Most research leaders know that grants matter. Grants provide resources, support people, and catalyze momentum. But far too often, the funded project comes to be treated as the vision of the research program. This subtle shift can unintentionally limit where the work ultimately goes.

A research vision should define where you and your research program are headed. Grants can help you get there, but the vision should exist independently of any specific funding award. This might sound easier said than done.

The key is to recognize that funding is infrastructure: a powerful tool that enables what you want to accomplish. Funding is not the outcome itself.

Vision Before Funding; Funding in Service of Vision

Here’s the reality many investigators feel but don’t say out loud: What is possible isn’t always the same as what is fundable. Funding agencies and their proxies (peer reviewers) tend to reward feasibility and defensibility. This often means proposing work that will satisfy those expectations.

And that’s okay, because most grants are not rigid contracts. They are flexible mechanisms designed to allow researchers to follow where the work leads within a certain scope. They give you room to adjust tactics while still pursuing a larger research goal. That flexibility is essential, and can be strategic when deployed in service of your research program vision. Where the challenge comes in is when the vision becomes defined by the funding instead of the other way around.

What Happens When Vision and Funding Get Mixed Up

It’s common for investigators to start with a compelling intellectual problem—something they genuinely want to solve or understand. Then, in pursuing grants, they realize the need to write what is most likely to get awarded. Working within the reality of the funding landscape is important to generate the key infrastructure under the vision (and a longer struggle to get funding hampers the vision). Infrastructure enables momentum.

However, momentum isn’t the same as direction. It’s possible to accumulate funded projects without ever articulating or advancing a coherent research program. When this happens, it is often because funding incentives and scientific discovery don’t always align neatly. If unnoticed, though, over time this dynamic leads to strategic drift: the work becomes defined by what is supported, not by what ultimately matters most. This drift can even lead to PIs feeling drained or burned out by the work because it’s not what they’re most excited about (or maybe they aren’t even sure what to be excited about anymore.

Three Strategic Questions for Re-evaluating Your Vision

If you want your research vision, rather than funding cycles, to be an intentional guidepost for your group, periodically ask yourself and your team these questions:

1. What enduring problem does our research group exist to solve?
   This question isn’t just “what are we studying now?”, rather, it’s the larger intellectual challenge that motivates the work. 
2. If funding were temporarily not the constraint, what version of that problem would we pursue?
   This highlights the aspirational direction that isn’t limited by immediate fundability.
3. How do our current funded projects function as infrastructure toward that problem—and where might they be merely sustaining activity?
   This distinction separates productive scaffolding from work that satisfies review panels but doesn’t advance the bigger mission.

This is not a critique of securing funding. It’s a strategic reframing: how to use funding to enable your vision, not define it.

Keep Vision and Execution in Dialogue

One practical habit we’ve seen work well in high-performing research groups is a regular vision check-in, separate from data meetings, manuscript planning, or proposal strategy sessions. One way to do this is to have a “State of the Research Group” discussion once a year.

Put your vision statement in front of the team. Ask:

“Given what we’ve learned, what are the most important questions we should be organizing around now?”

If everyone’s answer still points toward your articulated vision, you’re aligned. If the answers start to diverge, that signals an opportunity to refine the vision, update it, and then re-evaluate how current and future funding fits into the long-term trajectory.

(Note: We recognize that sometimes there are side projects that may not be 100% aligned with the vision. This is normal; it’s still good to evaluate those from time to time to assess where resources and effort are going and how it fits into the bigger picture.)

Viewing Grants as Tools

At the end of the day, sound research leadership is about:

• Knowing what you are trying to change in your field.
• Making sure the work you and your research group do contributes to that change.
• Choosing and aligning funding opportunities that serve the larger mission.
• Being willing to adjust tactics when new evidence or opportunities emerge.

Funding cycles come and go. While your discoveries under one grant may shift your overall vision, the funding opportunities themselves should not be the determining factor.

Design your vision intentionally. Use grants to advance it. When your vision is in the driver’s seat, your research program becomes strategically stronger and more resilient. This also opens you to being more nimble to funding opportunities that can shore up the infrastructure, rather than pigeon-holing you into a very narrow intersection of what’s possible vs what’s fundable.