An Attitude of Counterculture
 

So, I've been writing a blog for a short time now, and this is my latest piece. If you guys have anything I could add to this, please comment below.



This is an lesson from my lecture series for FIRST teams that I’ve been writing.

Over the last two days, I read a book called Do Hard Things. Its tagline is “A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations”. Something that hit me hard was a passage in the book.

“Proverbs 1:32 is even clearer: ‘The complacency of fools eventually destroys them.’
Over time, refusing to reach higher, try harder, and risk more robs us.”

Whether or not you’re religious, this point isn’t something to joke about. Many FIRST teams, many outreach efforts, & many movements have been forgotten and eventually blown away like chaff in the wind because people stayed in an attitude of complacency.

There are two things I believe that really allow us to transcend the status quo for teenagers in our generation, and allow us to be a part of a stronger FIRST.

1) Do what’s hard for you. Pretty much straightforward. We need to get to a point in our lives in where we step outside our previous comfort zones, and endeavor to do greater things than others have ever thought or attempted to do.

Notice the language I used; endeavor & attempt. There is a chance in which you may not attain exactly what you wanted. But in order to learn, we need something to learn from; our mistakes. I’ve known people that have completely abandoned reasonable ideas because they didn’t want to leave their comfort zone of their current abilities.

I was recently in a advisory meeting with a FIRST team, and a suggestion was made by a sub-team captain to make the effort of creating an second robot in order to practice after Ship Day. The captain of the team flat out said that they weren’t going to do it; almost a full six months in advance of the 2012 season. The reason? The costs to create the second robot & their dismal expectations on their performance in terms of time management. 6 months in advance. Truly sad. Because they will miss an opportunity to grow.

This also brings up another point. You may be doing excellent in terms of a standard of mediocrity perpetuated. Basically, only having to do little in skill and potential in order to stand out and gain attention. Then, people in this situation tend to become complacent in “excellence”, and it becomes a problem. This quote says it all: “It is not enough to impress a society with remarkably low expectations; it’s not enough to be a standout in a sea of mediocrity.” Example: outreach. You may have a specific set of outreach that your team does in one year. This one set of outreach has brought recognition, Chairman’s Awards, sponsors, and other things. But, it’s been the same thing for the past 3 years. No expansion, no effort.

In essence, the team has blocked its true potential, the real impact they could have on a community, because of complacency. It happened to my former team where we became complacent in our efforts across the board. We as an outreach organization, a competition team alliance, and as leaders did not grow. I realized it when one of the judges at this last year’s Peachtree Regional said, “Oh, that again. So, you guys have nothing new to show us?” Make the effort to do new things that STRETCH you.

When you stretch upwards, you’re growing. Figuratively, and literally.

2) Don’t forget the purpose. I’ve met many, many people that have basically lost sight of what FIRST really is supposed to be. I know of teams that their only purpose for outreach is to win the Chairman’s Award or the Inspire Award. I know teams who have told me, “We will win at ALL costs.” Guys, when we start thinking like that, we become like the sport franchises that we see on the TV. FIRST isn’t just a competition. IT’S A COUNTERCULTURE. It’s a revolution in itself, against the low expectations of our educational systems, against the misconceptions in our generation. We have to take the eyes off of ourselves, and put them on others; towards the overall vision.

Outreach is for recognition. Not for ourselves, but for the entire FIRST counterculture. So many teams have lost sight of that, to the point that it makes me think how the people on these teams will turn out in the real-world. Whether we will see their names in Time for being one of 100 of the most influential, or we’ll see them in the New York Times for outrageous scandal. When it comes down to it, it’s between becoming a better person without any hardware in the hands, and a winner with a hollow heart and a substance-void victory.

The winners of the Chairman’s Award, the Inspire Award, the Woodie Flowers Award, and the Dean’s List award (finalists & winners); they don’t win because of the amount of outreach they’ve done, or the amount of years they’ve been in the organization. They win because they’ve reached the point where they are constantly stepping out of comfort zones to bring new definitions of what FIRST truly is to others. They are the unconventionals, the servant leaders, the mavericks of the FIRST counterculture.

