Taking the plunge. . .
 

Ok ladies and gents,

I had an interesting thought today as I was browsing through posts and websites and the like. There comes a time in every team/club/organization where a decision is made. Are you going to be a small club that meets sometime, builds for fun, competes with the hope of winning, and then breaks till close o the next build season, or are you an organization that lives and breathes robotics and has the solid expectation of success each year. . . Or are you somewhere in between.

I'd like to know your team's shifting point. . . What changed or is changing your team from a rag tag band of club members to a lean, mean, building/award winning/outreaching machine? Or for my Tribal Leadership folks, what changed your team from a stage 2 or 3 into a stage 4 team?

Re: Taking the plunge. . .
 

Our team took the the plunge 3 years ago, Fall of 2010, when I joined as a freshman and said we weren't good enough. It wasn't just me, but my friends as well all agreed that we were not competing at the caliber of teams like 254, and 971. Noobs to FRC, we didn't know too much, but we knew if they could do it, we could as well, and the current team of 8 people (3 of which were mentors) didn't think so ("Don't have the money, they're funded by NASA, etc etc). So, I decided that the mediocre job we were doing wasn't good enough, and set out to learn as much as I could about this "FRC" in which I had joined (Start: My 10 posts a day on CD period) so I could make my team better. 3 years later, we're starting to make a name for ourselves, and have rebuilt the team's culture. We're not quite the hardcore dedicated to robotics only team I'd like us to be, but we've gotten far from where we started as a 5-student club where mentors had to build the robot so that the team would have something to work with by our 2nd match.

What caused the change? A group of (good looking) students who didn't like the current regime and wanted something better. Sorta like how history goes. In our case, it was all students pushing for the change, but in most cases, it takes inspired mentors to do so as well. Inspiring mentors is harder than it seems. Trust me, I know. ;)

Re: Taking the plunge. . .
 

My team's last/this season was arguably the best that we've ever had. The year has been both reasonably organized and lots of fun. The plan is to become even more organized this school year. There is no flip of the switch: Oh here look now we're different. It SHOULD be a process, in my mind at least. This school year has been the most organized robotics has ever been. At the same time it has remains loads of fun.

The switch from Rag tag to Organized should not signal the end of fun. If it does in my opinion you're doing it wrong. The switch from rag tag to organized comes with the development of the team, as the team becomes bigger and more established the team will need to become more organized.

At different regionals I have seen teams and team members who have given up the concept of "Fun" in order to create as you say, lean mean award winning machines. I find these teams sad. It's FIRST, people seem to sometimes turn it into FRST and leave out the Inspiration. Part of the point to the program is to create an atmosphere were team members can go "Wow that's cool, I want to try that".

It sounds like your team is on the brink of become a well organized team: I plead of you to remember that having fun is a good reason itself when doing robotics.

TL;DR Don't forget about fun when your team becomes organized.

Re: Taking the plunge. . .
 

That is a very interesting thought, and personally I believe it comes when your team gets the drive to win. While CNC tools and the such make that easier, it is worthless if the team isnt willing to actually design and build to the design of a well thought out and ambitious robot. The problem is, is that it takes the vast majority of the team (at least if your team is under 30 or so members) to have the will to change for the change to happen. Its alot harder I believe with a smaller team. For example, if you have 100 members, everyone coming in twice a week may be perfectly fine to produce a great robot, but the same does NOT go for a 20 person team (Unfortunately). You have to put in the time to accomplish your task, and I think when people start Wanting to come in and work all the time, you can have a great team. A half effort on time will produce a half as good robot.

My team is beginning to change, and this is my freshman year, second year on the team, and I must say, I am quite excited (And one of the pushers behind it). Compared to previous years, we produced a top notch robot in 2012, so Id expect the trend to continue. Id love to see 2607 reach its potential. This year, we have people in every area that really have the drive to win, and I think that could really make the difference. I guess we'll see.

Motivation of other people is a hard thing to do.

Re: Taking the plunge. . .
 

Our team is in the middle of this change right now, and its a bit overdue if you ask me.

the past 5 seasons have been mediocre at best. We started our rookie year pretty strong with plenty of support, but after that we were left in the dust in both amount of help our team got, funding, everything. One of the teachers quit the team, and all the other help we got seemed to vanish leaving us with just one mentor. Took him 4 years, props to him, but he finally had enough. He dropped out of the team this year and we're taking this as a reform opportunity, with the help of some local teams its been going good so far.

Were not looking to do anything crazy like win 10 regionals in the next few years, our goal is pretty easy if you ask me. Just consistently participate in eliminations, something we've only done once.

Re: Taking the plunge. . .
 

