I’m the Team President of a very large (~80 member) FRC team with a consistent ~15 mentors or so. Recently I’ve become more aware of two sides of the team culture-wise that I’d like help answering. Please note that neither of these have anything to do with technical ability or skill/quality of work, and purely about attitude and outlook on the team.
The rift occurs among how people approach the team.
The people who want to run FRC like a small business and look towards historically successful teams to emulate. This is a majority of the team, who find “joy in working” and though they’re by no means unfriendly or uptight, expect dedication and a hard-working attitude from members with responsibility. This is also a majority of the leadership team.
The people who are there to have fun, and work secondary. They’re “happy to be there” folks who feel ostracized under the expectations set by the first group (since those types of people are likely to get leadership positions). This is a minority among the team and a vocal, but small, minority of the leadership team as well.
While every team will have members that can’t commit as much as they’d like to because of other commitments or restrictions, or members who are trying to do as much as they can but find difficulty in grasping certain concepts or processes; that’s not what I’m talking about. It’s an attitude and outlook towards the team.
It’s becoming increasingly difficult and volatile to try and appease both groups. Outlawing fun or taking the “FRC” aspect of robotics definitely isn’t a goal of ours and would 100% destroy the team culture – definitely something to avoid. On the other side, however, it’s taxing to rely on people – work or leadership responsibility wise – who don’t want to face FRC as serious as others do.
Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.
Edit: Our mission statement, vision statement, and core values are below. Even though I was a part of writing them they seem quite nebulous to me, which makes it difficult.
1.2 Team Vision Statement
Inspire a community of young minds to excel in future business and STEM endeavors.
1.3 Team Mission Statement
To educate and develop future innovators by providing opportunities in an exciting learning environment.
Core Values — this is just FIRST’s core values plus Passion.
Impact: We apply what we learn to improve our world.
Innovation:We use creativity and perseverance to solve problems.
Discovery: We explore new skills and ideas.
Inclusion: We respect each other and embrace our differences.
Teamwork: We are stronger when we work together.
We also believe passion to be an essential value to achieve success.
Passion:We strive to achieve the impossible.
Have you discussed this with your mentors and team leadership? They should all communicate and come to a conclusion about what the culture goals are for the team and promote those goals to the rest of the team. Your objectives and mission statement should be clear, well-known, and reflected in your team’s actions and choices.
Between those two sides, there isn’t a wrong way, and anything in between is also valid (and sometimes more compromisable). Something to consider, though, is that at the end of the day you are paying money to compete in the FIRST Robotics Competition, and as such you have the responsibility to other teams to try your best (after all, they are partnered with you for qualification matches, and you owe it to your partners to try your best). If your program ultimately decides that pushing to be competitive isn’t for them, then why are you spending thousands of dollars on registration fees when you could be using that money to fund cool projects for your team?
TL;Dr: talk to your mentors and leadership about team culture and try and set the team’s goals. Keep in mind that as a competition team you have the responsibility to try your best (it’s the graciously professional thing to do!)
Does your team have a Mission Statement or Core Values? Those can both really, really help with this sort of situation, and the process of developing them, as a team, can help bring the team together.
A Mission Statements tells you and the world what your team is there to do. It defines your purpose, and you need buy-in on it from everyone on the team.
Core Values tell you how you go about fulfilling your mission. If “fun” is important to a significant portion of your team, then it should be part of your core values. Likewise, if “hard work” is important, then it should be part of your core values as well. They are not mutually exclusive, and it’s possible for teams to have both!
I think this puts way too much emphasis on being competitive. Frankly, this statement shows which side you fall on in the debate the team is having, instead of trying to help them find their own balance.
Our mission statement, vision statement, and core values are below. Even though I was a part of writing them they seem quite nebulous to me, which makes it difficult.
1.2 Team Vision Statement
Inspire a community of young minds to excel in future business and STEM endeavors.
1.3 Team Mission Statement
To educate and develop future innovators by providing opportunities in an exciting learning environment.
Core Values — this is just FIRST’s core values plus Passion.
Impact: We apply what we learn to improve our world.
Innovation:We use creativity and perseverance to solve problems.
Discovery: We explore new skills and ideas.
Inclusion: We respect each other and embrace our differences.
Teamwork: We are stronger when we work together.
We also believe passion to be an essential value to achieve success.
Passion:We strive to achieve the impossible.
When my team developed ours, it was a full-team effort. Our Mission Statement, “To inspire girls of all ages to incorporate STEM into their lives and to revolutionize the perception of women in STEM” is reflected in what we do - partnering with groups like the Girl Scouts, working to compete well, and knowing that, as a team, we’re working as roll models for others.