Definition: a person pursuing rebellious, even potentially disruptive, policies or ideas.

Now, the question is: how will you approach your FIRST experience? Be an uncomfortable rebel, or a complacent citizen?

All I know is that my demeanor when it comes to working with FIRST will be this: “That was nothing. Watch this.” Challenge yourself and your team to call the normal things normal, and save the word excellence for the things that truly make it to that pinnacle.

Hoping you guys got something out of this.

-Kyle J.

Re: An Attitude of Counterculture
 

“One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community.”-Albert Einstein

I am a rebel at heart.

On a side note, I read a part of that book. Seems like a great book.

Re: An Attitude of Counterculture
 

Well said Kyle, this post is going out to my team.

Re: An Attitude of Counterculture
 

Thank you for that Kyle, I too hope to spread that out.

Re: An Attitude of Counterculture
 

Good stuff Kyle !!

I'm getting a little nit-picky but what the heck:

I don't think outreach is for recognition. At its most basic level it is really for transformation.

The recognition is evidence of the transformation about the cultural attitude toward STEM activities.

Your quote immediate reminded me of the speech that President Kennedy gave at Rice University: We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

One could easily replace "go to the " moon with a phrase related to changing cultural attitudes about STEM activities.

FIRST is hard. In so many words Dean, Woodie, Dave and others have said so.

A couple of quotes from Woodie Flowers:
"Its not about winning the competition, its about doing a meaningful good job !! "

Having a good sense about what the team is trying to accomplish and staying true to that mission is more important than winning the competition. We have had judges make comments to us, some constructive, and in other cases, not so constructive in our opinion. We receive a lot of feedback from other places, outside of FIRST, that we use to measure the team's mission and performance.

Sometimes, these outside metrics influences team decisions. Sometimes these decisions put us at risk of not "winning a competition" because the decisions are mission centric, not FIRST centric in the eyes of a judge.

"Ideas are cheap,The combination of ideas and execution and excellence and the whole process is what really matters."
Woodie Flowers

Innovation brings new value. Yesterdays innovation is today's old news.
It doesn't mean that yesterday's innovation has no value. It should be improved, and made excellent.

The judges need to see two things. Old things done well, very well. And new innovation. And to make very fine and specific point, the innovation can simply be how old and new is combined to create a new/improved way to connect to the community. I hope that makes sense.

Much of what the leaders of all types of organizations do, whether for-profit, non-profit, governmental, etc is related to improving performance and execution issues. Maintaining a high performance organization is a leadership challenge.

".... the most important thing we can do on a given day in our organization as a leader is to remind people of what it was that we set out to accomplish. Because if we get people focused on and remembering that, they will make progress on it. And if we don’t remind them of that, of what it was we were trying to accomplish, of what the ultimate objectives were, they’re going to forget."

Professor Herman B. “Dutch” Leonard, Harvard Business School, Harvard University

Not a week goes by where students are not reminded of our team mission. We have our own team mission - it is roughly the same as FIRST's. We are very concise and succinct about it, not a belabored speech. But the reminder is there.

Each year at the Championship I remembered Dean giving one of his "long boring" speeches at the closing of the event. Paraphrasing, he said he "wanted to remind everyone why we are doing this thing." That is his version of Dutch's advice. He only got to do it once a year.

It is a team's leadership challenge to remind itself on a constant basis in way that is meaningful, non dismissive, or overbearing way what that mission is.

Here is a pair of questions I like to pose to students and adults:

a) what is the vision of FIRST
b) what is the mission of FIRST

HINT: It is NOT about promoting FIRST, or how many teams started, classes taught, etc...

Ed
.

Re: An Attitude of Counterculture
 

This post gave me chills. Thank you for sharing that.

Re: An Attitude of Counterculture
 

Counter-culture is a funny thing.

Take the X-Games as an example: A wonderfully entertaining, and provocative set of "counter-culture" sports that was nauseatingly effective at rousing our young people to emulate them.

