Academia

At Lemke & Lemke, much of our work begins with a simple observation. The first question someone brings to a conversation is not always the question that deserves answering. That is true in coaching and advisory work. It is also true in research. Many conversations about research impact begin surprisingly late. The study is complete. The findings are written up. Perhaps the journal article has already been accepted. Only then does someone ask: "How do we bring this research to

I spend a lot of time in two professional worlds: academia and business. They are clearly different. The work is different, the language is different, and success is assessed in different ways. But there is one similarity I keep noticing. Managers and academics spend a remarkable amount of their professional lives evaluating, being evaluated, and helping other people improve. Managers review performance, discuss targets, give feedback and receive it. Academics assess student

At an established stage of a research career, the questions can change. Earlier career stages often centre on building expertise, publishing, securing funding and becoming recognised in a field. Later, those activities may continue, but experience creates another possibility. Your contribution can extend beyond the research you personally produce. New Zealand's 2026 Tāwhia te Mana Research Fellowships Terms of Reference (last updated 18th March 2026) make this explicit. The M

"Mid-career" sounds reassuringly precise. You have moved beyond the early years. You have experience, publications, networks and perhaps supervision or leadership responsibilities. Surely the next stage should be easier to see. For many researchers, that assumption may no longer hold. The Australian Academy of Science's 2025 survey, published in May 2026, found considerable career uncertainty among 334 early- and mid-career researchers. More than half were employed on fixed-t

What helps an Early Career Researcher (ECR) become an independent researcher rather than simply a more experienced one? Two recent publications offer an interesting perspective. A study by Cui et al. published in Science in May 2026 analysed the work of more than 12.5 million scientists publishing between 1960 and 2020. The study, subsequently highlighted by Lenharo in Nature in May 2026, found that researchers’ contributions tend to change over the course of an academic care

In my work with academic leaders, I often notice that the pressure is not only about workload. It is about interpretation. A policy changes. AI shifts what students can do. Staff raise questions about quality, fairness, workload, ethics, and trust. People want clarity, but the situation itself is still moving. That is now a central part of academic leadership. EDUCAUSE’s 2026 report on AI and higher education found that 94% of respondents had used AI tools for work within the

From the outside, academic life can look flexible, autonomous, and deeply meaningful. In many ways, it is. But that picture hides something important. For many academics, university work is no longer just about teaching and research. It is teaching, research, publishing, grant pressure, supervision, marking, administration, pastoral care, committee work, stakeholder management, and constant adaptation to institutional change. That means a lot because the challenge in academia