1. Top 10 Things You Should Be Doing Now to Position Your Team for Success in the Fall
Kathie Kentfield, Director, NEMO
(Non-Engineering Mentor Organization)
Presented at CAS/NE FIRST Connecticut State Championship
May 13, 2017

2. TREAT YOUR TEAM LIKE A SMALL BUSINESS
TREAT YOUR TEAM LIKE A SMALL BUSINESS. No matter how big or small your team is, due to the nature of FRC you must treat your team like a small business. The following practices are in place with most businesses. You have a large budget; expenses to keep track of; money that needs to be raised; a product to be designed, built, and marketed in a short amount of time each year. You have personnel and a large attrition rate due to seniors leaving each year. In a business this would translate to the Human Resources office, Business/Finance office, Engineering, Manufacturing, Marketing personnel.

3. CELEBRATE YOUR SUCCESSES!1
1. First of all, Celebrate this year’s successes. This time of year can be sad for some team members, especially if they are graduating or leaving the team.
End of the year banquet or potluck picnic.
Certificates for each graduating senior (or if it’s a small team, one for each person on the team.)
Awards – may be funny things. Like the “Person who drank the most Mt. Dew during the Build Season”.
Print team photos and frame them for mentors or sponsors or graduating seniors.
Graduation cords can be ordered through FIRST (see team 195 for more info).

4. 1 CELEBRATE YOUR SUCCESSES!
DO SOME SPRING CLEANING 2
2. Spring Cleaning! This is a good time of year to do a spring cleaning of your build or meeting space.
Put things back where they belong, make note of items that might be missing. Replenish your First Aid kit, for example.
Organize your toolbox.
Go through your pit materials that may have been put away in a rush at your last competition.
Purchase new shelving or file cabinets if needed.
Update any lists you might have, such as contact lists. If you have any people who have left the team, remove them from the lists.
Throw out any unnecessary paperwork from last season – possibly shred the information if needed.
Go through your t-shirt inventory and organize it by size.
Go through team spirit materials and toss damaged stuff.
Clean the space, particularly if you are borrowing it from the school or sponsor.

5. 1 CELEBRATE YOUR SUCCESSES!
2 DO SOME SPRING CLEANING
HOLD END-OF-YEAR ASSESSMENT 3
3. Hold an End of the Year Assessment process.
Form a three-person committee (one student, one adult, one team leader)
Explain assessment process = not disciplinary, to help the team move forward
Have every person on team answer three questions:
Did being on the team this year meet your expectations?
What did the team do right?
What can the team improve on?
Arrange for 5 minute interviews with each person. Go over their assessment. Have an honest dialog to improve the team. Make notes of areas needing improvement. If person was dissatisfied with their experience, find out why? If they want to work in other areas, can that be arranged?
Bring list of areas needing improvement back to the team. Brainstorm how to fix things. Form committees to look into fixing these over the summer.

6. 1 CELEBRATE YOUR SUCCESSES!
2 DO SOME SPRING CLEANING
3 HOLD END-OF-YEAR ASSESSMENT 4
REEXAMINE YOUR TEAM ORGANIZATION
4. Reexamine your team organization:
A lack of good team organization, or up-to-date team organization, is the root cause of most of the problems I saw when I was a FIRST Senior Mentor. You can’t ignore this. And it takes time to do.
Team/Club status: If affiliated with a school, are you considered to be a team? Or an after-school Club? Each has pros and cons:
Budget – teams are often covered by the school budget. Clubs are often not covered. Does this impact your ability to fundraise? Does this impact your parental involvement? Chaperones?
Teams can hold tryouts (or have an application process); clubs may be forced to be open to everyone. If your team has a set number of students it can realistically support, this could be a huge deal.
Teams may have to be part of CIAC and need to follow those rules – i.e. when they can compete and who they can compete against; accepting students who have recently moved into town; etc.
Non-Profit? If a 501(c)(3), what reports do you need to write? Who are the officers, etc.?
All teams need a Handbook which outlines how the team is run (student-driven, adult-driven, a mix); what the roles of the members are; how those roles are chosen (elections, appointments, nominations, etc.); what the financial and time commitments are; rules and consequences. Look at your existing Team Handbook (or create one if you don’t have one). Does it need to be updated to match current team makeup, new school rules? Do your rules and consequences need updating based on issues you may have encountered this year? Have your election procedures changed? Include a mentor memorandum of understanding – it is like a small contract which states the expectations of the mentor on the team. This should be an annual contract, which gives you some options for letting a mentor go should you need to. How will the team communicate with team members, parents, sponsors?
Should you move to a format with officers? How will they be selected?
What is the decision-making process and who has the ultimate say in team decisions?
Develop your Strategic Plan. Where do you want your team to be next year? In 3 years? In 5 years? Set SMART goals with team’s input. For example, if your goal is to design and prototype the robot in the first 10 days of Build Season, what steps do you need to take to achieve that goal now? Take classes in CAD? In brainstorming?
Specific (simple, sensible, significant).
Measurable (meaningful, motivating).
Achievable (agreed, attainable).
Relevant (reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based).
Time bound (time-based, time limited, time/cost limited, timely, time-sensitive).
Develop your team’s Business Plan (“A business plan is a blueprint and communication tool for your business. A device to help you, the owner, set out how you intend to operate your business. A road map to tell others how you expect to get there. “- U.S. Small Business Administration)
Develop your team’s Execution Plan – How will you execute your strategic plan and business plan? The Execution Plan is the action plan for the team.
The strategic and business plans, and corresponding execution plan, may cover 3-5 years ahead. If you’ve never done this on the team before, you might find it helpful to concentrate on the upcoming year to start, then be thinking about extending the plan for future years.

