In our robotics class today, our coach mentioned how much our “Fault Jar” helped in the 2014 season. Our Fault Jar is a container that we add money to whenever we mention fault, i.e. “That’s George’s fault”, or “It wasn’t my fault”. We were wondering if any other teams did something similar, for “Faults”, or just for any other undesirable team element.
Thanks!
This is interesting. I’ve heard of swear jars before, but not fault jars. Can you explain more about the background of this and how it has improved your team?
I think I can see how it would turn pointing fingers into finding solutions, is that more or less the case?
Sounds like our proposed idea of the “In my Opinion” jar, where people put in money when they reference their opinion over things more pertinent like math or results of testing/prototyping… I approve.
My team has a swear jar in the shop.
We don’t use it… but it’s there… 
We’ve just never liked using the word fault. In fact, our coach refers to it as the “f-bomb”. Our team doesn’t really swear that much, but we have quite an issue pointing fingers, both at teammates and inanimate objects. We just got fed up with verbally reprimanding people for usage, and decided to put a monetary penalty on that word. We just started it, so we haven’t seen a noticeable increase in performance, but the team seems to be working better together already.