Being a self taught researcher comes with an added load of dealing with perpetual imposters syndrome, you know that inner voice that sits in meetings and user interviews with you and each time you make a slight unexpected move, it says “Really Satya? We’ve still not figured ___ out It’s been years since we’ve been doing this, day in and day out.” This self imposed added burden of pacifying the inner critic is often more taxing than the day’s labour itself. A muscle that I have needed to develop with time, is the one where I constantly keep reminding myself, that I work with amazing people, people that interviewed me, who use my work to get their’s done, people who’d be able to call me out on my deficiencies on day 3 of joining the team (this is an exaggeration, but you get my point.)
On days where I don’t trust my capabilities, I remind myself to trust theirs. While such days are far apart and (somewhat) few, they come out of no where and hit hard. After reflecting on such days, getting the feedback and creating takeaways for myself, I have realised that there's only so much a researcher can do. Specially early in our careers where not all researchers work along side a product mentor or a research mentor.
A researcher, a designer and a PM work together like a team, all three stakeholders must be convinced and aligned about the stakes that project has for the wider business goal, all three must know/feel/believe that the effort they make together supports their career's growth and the study isn't an academic exercise with an unclear or actionable business outcome. I was surprised to discover that even in seemingly 'mature organisations', willingness to accept research as a serious contributor to product strategy could be low. This cultural believe in the product team is one of the biggest influencer of how useful and valuable research is considered. I like to call this cultural belief, 'Research Maturity.' Before we begin to make judgements about our "researcher-ness" it is important to objectively evaluate how does our context enable us to do better work. This is not to say that there isn't any accountability on the researcher's part to advocate and develop that maturity within their teams. This is just a callout that a researcher's impact should also be measured in doing research advocacy, building trust with their counterparts about the value of research. (I am in no way trying to promote the thought that if you get negative feedback, do not take accountability if your organisation has poor research maturity.)
I wished during my interview process I had asked, or at least attempted to understand what was my team's research maturity levels. This would have better helped me understand what is the best way for me to measure my success.