7. 1 CELEBRATE YOUR SUCCESSES!
2 DO SOME SPRING CLEANING
3 HOLD END-OF-YEAR ASSESSMENT
4 REEXAMINE YOUR TEAM ORGANIZATION
INVENTORY YOUR ASSETS 5
5. Inventory your assets
Create a spreadsheet or database and include ALL your assets. Include those at your shop, at your sponsor’s workplace, your garages and basements. Vow to keep this up-to-date every time something is donated or purchased for the team.
An inventory may show areas that your materials are depleted and would need to be replenished. This information will impact your budget.
Ask team members who are leaving the team to bring back all team assets they may have been storing at home. This would include virtual software as well as hardware. You might want to do this annually each spring to keep better track of assets.
In the spreadsheet, include columns for where the item came from, price, etc. Also, if a team member or sponsor provides the item, was it a true donation, or a loan to the team? It’s important to note this in case you have a mentor who is leaving and wants something back, or a sponsor who loaned items to the team but is no longer able to sponsor you, or the team unfortunately folds. Who will get these assets?
Consider holding a swap meet/yard sale event where teams can bring unwanted materials and swap them with other teams or sell them. (We could not find a date that was successful for doing so in New England but I’m still open to the idea.)

8. 1 CELEBRATE YOUR SUCCESSES!
2 DO SOME SPRING CLEANING
3 HOLD END-OF-YEAR ASSESSMENT
4 REEXAMINE YOUR TEAM ORGANIZATION
5 INVENTORY YOUR ASSETS 6
DEVELOP YOUR FINANCING STRATEGY
6. Develop your financing (not fundraising) strategy for next season. (See series, for some good blog posts and tools.)
How is your team structured for paying its bills? In other words, do you have a “pay for play” type model where each team member needs to contribute X dollars towards the team budget? Does the overall budget pay for t-shirts, travel costs, as well as competition registration fees? Or are team members responsible for their own travel costs? Etc.
Who are your current sponsors? Is their level of sponsorship changing next year? Do not rely on current sponsors to always be there; personnel changes and business situations change all the time, which could impact their sponsorship of your team. What are you doing to maintain your relationship with your sponsor? Don’t just go to them once a year with your hand out. See my presentation, “BFF - Keeping Your Team’s Sponsors Your Best Friends Forever” in the NEMO website resources section.
Who are prospective sponsors? Always be on the lookout for new sources of revenue. Any new businesses coming into town? Expanding? Explore new types of businesses you may not have reached out to before.
Do you know anyone in those organizations that can introduce you the right people? Linked-In
What will you be asking for – monetary support (how much), mentor volunteers, Build space, in-kind donations (printing, tools, materials, etc.)
Develop your presentation for the “ask.”
Be sure your fundraising strategies are in line with your strategic plan, business plan and execution plan. Ask “How much do we need to raise to accomplish our goals?”
Review previous fundraising events. What are the ROI (returns on investment)? If a fundraiser took many hours to plan and execute, was the money raised worth that time and effort? Could there be easier fundraisers? If you’ve always done a spaghetti supper with an auction but you no longer have access to that facility, what will you do in its place? If everyone team in town is selling Entertainment Books, would you do better selling something that people can use multiples of, like Butter Braids or pies? BE CAREFUL with auctions – some states, like Connecticut, have strict “gambling” laws which cover auctions. Be sure you are in compliance or a fine assessed to the team could cost more than what you have raised.
Plan out your fundraising calendar; check with your school to see if there are any major event date conflicts with the events you have planned. Procure locations if necessary now before other groups claim those dates. If needed, get permissions from the school to hold these fundraising events.