If you watch the videos at the link I posted, you’ll see that developing Core Values really isn’t as simple as “Use FIRST’s and maybe add one”. It’s a process of brainstorming, coming up with a massive list that individuals like, and winnowing it down to the ones that are really important to everyone. It’s a discussion that takes a few hours to start, and can last weeks. Our values may reflect some of the same general concepts as FIRST’s, but really explore the nuances of our team and our culture:
Compassion – Treating others in a caring, inclusive, and Salesian manner
Integrity – Doing what is right, not what is easy
Curiosity – Seeking new ideas and exploring possibilities in STEM and in our lives
Perseverance – Overcoming obstacles to strive for excellence
Confidence – Trusting our abilities and taking pride in our accomplishments
If you haven’t gone through a comprehensive process to develop all of this as a team, including everyone on the team in the process, then I would strongly suggest you do!
I have strong opinions on this matter and I never once tried to hide them. At the end of the day it’s about accomplishing your team’s specific goals, and if your current program direction poorly allocates your resources, you’re not effectively accomplishing your team’s goals. Being an FRC team is not always the answer. There are plenty of other great ways to run an engineering program with the goal of inspiring students.
I also feel like I always have to clarify the term “competitive”, because it seems like people are always interpreting that as “you must be 254, otherwise you’re not competitive”, which to me is just silly. Any team who shows up to a match and contributes a net positive to the alliance by being there is competitive by definition because they’re competing. The opposite of this is teams who aren’t trying / bring an alliance down by being there, which in my experience tends to be more of a function of effort and intent than it is of skill.
It may be helpful to try to separate the “Competition Robotics Team” function from the “Third Place” function, and find ways for people to engage in the third place function and hold respect within the group, without impeding the flow of the competition robotics team?
At 841, we are currently primarily operating a Third Place (STEM Center for Engineering Academy & Robotics Club) and also running a competition robotics team (Team 841), but haven’t done a great job of cleanly separating the functions and responsibilities related to each, and it’s really hurting our ability to raise expectations and achieve competitive success within the timeline of the regular season.
I think every team has this to some extent. Some people are internally motivated to really push themselves hard and do the best they can in FRC; others want to have fun and learn something while hanging out with their friends.
You say it’s frustrating to rely on people who aren’t taking their work seriously, it’s frustrating when some of the student leaders act this way, etc. so the obvious question to me is: Why are you giving responsibility to people who seem not to want it? If a person is philosophically opposed to taking the team seriously, why are they being made a student leader? If they vocally don’t want to work that hard and just want to have fun, why are they being given important tasks such that everyone else will be stressed out if it doesn’t get done? This is what feels different from every other team to me.
For example, we have some members who’ve been on the team for years and are happy to come in once or twice a week to help out friends with whatever they can (usually things that don’t require being fully in the know, like machining a few parts or writing part of a grant app). We understand this is the extent of the commitment they can/want to make, and accordingly don’t assign them anything too critical or anything where it’d be a problem if they don’t show up for the next week. We don’t continually hassle them to work harder and then stress out when they don’t, we just dole out responsibilities according to who has shown readiness to take them on.
In your original post you state that this isn’t about technical ability, skill, and quality of work. On top of that you have students with time commitment restrictions or are really just taking the time to learn. (Which is fine).
But you also state “it’s taxing to rely on people – work or leadership responsibility wise – who don’t want to face FRC as serious as others do.”
The big question your trying to answer is:
Where does the dissatisfaction originate?
The following questions are me attempting to point you in directions of common places i’ve seen dissatisfaction originate. As well as general questions that help give context to the situation for the forum.
How hard does your team grind?
How are timetables and deadlines set and achieved? Could Type 1 people want the work done in unreasonable amounts of time, while type 2 just want to learn and accomplish the task?
What are the blockers that inhibit the less productive (whether it’s by choice or not) members of the team?
Is work getting completed? Is the team on schedule?
Is anyone sitting around? And I’m mostly asking for is if 15% of the cad team or anyone playing Halo CE in the back of the lab type thing.
5.5. Is there anything that could make things more fun?
And snichols question, why do people who aren’t taking it seriously in a leadership position or even the other way around if fun is highest on the priority list?
I think the best culture to have is a blend of both in my opinion.
What I mean is that you build your culture around having fun and working hard at the same time, in order to breed a culture where “coming to robotics for fun” also means “grinding and getting work done.”
As a former VP on my team I was definitely a category 1 type of person, but I realized that the reason I became active in the first place was because it was FUN to do so. In other words my “happy to be there” attitude meant that I was putting in a lot of hours and showing up and working hard.
Ultimately though, there will always be people who will not be active and not be as enthusiastic at you or the leadership team may be, but it is important to balance the dialectics here, rather than focusing on one choice.