One of the major failures I often see, working in policy, is also a lack of actual real-world experience. There are a huge number of upsides from the Undergrad to PhD to Academic pipeline, but one downside is that many people who have never actually worked in-industry or in any non-academic role have very little idea of just how much the ‘coalface’ differs from what is written on paper, or just how cumbersome even minor policy shifts can be.
I judged an AI regulation/policy contest last year and my number one piece of feedback to people was that they hadn’t considered the human element of the ‘end-users’ of policy. For example can the people/orgs this new regulation or governance impacts actually not only understand what the regulations want from them, but how they can demonstrate compliance—and can they even comply? Not all orgs are impacted equally.
I agree then that your pointers towards stakeholder management and social skills are very important, as is seemingly irrelevant experience working outside of research. One of the best policy researchers I know used to work in a warehouse, and that knowledge of complex socio-logistic environments within large organisations helps him tremendously, even though on paper that was an irrelevant role.
This was a super interesting read.
One of the major failures I often see, working in policy, is also a lack of actual real-world experience. There are a huge number of upsides from the Undergrad to PhD to Academic pipeline, but one downside is that many people who have never actually worked in-industry or in any non-academic role have very little idea of just how much the ‘coalface’ differs from what is written on paper, or just how cumbersome even minor policy shifts can be.
I judged an AI regulation/policy contest last year and my number one piece of feedback to people was that they hadn’t considered the human element of the ‘end-users’ of policy. For example can the people/orgs this new regulation or governance impacts actually not only understand what the regulations want from them, but how they can demonstrate compliance—and can they even comply? Not all orgs are impacted equally.
I agree then that your pointers towards stakeholder management and social skills are very important, as is seemingly irrelevant experience working outside of research. One of the best policy researchers I know used to work in a warehouse, and that knowledge of complex socio-logistic environments within large organisations helps him tremendously, even though on paper that was an irrelevant role.