Adviser Role

[MonteCristo578]

For the teams that have an adviser, or an adult who makes the ultimate decisions for the group, does it work? How do you feel about it? Has it made you successful? Do you think you are still going after FIRST ideals? How do you approach them with a decision you don't like?

I am asking out of curiosity, because my team has this type of organizational structure and I am having difficulty coming to terms with it.

Thanks for any input that can be provided.

[KrazyCarl92]

Each team has its own organizational structure and their own reasoning for having such an organizational structure. Typically factors that influence the organizational structure of teams include scholastic affiliations, financial situations, and the preferences of the most experienced or influential people from the team.

Decisions have to be made by FRC teams. It is often best that they get decided in an efficient manner, even in some cases to the extent of a less effective decision. While this is not ideal, it can be a reason for a particular person making decisions on behalf of the team that are less than popular.

To clarify, are you asking about team decisions in general or about robot/competition decisions specifically? This distinction may mean different answers for respondents to the OP.

[AustinNordman]

Well, a FRC experienced "advisor" figure took our team's competitiveness from poop in 2011 to reasonable 2012 on. There is a line that needs to be drawn between a dictatorship and a free-for-all. Too much of either side is bad. The students be allowed to make the final engineering decisions for themselves. On the other side of the coin, the advisor should be strict enough to discourage legitimately poor decisions, like trying to use Mecanum wheels with a 2WD.

All in all, a disciplined advisor can be a great asset to any team.

[CENTURION]

KrazyCarl asks a very good question, the nature of the decisions matters.

When it comes to robot decisions, i don't see any reason why a mentor should intervene. It's the student's robot, and frankly, you often learn more from failure than success. If a trained engineer makes all the decisions, yeah you'll have a better robot, but the kids lose out on the learning inherent in that process.

But when it comes to larger team issue, such as team organization, rules, safety, you often need somebody with knowledge and experience involved, and so you may need a mentor to take the reigns in those situations.

Now I want to be clear: this is just my opinion. Other teams have their own way of operating that works well for them.

[Ed Law]

Originally Posted by MonteCristo578

For the teams that have an adviser, or an adult who makes the ultimate decisions for the group, does it work? How do you feel about it? Has it made you successful? Do you think you are still going after FIRST ideals? How do you approach them with a decision you don't like?

I am asking out of curiosity, because my team has this type of organizational structure and I am having difficulty coming to terms with it.

Thanks for any input that can be provided.

It is very difficult to answer your question without more information. It looks like you were on a rookie team and this was your first year on the team.
First of all, who is the advisor? Is it a teacher? Is it a parent? Is it a mentor? How much experience does this advisor have?
What kind of decisions? Is it engineering/design decisions? Is it team organization decisions? Did the advisor listen to other's input first and then make the decision? Do you know for sure the advisor did not consider other's input?
If there is a decision you don't like, it does not mean it is wrong. A leader makes the decisions that is best for the team. A leader's job is not to make everybody happy. It is impossible. If there is a decision you don't understand, you can calmly and diplomatically ask the advisor to clarify, so you can better understand how things work.
From my experience, every successful team has a strong leader who makes decisions for the team. In any organization, it is rare to find success using management by vote from multiple leaders. Too many cooks in the kitchen is never a good thing. This is especially true in FRC when the build season is so short.
There are many ways FRC teams are organized. Every team is different and they have to find the best way to run their team based on their unique circumstances. There is not just one correct way.
CD is not the best place to complain about your team's advisor. It is an open forum and your advisor may be reading these posts. If you would like to discuss this further, you can PM me.

[EricH]

Ed, they're relatively local to me. Yep, they are rookies (and from my perspective officiating, one of the better-off rookies in terms of robot). I may have heard a little more about their situation, but I don't remember for sure, and it was at least 2nd hand, so I obviously don't know enough to post it even if I wanted to.

OP: I'm also available via PM.

