as successes worth recognising, for promotions and annual reviews? And if so, what other unsung successes among us could finally have their time under the sun?

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