Creating better trees

A few weeks ago I was asked 'so what do you do?' I could go on and on, explaining the intricacies of quantitative genetics, the problems of convincing breeders to spend some time defining their objectives, etc. However, I was reminded of Guy Kawasaki's writings on making meaning and the importance of a good mantra.

Breeding programs rely on three elements: vision, improvement objectives and breeding strategy. I will only write about the first one here. Vision relates to our set of believes about what the future brings, including markets, products, technologies, etc. It is our way to deal with this vision that gets mantrified'.

Rather than wasting time on useless and mediocre 'mission statements'—which nobody remembers—it is much more powerful to synthesize (or summarize) our objective in a mantra. My mantra is fairly simple: 'creating better trees'. This can be easily transformed to an elevator pitch as 'we create better trees—through the use of genetics, statistics and economic tools—aiming to maximize industry profit’ if you are into that sort of thing.

I have found that mantras are not only useful at reminding me what I am supposed to be doing, but they are great at providing a vision to research clients. For example, one of our projects is being presented as 'profitable shorter rotations': a short and sweet way for clients to remember where are we going and why they do need to revisit their research portfolio.

Mantras or, better yet, clear visions can also provide an advantage over competing research organizations. While they try to communicate a real dog’s breakfast of projects—without much success—one can fit multiple steps in 'creating better trees'.

P.S. I wrote this text in June 2006. Since that time I have shifted part of my research to more basic (sensu less applied) issues. These issues are covered by another mantra 'understanding how trees work' or, more informally, 'if trees could talk'.

Sketchbook

Creating better trees