[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by Rich Kressly

What if I responded to this by saying that I don't care if these things take place or if there is ever a system of checks and balances? I would hope all teams do their absolute best to represent themselves fairly and well, but trying to externally mandate or manage this is a bad idea...

The Chairman's Award is about documenting your team's growth, impact, and outreach so you keep the type of focus in your program that Dean, Woodie, Dr. Murphy, John Abele, and others have envisioned since the beginning. It about managing your team and program in a way that's more concerned with positive culture change than it is with solely building a killer robot every year. It's about being a model for the creation of socially conscious leaders.

You start shifting the focus toward "catching the cheaters" and you'll start creating more teams that point fingers and worry about the blue banner as opposed to worrying about the healthy pursuit of the blue banner.

Do I want every team to be 100% honest (whatever that means, btw) in their endeavors? Yes. Do I want to spend any time thinking about other teams that might not be doing business that way? No. Not at all.

I want to seek out the models in the FIRST community, take previous year's judging feedback given to my team, think deeply about what makes sense in growing my team's program, and then plan a positive course for growth.

This effort is about the mirror test folks; it's not about looking for the "cheaters." I realize that I may be in the minority here, but we're not going to change enough of the culture for the better if we don't start thinking differently and living accordingly.

my .02, take it for what it's worth.

Wish we could spotlight an entire post.

Wisdom.

Jane