Every year, radio sailing will have a large World Championship running somewhere. We found that not much definition of “how to do it” gets passed on from one generation to the next.
The thing about Scoring a large one week event, is that it’s NOT at all the same challenge as scoring a weekend event,…. “but only bigger”….
Honestly – entering the scores is a tiny part of what needs to get done.
The number of people who will volunteer to help, may be what you need…. may be a different number. “Unbelievably” at the IOM Worlds we had a roster of 5 plus one subject matter expert on the phone all day from New Zealand. I most often score a weekend event, with one person – me.
So why a larger team?
1/ Venue layout. Not the same as normal racing at Datchet – these Datchet Worlds courses were widely spaced out. There were issues as to the where the Race Control Van could go. We had to think through our primary objective of always having a Scorer at the line, and how/where we got the Scoring processes done. It’s not going to be one person. We figured and tried a minimum of three. Not enough. Entering Scores is not the biggest part of the job.
2/ The BIG Thing….. If it’s a large scale, one week, championship you need enough people to cover the fact that most volunteers have to work weekdays for a living. You need at least the minimum number of people every day. You also have build enough scorer capacity to cope with a team member falling sick, or cannot get through traffic etc. TIP : Build a roster and publish it. Try on any day to roster your minimum number plus one.
3/ if you are missing a key team member contribution, you must have the ability to keep going.
We needed at least three scorers on duty on any day. We had five volunteers to cover this, plus a subject matter expert on the phone. I took everybody. Good job we did. There were plenty of hours where we were all flat-out working. The workload arrives in waves. We took no lunch breaks either. Eating/drinking was on the hoof. Don’t mention “Standard Redress” processing either.
If 5 people stand up for the job, naturally different skills can be brought to bear. If the daily number on duty varies from 3 to 5, you cannot really have a set role per person. Any team member must be able to do any role. So what you do, is not assign roles to each volunteer. What you do is document your key processes, then “Staff the processes”.
It’s important that key processes (eg backups) happens the same way each time no matter who is the duty scorer assigned to do it that day. Document the processes. More on that in later article.
Special contributions:-
It’s surprising/delightful what people can give.
1/ It turns out that most frequently used “asset” the scorers produced was our chronological filing library. Our ‘Runner’ role in addition to ONB and document transport, was defined to also complete our librarian function on our behalf. Honestly it was SO useful – Race Team, Umpires (checking their own decisions!), Board Managers would come in on-spec and inspect that file. We started with score sheets and results in one folder and umpire paperwork in another file. It needs to be on paper no matter how many laptops you have. Our librarian quickly realised that separate filing was wrong – file all that together in ONE time-ordered folder. This folder became so large that it eventually filled TWO lever arch files. We also had to keep “parking lot” issues on large flip charts on display for all to see. Vital as it turns out – for ticking off completed tasks.
It’s a big deal.
We had one team member who admitted he was technology averse – and he built and maintained all of that for us. Brilliant.
2/ Our most valued innovations often came from RH. He was fantastic. A process genius. Professionally ? He is a Schoolmaster….
I now see that the key skill of a Schoolmaster is to organise work so that even a group of recalcitrant teenagers will manage to complete it. RH gave us the most profoundly simple methods and they helped the team to a ridiculous extent. The way we laid out our work area, the way we named our backups, we way we built our crib sheets (and where we placed them), how we processed paper arriving in the room…. and really critically, RH (very fit) built a process tick sheet for a duty scorer being out at the line, as the Scoring Office representative…. It was with always him inside a waterproof cover and ticked off as racing progressed. As a Six Sigma process guy, I was stunned. Amazing.
So – for your Championship at your Club, if you need to build a team:-
1/ Define and Document your processes first. Then find people and staff your processes on a daily chart.
2/ Find what skills you have between the team, and use them to their best effect. People can give a lot. If they feel they can challenge the most obvious, then that’s the best you can get.
3/ Rotate the team members as much as you can. Give them all a “go” at all the processes. Not always possible, or easy, but give it a try.
Good luck with your forthcoming Championship !!
