Arontius of Bygelswade

.....This is an interesting conundrum from the standpoint of Team Planning. I was talking to someone today where the thought was that if a major event needed to be done in a hurry, with as little hassle as possible, that the best course of action was to hand pick a select group of people to be the major players of that Team.

.....You have this major Project you are committed to completing. The event is a larger scale SCA Event (Crown Event), which means upwards of 1,000 people. But not the scale of an Inter-Kingdom Event (with larger numbers) or a Demonstration Event which combines the strangenesses of dealing with the Modern Public. Your time frame is tight, but not an emergency. You have your site and you have a relatively clear vision of what the overall event should be and look.

.....Naturally, the tendency is to want to surround yourself with a Team who are all competent, as in they have experience with this type of event and know what it is they need to do to be successful. All of the Team members have at least some experience in the tasking they've agreed to do. They at least know, if not have worked with, all the Team members regularly or in the past. They have some passing familiarity with the site, and that site is relatively close. Within these parameters the event should happen at least relatively smoothly, barring unexpected hits (extreme weather, etc.). If the Team has the required experience, they should be able to deal with unexpected occurrences (more people than expected show up to the event, etc.).

.....Dare I say it? Leading that type of Team would be fun and actually kind of peaceful and restful, with much satisfaction when complete. Well worth the time and energy that was input to make it happen.

.....However, the SCA (like many others) is a group based on volunteers. You really cannot dictate what people can and cannot become members. So your range of volunteers runs the spectrum of the type of people from whom you can recruit. People with no experience in event planning whatsoever. People who routinely overestimate what they can physically or mentally accomplish. I'm not even suggesting that it is necessarily any fault of their own either. People don't know what they don't know and may commit to actions that look relatively easy, but prove to be quite the challenge.

.....Then there are the complexities of Modern Life. In a Volunteer Organization, it is that Modern Job that pays the bills and puts the roof over your head. Sometimes it will determine what is the most important thing happening in your life at any given moment. Volunteers may be lost at sometimes the eleventh hour due to these issues. As the person who is ultimately running the event, you can sometimes gage the risk of these volunteers as integral members of your Team and how best to shore them up or have back-up plans in place.

.....If your Team is high risk, there will be anxiety. Time and energy will be spent in guiding and nurturing Team members, building those back-up plans, stepping in to take on duties as needed. Or finding someone to take on those duties. When you have completed this event, you may feel a sense of accomplishment still. But you will also feel a sense of frustration that you had to deal with the issues you did.

.....Here is the conundrum. When you put your hat in the ring and submit a bid for an event, should you always hand-pick your Team and only select those people whom you KNOW can complete the work? What percentage of your Team would you require to have the experience and / or knowledge to complete the actions you know are required to plan your event and execute it successfully?

.....Is that fair? There are always people coming into the branch who need to learn how to become part of an Event Planning Team and what it takes to successfully execute an event. Some people have natural talent for this and will pick up the process easily, with very little mentoring. You can fairly easily add these people to your Team and only check in on them occasionally to course correct as needed.

.....There is another group to consider that is even more difficult. Those people who do not normally work well with a Team at all, but still want to support the event or the branch. Those people who do not have any proclivity towards the things it takes to plan for events or make them happen. Those people who are not naturally creative people, who have a difficult time coming up with solutions on the run, or thinking outside the proverbial box. There are others who seem to delight in disrupting everyone around them, oftentimes without even thinking about it.

.....These difficult people are also paid members of the Society, as well as members of your branch / group. Is it right to exclude them from the event process? The one answer that comes to mind is that if the actions of these people are going to be detrimental to the group as a whole; well then, you have to protect the group. Duh. Can you help them grow into productive members of an event planning group? How much work would be required in doing this? Do you have the time and energy to devote to this? Do you have someone else you can convince to take them under their wing?

.....If these people are paid members of the group, is it right to exclude them from the process even though it is disruptive? That rather points to the system as a whole. There is no test given to applicants to gage their ability to function in the SCA or the local group. Once they have become members of your group you have to incorporate them in your plans somehow. You can't exclude them all together. They are members of your branch family.

.....Everyone is good at something. Sometimes you just need to take some time to find out what that something is and how to incorporate that. At least that is the way I tend to think. But I have been dinged for thinking this way and I can see why. It really introduces a level of risk to your plan that could be avoided by using someone else. Again, is that risk fair to your Team and to the branch as a whole?

.....But the feeling you get when you see someone succeed at something everyone around you said would fail? That's a pretty good feeling. Pays you back for the risk you took in trusting them, and maybe mentoring them just a little bit.

.....Just musing on the issue, and trying to figure out what I want to say to the new Protege and what I do not want to say as far as event planning goes and how to work with a Team. She has worked with some difficult people herself, and has done a good job of it. So maybe we can mind meld and come up with something together that we can put down in black-and-white. :-)

.....Aaron / Arontius.