Most everyone seems to be focusing on how collaboration affects the final inspiration of the students involved in such a partnership (the output of the process); however, few have commented on the effects different forms of collaboration have on the mentors (the “equipment” driving the process) and the team’s resources (the inputs of the process). Inspiration is neither a free nor an easy thing to create. Teams stepping outside of their comfort zone in an attempt to increase the amount of inspiration they generate is an even more difficult challenge. There are real costs associated with altering the inspiration process via collaboration – you cannot celebrate the end result of changing the outputs of the process (more inspiration) without also examining how the change affects the process inputs and the process itself. Before a team enters into a collaborative agreement with another, all sides must examine how the new partnership would affect EVERY aspect of their programs, from initial input resources to mentorship involvement to the final process output.
For simplicity’s sake (hopefully), I wish to describe a typical FIRST team as an “inspiration factory”. The final output product manufactured by this team factory is inspired students. The primary “assembly equipment” which drives the process used to manufacture this product is the team’s mentorship base. The raw materials that are fed into the “assembly equipment” are time, money, physical resources (tools, machine shop equipment, etc.), and impressionable students who have yet to be “processed” by the team (perhaps a bit of a scary image, but I think you all know what I am talking about).
Let’s start with a typical veteran FIRST team “factory”. It turns out high quality product every year, and the factory is running smoothly. In fact, it has received high marks and praise for its product from the manufacturing community; perhaps even the highest award granted by its peers. It has just the right amount of resource input to avoid “excessive inventory”, and its “assembly equipment” is properly maintained and never overworked past its capacity limit, so it keeps churning out the inspiration at high efficiency levels.
Suddenly, the plant manager has a bright idea. He is a noted philanthropist and thus has no designs to achieve personal gain by pushing his superior product on customers at the expense of others within his industry; instead, he wishes to augment the productivity of inspiration at other factories in his region so that the combined overall productivity of the regional factories is doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled. How does he choose to achieve this objective? Let’s examine two different pathways, one involving regional partners that are not nearly as productive, and another involving partners that are on par with the plant manager’s factory….
Pathway 1 (Collaboration between an established factory and those that are either new or not as productive)
The plant manager eagerly pushes through an agreement with several other factories to merge their resources and build their product at the manager’s facility. The other regional plant managers welcome this partnership with open arms, for they are either newcomers to this industry, or they have struggled with notable productivity and quality control issues as an independent manufacturer.
Upon merging the other factories’ “raw material inventory” and “assembly equipment” with his own, the plant manager quickly discovers that he is in for more of a challenge than he originally expected. The other factories’ assembly equipment, while demonstrating great promise, is far behind the efficiency and technology levels of the host plant’s equipment. The host factory spent years learning how to fine tune their equipment based upon experience and feedback from industry professionals. The other factories have not had that luxury. In addition, the other factories, while bringing equally large stores of impressionable students over to the host factory, were short on the raw materials of money and physical resources. These factors all threatened to upset the delicate balance of input management the plant manager had established over the years. What was he to do? How was he to achieve his objective of increased inspirational output and still account for the excess inventory? He could make 1 of 2 choices……
Decision 1
Not wanting to divert too much of his factory’s raw materials to improving the relatively inefficient assembly equipment brought into the factory by his partners, the plant manager chooses instead to let that equipment sit relatively idle as he ramps up the production demands of his original assembly equipment, which he trusts. He feeds most of the combined raw materials of the partnership into his equipment, effectively absorbing the additional material inventory recently brought into the factory. His assembly equipment is a well-oiled machine and is flexible to changes in process and in material input levels, and for a time, it compensates beautifully. Production is way up, and from the outside, the factory appears to be succeeding in its objectives. The manager only activates the additional equipment in limited situations where the process demands weren’t nearly as taxing. The other plant managers are thrilled by the accolades and awards they receive for being associated with this partnership, yet they see that their own assembly equipment and processes have not improved to anywhere near the same level as the host manager’s. Because of these facts, they have simultaneously grown too dependent upon the current level of success and too afraid that they do not possess the same level of ability as the host manager’s process to separate and return to their own factories.
Over time, as the original host factory equipment is continuously pushed to or past its capacity limit, this extra production demand slowly takes its toll. If the plant manager doesn’t recognize the imminent danger this poses to the entire factory, a severe meltdown could eventually occur. The host assembly equipment will never again function within the factory walls – it will take a new factory and a fresh new approach to restore the broken equipment to the level of excellence it once demonstrated - and the remaining partner managers’ equipment won’t be developed enough to compensate for the loss.
Decision 2
The plant manager recognizes that his own assembly equipment is a precious resource that should not be overtaxed by the new partnership. In fact, he feels he should invest more time and money upgrading the new, raw assembly equipment and bring it up to the quality and productivity of his own. All of the partnership’s raw materials would be more equally distributed among each piece of equipment, and all equipment would be run at nearly the same rate. While this path may not lead to the same immediate increase in output that would have been seen by following the path of Decision 1, and in fact, the productivity of his original equipment may actually decrease for a time, taking this direction would eventually lead to multiple pieces of high quality equipment running within his factory walls, all churning out the high-quality product his factory produced before the partnership took place. In fact, at this point, his partners may be so encouraged by their progress that they take their raw materials and equipment and go off on their own, perhaps even to propagate the same successful plan implemented by their host.
Pathway 2 (Collaboration between two factories that share the same high-quality levels of productivity)
I don’t have to go into nearly as much detail here. To achieve his goal of increased productivity throughout the industry, the plant manager contacts another plant manager from an equally successful factory. Both managers recognize that they do many, many things right, but each could stand to learn from the other and implement improvements to their process based upon the experiences of the other factory. The managers keep their factories distinct and separate, collaborating only to upgrade their assembly equipment and processes such that the quality and rate of production of their individual product is improved. Each manager gives proper credit to the other for their role in these shared improvements, and the two factories maintain lifelong connections so that they can continue to benefit from the partnership. They also agree to share their knowledge with other, less efficient factories that could use their assistance.
As you pursue “Pathway 1” collaborative partnerships, please do not overtax and ultimately break your “assembly equipment”, because without it, your raw materials will either be wasted or sit around as excess unused inventory, and they will never combine to form the finished product you seek. The key new point to all of this is that if you don’t take care of your mentor resources - if you try to overwork them too hard and too long and stretch them too thin - if you do not supplement them with an infusion of equally capable mentors from your new collaborative partners or alter your internal process to see that your new, inexperienced mentors have room to grow along with your students, then you will most likely place an undue amount of strain on your most experienced mentors, and the quality of the inspirational output of your program could suffer.