9. 1 CELEBRATE YOUR SUCCESSES!
2 DO SOME SPRING CLEANING
3 HOLD END-OF-YEAR ASSESSMENT
4 REEXAMINE YOUR TEAM ORGANIZATION
5 INVENTORY YOUR ASSETS
6 DEVELOP YOUR FINANCING STRATEGY
DEVELOP YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY 7
7. Develop your Marketing strategy.
External – how will you market your team next year to the community/school? Newsletters, social media, press releases, cable community TV channel broadcasts, writing articles for local newspapers (like The Patch) – if you take the time to create a marketing plan, it will help you to more easily execute it. Develop a press release template that you carry with you on a laptop to every competition and event you attend. If you attend a robotics competition, that may be of interest to your local media. Robots are cool and newsworthy, especially for “fillers” if they need it. If you earn an award or win a competition, that can be added to the press release. Develop your list of media contacts so you can easily update the press release and send it out as soon as possible. In today’s world of instant communications, no one wants stories about something that happened last week.
Within the FIRST Community – teams must market themselves! FIRST is growing. No longer do you attend competitions where you are familiar with every team there. You have competition from the other teams at an event, so you need to get your team out there meeting other teams in the pits and in the stands where the SCOUTS are working! If your robot does something consistently well, hopefully the scouts will notice it! But if you are a new team, or a team who has not had much success previously, may not be on the radar screen of the teams who consistently have good robots. Technical mentors often will network in the pits. Non-technical mentors are often chaperoning in the stands and don’t have the ability to move around and have casual conversations with others. (Hence NEMO was born.) Consider hosting a NEMO meeting; a networking meeting on a Saturday morning where mentors can get together over coffee and just talk. Or share something that your team is working on that might benefit another team.

10. 1 CELEBRATE YOUR SUCCESSES!
2 DO SOME SPRING CLEANING
3 HOLD END-OF-YEAR ASSESSMENT
4 REEXAMINE YOUR TEAM ORGANIZATION
5 INVENTORY YOUR ASSETS
6 DEVELOP YOUR FINANCING STRATEGY
7 DEVELOP YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY
IDENTIFY INFORMATION RESOURCES 8
8. Information Resources - Identify sources of information from FIRST HQ and local FIRST organizations. Who will be monitoring them (especially over the summer)? How will information be disseminated to the rest of the team? There are so many places to go for information today that it’s overwhelming. It would be good to brainstorm all the resources available to you and identify which ones need to be monitored on a regular basis (ie FRC blogs) and who will be monitoring them, and which are resources to go to occasionally or when you are looking for specific information (ie Chief Delphi)

11. 1 CELEBRATE YOUR SUCCESSES!
2 DO SOME SPRING CLEANING
3 HOLD END-OF-YEAR ASSESSMENT
4 REEXAMINE YOUR TEAM ORGANIZATION
5 INVENTORY YOUR ASSETS
6 DEVELOP YOUR FINANCING STRATEGY
7 DEVELOP YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY
8 IDENTIFY INFORMATION RESOURCES
9. Examine your Human Resources
Based on your strategic plan, how many people do you need to accomplish your SMART goals? How many mentors, how many students? In what areas do you need to have people in place – i.e. creative writing, videography, computer programming, electrical? Where are your holes that you need to fill?
How many students can you realistically support given your resources (build space, budget, mentors)? If you have too many students wanting to join your team, do you implement an application process? What is the criteria you will use? If you don’t have enough students to achieve your goals, how will you recruit more? Don’t forget to recruit from the non-technical students also.
Where will you recruit mentors? Reach out to your FIRST Senior mentors. Have an MOU (see above). Are parents considered mentors? What if they don’t work out? See my presentation, “Mentors - How to Hire 'Em, How to Fire 'Em” in the NEMO website resources section. 9
EXAMINE YOUR HUMAN RESOURCES

12. 1 CELEBRATE YOUR SUCCESSES!
2 DO SOME SPRING CLEANING
3 HOLD END-OF-YEAR ASSESSMENT
4 REEXAMINE YOUR TEAM ORGANIZATION
5 INVENTORY YOUR ASSETS
6 DEVELOP YOUR FINANCING STRATEGY
7 DEVELOP YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY
8 IDENTIFY INFORMATION RESOURCES
10. Develop a teambuilding plan.
Once you’ve recruited your team members, teambuilding sessions can be very valuable to your team prior to the Build Season. You can hold a two-hour session, or multiple shorter sessions prior to each team meeting. Or plan a whole weekend. See my presentation, “Teambuilding: Build Your Team Before You Build Your Robot”, also in the NEMO website resources section for ideas.
9 EXAMINE HUMAN RESOURCES 10
DEVELOP TEAMBUILDING PLAN