The unfortunate thing is all we did was rally our young people to spend ungodly hours of concerted focus and concentration to become really good at doing skateboard tricks - a wholly un-useful skill in the real world.

Imagine being able to employ that kind of power to motivate our young towards something like robotics? Counter-culture could be the key...

As an aside, the irony is that everything that is X-Games related has become so popular, that there is no counter-culture anymore. It's become so mainstream, that when I see a kid hop on a skateboard, the reaction is more "another mindless sheep trying to fit in" as opposed to "this kid is trying too hard to be different."

Maybe the hidden gem in your post is that the FIRST community needs to take advantage of counter-culture attitudes in order to eventually gain mainstream acceptance, just like the X-Games did.

Can we do it? Absolutely.

We already have the most important parts going for us: we nerds are already unpopular and not well liked.

So were skateboarders when they first emerged, and what did these wholly unremarkable destructors of public property do when you made fun of them? They took on a belligerent "eff-you" attitude, skated harder, and flaunted their tricks even more. People eventually noticed. They became popular, but still were not that well liked by the masses - and that's the secret. It's definitely better when some people hate you, and even moreso when you don't give a hoot that you're hated. For some reason, that's the secret to success when it comes to the teenage mind.

So what should we do? As Dean and will.i.am say: be louder. Be more belligerent about the fact that we're nerds. Let the others know that they're on the fast-track to a future pumping gas... or if they're really good, in retail ("Hey, I used to hang out at the mall, and now I WORK there... booya!")

Most importantly, flaunt your skills without regard for whether you're going to be hated or liked. That's the point: people are supposed to not like you, and if they don't, you've done your job furthering the counter culture!

In other words:

Nerd harder, be seen doing it... don't care what others think.

Re: An Attitude of Counterculture
 

So, I want to thank you all for everything you've said. It's been really helpful to me to improve this teaching, and has given me some new material I would like to write about.

Actually, Mr. Lim, your example of the X Games as an act of counterculture got me to think about one of the reasons that the X Games became a televised event; not only because of the following of skaters & the athletes involved, but the large amount of noticeable "big-light" sponsors that sponsored the skaters. I'm not saying that the sponsors we have now aren't amazing (the engineers and leaders of these select companies and organizations are my heroes), but the X Games has sponsors that connect to kids and teenagers directly now. Maybe one of the next moves now is to bring some of those kinds of sponsors our way.

Examples: Oakley, Mountain Dew, Playstation, adidas, multitudes of beverage and drink companies, Nike, and the list goes on.

I've got the FIRST Studio Beats; might be more boss if there was some Oakley-designed safety glasses to go along with it........:D

But, seriously, sponsors that can connect us as an organization more to the people we're trying to reach may be a breakthrough point for us. I mean, between Boston Scientific & Nike, which would you use to get kids interested right away?

Also with this, I might add, it's not about the recognition; but the transformation (thanks to Mr. Barker). Majority of the sponsors we have now realize that the students that participate will be joining the workforce in a matter of a few years to a decade. Their participation ensures that students see the opportunities that could be theirs, along with companies they could pursue those opportunities with. Majority of the sponsors that sponsor the X-Games are ones that are only looking for future consumers or future athletes to sponsor. If we can get some of those "big-light" sponsors to look at our students as the future workforce & untapped wells of innovation potential for their companies, we could have access to one of the largest exposure mediums in the modern world of media; brands & reputation. It could be a key to becoming larger and gaining a larger audience to the message of FIRST. And then, we've got the transformation part down when they become a part of it. It could even lead to another exposure source, sports programming networks; they LOVE those kinds of sponsors.

That being said, who wouldn't want their own 5 minutes on PTI on ESPN? (Would love to be a robotics correspondent with Michael & Tony.) :yikes:

Re: An Attitude of Counterculture
 

Outreach works hands in hand with not being "excellent in a sea of mediocrity."

If your team is the best team ever, they will work their butt off to make sure as many people as possible can try to beat them. That's the approach you can take to outreach, to really show a strong, motivated team of students the power they have to change the 10 months they're not on the field.

