1. Leadership & Team Structure
Mark McLeod
Main Advisor FRC 358
Control System Advisor (CSA)
FIRST Technical Advisor (FTA)
December 2, 2017
Long Island & Hudson Valley Regional Planning Committees
Long Island mentor on call

2. Overview Leadership Produces... Concrete Leadership...
Types of Leaders
Organizing Responsibilities
Sample FRC Team Structure
Remember Care & Feeding of:
1) students
2) school advisors/school administration
3) mentors
4) parents
5) sponsors

3. Leadership Produces... Organization Always focused on the Big Picture
Clear goal/focus purpose — establishes a vision
Task/result driven — vision is broken down into discrete team goals
Divide responsibilities/work
Unified commitment — a team, not a group
Collaborative climate — people aligned to a common purpose
Always focused on the Big Picture
- Goals/Schedules for Off-season/Build season/Competition season.
- Teams Grow/People Grow
Read the game rules
Decide on a strategy
Break that strategy down into tasks
Divide up the tasks
Come to a common agreement

4. Concrete Leadership... Set the Goals/Schedule
Organize & Coordinate Sub-Team Efforts
Recruit, Train & Motivate Members
Manage Conflict
Keep to the Schedule – Deliver on Time
Recover when things go wrong
Advocate & raise community awareness
Build a Long Term Team
Ensure the Improvement of the Team
Ensure the Continuation of the Team
Schedule Breakers:
- Sponsor funding delays
- What can you do when a sub-team lead doesn't show for a week?
- How do you redirect a task when the original plan isn't working out?
- Try to overlap school breaks/exams with parts shipping time.

5. Types of Leaders Authoritative (do what I tell you)
Strengths-takes risks, goal oriented, gets to the point
Weaknesses-decisions may be rushed, risky, single point of view, poor over more experienced people
Affiliative (people come first)
Strengths-people person, idea oriented, entertaining
Weakness-too many ideas, no priorities or follow through
Thinker (gets buried in the details)
Strengths-fact oriented, quality & precision focus
Weakness-No big picture, unwilling to take risks
Harmonizer (What do you think?)
Strengths-team & relationship focus, friendly & fun
Weakness-avoids conflict, slow decision maker
- Most people are a combination
- FRC Leadership are participants not traditional supervisors or managers
- Your mandate derives from the team members-they are your customers

6. Organizing Responsibilities
Off-Season
Recruitment, training, fundraising, outreach
Build Season
Set & track goals/schedule
Support-materials, parts, skills are on-hand
Competition Season
Drive team, spirit, judged awards
Support
Team communication, travel planning, budget/purchasing
Year-end Review
SWOT/Successes/Failures/Improvements
Continuous Improvement
Increase Team Efficiency
- Decide on tasks & goals
- Assign responsible people
- Regular progress reports
- Take remedial actions (follow up)
- reassign people
- drop the task
- change the goal

7. Sample FRC Team Structure
Team Leadership
Captain(s)/President/VP
Secretary/Treasurer
Sub-team leads
Sub-teams
Public Relations & Media
Communication
Budgeting/Purchasing
Outreach
Fundraising
Build teams
Mechanical drivetrain/mechanisms/chassis
Electrical/control system/programming
Drive team/pit crew/scouts/awards
- Lots of ways to handle this
- People may cover more than one position
- Every position needs backup
- Reassign the positions if someone loses interest, is needed elsewhere, or is unavailable

8. Sample Org Chart - What do the attending teams do?
- What else have they tried?
- What ideas would you like to try?
- What problems can arise?

9. Closing Notes FRC teams end up as networks rather than hierarchies
Teams Grow Organically – people gravitate to the jobs that appeal to them. People want to take on new things.
People Won't Always Be There
Expect your Leadership structure to change over time
Succession Planning
Shadowing
Historical records/handbooks, retaining skills and lessons learned
Don't lose account logins, e.g., team twitter
- You first job is to find your replacement
- Make things fair to all
- Things change
- More people means sharing the load
- How will you pass on lessons learned before you graduate?