When you’re new, everything is still slightly unfamiliar. You haven’t yet absorbed all the unwritten rules or developed shorthand explanations for complexity. You notice the pinch points because they slow you down. You notice inconsistencies because you haven’t learned how to work around them. None of that comes from a lack of competence, it comes from not yet being conditioned by a system. That’s the gift of fresh perspective. It brings the familiar back into focus.
Within our translational and clinical research ecosystem, our operating space is full of necessary complexity, regulation, governance, funding, institutional processes, national frameworks, local interpretation none of that is simple, and none of it can be wished away. Over time, we become fluent in navigating it; we develop mental maps and practical shortcuts; we learn which decisions are genuinely constrained and which are more flexible than they first appear. That experience is valuable, but it also changes how we see the world.
New colleagues aren’t fluent yet and that’s precisely why they’re so important. They don’t instinctively distinguish between what’s essential and what’s historical. They don’t automatically accept that something is complicated “because it just is”. They ask whether a process is designed that way for a reason, or whether it has simply evolved that way over time. Those questions can feel uncomfortable if we’re not expecting them. They can land badly if we’re rushed or defensive. But handled well, they are one of the quickest ways to learn where improvement is really needed.
There’s also an energy that new people bring which is easy to underestimate. People at this stage are curious, enthusiastic, and making connections at speed. They’re spotting links between teams, between systems, between problems that feel separate until a fresh pair of eyes joins the dots.
Much of the JRO’s work is enabling, facilitating, and quietly keeping things moving, it can be hard to step back and see the bigger picture. New colleagues often do that instinctively. They ask how their role fits into the whole. They want to understand who relies on what we do, and why it matters. In doing so, they often remind the rest of us of the impact of our work, not just the workload.
But none of this happens automatically. Fresh perspective only adds value if we make space for it, and the responsibility for creating that space sits with those of us who’ve been around longer. We need to listen properly. We need to resist the urge to explain away every observation. We need to treat questions as data, not disruption. And sometimes, we need to admit that the best answer to “why do we do it this way?” is: “I’m not sure, let’s look at that….”
Leaving that meeting, it dawned on me that I had just had the best 15 minutes I was probably going to get for the rest of the week because I realised that our JRO can be shaped by people who notice things, who care about how the work feels as well as how it functions, and who want to make things better.
So, if you’re new to an organisation, keep asking the questions. Keep noticing the odd bits. Keep bringing that curiosity and energy into your conversations. And if you’ve been here a while: lean into it. Fresh eyes don’t undermine experience, they sharpen it.