[SenorZ]

As an advisor (faculty mentor) for my team I struggle with this quite a bit.
I see my role as mediator, dangerous-idea-thwarter, and good-idea-pusher.

[jijiglobe]

There are experienced mentors on our team that give us a lot of useful advice. Many of our mentors a lot about FIRST and give us tips here and there but they don't make decisions. Many mentors will explain to us why certain ideas are better than others and why some ideas are straight up bad. Mentors, like anyone, are people that make mistakes. Many of the mentors on my team are people that I can chat with. Talking to mentors has helped me learn a lot and at the same time put me in a position where we can debate different decisions instead of just letting the mentors decide. Two heads are better than one. I think, however, that the role of mentors is to provide advice. Team leadership should make final decisions. You should absolutely listen carefully to what your mentor are saying and take it into consideration, but an FRC team is made of its students.

[Nemo]

Originally Posted by CENTURION

If a trained engineer makes all the decisions, yeah you'll have a better robot, but the kids lose out on the learning inherent in that process.

I think the focus on who gets the ultimate decision authority obscure a bigger picture. A successful FRC team will typically have some experienced adults supporting the students with good advice. They will tend to impose some structure onto the build season to avoid wasting time and keep things progressing toward a finished, working robot.

Example adult decision: mentor leader decides it's time to end wide open prototyping and pick a robot concept and throw all resources at that one robot design. That's a decision that might be imposed by an adult leader, possibly over the protests of students who still want to prototype the next idea and the next one after that. But it might be the right call for the team. I'd argue that a team is generally going to be more successful and satisfied with their experience if a mentor assumes some decision making authority to keep the team on track during the build season.

With significant, fundamental robot design decisions, we try to discuss and reach consensus. We'll discuss until the pertinent evidence and logic have been put out there for everybody to consider. This discussion will tend to eliminate ideas that are overly complicated, fundamentally flawed, poorly suited to the game objectives, and so on. The tricky part is deciding between alternatives that each sound pretty good on balance. When I'm facilitating those discussions, I want us all to figure out which set of arguments and trade-offs is most compelling and then coalesce around that choice. When the arguments are all out there, typically a critical mass has tended to go one way or the other and I convince the whole team that we should just go that direction and lock in the decision. If two alternatives seem equally viable and the students are mostly in one camp after the discussion, we'll go that direction.

For smaller scale decisions that happen within a particular system of the robot, a smaller group of people will communicate and make the call. I might be involved in the discussion, and I might offer my opinion. A mentor will probably be in the conversation - this helps us avoid pitfalls that a student doesn't recognize at the outset. (Sometimes the mentors recommend something that doesn't ultimately end well... such is life)

Decision making is a significant challenge in FRC. It's a balance between keeping the build project on schedule, giving students the best experience possible including giving them all of the ownership they can handle, and utilizing mentors in the most effective way.

Anyway, I think it's a false choice to say that you're either going to let an adult call the shots or be successful on the field. What you really want is to get your students and mentors prepared to have a rich evidence based discussion of trade-offs when decisions come up. Prepare your people with the knowledge and skills to present objective arguments, identify and evaluate trade-offs, listen to other points of view, and change their minds when better arguments come to light. A group of people like that can reach consensus around the best idea, and a minority that prefers the other choice will still recognize the merits of the decision and jump on board to help implement it.

[CENTURION]

Originally Posted by Nemo

Example adult decision: mentor leader decides it's time to end wide open prototyping and pick a robot concept and throw all resources at that one robot design. That's a decision that might be imposed by an adult leader, possibly over the protests of students who still want to prototype the next idea and the next one after that. But it might be the right call for the team. I'd argue that a team is generally going to be more successful and satisfied with their experience if a mentor assumes some decision making authority to keep the team on track during the build season.

Yes, I agree, this is definitely a good time for a mentor to step in. The mentor can make the decision that prototyping needs to wrap up, and a design choice needs to be made. I just don't like the idea of a mentor making that design choice.