What makes a good lab manager?

Lab managers are stereotypically cantankerous. Red tape wielders. Closed to new suggestions. Miserable even. Sound familiar? Well, bear in mind it can sometimes be a job that no-one wants. Because in many organisations, a lab manager is not a role in its own right. Instead, some unlucky individual is probably trying to do it on top of their day job with little relevant training.

If you do find yourself holding the baton though, formally or otherwise, the first port of call is to establish what falls within your responsibility and what doesn’t. Inductions, chemicals and waste management, fire and first aid planning, data storage and so on. Are there broader organisational arrangements in place for these things? If so, do you have suitable contacts for occupational health, cleaning services, IT, procurement? Sooner or later, you’re going to need their help. Who’s responsible for maintaining fumehoods, water systems and general instrumentation? Simply assuming it’s someone else’s job will likely be a folly.

Next, get to know the staff who are essential to your operations, avoiding formal meetings if possible. Shooting the breeze for 10 minutes can be the quickest way to establish an efficient way of working as well as tackling unnecessary gripes with minimal effort. And it’s nice! You also shouldn’t underestimate the importance of saying thank you. If someone has gone over and above for you, consider mentioning it to their line manager. (This also makes it more likely you’ll be top of the list next time you need help.)

If you’re in charge of the lab running budget, you’ll probably be expected to work miracles with meagre funds. Keeping legacy instruments running, ensuring consumables are topped up, managing proprietary software and data requirements – these are costly tasks. It can be difficult to calculate the cost of running a lab without a few years’ data and if you need to come up with something from scratch, it’s probably worth doubling your initial estimate. It’s also important to understand what counts as a running cost and what doesn’t. Including service contracts and major equipment repairs in the budget is very different to only covering things like gas supplies and general consumables.

A critical goal for a lab manager is to introduce a system where the end users (technicians, researchers, operators) contribute to the general running of the lab through maintenance activities, cleaning, waste disposal, training and so on. You might find it surprising how warmly such an approach is received. As far as possible you should avoid the situation where only one person can perform a certain task. This may also free up precious time for you to dig into broader challenges – like, why is that area always a mess? Why is there a bottleneck with that operation? How can you generate funds to replace that ancient bit of kit which is still critical to the lab outputs? An effort–payoff matrix is a really useful tool here as it’s easy to get bogged down in something complex at the expense of things that are simpler and might bring greater reward.

Being a good lab manager is synonymous with having good people skills

In a similar vein, a lab manager will never be able to keep an eye on everything all the time. At some point you might become sick, or (heaven forbid) want to go on holiday. Instead, you need to create an environment where all lab users have a mentality to follow good practice and flag when something’s wrong.

Take something like PAT testing. You’ll likely find it on every lab risk assessment and an intense obsession can arise where every bit of kit has to have an in-date green sticker. This might save your bacon legally if someone is electrocuted. But how about morally? Is it not equally important that everyone knows it’s not OK to use suspect equipment and to give things a once-over beforehand?

Generally, a mechanism for lab users to provide suggestions on how things operate is also important and the more informal you can make this, the better.

It will hopefully come as no surprise that being a good lab manager is synonymous with having good people skills. But especially important in this context is the following: always admit if you’ve made a mistake because if you get ‘found out’ later (and you probably will), you’ll lose respect. Don’t put people under undue stress; there’s usually an alternative way of doing things. Never show panic in an emergency; this may not be easy, but panic does make things worse. Treat anyone providing operational support with kindness and respect – it really does work both ways. Keep things professional when disagreements arise. And finally, there is no such thing as planning too far in advance – labs are complex environments.

Keeping these things in mind should stand lab managers in good stead, and maybe go some way towards dismantling the grumpy stereotype.