I really feel that you have to look at this from two different perspectives when did you decided to compete as a robotics team and when you decided to compete as a FIRST Team. What I mean is that a FIRST Team competes for The Chairmans Award since it is the highest award out there.

In terms of the robot for us it kind of happened on accident to us. In 2005 our rookie year we won an off season event, Mayhem at the Museum. It really invigorated the 12 members for 2006 when we went with a risky design and had a huge boost, we made it to the finals by beating an alliance of tough frc veterans (233, 190, 744).

My freshman year was when we became focused on being a FIRST Robotics Team, with our first team captain graduating the new team captain was NOT a robot builder so his focus was not on the robot and it showed with us receiving the Regional Engineering Inspiration Award, and Regional Chairmans Award in back to back years.

Unfortunately after that year both robots and outreach took a huge drop off after that due to funding and build location but we finally are making the come back to both.

Re: Taking the plunge. . .
 

I believe your notion of "more bodies = better robot" is simply not true. Many very successful teams each year make do with relatively smaller teams. A 100 person team is much more difficult to manage than a smaller team because engaging 100 people is just that much harder.


Now I can get behind this statement.

What really drives strong teams is the culture (this is true for strong companies as well). If the culture is there to allow people to innovate, learn, grow and FAIL along the way while striving for excellence at every opportunity, the rest will take care of itself. The team will grow in size because that passion will infect the team members who will spread it to their friends who will spread it to their friends, etc. Establishing this culture is something every company in the world tries to do and many of them fail to remotely achieve.

You've just nailed one of the strongest themes of a professional career, motivation. Excellent managers are ones that can ignite passion in their employees. This skill is very hard to find in people, however I have seen many people with this skill involved in FIRST.

-Brando

Re: Taking the plunge. . .
 

It's interesting that you reference Tribal Leadership as I am currently reading this book. So far it has been a great resource and I now better understand the transformation that 2168 has gone through in the last two years.

When I began working with the team they were a acting like a Stage 2 organization, which is common among many teams. They had dedicated mentors, students, and a teacher. They even had resources some teams could only wish they had, yet they were not properly utilizing them. The team operated with and understanding that there were really great teams out there, but believed that they were not capable of performing at that level. (The "My life stinks" stage.)

The 2011 season saw an increase in experienced mentors, and more dedicated students to the point where we began to see specialized members of the team. Specifically in programming, mechanical design, and the driveteam. Thankfully the team pushed though the "I'm great and your not" stage quickly, as the team began to organically foster striving for greatness and positive growth.

The 2012 season found the team operating squarely in the Stage 4 region as internal motivation took over and the students began teaching each other the critical skills and instilling the cultural norms and expectations of the team to the newest members. I have never been on a team operating at this level before and it has been an awesome experience. As we continue to move forward, I see the team maintaining at Stage 4. This however does not mean that there are times when the team falls back to acting as a Stage 3 however.

What pushed these changes? Experienced Mentors. Positive results from reaching set goals. Setting goals that are both a challenge and reachable. (For 2011 it was being competitive and always playing in eliminations, for 2012 it was being an alliance captain at every competition). When the goals are clear, you can define the steps to get there.

Re: Taking the plunge. . .
 

We're in the process of change ourselves.

This is the first year that 157 has gone from a build season only team to a full year team. We're definitely having our growing pains, but its something that the kids have wanted for a long time and they're beyond excited that this is happening. We right now are running into the challenge that our school is going under construction so we're getting pushed out of our build space and into a smaller space - so the fact that we've got time right now to be organized and know what we have and what we have to move (everything) after build season is a giant help. We couldn't have done this with 2 weeks between build season and when we need to be out of our space.

Anyway - we know this year is a build year and we'll see what happens, but we don't see us going anywhere but up. Its really gratifying seeing our students take charge with just a little bit of guidance, not be afraid to share their ideas and want to be leaders. They're super excited about the outreach too and getting our team known into our community, which is awesome. :)

Re: Taking the plunge. . .
 

This is a good question, as right now we're fighting to stay "plunged" with nor permanate space in which to work. Our transition to plunge-ness was also split into 2 phases, though I split them into technical and student leadership rather than technical and non-technical.

We started in 2005 as a very small, back-of-the-classroom, only-during-build-season team with hand-selected students, mostly upperclassmen. Most of us tended to take a lot of leadership naturally, because the teacher only selected those that did. After a teachers' strike separated us from the school during the 2008 season, we stopped the hand-selection and upperclassmen preference. This was in part because we basically didn't recruit in the chaos and in part because we did absolutely terribly in 2008.

