JL: In general, I try to leave work at work and home at home and to not use either to make excuses for my shortcomings. I’ve been very fortunate to have adequate protected time blocked into my schedule that permits me to do this. I also can’t belittle the fact that I have an incredibly supportive husband of nearly 11 years and a very understanding nanny who loves my 2-year-old son. As far as I can tell, this strategy has worked, but I guess one would have to ask me in a few years to confirm.
Explore This Issue
July 2018I define success at work and at home somewhat differently. At work, it’s a lot easier to look at concrete data such as my clinical outcomes or, in the quality realm, our divisional performance on dashboards. At home, success is a lot more subjective and difficult to define. I do think that having a child has changed my strategy to work-life balance by making me more efficient and [helping me to] realize that it’s possible to set boundaries without falling short of one’s duties.
DT: In three short years, Jennifer has learned and applied lessons of change management that many of us take years to learn and cultivate in real-time application, including myself. I have grown personally and learned by observing her in her early successes. She has demonstrated an ability to bring along others, including many senior to her in experience and years of practice, through careful and precise data analytics, engaging and influencing stakeholders in a matter that was well ahead of her years of clinical practice or administrative experience.
What Have You Learned from a Mentee?
Dr. Smith: Never stop collaborating.
Many years ago, I was fortunate to meet a critical mentor in my academic development (Ann Nattinger, MD, at Academic Internal Medicine in Wisconsin). She mentored me in the writing of my first R01 in 2002 where she instructed me: “Tim, you’ve got to find quality collaborators around the country if you really want to make an impact.”
After 12 years of successful collaboration and NIH funding, I found myself competing for funding yet again, but my ideas and scientific methodology skills had not kept pace with the cutting edge and I was at risk for losing funding and our clinical research program. Faced with this realization, many scientists would take a sabbatical to gain new vision and learn fresh skills and then apply those to a new grant. But I was a clinical researcher with a robust clinical practice that I loved and just couldn’t walk away from.