Creating a team with the right kind of leadership organization is a tough, but necessary thing to do. Our team initially had our democratic team elections last April at the end of the FIRST season for a President, Vice President, Treasurer, Community Outreach Chair, and Webmaster. At the time of the election we were expecting the officers to lead the team for the BEST Robotics Competition this past fall, but we had a lot of members drop out, and lost most of our leadership with the exception of the President.
So, about a month ago our President and team mentors sat down and wrote out what the student positions needed to be, and what the specific responsibilities were going to be for each one. This is now posted on our website:
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dhtbdfw9_50qqh8znqr
We had our latest elections in the first week of December and reelected someone for each position except for our President. But the important part was that defined the responsibilities first, and reviewed them with the entire team before anyone nominated themselves for the positions. We did add one pretty major new position, and that was the Project Manager who is essentially in charge of everything related to the robot. Our team President is responsible for the big picture for the team. This includes not only the robot, but the marketing team, fundraising, community outreach, our team website, our pit display, etc. This will be the first season having this President/Project Manager organization, and I think it should work well.
As for breaking up the subteams for the build team, we've left that up to the Project Manager to handle. We may appoint subteam leaders for drivetrain, manipulator, electrical, and programming, or we may end up doing what we did last year where everyone just helps out with whatever needs to be done, so we'll see.