It had been 5 years since I last coached a competitive Lego robotics team. 5 long years. What could possibly have changed?

From 2017-2020. I coached a Lego robotics team through three seasons, two of which climaxed with appearances at the state championships. Those were some great years, and they inspired many blog articles. If you’d like to check them out, click here, here, and here.

But then covid hit, and that changed everything. Also, shortly after that, all of the kids on the team aged out.

It took a little while, but eventually, a new generation of kids were ready for the challenge.

Before I get into that, I recognize that some of you have no idea what Lego robotics is. Allow me to introduce you, briefly.

This is a competitive team sport for 9-14 year olds. There are over 32,000 teams in the First Lego League in 88 countries, and over 600 teams in Minnesota alone. Each season, every team in the league receives the same tournament board. Teams design, build, and program their robots to score points on the tournament board. The robots must be designed to operate autonomously. You can read more about it here.

This fall, we offered robotics as a class and an extracurricular activity in our homeschool co-op. I volunteered to teach and coach. Our team is called, The Plaidiators. Parents in the co-op enrolled 11 students aged 10-13. Two of them, Josiah and Elizabeth, are mine.

Last time around, I had only 5-6 students, and I knew them well. While I coached them for three years, when I started, the team had already been together for 2 years prior.

This season, I had 11 newbies with varying degrees of enthusiasm and interest in the sport of competitive robotics.

Rotational Assignments

In our first meeting, I explained the rules of the game. I asked the students if they had more interest in mechanical engineering, software engineering, or research. Of course, they raised their hands for various specialties, but I later realized how silly that was. They had no idea.

It was my responsibility to create opportunities for each of them to learn and experience the various tasks associated with competitive robotics. I set up a rotational assignment schedule and observed their aptitude, enthusiasm, and performance.

Think about the leadership lesson in this. At work, we hold our team members accountable for the jobs they signed up for. On one hand, we should. On the other hand, sometimes our team members have no idea what they are good at. It doesn’t matter if they are 25 or 55. Leaders have a responsibility to give our team members opportunities to stretch and try new skills. You never know when you’ll unlock a new, never-seen-before level of performance.

Legacy technology

To save on costs, and to leverage my previous experience, we dusted off the old robotics equipment that we used 5 years ago. It all still worked, and I taught the students how to design and build on that platform. This platform is called the Mindstorms EV3. It came out in 2013 and officially went end of life back in 2022, but is still totally legal for use at official tournaments.

Spike Prime came out in 2021 during my hiatus to succeed the EV3 platform.

The Plaidiators had their first Regional Qualifier Tournament last weekend. We showed up and competed against 47 other teams. I figured there would be a mix of platforms in use, but I was wrong. Looking around the event, I saw only one other team running EV3. Everyone else was running Spike Prime. I was surprised at how quickly the world had moved on.

When we got to the robot design judging session, my eager students opened their laptop to show the judges their code, and one judge squinted his eyes like he had just seen Cobol after not seeing it for 30 years.

Watching from the sidelines, I thought to myself, “Uh oh.”

Fortunately, the kids didn’t miss a beat. They confidently talked through their code and design. They all knew it wasn’t the latest and greatest tech, but it was theirs, and they were proud of it.

My daughter, Elizabeth, explained our Kanban technique, which definitely made an impression.

What were the results?

Well, they rocked it. They put up the second-highest performance score in their division, won the Programming Award, and won the Champions Award (for being well-rounded across disciplines).

What’s the leadership lesson here? At work, we have a vast portfolio of technology. Some of it is fancy and new. Other parts are not new at all. It’s natural for the teams running legacy technology to look over at the teams running new technology with a bit of envy.

As leaders, we set the tone. We shouldn’t let legacy technology degrade. Instead, we should set high expectations for everyone, regardless of the age of their tech stack. Then teams can have pride in their work, knowing they’ve taken what they have, and made it as good as it can be.

Leadership moments

I mentioned earlier that the team was double the size of my previous team, and all new. Going into that situation, I knew I needed some help.

Me and my co-coach, Amanda, enlisted the help of our sons, who are alumni of the original Plaidiators team years ago. Her son, Mycah, mentored in mechanical engineering. My son, Caleb, mentored in software engineering.

It was great to see them pass on the legacy of competitive robotics to their younger siblings and their teammates.

There was another moment that made me particularly proud. When the team competes, they are on their own. Coaches and mentors are on the sidelines and cannot direct or interfere.

Kids being kids, they were rowdy and chaotic heading into their final performance match. My youngest son, Josiah, assertively spoke up, got his teammates’ attention, focused everyone on their agreed-upon roles for the final match, and then got to work.

Later that day at the awards ceremony, we found out that The Plaidiators season would continue, as they advanced to the sectional round. It was a magical moment. It was the moment when I saw in their eyes that they caught the bug. They fell in love with competitive robotics. Go Plaidiators!

This so eloquently parallels our roles as technology leaders. There’s too much going on for us to direct it all, so we need to develop leaders within our teams and let them figure it out. In the end, we can’t directly control the outcome, but we can set up our teams for success. And when they succeed, we can be right there with them celebrating. With a little luck, our leadership efforts can become a virtuous cycle that is self-replicating. That’s the best-case scenario, and I got to experience that with a brilliant group of young engineers last weekend.

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