Make others great, and you may end up shining... maybe even the brightest after all.

Re: An Attitude of Counterculture
 

( broad comments below, exceptions abound )

Something to keep in mind. These sponsors produce mass market consumer items. Their marketing people have to get their name in front of as many eyeball viewings as possible. They are working in their own self interest. And that is fine.

Most of the companies that sponsor FIRST teams are also protecting their own self interest. That is fine too. They are building a recruitment pipeline, working to make sure they are competitive in the future.

It would be great to have a beverage or apparel company participate in FIRST, just to help support FIRST.

What we really want to see, and is more likely to happen, is the "cultural transformation" occurs, it draws enough 'public eyeballs' and the sponsor wants to associate themselves with the activity. That will be a good place to be when we get there.

But how do we get there ? That is a strategic leadership challenge. There are a lot of ideas floating around. a) more visually appealing robot challenges, b) better public outreach by teams, c) and more.

food for thought........................
.

Re: An Attitude of Counterculture
 

If I'm not mistaken, Coke associated with FIRST this year. I remember one of the exec's speaking at Dean's House at kickoff. I haven't seen a lot since, but I think the idea was to have them help with the marketing appeal.

And to the second point, at least from the story I heard I think will.i.am actually approached Dean (not the other way around). Granted, I think it was because he wanted "to meet the invented the really cool Segway"... but he was excited enough to approach technology, not the other way around.

Granted as the top of your post mentions, this isnt the majority yet. But I think at least things are moving in the right direction.

As far as the original post goes, I may have gotten myself in a bit of trouble highlighting this thread. I want so badly for more kids to realize that its one thing to be a "Doer" - someone who can get a task done that is given to them. Its another to be a "Leader" - a founder and initiator of Great ideas. Whether its because kids are afraid to fail, or inclined to do "just enough" to get what they want/need, I agree... its NOT enough to change the culture. We need to dream bigger and reach higher.

When I was in high school, I had an English teacher who gave me a C and the girl next to me an A on a paper... yet mine was "better" than hers. The teacher told me simply "You aren't working to your potential". It was a lightbulb that went off in my head. He was the first teacher to ever call me out on the fact that I was doing "just enough to get by", and that I wasn't working as hard as I could. I had figured out what was "good enough" and stuck to that. Well, I couldn't in his class!

But I found in Robotics, that was never a problem. I was always pushing hard, dreaming bigger, trying harder. When my high school team started, I pushed the mentors to let the students have a leadership group to help run the team. When I wanted students more involved in the design, I signed up for a CAD class so I could learn & teach others. When we needed a way to show off our sponsors, I learned MS Publisher and created our Patron Book. When I wanted to become a coach, I set up & ran our entire scouting system for a year to prove that I knew other teams & strategy. When I graduated but didn't want to leave FIRST, I founded a new team. I was always willing to push myself and my ideas to the limit. I don't know if it was just that I was that much more interested in it than my English class, or if its because I set my own expectations instead of yielding to the expectations of a school system/parent/grade.

Today we are nervous about extremes - parents are either helicopter parents, or too wary of being helicopter parents. Kids are expected to be involved in 10 different things, and do them all well, to build resumes that will get them into Ivy League schools. Yet it seems that kids have trouble finding their passion when they are forced/run off in so many directions. Its about "just doing enough" to be good enough in everything, without being Great. I want kids to know what its like to really give it absolutely everything they have (because I would bet 99% of them have it in them dream bigger). To eat, sleep and breathe something year round. To find something they are so passionate about that it oozes into everything they do, and others can't help but want to follow them into this Counter-Culture where good is not good enough, Great is all they strive for.

Re: An Attitude of Counterculture
 

To get a sense of commitment and what it feels like, what it means, and the powerful potential that it can have.

Great post, Kim. I would love to meet that teacher.

Jane

Re: An Attitude of Counterculture
 

I am very sorry I did not see this thread earlier! I really think you guys are onto something, and like many of you have said, I think counter-culture can be the ticket we need to the, "Big Screen," if you will.

This is powerful stuff.