The survivors were determined to fix it in 2009, and we took our technical "plunge". This was mostly on the part of our lead engineering mentor with a few remaining student veterans. This small scale worked alright for a while, but as the team started to grow (without the historical vetting process), the student population got younger, less experienced and less assertive, and mentors started to play a bigger role. We recognized this, and in 2011 we took the organizational "plunge" to restructure and expand from a team designed for selected alpha upperclassmen to one that would be better at giving everyone opportunity and encouragement to grow. We're still plunging on that one (that's a good thing, right?) as our team continues to get younger with less technical background.

Re: Taking the plunge. . .
 

If I had to pick a tipping point, I would put it about 1 week after kickoff our first year, when we looked at each other and said "****, how are we going to get this thing finished with only 5 weeks left?" Keep in mind, prior to kick off, the team had met once, and we didn't do anything technical - it was just a meet and greet.

We pushed hard through our first season and did pretty well for ourselves. After that, us mentors got together and said "We have to get these students better prepared before the season starts". So, we had our first fall program. It consisted of 3 Saturday sessions, and helped a little. After the second year, we decided it wasn't really enough, so we went to a summer and fall setup, where we met every Monday throughout the summer and fall. That was rough, and was starting to lead to some burnout, so we switched the summer to a summer camp, and left the fall at every Monday.

Last year, we pretty much had no PR/business team. That meant that the captains ended up doing that portion during the build season, which unfortunately took two gifted future engineers off the robot. We talked with our new captains over the summer about how to fix that, and we finally decided to have the PR/business group meet separately from the build group. This way, the PR/business group meets at the school two days a week through the fall, while the build group meets at our build space (which unfortunately is off-site until next year) on Mondays. As a direct result of this change, we have the largest team yet, with 30 members signed up, compared with 20 last year, and the PR/business group is doing a lot of fantastic work!

Sometimes, changes happen without any direct planning on our part, too! One great example of this is the programming team. 2 seasons ago, one of the seniors basically took over that team completely, acting almost as a mentor and not a student. She passed that down to another student, who has kept the tradition going. This is going to be extremely useful this year, as our lead programming mentor is taking the year off, having had a baby this past year.


Each year, we ask the captains and the team what we're going to do differently to improve the team. We aren't looking for large, drastic changes - we're already a pretty successful and well known team in the area (in 6 years we've been to the semifinals twice, finals 3 times, and won once), and we've been making some pretty clear progress towards Chairman's each year. Rather, we're looking for the small changes that can have a big impact on the experience the members have, or on the future of the team. I challenge the captains to "leave their mark" by improving the way a part of the team works, not by just achieving a specific award that year. I can look at some of the things our team does, and say "I remember who started us doing that!"

PS. I know I read Tribal Leadership years ago when I was in school... but I don't remember enough to place my team in specific stages :(

Re: Taking the plunge. . .
 

For my team, I would say that they made the plunge in 2008. This was the first time that we won any really big honor. We won the Boston Regional Chairman's award. From then one, there has been a lot better student-mentor relationship, the students want to go to the shop every day, the mentors don't complain about volunteering all their time because now they can really see the equivalent commitment from the students, the team has built better robots, and the hope of winning is real, the moral is much better. Since that year of transition, the attitude in the shop is better and everyone really gives it their all, instead of a few students giving 120% and others only giving 60%. It was that dynamic change that tipped our team into being hardcore FIRSTers.

Re: Taking the plunge. . .
 

Maybe I worded that wrong. A Larger team certainly does not "=" a better robot.

I wasn't saying that a larger team automatically makes a better robot, I was simply stating that having 15 motivated workers on a robot vs 7 motivated workers on a robot means that, in order to get the same result, the 7 must put in more time then the 15 in general, going back to my other point on time.

That being said, a huge team that isnt motivated vs a small team that is, Id pick the smaller.

100 is a BIG team though (that was a bad example), that I do see as possibly being hard to manage and could produce a lot of... "wanderers" :)

Cool discussion

Re: Taking the plunge. . .
 

I would say that while our team grew slowly from the beginning, the real mark of our team changing was when we won the granite state regional in 2010. Since then, our team has become a lot different, both with building the robot and helping our community. We've definitely increased our outreach to our community over the last few years. Our Chairman's award signifies that change we made and proves we are going in the right direction.

Re: Taking the plunge. . .
 

Just to expand on what Jay said, 2010 was the first year our team had more than 10-15 students, and also the first year we went to two regionals. The robot we built was simple, reliable and effective, and brought us our first regional win and elimination appearances at Champs and IRI. Since then, we've been in eliminations consistently, done more outreach, and were rewarded with a Regional Chairman's Award last season. we had been competitive before, but that season laid the foundation for the team to hit that next level, and the RCA was confirmation that we made it.