A word from the MD: GO FROM GOOD TO EXCELLENT AND WHY

We have just completed our performance appraisals as well as our next year’s performance agreements. Reviewing and moderating these I can only say how very lucky I am to have the staff that I do. Overall our appraisal from NRF corporate was just short of excellent and with very few exceptions the staff performed well. So the question we should all be asking ourselves is how we go from good to excellent. And if you are not thinking of this and are content to keep SAIAB as only a good Institute you need to apply your mind to where the world and South Africa are today. Simply put, we are in an era of uncertainty be it world finances and governance, South African politics and our economy or the shape and size of the National System of Research and Innovation (NSI).  

I am confident that over the next two to three years we can move from good to excellent as I know we have the human intellectual capital, we fill a distinct and needed niche within the National research arena and we have excellent administrative systems. In order to move from good to excellent we need to achieve two things namely: improved quality and increase the scale of our activities. I firmly believe that the Institute produces enough output given our current resources and what we need to do is take these outputs from good to excellent through improving quality. The staff need to think strategically on how to improve on the quality of our activities - we need to ensure we do not offer good but rather excellent service (internally and most important externally) in terms of our collections, library and marine research platforms. Our researchers need to ensure we not only publish extensively but we also publish more high impact papers. In terms of supervision we must not only supervise but we must aim to ensure we produce well rounded young researchers from all demographic sectors. In turn the executive needs to convince NRF and DST that we are well positioned as a National Facility to grow in scale. The Institute urgently requires a 20% shift in baseline core funding and our administrative systems could easily cope with four more scientists, two outreach officers and two more technicians which would entail a 50% shift in funding. If we achieve the above, then I believe we will move from being a good Research Institute to being an excellent National Facility in the true sense of the word.

To those of you who ask why do we need to do this – we are quite happy being good and why should we buy into this competitive academic/research rat race? The simple answer is we are regarded as a mature Institution and because the research arena is highly dynamic we need to remain relevant and ensure we communicate our worth to the decision makers. There are a number of new and “hot” research mechanisms such as the DST/NRF Research Chairs and Centres of Excellence which are receiving considerable, and growing funding, while our funding level has plateaued out at best.  We need to ensure the role and worth of National Facilities is revitalised in the mind of the decision makers and the only way we can do this is by ensuring we offer excellent value for each research rand allocated to us and we communicate our success. 

I have every confidence in the SAIAB team and I look forward to moving from Good to Excellent over the next few years.